Habakkuk 2:1-4(NKJV)
1 I will stand my watch And set myself on the rampart, And watch to see what He will say to me, And what I will answer when I am corrected.
2Then the Lord answered me and said: “Write the vision And make it plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it.
3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, It will not tarry.
4 “Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith.
We have discovered that in order for Israel to fulfill it’s destiny, it had to come to a place of total trust in God. In order to bring this about in their national life, the Lord led them into an impossible situation. The purpose was not to destroy them, but to destroy the enemy who plagued them. Once this was accomplished there would be no power on earth capable of bringing them back into bondage. They would, however, have to trust God enough to walk through the parted waters of the Red Sea, believing God would get them to the other side as well as protect them from the Egyptian army
There were a number of things they needed to do in order to cooperate with what the Lord was doing. The first of which was to deal with the fear they naturally felt facing such an insurmountable trial. In Hebrews 10 we found that they needed to hold on to the confidence they had. The only thing they could be confident in was the power of God. They could not afford to start looking to the flesh. They had nothing to be confident in there.
They also had to make the decision to endure. God would come through in the end, but they had to decide that they would not pull back from their faith. They had no where to go anyway. The only thing that lay behind them was slavery and death.
I believe we must learn the same lessons. We face a day in which the power of God must come through or we will likely see some very bad things in our world and that of our children. I believe God has led the church to a place where natural plans and programs will not produce. We must have a move of God or we will not see the results we need to see in our world.
Today let’s spend a moment looking at the scripture that is being quoted in Hebrews 10:38. The prophet Habakkuk lives in a time when God is restoring his power and presence to the earth. It had been a long time since the people of God had dwelt in the city of Jerusalem. Once again they had known bondage and once again God had delivered them from it. As they worked to rebuild, it was a hard road. Many bad things happened along with the good things. It sounds a lot like our day to me.
God speaks to the prophet and tells him “the just shall live by faith.” We talked about what that means yesterday. Faith must become the source of their livelihood. Fear threatened to dominate them just as it had their ancestors at the Red Sea. They must begin to see through the eye of faith instead. I believe we can see some more key attitudes in the prophet’s life that will help us today.
First it says he would stand his watch. I believe in order to live by faith we have to stand our watch. What does that mean? It means we have to be busy in the kingdom of God. It means we have to do our job. It was his job to watch for trouble. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing. Living by faith does not mean we sit around waiting for God to do something. It means we become active in the Kingdom, doing what we know to do.
Second, he was looking for correction. That does not mean that he thought of himself as nothing but a sinner. He simply understood that he had more to learn and he was willing learn it. He was willing to be wrong. He understood that being wrong did not mean being bad. It just means we need to make a change. If we cannot be challenged, if we cannot be wrong without feeling that we are being persecuted we will never make the changes necessary to maintain our faith life.
Finally, he was looking for the will of God, the vision. The vision is the direction of God for today. He was looking to hear and see it and he was ready to communicate it to others. Faith takes vision. Faith requires that we realize there is more to life than just our needs. We are part of something greater than ourselves. We must grab hold of the vision and we must encourage others to be people of vision. Only then can we be people of faith.
One more thing we learn from Habakkuk. If we are not living by faith, we are probably affected by pride. When we think we can’t be corrected it is pride. When we think we don’t need to be part of the vision it is pride. When we become fearful it is pride because fear is always self centered in one way or another.
Let’s get to our posts. Let get involved in the vision God has given for our church and for our lives. Let’s look for God’s loving correction. In this way we will be prepared to live in the victory faith can and will bring.
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