INTRO: Our subject is living by faith. God’s entire plan for everything is wrapped up in those who live by faith. We looked briefly at the prophet Habakkuk’s two questions in the first message. First, “How can such wickedness exist and you do nothing about it?” The nation of Judah was on its last leg spiritually. To the prophet it seemed as though God was not doing anything about it. It was much like our day today. But God answered him like this: “I am already at work.” When Habakkuk found out what God was doing and that He was preparing the Chaldeans to come and punish sinful Judah, he had a new problem: “Oh, Lord God, why would you use a nation more wicked than Judah to punish her?” Well, in short, through punishing Judah, God would ultimately save a nation and a people of faith.
God’s whole plan stands or falls in producing a people of faith. The people God had chosen to proclaim His message were the Jewish people, and now they were going astray, and the only hope was severe discipline, and that is what God did. It was very severe. If I could describe it for you, every one of you would weep.
We also saw that sin is man’s primary problem. And to bring about a people of faith, sin must be dealt with. We also saw that there are two realms. There is the visible physical realm of the five senses. It is the natural realm. But there is a spiritual realm. It is the realm in which God, the good angels, Satan and demons dwell. This realm plays a very huge part in what happens in the physical realm. I mentioned Lloyd Jones who said that to understand the physical, one must understand something of the non-physical realm. |
