Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: You're saved by God's grace through faith, not of your works. The Bible says that the just shall live by faith. You see, this is important, you guys. Nothing you can do to add to the salvation God offers to you.

Kurt: In today's word, a reminder from Pastor Brett Meador that it's the hearing of faith that saves, not the works of the law.

Brett Meador: We're all sinners, we all fall short, we need to be declared righteous. And there's only one way for that to happen, by faith, through Jesus Christ. The just shall live by faith.

Kurt: "The just shall live by faith" is a little verse tucked away in Habakkuk 2:4 and emphasized in the New Testament that packs a powerful theological punch. As Pastor Brett Meador examines this passage, he'll discern what it means to be saved through faith and not subject to a mere works-based religion, an important truth from today's word for a believer's reliance on God.

Brett Meador: Why don't you grab your Bible, turn to Habakkuk or Habakkuk? But our text is somewhat famous and it changed the world. I think the whole Bible has changed the world, but this one changed the course of history. This little phrase that's tucked away in a single verse in Habakkuk, and we're going to take a look at this little verse. It's Chapter 2, Verse 4.

It says, "Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith." The just shall live by faith. This phrase changed the course of history in pretty radical ways. You've got to go back a little over 500 years ago, November 10th, 1483.

A coal miner there in Eisleben, Germany and his wife gave birth to a baby boy. The poor coal miner and his wife, well, she was a homemaker and they just were in such poverty they wanted their son to surpass their poverty. And so they decided to prepare him and send him off to law school when he got old enough.

And he wanted to be better off than his parents, so he studied hard to be a lawyer and did really well there in his schooling. But a life-changing event happened to this young man as he was attending law school in 1504. He was caught walking outside on the campus there of the college during a massive lightning and thunderstorm.

I guess it was pretty dramatic, so much that he's freaked out and he falls down on his knees and he cries out to Saint Anne, the patron saint of coal miners there in those days. And he promised that if he survived the storm, that he would become a monk. Well, a few minutes later, the storm ended and he kept his promise. This guy who was once wanting to be a lawyer, he ends up being a monk. And he goes there dedicating his life to theology and becoming a doctor of theology at the University of Wittenberg.

But although he was an expert in theology, he struggled with his relationship with God. In fact, he would write in his journals over and over again, if you read them historically, he would say, "What can a man do to really have peace with God?" That was his struggle.

The idea of peace with God, and he knew that he was a sinner and every time he sinned, he knew he couldn't have peace with God because of his sin. And so he'd struggle and so he did what some people did in those days. He would sort of beat himself up, literally.

I mean, he would deny himself when he knew he'd commit a sin, like he was known to think a thought and then think, "Oh man, I sinned," so he'd fast for 15 days. Some of us would starve to death if we fasted 15 days every time we committed a sin. I think all of us would starve to death at that point.

But this guy, when fasting didn't work, he started whipping his own back, and he'd bloody and bruise his back trying to sort of show God of his penance and trying to gain sort of God's approval or favor. Like this guy was plagued, plagued with his sin. Well, as he wrestled with this, he started to realize that he wanted to do something more.

And so he decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome, where the headquarters of the church was. And he would go on a radical journey. In fact, he actually would travel over the Alps on foot, going over the mountain range there. He came down, but in his journey, he got feverishly sick.

And when he reached the other side of the Alps, he went in almost dead with fever into this monastery that was there. And those monks there at that monastery nursed him back to health and he was there for a while just trying to recover from his fever.

But while there, one of the monks that was there looked at this guy and said, "Man, you're struggling with God. You're looking for peace with God." And he said, "Yes." And he said, "I want you to do this: read the book of Habakkuk." Which is interesting. Why did this monk suggest that?

Don't know. It is interesting that Habakkuk means wrestler. He was a wrestler with God and he wrestled about some issues with God about the Chaldeans. But interesting, this wrestler that was at the monastery, he read through the book of Habakkuk, but the little phrase that we read that's our text, the just shall live by his faith, it popped out to him.

Have you ever read a scripture that just sort of stuck in your brain and pops out? You may not even know what it means. Well, that was the situation with this dude. He read it and he didn't know what it meant, but he just kind of tucked it away thinking, "man, the just shall live by faith." Well, he continued his pilgrimage there to Rome.

He had a specific objective. He was making his way to the church of Saint John Lateran, where especially today, even back in those days, there were all kinds of holy relics in Rome. There still is today. And I got to say, be careful on this, all the relics of religion.

People get really into this, man. If you travel to Rome, you'll see people wiping stones with their hair and kissing things, you know, like if you go to Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, you can kiss the toe of Peter. And so many millions of lips have touched those toes that his toe was kissed clean off after centuries of kisses.

It's really embarrassing some of the stuff that's going on there. But as it turns out, this guy was wanting to go to one of those relics. You see, there was a staircase in Rome there across the street from Saint John's called Scala Sancta.

But the stairway was claimed to have been in Jerusalem. It was the very stairway of Pontius Pilate's Praetorium where Jesus would go up those stairs after he was whipped with a flagellum. And drops of blood sprinkled on the stairway as he went up.

Okay, Brett, I understand there might have been a stairway in Jerusalem. How did it get to Rome? Nobody really knows. A marble staircase made it to Rome. And some people say it was Helena, the mother of Constantine, who transported this thing back to Rome or whatever. Who knows? Probably not true either.

But all that, the Scala Sancta as they call it, the holy stairs, it was this young man's desire to get closer to God. And the reason he went to this place is the staircase itself, what people would do is climb up on their knees and everywhere there was a drop of blood, they put a little crystal mosaic on that part of the staircase and you could kiss that part where the blood.

As you climb up holy on your knees and you say a prayer every step. If you say a prayer every step and you climb up on your knees, as it turns out, you can pray and have one of your relatives that's in purgatory have their time cut short because you went up the stairs on your knees praying and kissing and all that stuff.

Brett, is that true? None of what I said is actually true. It's there, it's still there to this day, you can do it today, but it's not true. It's totally wacko. Bible says nothing of that stuff. And so what you say, Brett, what happened?

Well, this guy, he goes there and he does this and he's thinking, "I'm going to find peace with God." And as he's climbing the stairways on his knees and kissing and whipping and torturing himself and trying to find peace with God, about halfway up the stairway, he remembered Habakkuk 2:4, the just shall live by faith. And he realized what it meant.

The just or the justified person. Justification, the word just is a legal term, a courtroom term. It's not that you're forgiven of your sin, it's just as if you never sinned at all. You're declared innocent of that crime. And suddenly this guy's, "Oh, the just shall live." Not just, you know, be saved, but live by faith.

And he stood up halfway through the stairway, stood up from the stairs, turned around, and walked down. And he went back to his hometown there at Wittenberg and started to study the scriptures himself to see what it said about this idea of justification by faith. And after that, he started saying, "man, the church is off course."

See, what happened is the church went through the centuries. Remember, it didn't take long for the church to get off course. Remember the seven churches Jesus addressed to Asia Minor there in the Book of Revelation? It didn't take, even in the first century, Jesus would say stuff like, "I know that you're doing good here and here, but I have this against you."

He had against his church. In the first century, the church was off course. Can you imagine 300, 400 years down the road when the church started adopting weird traditions and heresy and crazy stuff? And do you think Jesus has something against the church today?

But this guy was realizing, man, the church teaches the just or the justified, they live by works. And by doing and attending mass and all kinds of weird things. And this guy realized there's all kinds of things. And so he wrote a list of things that he kind of by reading scripture said, "these things are off."

And he came up with 95 of those and they're called the 95 Theses. And the man was named Martin Luther. And he was the guy who wrote the 95 Theses, and he's the one who hammered them, clink, clink, clink, as he hits the door and puts this on the door, the people were shocked that somebody was bold to speak that the church was off course because the church at this time had become so powerful that nobody dared speak anything against the church of Jesus.

Man, this Martin Luther in his little study there that you can actually go visit it today and look at his study, he wrestled with God there. In fact, there's a story about him, it's kind of famous, where he was there studying and trying to figure out his relationship with God and he perceived that Satan was in the room with him and he picked up his inkwell and threw it up against the concrete wall there and the ink splattered on the wall.

And you could see the stain of his ink up until about 100 years ago. What would happen to it? It started to fade and also tourists came and chipped off pieces and put it in their pocket of Martin Luther's ink stain. Brett, I was there last year and there's still an ink stain there. That's because they repainted it on there just as an FYI.

But Martin Luther, when he saw all this religious relic and all this crazy stuff, he said, "man, the church is off course." One of the big problems of his day was the selling of these indulgences. And in some way you can sort of, if you paid enough money, you could shorten the time of someone in purgatory.

Purgatory? What's that? Stuff that people made up. It's not in your Bible. Nowhere in the Bible do you read about purgatory or indulgences or the selling of that. And Martin Luther called all this stuff out. Now do you think the Catholic Church at the time was really happy that there was some guy making a bunch of noise about greedy selling of indulgences and stuff? Well, they were upset.

So they called a council together to talk about what Martin Luther had hammered to the Wittenberg door there and they called it the Diet of Worms. I bet you'd lose weight if you were on a diet of worms. I know I'd probably lose weight on that one.

But no, the word diet means council, the word Worms, that was the place, it was a place called Worms. And so it was the council at Worms. And it was at that place, the leadership at Wittenberg, they were not happy and they particularly didn't like the idea of Martin Luther cutting out the indulgences. And so they tried him there and in 1521, they accused him as being a heretic. They excommunicated him from the church. It was very dangerous for Martin Luther at that time.

But the problem with the church at that time, they were shocked at how Martin Luther's information that he had been writing was spreading like wildfire. How did it spread? Interesting, one of the major changes in the world was when the printing press was invented.

The Gutenberg press. Martin Luther was able to print up some of the stuff that he had written and it started to be dispersed. It's almost like in my lifetime I watched the internet become invented and suddenly we had the texting and email and social media and communication went crazy in our lifetime. We've seen that.

Before that happened, the big event was the printing press, the invention. Martin Luther was able to get his information out and he would declare the just shall live by faith. Not by beating yourself, not by praying or not by fasting or even attending mass or giving money.

And the world caught what he was trying to say largely and the great Reformation was launched. He wrote many works of theology. He translated the whole Bible. That's a pretty big work right there, somebody doing that, from Latin.

Because at that time the Catholic Church, did you know they used to chain the Bible to the pulpit? And it was written in Latin so the average dude couldn't read the Bible. That was for the priests. You couldn't trust the average layman to read the scripture. So they left it in Latin and they chained it to the pulpit.

But it was Martin Luther and there were other guys like Tyndale and others throughout history that said, "we got to get Bibles in people's hands." So Martin Luther translated it from Latin into the Germanic languages. And by the way, people are stunned at his intellectual power that he possessed to do that, knowing Latin and Greek and was able to translate the Bible with even the German language today was influenced by Martin Luther's writing, as it turns out.

But what he did is he said, "I'm going to search the scriptures and see what the church is supposed to really be about." Because of that, he led the Protestant Reformation. If you're a Catholic, you're saying, "Brett, I don't like Martin Luther. He ruined everything." Well, actually I think he got the church largely back on course.

But we have to be careful because even the Protestant Church can get off course really fast too. And we have, and we do. Martin Luther even got off course. Did you know that? I loved that Martin Luther was great at saying, "what does the Bible really say?"

But the sad thing is there were several things he did that he didn't look at the scriptures, like for example, his understanding of God's plan and purpose for the Jewish people. Martin Luther somehow missed Romans chapters 9, 10, and 11 where God says, "I've got a plan for the Jews and they're all going to be eventually saved."

And Martin Luther wrote some of the worst antisemitic writings in the history of the world. So I'm not saying Martin Luther is Superman or anything like that, but I am thankful for what he did in the Reformation when he realized justification comes by faith.

And he changed the direction, what I think was a major course correction, maybe one of the biggest events that happened in modern history, the Reformation of the church. Well, you say, Brett, well we don't care about Martin Luther. Oh, but this is where this verse, I wonder if God put this verse in Habakkuk just for this reason, to get in the 1500s to get the church back on course.

And really it's something we should be careful with because Martin Luther grappled with the issue at hand and it was an important issue. He was really dealing with two major important topics. Number one, how are you saved? Number two, how do you stay saved?

Those were the two things that Martin Luther was saying, this is important. Because at that time you kind of had to say, well man, you got to go to mass, you got to pay indulgences, you might go to purgatory, none of which is in the Bible. I always like to challenge people, find it in the scripture. See what the Bible really says.

But when Martin Luther went back to Wittenberg, what were the scriptures that he focused on and started realizing, wow, we've missed it? Now some of you might say, yeah Brett, why did they so blindly follow the church leadership?

Why didn't they read the Bible more? And the answer, they didn't have Bibles. Nobody was reading the Bible back then except for the Catholic Church leaders. They had their Latin Vulgate or whatever and they were able to read, but they neglected the issues of salvation through faith by God's good grace.

So when Martin Luther got the scriptures and started studying them, he dealt with these two issues: how are you saved and how do you stay saved? If you ask that question to yourself, how would you answer that right now? That's a good question for you to know.

It's also a good litmus test if you want to find out what church is a cult versus what church is true or false. You can just ask this question. If you are saved by wearing a metal triangle on your head, finding the third eye of understanding and thinking of thoughts of nothingness and finding your navel and lighting the third eye of understanding candle or whatever you're doing, you can say, well that person really doesn't know what salvation is because the Bible doesn't say anything about all that stuff.

I'll show you what I mean. What were the scriptures Martin Luther looked at? Well, it had a lot to do with this "the just shall live by faith." Romans chapter 1, verses 15 and 17, you can write this down. Paul the Apostle said, "So as much as is in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.'"

There it is, Paul is quoting from Habakkuk, "The just shall live by faith." And Paul made this argument over and over and over again in his epistles. But I love that he said for the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God. t's not your giving money or your attending a church or whipping your back or giving to poor people. That's not how you're saved.

People still get this confused that being obedient to God's word is how you're saved. That's not really it. It's actually faith and faith alone that saves you, the just shall live by faith. Notice the phrase before that, it says here from faith to faith. What's that all about?

That's what the King James says there, but if you look at the New International Version of verse 17 there, it says, "for in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last." King James says from faith to faith. NIV says by faith from first to last.

What's it saying? It's saying it's the beginning and the ending and everything in between. In other words, it's not that you start with faith and end with works. The whole thing is faith, from beginning, from faith to faith, from the first to the last, the just shall live or the righteous shall live by faith.

Quoting from Habakkuk. You see this is important, you guys. Nothing you can do to add to the salvation God offers to you. You're saved by God's grace through faith, not of your works. The Bible says that, read Ephesians 2:8. It's very, very clear. The just shall live by faith.

The Galatian church by the way, the Galatians, they were making a big mistake. They were starting to allow these people to come in and cause problems with this notion of are you saved by faith or are you saved by works? They were called Judaizers.

Now I've studied these Judaizers for a long time and I used to think they were Jews trying to make the new Christian church in Galatia sort of more like Jews. That's what I used to think. But the more I've looked into it, I'm realizing it maybe was some Jews, but it was actually mostly Gentiles who had in the early church thought, well we got to become believers, so we need to be like Jews.

Jesus died on the cross for my sins, but we also need to be circumcised, we got to celebrate the festivals and the feasts and the new moons and the Sabbaths. We got to start keeping the laws of the Jews and they were really into this.

And Paul, that's largely what the book of Galatians is about. The Judaizers that were putting this burden and causing a problem saying, "yeah, it's nice that you love Jesus and all and have faith, but that's not enough. There's more."

Turn to Galatians chapter 2, verse 16 of Galatians where it says, "knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified."

Justification's what you and I need. We're all sinners, we all fall short, we need to be declared righteous. And there's only one way for that to happen, by faith, through Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins. The just shall live by faith.

Kurt: Pastor Brett Meador sharing how the scriptures from Old to New Testament clarifies salvation begins and ends with faith and the work of Jesus who paid the price for sin on our behalf. And there's much more to share of this message from today's word that Pastor Brett has planned for next time. In fact, Pastor Brett has some hope to share with you in just a moment.

If you'd like more information about today's word or Pastor Brett Meador, just go to todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com. All right, Pastor Brett has joined me now. You know, I'm sure there is somebody listening who may have tuned in and they might be feeling a sense of hopelessness today, possibly because of something that just happened to them, or they could be feeling lonely or even depressed in life. Brett, can you share some hope for that person today?

Brett Meador: Boy, Kurt, I know there's a lot of people out there that do feel that. And if someone's out there that feels hopeless, I just would say, just remember you're not alone. More importantly, God sees you, he knows you. Sometimes it's the darkest seasons of our life, that's the very place where God does his deepest work.

So try to remind yourself that maybe it's the Lord who's going to do a great work because I'm going through this season. One guy in our church comes to mind, I was ministering to this guy because he was feeling suicidal. He felt like his life was over. He even had thought of taking his own life and had to plan for that.

But while being kind of trapped in that despair, it seemed like he said, "everything's against me. Everything's against me." And I shared with him the story of Genesis 42:36, where if you remember Jacob, he said, "oh, everything's against me. All these things are against me" because he thought his son Joseph was dead, Simeon was dead, Benjamin was dead. That's what he thought.

But none of that was actually true. And I found that when we get in despair, we can often have a perspective that everything's really bad. But if you know the story, the way God works is actually everything was for him. Even though Jacob was saying all these things are against me, if you know the story, everything was actually for him.

And that's what the Lord promises if you're a follower of Christ, a believer in Jesus, all things are working together for good and you have to remind yourself. So that's the truth. Your feelings are real, but they're not final. God's got the final word on what's going to happen to you. And so you just have to put your trust in him and that's where you really find true hope.

Kurt: It really is worth repeating that no matter what troubles we're going through, if we put our faith in God and trust him, he does indeed have the final word and he wants the best for us. Thank you, Pastor Brett. A good reminder.

And one more time, if you missed any portion of this study, you'll find this message from Pastor Brett and more at todayswordradio.com. Well, that's all the time we have. Next time, Pastor Brett Meador will continue to look at the prophet Habakkuk, which points us to the truth that salvation is found not in our works, but in trusting the work of the Lord. Today's word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.