IDEA: "My righteous one shall live by faith" is one of the great ideas of the Bible.

TEXT: "The just shall live by his faith" (Habakkuk 2:4).

PURPOSE: To help listeners understand the impact of this idea.

Do you think we underestimate the power of ideas?

I. Ideas are what move the world.

Day after day over several years a nondescript man came regularly to the library of the British Museum in London. He shuffled in and out almost daily, noticed only by a few guards and some of the librarians. The man was Karl Marx, the intellectual whose writings spawned communism. He was destined to affect the 20th century more radically than any other human being.

How do you feel about people who say they are not concerned with Christian doctrine, only with Christian actions?

Where do actions come from? Actions are the result of convictions, and convictions are formed by thought.

Is that true of Christianity?

II. "The just shall live by faith" is a doctrinal idea with great significance.

These words are the backbone of the early Christian church.

They are quoted in three different New Testament letters—Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. They come from a little-known prophet in the Old Testament, Habakkuk.

What does that tell you about the power of that idea in the early church?

These words also affected the history of the church.

Martin Luther was changed by these words and he, in turn, became a major force in the Protestant Reformation. Why were they powerful for Luther and the church in the 16th century?

Do you think the truth of these words is needed today? Why?