This sermon emphasizes the importance of living by faith, drawing from the prophet Habakkuk's experience of seeking God's word amidst difficult times. It highlights the need for believers to trust in God's timing and sovereignty, even when faced with injustice, sin, and unanswered prayers. The message encourages listeners to have open ears to hear from the Holy Spirit and to mix the word they hear with faith, ultimately living by faith in all aspects of life.

Did you hear what you were seeing? God is always on time. He knows where you live. He has your telephone number. He's got your address. Did you hear it? Why don't you stand up one more time, just one time if you will. I want you to ask the Holy Spirit to give us open ears to hear what he wants to say. We pray that for every service among ourselves, but let's do it publicly this morning. These are very difficult times and I would not believe, I know for myself and for every one of the pastors here and those that we invite as guest speakers, never approach this pulpit without having been with God and pleading for a word from the Lord to lift up the church, to correct the church, to do what God says so we can be built up in the faith. And I'm praying now that God would speak through my lips and sanctify the lips and just let this come forth. I'm not going to shout at you this morning. I'm not capable of that much anymore. But you'll hear the voice of the Lord. You'll hear something from God's heart. And let's pray for open ears that we can mix the word that we hear with faith, mix it with faith. I have no rebuke. I have no bad news. This is good news from the Holy Spirit. And he will speak if we open our ears. Lord, we pray for open ears to hear what the Holy Spirit has to say. But I don't have anything to say worthwhile. I have only the word anointed by the Holy Spirit. It can't be just a dead letter. It can't be a sermon. Lord, this is not the time, not anymore. This can't ever be the answer. There has to be something from your throne room. And I'm asking you, Lord, to take over and possess my body, my mind, my spirit, that I may speak as an oracle of God, not of man, that you would open up our ears, get our eyes off of the economy, get our eyes off of all the fearful things happening in the world today, and refocus on you and understand the majesty and the glory and the power of our God who's at work even now. We will hear your word. Pray it with me. Lord Jesus, I ask you to give me an ear to hear what the Spirit says. Amen. And be seated, please. Thank you. I want to speak to you about what it means to live by one's faith, what it means to live by one's faith. Now, if you want to find this wonderful little four-chapter book and Bible, just look to Zephaniah. And if you can't find it, go to Nahum. And it's not but a few books over from Micah. I'm not being facetious. Some of us have a hard time finding this. I'm going to wait just until you find it. And go to chapter two, if you will, please. This is Habakkuk speaking. I will stand upon my watch and set me upon the tower. And I'll watch to see what he's going to say to me. He's waiting alone. He set himself in with God. And I will find out what he's saying to me and what I shall answer when I'm reproved. And the Lord answered me and said, write the vision and make it plain upon tables that he may run that reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time. But at the end, it's going to speak. It will not be a lie, though I do it tarry. Wait for it, because it will surely come. It will not tarry. Now, here's my text, verse four. Behold, his soul, which is lifted up in him is not upright, but the just shall live by what? Faith. No, you skipped a word. Shall live by what? The just shall live by his faith. Now, this is the first time this phrase is used in the Bible. The very first time. Paul the Apostle quoted him in three times in Galatians, I believe in Ephesians. It's one of the most preached texts in all the Bible, the just shall live by faith or by his faith. Paul made it a foundational truth for the doctrine of justification, of sanctification, the purifying of the heart by the Holy Spirit, literally salvation itself by faith, the just shall live by faith. You receive joy by faith. Everything is received by faith. This is where I'm going in my message today. He had a dreadful vision. This prophet had a dreadful vision of a great calamity that was coming to the land and surrounding nations. And the Lord said, you write it down. You may not understand it right now, but write it down. What I tell you is going to be fulfilled. And he said, if I told you how severe it's going to be and how tragic it'd be, you would not believe it. I will not tell you that. But I am going to tell you, this man, if you look at the beginning of this book, Habakkuk, it says the burden of the prophet, the burden. He was a burdened man because of the grief he carried over the despising of God's word in his time. The law, he said, was not just. The rulers, the judges were ruling in favor of those who were wicked. The laws of God were totally despised. There was violence. There was fraud. The rich were taking advantage of the poor and stealing their houses. And there was grief over the flaunting of the sins. In the original, it says in one of these descriptions in the first chapter, you have described the grief and what he had been seeing in the spirit. And God says, I'm going to bring against this nation an enemy that is going to be my rod. Here is the prophet's cry before the Lord even told him what was going to come. And in Malachi or Habakkuk 1, 3, and 4, the prophet says, why do you show me these iniquities? And why do you cause me to behold grievances for spoiling? In the original, perversions and violence I have seen before me. They are there that rise up strife and contention. Therefore, the law was slacked. The judges, their true judgment never goes forth. The wicked compass the righteous. Therefore, wrong judgment proceeded. And here is his complaint. And here is his cry. How long, O Lord, shall I cry and you don't hear me? Even when I cry out of violence, when I see this violence, and you do not hear me, you do not save. And the issue now is this thing in the prophets. I see this in the spirit. Lord, you show me these things and they grieve me. These are the sins that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. And you're showing me this. But when I cry for you to do something about it, you don't answer me. I cry. I grieve. You place the grievance on me. You put the burden on me. And folks, where is there a true heart? Where is there a true spiritual person who loves Jesus with all their heart, who is not grieved over the flaunting of sin in the face of God? Who is a Christian? Who is a believer who would just say, well, what will be, will be, and we can't stop it? And many of us, we pray this prayer. If we don't pray it, we think it. We think this God, it looks the same thing. It looks like the wicked are winning. It looks like those who push their perversions upon us are prevailing. There's no other generation in history that ever proposed what we see and hear being foisted upon us now by the courts and by those who want to foster their perverse natures and perverse lifestyles upon the whole of society, that men should marry men and women marry women. And then there's something innately in us. There's something in the heart that says, oh God, how long, how long, how long does this go on? When do you stop it? Will this next generation who thinks all of these things are not only right, but perhaps preferred, and will God stand by and just let it all happen? Is God going to let the rich rob the houses of the poor, and five million people lose their homes because of fraud, because of rich men? They're dancing according to one prophet on the thresholds of the poor. How long do we expect God to just, and this is the cry of the prophet, Lord, you know these things. They've piled up to heaven, and what do I do because I cry and I pray, and you're not hearing me. And folks, this problem of God seemingly not to answer our prayers is sweeping through the body of Christ. I hear it from so many young people from different states and from college students who've drifted away from God, and those who have never had a heart for God. And you find almost every time you ask the questions, the right questions, you'll say, well, for me, my prayers don't work. God has never answered my prayer. You always find that at the back of it. This is what is going through the mind of the prophet, and he says in verse 13, you are much purer than to behold this evil. You can't just look on iniquity. Wherefore, are you looking upon them that deal treacherously and hold your tongue while the wicked devour the man who's more righteous than himself? He said, God, you are purer eyes than to allow this to go on. Such an overwhelming burden. He said, I have to get away, and he isolated himself in a tower. I can't go into that somewhere. He got along with God. He said, I'm going to wait until God speaks to me, and then he says, God, speak to me first. I want you to deal with me. Now, he had some things that he had to face. It's first of all, he had to face this thing in him that says God is not answering. God is winking at sin. God's just allowing these things to go, and he's not doing anything about this. There's no evidence that God is judging sin. And so he gets away, and God gives him a vision. But first of all, he says, I'm going to wait to see what the Lord says to me, how he rebukes me, or the very words, how is he going to rebuke me? He knew in his heart he had to have the right Holy Ghost view of how to face what was coming. It couldn't be his own zeal. God would not allow him when this Chaldean army said, God said they're going to go from all through the land, from east to west, they're going to devastate the whole nation. They're going to devastate it. That's what is coming. But he didn't go any further than that until he dealt with the attitude of this humble prophet. And his attitude, before he goes into the secret closet and seeks the face of God, his attitude was, God, I'm just going to go in and wait. And what he expected to hear is all the details of what is coming, and he wanted to know all about that. But God says, I'm going to deal with you first. He had to deal with probably the Jonah syndrome where, you know, the prophets, God said, you dare not do this. You dare not stand and say, I told you so. I warned you. And what that really says, look, I want to be confirmed as a prophet. I want to be acknowledged. Lord, you're sending me for the people now. You're telling me there's calamity coming. And God has to deal with this man because he goes into it with this mindset. Behold, all you among the heathen, and listen, and wonder marvelously, because I'm going to do a work in your days which you will not believe, though he told you. All he saw was the devastation. But listen to the scripture. When I heard, God told him, he says that the Chaldeans are going to come. I'm going to devour and march through the length and breadth of the land. When I heard this, my belly trembled, my lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness entered my bone. I trembled in myself that I might rest in the day of trouble. When he cometh unto the people, he will invade them with truth. But he remembers now that he has been called as a prophet, and he knows that the body, those godly people are going to ask questions. All right, if God is going to raise up a rod of chastening against a nation that has pushed you out of their very society, if this is so, how are we facing? You're getting a word of judgment. What's the word? How does the church respond to this? What's going to happen? How do we get a hold of something from God? And he's seeing this. And folks, this, I'm going to quote you at the conclusion of my message this morning. This is a page from a message I preached in 1992 from this pulpit called The Desolation of America. But I'm going to show you what hope I saw back then because the Lord told me I couldn't preach all these prophetic messages. I couldn't warn the people of the economic holocaust that was coming. I couldn't do it until I got a vision of God's true heart and for his people. And that when the questions are asked,