This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Habakkuk” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, July 9, 1995.
give your attention to God’s holy word. Hebrews 10 verse 19. Having therefore brethren boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh, and having high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for He is faithful but promised. And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as we see the day approaching. For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.
But a certain fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much more, of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despise unto the Spirit of grace. We know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, the Lord shall judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
It called to remembrance the former days in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions, partly whilst ye were made a gazing-stock both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion on me and my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye had in heaven a better and an enduring substance. Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of endurance, that after ye have done the will of God ye might receive the promise.
For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith. But if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him, for we are not of them, who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. And once more, Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 4, Habakkuk 2 verse 4, Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith.
Help us, O God, with your word, and help us, Lord, in our concentration. Lord, in our concentration, may we be a help to those who are with us here, that they may concentrate well also. We thank you, our God, for the blessing of this fellowship. And as we are the children of your word, may we live in and from that word. We pray that this time of worship and this instruction in your word may profit us greatly. We ask it through the living word of Jesus Christ.
Amen. you are engaged in a great struggle. Not always conscious of that struggle, but nevertheless you are engaged in a great struggle, the greatest of struggles that is going on for the souls of men and women, the very soul of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Now this struggle has had particular definitions for us throughout the history of the Church, and in order to remind us of that, we call to mind the evidence of the struggle from the first century. The Apostle Paul’s battle with the so-called Judaizers, evidence in his letter to the Galatians, also reflected upon in his letter to the Romans, commented on widely throughout his writings, even particularly in Ephesians, the second chapter. In the fifth century, the battle takes shape around Augustine, the great Augustine, in his struggle with the Pelagians. In the sixteenth century, again, the struggle marks out as Luther and Calvin go to war against the Church of Rome. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Calvinism battle against the Arminians, and in our own century, J. Gresham Machen battles against religious liberalism.
The struggle is always the same. It is ongoing, and it is always the same. It revolves around the question, are we saved by grace, that is, by God’s gift through faith, or are we saved by our own merit through a combination of our faith and our words? While this struggle in the Church has always been the same, that is not to say that the struggle hasn’t become more lethal as we have come into our own century. That is not to say that this struggle hasn’t become even more subtle in its refinement.
At least before the 20th century, the struggle was fought out on both sides by those who believed in the supernatural, Neither the Arminians, nor the Roman Catholics, nor the Pelagians, nor the Judaizers of Paul’s day rejected the supernatural message of Scripture.
They accepted, for instance, the miraculous appearance of Christ in the world. They accepted the testimony about God’s powerful deeds set out in Scripture. They accepted the reality of another world into which God welcomed His people at death and at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
But now, in our century, the stakes seemingly have been increased. Liberalism has brought into the Church a rejection of that very supernaturalism, the supernaturalism of the Scriptures, the supernaturalism of historic Christianity. And in the place of this supernaturalistic historic Christianity, there now stands a religion that teaches salvation for society through the common pursuit of civility. That is, through the common pursuit of good citizenship. There have been two devastating consequences to this rise of insidious religious liberalism.
The first is what Robert Pattinson, in his Oxford title, has called the triumph of vulgarity. Look at the culture. We are witnessing the triumph of vulgarity. Lewis Sass has gone even further. He has identified the origins and legacy of modernism in insanity. And he’s speaking clinically here. He is suggesting to us that the world, in modernism and because of liberalism, has been given over to madness.
We are faced, therefore, with the ugly reality that religious liberalism, while claiming to be the sure and certain road to a sane and beautiful world, has in fact produced just the opposite. But secondly, it is as if with the liberal ascendancy within the Church, Satan has struck upon a bright new tactic. For liberalism, in its new exposition of the old religion of salvation by works, has generated such personal, such social, and such ecclesiastical chaos, that the old forms of works salvation appear relatively harmless and benign. In fact, they start looking downright attractive.
The old forms of work salvation, that of the Judaizers, the Pelagians, of Rome, of the Arminians, the old forms of work salvation gain a certain appeal, especially as they can be judged as promoting a saner, more civilized brand of morality. It was on this basis, you see, that the document was produced a year ago, last spring. Evangelicals and Catholics together. The foundation of that document is a common morality, not a common view of salvation. And I’m afraid that even some in the Reformed churches have been compromised.
Therefore, it is imperative that you keep up your guard. The old struggle remains. The issue continues to be salvation by God’s gift through faith alone versus salvation by human merit through faith in one. And the stakes in this struggle, this battle, continue to be just as weighty as ever.
Paraphrasing the Apostle Paul from his Galatians epistle a bit, it is another gospel, which is no gospel. If it is not the gospel I preach. We then, so much like those Galatians to whom Paul wrote, so desperately need the reminder. Do we not? And that’s exactly why the Holy Spirit works in the Apostle that he write as he does. Not so that just Galatians in the first century would be reminded, but that you would be reminded here, presently.
After all, it is so easy to become confused. I know of people who have stopped reading their Bibles. It’s not because they’re lazy. It’s not even out of disinterest. Their confession is, the Bible confuses me. And when I become confused, I just become upset, and I become more upset the more I read. It is easy to become confused, to lose our way without proper direction and instruction. And it may seem at times that even the scriptures, the scriptures deliberately are tripping us up, as if they’re throwing roadblocks in our way.
We look to the law, for instance. How long have we been arguing about the law in this place? Even within the Reformed Church we are arguing about the law, are we not? So we look to the law. We start reading those first five books of the Old Testament. And as we do, we begin to become convinced that the commandment is, after all, the means of life.
Doesn’t it say, obey and you shall live? The examples of this are countless throughout the law. Just a random citation, Deuteronomy 430. So you shall keep the Lord’s statutes and commandments which I am giving you today, that it may go well with you and your children after you. and that you may live long in the land which the Lord your God has given you for all time.” It is very conceivable to approach that text along the lines of the doctrine of salvation by merit. You can slip into it so easily. What do we do with the Psalter?
Take, for instance, Psalm 26. The first seven verses of that 26th Psalm seem to be so blatantly salvation-by-merit oriented that one wonders if the editors of the Trinity Hymnal didn’t omit those verses from the Psalter selections to the back out of embarrassment. Check it out. Selection 11 at the back of the Trinity hymnal. There you find verses 8 through 12 of Psalm 26, but you don’t find verses 1 through 7.
Just to give you a feel for how Psalm 26 goes, if you don’t have it open in front of you, verse 1 reads this way, Judge me, O God, for I have walked in my integrity. You might re-translate that verse this way, “‘Justify me, O God, for I have walked in my integrity.'” Sounds like salvation by merit to me.
As we make our way through the prophets, many examples there as well. We find the pattern there seemingly, apparently reinforced, various passages. We won’t take time this morning to review those. But then again, there is Jesus Christ himself, who said on two occasions, He who endures to the end shall be saved.” Matthew 10, 22, and 24, 13. And of course, there is always James, the official of James, who boldly announces in his second chapter, the 24th verse, You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.
So you see, there are those, even within the Reformed camp, who have given up reading their Bibles. Again, I say to you, they’ve given it up, not because they’re lazy, not because they’re spiritually disinterested, but because they’re confused. They’re bewildered and baffled. The weight and pressure of all of these texts that we have noted to them has become invariable. What conclusion, then, might they render with regard to these readings?
Do we have in our Bibles two competing religions? The liberals have said that all along. They say we have three or four or five competing religions in the Bible. But do we have two competing religions, one of faith alone and another about faith and works? Is the ongoing struggle for the Church and within ourselves because of a fundamental confusion in the scriptures themselves? Can we get ourselves off the hook by blaming God?
That’s convenient. And as if the problems weren’t severe enough already. What do we do about those who suggest to us that the great justification text from Habakkuk, which we’ve read this morning, Habakkuk 2.4, teaches the opposite of what Paul thought and what we have thought historically. Their suggestion is that we must translate this important text this way. The just shall live by faithfulness.
You might check the margin of the New American Standard Bible. You’ll find that that’s an alternate reading. Isn’t anybody going to help us? Even the marginal notes are conspiring our overthrow. but just shall live not by his faith, but by his faithfulness.”
And then you add weight to this translation, this rendering of the Habakkuk text, when you move to Hebrews 10, verse 38, which we’ve read this morning. You’ll note that this passage is truly glorious. We move along through it. We’re carried along by its poetry, its power, its force. But you note, of course, that the interest here in Hebrews is the subject of endurance, perseverance. Verse 36, for you have need of endurance. And also the latter part of verse 38 itself, and if he shrink back, so writes the author, my soul, referring to God, my soul has no pleasure in him. words that can be interpreted well to fit into a salvation by works orientation. So we are told. So it is suggested by some. So here we are.
Does Hebrews 10 get it right? Does it have the proper spin on a Habakkuk 2.4? Has Paul built his case for justification by God’s gift through faith alone on his own private misunderstanding and misuse of that text in Habakkuk? And have we all been fools for following following Paul, just as Augustine and Luther and Calvin in nature have been fools.
By no means. But how can you say that? Isn’t the evidence simply overwhelming? Haven’t you yourself presented the case? Doesn’t the evidence tell us that salvation is by our own merit, after all, through a combination of our faith and our faithfulness, our words, our endurance, our perseverance? No. Not at all. How so?
Well, you must remember what we’ve already learned. You will look again at Habakkuk 2.4. You will remember the Lord’s interest there. And you will remember how the Lord has now declared to Habakkuk and through him that the Babylonians are coming upon Judea. And it is in that proclamation that Habakkuk and those who stand with him have been brought up against the end.
That is the point. They have been brought up against the end. I want you to capitalize that word, end. It is a big word, a very, very big word. It is not just that Habakkuk has been brought up against the end or the prospect of the end of Judah. It isn’t that Habakkuk has been brought up against the end of his own little private world as he has known it.
He has been brought up against the end of the world. It is only then that you can understand faith. It will be only then that you grasp whole in depth the meaning and the significance of the words that you find on the pages in your Bible. God repeatedly is going to bring his people up against the testimony to the end, because the end is the most important thing. Do you see what that does?
If, in fact, Habakkuk and the Judeans are brought up against the end of the world, there is no time for worse. Time has run out. There’s no time now for a demonstration of faithfulness. There’s no time for a demonstration of endurance or perseverance, for none of that will do any good whatsoever. The end has come, and there is absolutely no hope for Habakkuk or any in Judea unless they cast themselves completely and absolutely upon God and His provision for them in utter trust. Habakkuk is therefore being told that he is brought up to the end.
But now, because of the message of the Lord in Habakkuk 2.4, there is a way through the end and beyond it.
There is a way, even through death, to such life as triumphs in the face of the end and in the face of judgment. And that’s by God’s gift. Habakkuk meets the end even before the end comes. He meets his God in the end. And I tell you, this man is never again the same. For having met the end and God in the end, This truth informs all his living. He now lives from the end. And that, regardless of how long he will yet be in this world, where he stands specifically, respective to the actual culmination of this world’s history.
Do you hear Jesus’ message as he appears in the Judean wilderness? His announcement is that the end is proximate as never before. The end and God’s judgment and God’s grace They are immediately at hand. He declares in Mark 1 15, but time has run out. The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent ye and believe the gospel. And now every word that he speaks about obedience and endurance and perseverance has its origin in that message. That is the context. The entranceway in is by faith. It can be by no other way. It can’t be by your merit. It can’t be by root of you commending yourself, calling attention to your righteousness. What righteousness do you have?
I am bold to claim before you that James’ message is exactly the same. He is building upon the message of Jesus Christ. even when he talks about us being justified by works and not by faith alone. The perspective in which we ought to see that text from James is the context of the arrival of the Kingdom of God and the proclamation of the arrival of true, unadulterated faith.
James’ message is about faith, James 1.3. His interest is the trial of our faith. James 2 verse 14 makes it clear that James’s intent is with respect to the quality of faith. What kind of faith is it that justifies? Well, it’s the faith that works.
Paul said nothing less in Galatians 5, 6. Faith works by law, he said, in the very epistle in which he is declaring justification by faith alone. And the epistle to the Hebrews has no other message than this. It proclaims no message of salvation by words.
Faith here is front and center. It is so much the center of things, the focus of things, that the writer is able later on in the 11th chapter, the 6th verse, to say, without faith it is impossible to please God. In other words, without faith you can’t work. And this very faith, commended to us by Hebrews, is it not the sort that keeps the end and the promise in view? The glorious text on which we concluded this morning, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, the vision of the writers with respect to the end, the future, the glorious conclusion of all things. Endurance, perseverance, faithfulness, works, all of these are seen in that light. And they are laid out in that light as then the writer goes on to speak about the so-called great heroes of the faith.
All of that anticipated by what he says in his quotation of Habakkuk 2.4 in chapter 10, verse 38. Here is a man who has a firm grip on the true nature of faith. and on the end of those things, and the reality of those things to which that faith presses. In view is the better country, the heavenly city, whose builder and maker is God. In view is the sum total of what we find in Christ our Savior, for we are told in Hebrews 12, too, that He is the author and the perfecter of our faith.
Faith, in Hebrews 10.38, as in Habakkuk 2.4, as in James, as in Paul, and with Jesus Christ himself, keeps in view the end. And the life of faith is always a life thoroughly informed by this perspective. You walk about as a testimony to the end of the world. That’s why you are faithful, that’s why you endure, that’s why you persevere, that’s why you work, that’s why you love.
And if we know what we’re doing, And if we are well-grounded in all of this, we don’t even hesitate to translate Habakkuk to, for the just shall live by faithfulness. Because we know what that means. Nor do we hesitate Say with James, a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. We should in no sense surrender these wonderful texts in any regard to the enemy. They belong to us because they belong to the gospel. But of course, the best way to avoid surrendering these texts is to make sure We are ourselves living constantly in light of the end, in which we are cast utterly upon the provision of God, his gift to us in his Son, and enabled by God’s grace to believe absolutely Christ’s gospel message. The just shall live by faith and they shall live.
Pray. O Lord, you call us through endurance. Father, would you be patient with us, even as we stumble too often with your word, even with that word in our hands? Would you teach us, O God, the great and deep meaning of our justification, that in it, Lord, we have been brought to the judgment And there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Truly, we have peace with you through our Lord Jesus Christ. But Father, we know as well that our living in this world must be thoroughly informed by this justification. And therefore, O God, may we work, may we endure, may we persevere, may we be faithful, even as this faith which you have granted us, with respect to the end, works its perfect work in us. And we are shown to be more and more the children of your love. Bless each one here today, O God, that we all might have a good and proper understanding of this truth, that just shall live by faith. Amen.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.