Would you turn with me to the Prophet Habak in the Old Testament?

While you're looking for that, let me try to bring you into the situation of Habakkak so that when we focus on its content you'll know a little bit of the background.

The situation is that the invasion of Judah, that is the southern kingdom, is imminent from the Chaldeans, or another name for

them the Babylonians.

The invasion eventually happened at the 6th century BC and Nebuchadnezzar with his forces sacked Jerusalem in about 586 BC. Before that happened, the Lord revealed to Habakak that in fact it was

going to happen, that Judah would be punished for her sins by the invasion of the Chaldeans. And unlike Joel and

Zephania and Amos, whom we have looked at before, nowhere in Habakkak, is there any mention of the possibility that judgment might be averted?

Nowhere does he call for national repentance. It's too late. It is coming. That's it.

All we can do, therefore, according to Habakak, is prepare ourselves as individuals to get ready for it.

And the way he says that an individual can prepare to live in the judgment is by faith. So destruction is decreed

and the hope of individuals is faith that the nation as a whole is going to be blasted.

Now, the full-blown doctrine of justification by faith, which we're going to aim at, is not here yet in Habakk, but the seed is here.

So what I'd like to do is survey this prophet and then zero in on its main point, which I think is chapter 2

verse 4, and then let the little seed of the main point unfold for us into the New Testament flower.

And that will be justification by faith, the greatest news in all the world.

So turn with me to chapter 1 verse 1. After introducing

the prophecy as a burden which the Lord has given to him, Habakk cries out in verses 2 through 4, that Judah is full of violence and perverted justice.

For example, verse four, so the law is slacked and justice never goes

forth, for the wicked surround the righteous and so justice goes forth perverted. Now Amos, you remember, had warned

the Northern Kingdom, Israel, of those very sins that if they persisted in them judgment would come and

judgment came in 722 a Syria clean house on the northern kingdom and it's gone.

But it's gone. But Judah evidently just to the South didn't go to school

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