Shaken, Yet Sure

Transcript

JR 21
6/25/2023
Shaken, Yet Sure
Habakkuk 3:16-19
Jesse Randolph

Sutherland Springs is a sleepy, sun-bleached town just east of San Antonio, and this dusty little hamlet just off Highway 87 has only about 600 people who live there. Only a handful of amenities in this small town—they have a gas station, they have a tire shop, they have a Dollar Store. Of course, like any little town in the Bible Belt they have a church, it's called First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs is housed in a tiny little white clapboard building surrounded by tall grass and uneven pavement. The church has a worship center, it has a separate area for the kids, and it has a large grassy area out front where you can picture all the after-church picnics and potlucks and barbecues they have. First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, though, also has something else that not many churches have, at least that I know of. They have something called a memorial room, and the purpose of this memorial room is to honor the memories of 26 people who used to attend this church. When I say used to, I don't mean that 26 people left the church, or 26 people were sent out as missionaries from the church, or that they planted a new church somewhere else. No, something far more tragic happened. See, on November 5, 2017, which was an overcast and humid fall Texas morning, a young man named Devin Kelly walked into this church and this young man didn't show up to worship and he didn't show up to fellowship, he didn't show up to pray, he didn't show up to hear the preaching. No, this man showed up to kill. Armed with an assault rifle this recently court martialed and dishonorably discharged former member of the U.S. Air Force sprayed 450 rounds around the room. He took the lives of 26 people—men, women, children, one unborn child—and injured many more. This was and still is the largest mass killing in Texas state history. This shooter, Devin Kelly, would eventually flee the church, making his way around bodies and pools of blood in the smoke-filled air. But he didn't get far because he was chased down by an armed local citizen. Rather than face up to what he had done—taking the lives of all these human beings created in the image of God, wreaking havoc on a local church, selfishly changing the lives of each of the survivors of the shooting, leaving gaping holes in these families—Devin Kelly in an ultimate act of cowardice took his own life. Terror, tragedy all around.

Now the pastor of First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, his name is Frank Pomeroy, and he happened to be out of town that Sunday, November 5, 2017. So, he was spared having to witness the carnage and the terror that happened in his church there, but he wasn't spared the consequences of that awful day because among the congregants that were killed that day was Pastor Pomeroy's own daughter, a 14-year-old named Annabelle. Pastor Pomeroy was not only grieving as a pastor, but he was also grieving as a father. When a news reporter approached him about a week or so later about how he was processing this pastor, all that was happening in his church, Pastor Pomeroy looked at the reporter and he looked into the camera with the microphone under his chin and said, “I don't understand, but I know my God does.”

We've all been there and when I say “there” I don't mean that we've all seen bullets flying and blood spattering in a church service; and praise the Lord for that. But I mean we've all been in situations involving varying degrees of heartbreak and pain and grief and worry and confusion. We've wrestled with those issues that Pastor Pomeroy was wrestling with as he stood there, stunned, with this news reporter's microphone under his chin. We've wrestled with the question, how can strife and difficulty and evil exist? How can pain and suffering and frustration exist? How can the sting of salty tears exist in a world that has been created and governed and is being upheld by an infinitely good God?

This morning as Aaron mentioned earlier, we'll be in the book of Habakkuk and we're going to encounter an Old Testament prophet who was wrestling with questions similar to those I've just mentioned. We're going to witness a man of God who, like Pastor Pomeroy, was shaken, yet sure. Shaken by the various difficulties and distresses of this life, but sure eventually in the hope and the character and the promises of his God. Please go ahead if you would and turn with me in your Bible to the book of Habakkuk. All you have to do, you have to find the Gospel of Matthew and turn left, go back five books. You'll see Malachi, keep going. You'll see Zechariah, keep going. You'll see Haggai, keep going. You'll see Zephaniah, and then there it is, Habakkuk.

Now by way of background Habakkuk is one of the twelve so-called minor prophets of the Old Testament. We just finished a study of one of these minor prophets recently on Sunday evenings through our series in Hosea. Actually, on Sunday evenings going to be going through Jonah in the fall, another minor prophet. Like the other minor prophets, Habakkuk's prophecy here is not minor in terms of the significance of the content of the book that bears his name, rather it is minor in the sense of this prophet's economy of words. It's a short book, at least in comparison to the other Old Testament books. This book of Habakkuk, as you can see as you thumb through it, has just three chapters, has just 56 verses. Today in our time together our focus is largely going to be on the final four of those 56 verses. As we're going to see as Habakkuk concludes this book, having verbally wrestled with God through much of this book, he finally gets to a place where he is able to wait quietly on the Lord and trust joyfully in the Lord. I'm kind of previewing for you the two points for this morning's message, which are to Wait Quietly on the Lord and to Trust Joyfully in the Lord, which is a place we all need to get as we walk down this narrow and sometimes bumpy road on the way to glory.

Turn with me, if you would, to Habakkuk 3. This will be our focal point this morning, Habakkuk 3, starting in verse 16 and all the way to the end of the book. God's Word reads, “I heard, and my inward parts trembled, at the sound my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones, and in my place I tremble. Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress, for the people to arise who will invade us. Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds' feet and makes me walk on my high places. For the choir director on my stringed instruments.”

Now before we jump into our text, into those four verses, we do need to spend a little time here sort of surveying the landscape of the times into which Habakkuk was writing and also to sort of survey the book as a whole. Now we know nothing about this prophet except what we can glean from the three chapters of this book that bear his name. We know that Habakkuk was a prophet to the southern tribes of Judah, Judah and Benjamin, and in the earlier days of Israel's history we know that the kingdom was unified, during the days of Saul and David and Solomon. In those days the people of Israel rallied under a single flag. But by Habakkuk's day that was no longer the case. The kingdom was now divided between the northern tribes and the southern tribes. We know that Habakkuk wrote these prophetic words sometime toward the end of the 7th century B.C., which would make him a contemporary of the prophets Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, who you might remember by word count wrote the largest book of the Old Testament in which he gives his own heartbreaking account of the demise of those southern tribes. If you have spent any time in the book of Jeremiah, you know that at this time in the history of Judah sin was rife, idolatry was open and rampant, and it was being committed, as Jeremiah says, on every high hill and under every green tree. This was a time of gross moral deterioration and now by this point the ten northern tribes had already been sacked and taken into captivity by the Assyrians. That's what we were studying in Hosea on Sunday nights. Now the two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin by Habakkuk's day were on the cusp themselves of being taken into captivity by this group from southern Babylonia known as the Chaldeans, a group, by the way, from whom Abraham descended. Remember he was from the Ur of the Chaldees. It is into this historical setting now that Habakkuk is called to prophesy to this morally wayward and rebellious people.

Now this book Habakkuk is organized according to these three different back-and-forth discourses. We're going to look at these one by one and what we see here is Habakkuk asking questions, or better stated, stating objections and then God answering him. He asks the question, he states his objection, God answers. Next question, next objection, next answer. In fact, let's look at these discourses just to get a feel for the flow of the book. Please go ahead and turn back to chapter 1 of Habakkuk. In his first discourse, the first of three is picked up in Habakkuk 1:1-11. And it begins with the prophet complaining to the Lord about the injustices he sees here in the land, the land of Judah. In fact, look at Habakkuk 1:2, he says “How long, oh Lord, will I call for help and You will not hear?” See, Habakkuk here is complaining to God about his own people. He looks around the landscape and he sees his people, the people of Judah, and he sees violence, and he sees iniquity, and he sees wrong, and he sees destruction. He sees strife and contention and injustice. That's all built into what he says here or asks here in verse 2 where he says, “How long, oh Lord, will I call for help and You will not hear?” Or paraphrased, God, why aren't You punishing this people? God, why aren't You punishing Your people? See, Habakkuk has already seen or at least he has heard of the ten wicked tribes of the north being hauled off by Assyria and now he is asking God; well, what about these two wicked tribes in the south? What are You going to do about them? See, Habakkuk is not only concerned that God is not bringing His divine hammer of justice on the people of Judah, but he is also getting worked up here. It's written, it's clear from the way he asks the question, he's getting agitated about God's inaction. So much so that he ramps it up here in verse 2 where he tells God that He does not hear, he's saying that to God, and that He does not save. Look at the last part of verse 2, he says, “And You will not hear. I cry out to You violence, yet You do not save.” We need to take a moment to appreciate the gravity of the accusation that Habakkuk here is leveling against his Creator. He is accusing the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator of the universe of somehow having ears that are stopped up. That's layered into the accusation here, “and You will not hear.” He's telling the author of salvation that His divine arm is too short to save, where he says, “Yet You do not save.” Can you imagine? Habakkuk certainly knew better than to make such ludicrous accusations and charges against the very God he had been charged to proclaim. God had every right at this point to smite him, to kill him, to strike him dead for daring to speak about Him with such irreverence. But He didn't. Instead in verses 5-11 God gives a response to Habakkuk's first complaint, and God responds by telling this prophet that the deteriorating situation in Judah is not going to last much longer because Judah was going to soon come under divine judgment at the hand of an outside force, the Chaldeans. Look at verses 5-6, this is God now speaking. He says, “Look among the nations, observe, be astonished, wonder because I am doing something in your days. You would not believe if you were told. For behold I am raising up the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous people who march throughout the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs.” See, the Chaldeans were this rising political force in the world at this time. They were fierce and they were nasty, and they were brutal. They had been appointed by God to be His human agent to bring about the chastening and the discipline that His people deserved. In other words, Judah was not as Habakkuk speculated and complained, going to go unpunished. There is a lesson for us here already, which is that the God of the Bible is not some aloof, cosmic force who is sort of loosely connected with the affairs of this earth. The God of the Bible is not some wishy-washy deity who refuses to wield the sword of His justice according to His perfect timing and His perfect wisdom. Rather, we can always be certain that if our hearts are stirred over the injustice and wickedness that we see in the world, God who is perfectly holy, unlike us, perfectly just, unlike us, is all the more deeply concerned and offended and will one day unleash His fury and wrath on the sin that exists.

In fact, turn with me over to Romans 2 where we see a picture of this. Look at Romans 2, keep your finger in Habakkuk so you don't lose your way back, and we'll just pick it up in verse 5. Romans 2:5 says, “But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God Who will render to each person according to his deeds, to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life,” meaning that is their reward. But then to those who are the enemies of the Gospel in our day Paul says here in verse 8 what's coming to them, “to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness,” (what's coming to them?), “wrath and indignation.” Or go over to II Peter 3, keep turning right in your Bibles to II Peter 3, where we see another example of God's stored up wrath against all wickedness and all unrighteousness. II Peter 3, picking it up in verse 7, it says, “But by His Word,” God's Word, “the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment, destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. And the Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”

Now back to Habakkuk in his setting with this unchanging God, the same God of Romans and II Peter is the same God of Habakkuk. But he is not buying it. In fact, the answers God gave in response to Habakkuk's first complaint, which we just looked at, only end up breeding more questions from Habakkuk, which we see in the second discourse which starts in Habakkuk 1:12 and actually goes all the way to the end of chapter 2. Now this second discourse begins with Habakkuk who has just been told that justice will be executed on Judah, now stating his displeasure over how God will execute His justice. Note that the prophet here in this second discourse again finds himself in this position of questioning God. Look at verse 12, this is the word of the prophet now. “Are you not from everlasting, oh Lord my God, my Holy One.” He is bringing God's eternality before Him as he accuses Him. Then look at verse 14, he says, “Why have you made men like the fish of the sea, like creeping things without a ruler over them?” Now he is questioning God's wisdom, God's wisdom in creation. But then go back to verse 13 where he loads up these barbed questions. He says, “Why do you look with favor on those who deal treacherously? Why are You silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they?” See, this is the classic, “why do good people suffer while evil people prosper” sort of question. Habakkuk here is asking God and really accusing God—God, are You really going to allow this even more wicked people to come to Judah and invade us? And then, are You really going to allow those wicked Chaldeans to go unpunished? How does this square up with You, God, being a good God, a God of righteousness? He's asking questions that sort of sound like questions Job would ask in the early chapters of the book of Job, like Job 3:11. He just lays accusation after accusation against God. This is Job now. “Why did I not die at birth, come from the womb and expire?” Or Job 3:20, “Why is light given to him who suffers and life to the bitter of soul?” Or Job 7:20, “What have I done to You, oh watcher of men? Why have You set me as Your target so that I am a burden to You?” That's Habakkuk's mindset here, too. Complaining. But here in Habakkuk, as was the case in Job, he's really not asking questions again, he is objecting. Again, his objection is how can and why would a just God allow a wicked people like the Chaldeans to come in and punish His own people.

Well, God answers that question, too. His answer, God's answer, comes in two parts. The first part of His answer deals with the responsibility of the righteous and that instruction is very simple and very straightforward. Look at the last few words of Habakkuk 2:4, these are the words of God here. It's a phrase that Paul would later appropriate in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11, “The righteous will live by his faith.” In the original context when God says that to Habakkuk, to His prophet, He is saying, you, Habakkuk, your charge is to live by faith. You are My mouthpiece, that's it. I'm God, you are not. You are not to be concerned with how I'm going to work all things out according to My purposes for My glory and for the good of the people of Judah. That's My job to figure out. That's God's first response to Habakkuk's question here in the second discourse.

The second response, though, is found in the rest of chapter 2 here, from verses 6 through 20, and here I'm going to paraphrase the response before we work through it. But God is basically saying to Habakkuk, don't worry about those Chaldeans, I'll deal with them. We see that through these five woes that God declares on the Chaldeans; we’ll run through these one by one. First there is Habakkuk 2:6 where God says, “Woe to him who increases what is not his.” That means the Chaldeans were thieves. Or look at verse 9, “Woe to him who gets evil for his house, to put his nest on high to be delivered from the hand of calamity.” The Chaldeans were covetous. Or verse 12, “Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with violence.” The Chaldeans were murderous. Verse 15, “Woe to you who make your neighbors drink, who mix in your venom even to make them drunk so as to look on their nakedness.” The Chaldeans were drunkards and immoral. In verse 19, “Woe to him who says to a piece of wood, 'awake,' to a mute stone, 'arise.' and that is your teacher? Behold it is overlaid with gold and silver and there is no breath at all inside it.” The Chaldeans were idolaters. What God is saying here to Habakkuk by proclaiming these woes on the Chaldeans is this. He is saying, yes, I'm going to use the Chaldeans to discipline My people there in Judah, but don't worry, those wicked Chaldeans will face My wrath, too.

Then finally we get to our third discourse between Habakkuk and God in chapter 3. What we see from the very first words of chapter 3 are that this is a prayer. Look at the first words of chapter 3, “A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet.” So, this doubting, disrespectful prophet has received all the answers to his objections back in chapters 1 and 2. Similar to Job, then, he gets this answer from God. Remember the answer that God gave to Job there in Job 38? “Where were you before I laid the foundations of the earth?” That's kind of what we have seen here. Now having received these answers from God about God dealing with the Chaldeans in His perfect time, Habakkuk now finds himself in this different posture. He is now finally, in chapter 3, at this place of acceptance and not only that, as he is reflecting on God's character and God's attributes and God's works, he is in the posture of worship and prayer. His attitude and his prayer, as we are about to see, is to the effect of not understanding everything, not understanding why God would allow His own chosen people, the people of Judah, to decline, not understanding why God was bringing in the Chaldeans to judge them, not understanding why God was going to delay bringing judgment on the Chaldeans. Not understanding any of it, but ultimately, as we're going to see, trusting it and being accepting of it.

We see that come out starting with his prayer here in Habakkuk 3:3. Look at Habakkuk 3:3, it says, “God comes from Teman and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor covers the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. His radiance is like the sunlight, He has rays flashing from His hand and there is the hiding of His power. Before Him goes pestilence and plague comes after Him. He stood and surveyed the earth; He looked and startled the nations. Yes, the perpetual mountains were shattered, the ancient hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting.” If you picked up on it there, what Habakkuk is doing here in his prayer is praying God's attributes back to Him, reflecting on who He is, praising Him for who He is, extolling Him for His majesty, His power, His sovereignty, His eternality, His supremacy. He is going far beyond the old prayer for the food or the prayer for traveling mercies here. This is a reverent, humble, lie-prostrate-on-your-face kind of prayer. A prayer that is worshipful, a prayer that magnifies the name and the character of God, a prayer that gets the attention off the one who is praying and on the One to whom the prayer is directed. Do your prayers sound like that? Do our prayers sound like that where we are praying back to God what we know of Him as He has revealed it in His Word? Are you through your prayers, as Robert Murray M'Chain once said it, turning the Bible into prayer? Taking what He has revealed and praying it back to Him? Are you through your prayers, as Thomas Manton put it, showing God His handwriting? Showing Him where He said what He said about Himself and praying that back to Him? There is no sure and more solid ground from which to pray than from what God has already revealed about Himself in His Word.

We have sort of circled around once but we're finally going to land back in our text this morning, Habakkuk 3:16-19, and note as we come back to these verses the bleak reality of the situation hasn't changed at all. The Chaldeans are still advancing, Judah is still about to be overrun and taken captive and Habakkuk knows it, he isn't cocooning himself from what is happening around him. What has changed, however, as we move from chapter 1 to the end of chapter 3 is Habakkuk's response, his response to the reality of the dire circumstances surrounding the people of Judah. If you are a notetaker our first major point halfway through the sermon here is Wait Patiently on the Lord. That's what we're going to see come out of the text here, the call to wait patiently on the Lord.

Look again at verse 16, he says, “I heard, and my inward parts trembled, at the sound my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones and, in my place, I tremble because I must wait quietly for the day of distress, for the people to arise who will invade us.” Now at this point the Chaldeans are already advancing, they are making their way toward Jerusalem, they are gaining ground on the Holy City. You can hear the sounds of the enemy voices and the clip-clopping hooves as they are making their way toward Jerusalem. You can picture the dust clouds sort of kicking up around the horses' hooves. You can picture the gleam of the spears of the Chaldeans reflecting from the noonday sun. As all of this is happening, Habakkuk here is clearly describing the fear that he is experiencing. Look at the different words and phrases he uses here to describe his experience. First it says, having heard all that is happening around him, he says, “my inward parts trembled.” The Hebrew word that Habakkuk uses here for inward parts refers to his lower abdomen, his belly, which in Hebrew thought was always known as the inner seat of emotions where the human emotions were located. A fair translation for our day would be his heart was pounding, pounding through his shirt. He is describing a tense shivering here. He is going through this phase of internal upheaval. Next, he says, “at the sound my lips quivered.” Other translations say, my teeth chattered. Not because it is cold outside but because his nerves are totally shot. Then he says, “decay enters my bones.” He is experiencing this feeling of weakness and paralysis, a total inability to cope with the situation. Then he says, “and in my place I tremble.” His legs are trembling beneath him, they are turning into Jell-O. The ground is giving way beneath him, he is feeling weak in his knees. The major thought that is being communicated here, though, as he moves from one set of body parts to the other, is that from his lips to his legs, from his head to his toes he is fearing ultimately, he is experiencing total fear, captivating fear. Now this is not an ungodly fear, not like a sinful fear of man. No, this rather is what theologians would call a natural fear, the sort of fear you would experience if you saw a lion charging toward you in the Serengeti, the type of fear you would experience if you were walking on a dimly lit street at night and suddenly heard footsteps rushing up beside you. The type of fear that you would experience when you just get that hair on the back of your neck, chill down your spine sort of feeling when things just don't seem right. How relatable is Habakkuk's experience here to us today. Though we sit 7000 miles away from the place he lived and prophesied, though we live 2600 years after the time in which he lived and ministered, our inward parts, to use the text's language here, might be trembling. Not because an army of enemy invaders is coming upon us, but instead because the bills are mounting, and the funds are running out. Our teeth might be chattering, our lips might be quivering not because we are about to be taken into captivity, but instead because we find ourselves in a place of despair and worry about the state of the world today. Our bones might be decaying not because we are about to be ripped from the only land we ever knew, but instead because we were going through a period of separation from someone we dearly love. See, we can't ever fall prey to the lie that the Old Testament generally, or the prophets or the minor prophets specifically are somehow unhitched or irrelevant or unhelpful to the Christian today. No, all Scripture, II Timothy 3:16, is inspired of, breathed out by God from Genesis to Malachi, from Matthew to Revelation, from Haggai to Habakkuk. It is breathed out by God, and it is profitable and useful for Christians today. He gave us this book to study, to enjoy, to learn from.

Getting back to the text, though, the point here is like Habakkuk we are going to experience trials in this life, which lead to varying degrees of fear and distress. The New Testament doubles down on this and affirms that as Christians we are not immune from these trials. In fact, trials are to be expected in the Christian life. Like it says in James 1:2, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, if you experience various trials.” Right? That's how it goes? No. “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you experience various trials.” It's not a matter of “if,” it's “when.” Or think of how Peter puts it in I Peter 4:12 when he says, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial or ordeal among you which comes upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you.” So yes, our trials may bring us natural feelings of fear like was happening with Habakkuk here. Yes, our trials may be accompanied by immediate reactions of anxiety and panic. But what this minor prophet, Habakkuk, is telling us is that the remedy for our fear is not to be more fearful. The antidote to our anxiety is not to be more anxious. Rather, the solution when we are experiencing that fear, when we are experiencing that anxiety is to wait. To wait. Not the answer you were expecting, was it. But it's in the text.

Look at the end of verse 16. After he expresses his inward parts trembling and his lips quivering and decay entering his bones and his trembling feet, he says, “Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress, for the people to arise who will invade us.” Now in his original context we know Habakkuk was literally waiting quietly for the Chaldeans to invade his land and take the people of Judah away. And though we have different contexts as 21st century Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, what we see here is directly applicable to us, since so much of the Christian life is all about waiting on the Lord. Right? In the workspace, waiting for that promotion or that raise. Circumstantially, just waiting for doors to open or waiting for doors to close. Relationally, waiting for a husband or waiting for a wife or waiting for that pregnancy, waiting for that child. Spiritually, waiting for that loved one to come to know the Lord. Waiting for the wrongs of this world to be righted. Eternally, waiting for the rapture, waiting for our resurrection bodies, waiting for the millennium, waiting for the new heavens and the new earth. It's all about waiting. A verse that ought to encourage us as we do wait on the Lord is Isaiah 40. In fact, turn with me if you would to Isaiah 40. This chapter as a whole, Isaiah 40, and this whole section tells us so much about God, about His character, about His attributes, about His purposes in the world. Look at just the last few verses here of Isaiah 40. We'll pick it up in verse 28, Isaiah 40:28 says, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired, His understanding is inscrutable. He gives strength to the weary and to him who lacks might He increases power. Though youths grow weary and tired and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” That is such an important cross reference for us to consider because what it shows us is that waiting is not to be confused with passivity. Look at what it says there in verse 31, “Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength.” And then what? With that new strength “they will mount up,” they will walk, they will run. You see, the Christian life is not about letting go and letting God. The Christian life is not about putting it on autopilot or cruise control and just sort of bracing for the rest. Instead, Christians are simultaneously waiting and battling. We wait on the Lord for Him to bring all His plans to fruition as we just saw, but we are still “working out our salvation with fear and trembling,” Philippians 2:12. We're still “growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” II Peter 3:18. We're still putting on the full armor of God as it says in Ephesians 6:11, “so that we are able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” Waiting, in other words, is not for wimps.

All of that was tied to Habakkuk 3:16, we've covered a single verse. Let's move into our second verse, verse 17 and as we do so we are going to see Habakkuk was not only experiencing these physical maladies and these emotional issues—knocking knees, sinking stomach—he is also anticipating some other trials, some other hardships and difficulties that had not yet arrived. Let's look specifically at the context here, verse 17, and what it is he is concerned about. He says, “Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls.” He is painting this picture of famine on the horizon. He's painting a picture of a complete economic collapse in war torn Judah, a situation involving total devastation and the ruin of a nation. Now, I have preached this text before and when I did it, I did it in California. The last time I preached this text in California it sort of clicked and resonated on one level, but I suspect it might click on a different level here, given where we live and that we might have people in the room who have personally experienced a season of barren branches or crops that won't grow or fruitless vines or rain that won't fall or fields that produce no food. What are we called to do when that happens, when we experience seasons like this? Well, Habakkuk has already given us a clue earlier in the book, we already saw it very briefly there in Habakkuk 2:4. Remember that last line there, the one that Paul appropriates, “The righteous will live by his faith.”

That brings us to our second point this morning which is we are to Trust Joyfully in the Lord. See, if you are here this morning as a blood-bought follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, our text here compels me to ask you this question. Are you truly trusting in the Lord in whatever season you find yourself in today? Do you truly trust in the Lord no matter what season you find yourself in? See, it is easy to trust God when the fig tree is budding and when there are grapes on the vine and when the olive crop is succeeding, and the fields are producing, and you have plenty of cattle and sheep in the stall. It is easy to trust God, using more maybe modern illustrations, when the fridge is full, and the gas tank is full, and the grain bins are full, and the lights are on and the pay is steady and your health is stable. But what about when the going gets tough? What about when you are suddenly on thin ice at work? Or when your parent dies? Or when your spouse starts pulling away from you? Or when that so-called friend is now bad-mouthing you? Or when there is tension with your grown children? Or when that scan reveals a lump? What about that? Where does your trust lie? Does your trust lie in God and His perfect and providential ordering of all events in your life? Or does your trust lie in your hope and your wish that He will quickly deliver you from those events? There is a difference. See, for Habakkuk the specific difficulties he was facing could have dominated him, they could have driven him away from his ultimate trust in God, they could have led to cynicism and skepticism and fatalism. But they didn't. Instead, what we see here is that Habakkuk didn't lose heart, he didn't lose his eternal perspective.

Look at verses 18-19. He says, “Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength and He had made my feet like hinds' feet and makes me walk on my high places.” See, after outlining the various trials he was experiencing and laying out the various trials like the famine he was still anticipating, Habakkuk here turns the page and puts his circumstances in their right perspective. He does so with this tiny little word that we see in our English Bibles there at the beginning of verse 18, “Yet.” See, in the English Bible we have a word there, “yet,” but if you go to the Hebrew Bible that word isn't there. The word “I” is there in the Hebrew, but that word “yet” is actually marked by this tiny little conjunction, it's hard to even see it on the page of the Hebrew text attached to the Hebrew for “I.” That word there in the Hebrew text serves as a conjunction, bringing one set of thoughts the prophet has had in chapters 1,2 and part of 3 up to here. What we're going to see is that little Hebrew conjunction that is translated here “yet” plays such an important role in the development of Habakkuk's thoughts and the conclusion he ultimately reaches here. Because ultimately what this conjunction shows is that Habakkuk's solution both to the trials he had experienced and was experiencing and was going to experience was not to practice deep meditative breathing or positive thinking or to push the realities of his life out of his mind, instead it was to set his sights higher on God and to focus more faithfully on his relationship with God and to realize that his salvation and his strength come from God. See, Habakkuk could eventually and ultimately recognize that his inward parts were trembling, yet he could exult in the Lord. He could recognize and affirm that his lips were quivering, yet rejoice in the God of his salvation. He could affirm and recognize that decay had entered his bones, yet say that the Lord his God is his strength. See, the word “yet,” though small is actually of enormous significance.

Now carrying that over from what Habakkuk is describing here in his context to our day, we see that there really are two ways that people can choose to live, not only in the world but right here in the church. The first way is the way of if/then, and this way essentially says if everything goes well, if my life is prosperous, if no one I love dies, if I am successful, if I feel loved, if I am healthy, if I am honored, if I feel understood, if I feel respected, then I will trust in God, then I will follow Christ, then I'll get connected to other believers, then I'll spend time in the Word, then I'll commit myself to prayer, then I'll get more active in the church. But see the fatal flaw of that mindset is that it suddenly attempts to place the supreme and sovereign ruler of the universe under our thumbs, which is not only an impossible task, by the way, but it reveals a heart that is steeped in the idolatrous worship of a so-called God that we have attempted to create in our image.

Compare this to the second way of living which is not if/then, rather it is though/yet. This mentality by contrast allows a right view of God to interpret and inform all of our circumstances. This mentality believes with the presupposition, the knowledge, that I believe God, I know God, I trust God and I trust what He has told me in His Word. So though evil exists and though loved ones die and though abandonment happens and though I get frustrated and though I get disappointed and though hopes are dashed and though not every dream is fulfilled, yet I will wait on Him, yet I will follow Him, yet I will love Him, yet I will serve Him, yet I will live for Him, yet I will proclaim Him. This way of living is all encapsulated in what Job says in Job 13:15 where he says, “Though He slay me, yet I will hope in Him.”

So Indian Hills family, which part of the book of Habakkuk describes you? Which part of the story do you find yourself in this morning? Are you at the beginning of the story where he was, and you are repeatedly questioning God in His wisdom and His purposes? Or do you find yourself more at the end of the story where he found himself at the end of the story where he was submitted fully and dependently to God, where he was fully trusting in God, where he was willing to wait on God, where he finally embraced God's plans and purposes? Put another way, are you living today according to the always flawed, ever disappointing, man centered cycle of if/then, or instead are you living that God centered, firmly rooted though/yet way of living? People who are shaken, but people who are sure. People who are waiting on the Lord and people who are trusting the Lord. People who like Habakkuk here are ultimately exulting in the Lord and trusting and rejoicing in the God of your salvation. When we are people like that, when we live like that we can genuinely heed and find comfort in what the prophet says in verse 19 where he says, “The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds' feet and makes me walk on my high places.” Habakkuk here pictures the female deer running on the heights of the mountains, she is steady, she is sure-footed, she is uninhibited, she is unafraid, she is full of freedom, confidence and she is scaling the heights of the mountains here. Sounds a lot like Isaiah 40:31 that we shall “mount up with wings like eagles.” That's the joy, that's the assurance that each true worshiper of the living God, meaning those who have truly trusted in Jesus Christ, who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb can experience this morning.

Now I trust you have sensed that here in Habakkuk 3:16-19 that in the end when we look at the whole scope of it from chapters 1-3 that this is a comforting and encouraging text of Scripture as we've witnessed Habakkuk moving from struggling to singing, from doubting to shouting, he is going from worrying to worshiping. Our text definitely has this happily ever after feeling to it, this definite upward arc. But as sweet and as assuring as this passage is for God's redeemed people, I don't want to mislead some of you sitting here this morning who are not in fact one of God's redeemed people. See, if you are sitting here this morning and you are not right with God, meaning you have not bowed your knee to His authority, you've not surrendered your life to His Son, Habakkuk 3:19 is not your life verse. Don't go naming it and claiming it just yet. No, if you haven't repented of your sins and trusted in the sufficient atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross, don't be deceived into thinking that the Lord your God is your strength. Don't be deceived into thinking that you are going to be bounding up to the highest elevations like this female deer. Don't be deceived into thinking that you'll be treading on any high places, eternally speaking. Because the reality is that no matter how many acts of charity you perform, no matter how many good deeds you've done, no matter how many compliments you've paid, there is no getting around the Bible's teaching that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23. There is no getting around the teaching of the Bible that “the wages of that sin,” your sin, “is death.” In other words, if your plan is to try to get to heaven on your own, you'll never make it. Instead, what awaits you, based on the sins that you have committed against an infinitely and righteous and just God are the never-ending flames of a real and eternal hell. That's where you'll spend your eternity as the object of God's just punishment as He metes out His fury on your sin-blemished soul. But God, in His infinite wisdom, in His infinite kindness, in His infinite love, in His infinite grace and mercy has provided a way. He has provided you a way, He has provided all of us a way, a single way to avoid that fate. It's through Jesus Christ. See, like Habakkuk, Jesus Himself faced a day of distress in His earthly ministry, did He not? Luke 22:44 speaks of the “drops of blood that He was sweating out.” Though He knew in His eternality that His Father would never forsake Him, the reality of the agonies He was about to face overwhelmed Him in His humanity. So much so that in Matthew 26:38 Jesus is reported as saying, “My soul is deeply grieved.” Though He faced those feelings of internal turmoil, similar to what Habakkuk here experienced, Jesus with His face set like flint proceeded toward the cross. As He did so He was spit upon, He was tortured, He was mocked, whips were laid across His back, a crown of thorns was hammered into His skull, nails were driven through His hands and feet and a spear was driven into His side. He gave His life voluntarily according to the perfect plan and foreknowledge of God as an unfathomable act of love and mercy and grace. He did all of this. He even died so that you might live. Have you trusted in Jesus to save you? If not, I beg of you come empty to the only One who can make you full. Come broken to the only One who can piece you back together. Come humble and come contrite to the only One who can save your soul. Repent of your sins, turn away from your old way of living, turn to the living God and trust fully and completely and exclusively in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only means by which your soul might be saved.

I'll wrap up our time here this morning by noting that our text for today is actually a song. Look at the last line there of verse 19, it says, “For the choir director on my stringed instruments.” Like other songs in the Bible, like the psalms, Christian poets and hymn writers have used this text, our text, as a source of inspiration for their own hymns and songs. In fact, William Cowper who lived during the 18th century in England, he wrote a famous hymn called “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” But he also wrote a hymn called “Sometimes a Light Surprises.” That hymn is based on our text today, Habakkuk 3:16-19. I'm not going to sing the hymn but I'm going to close with it. It says:

Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings,
It is the Lord who rises with healing in His wings.
When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again.
A season of clear shining to cheer it after rain.
In holy contemplation we sweetly then pursue
The theme of God's salvation and find it ever new.
Set free from present sorrow we cheerfully can say,
Even let the unknown morrow bring with it what it may.
It can bring with it nothing, but He will bear us through.
Who gives the lilies clothing will clothe His people, too.
Beneath the spreading heavens no creature but is fed,
And He who feeds the ravens will give His children bread.
Though vine nor fig neither, their wanton fruit should bear,
Though all the fields should wither, nor flocks nor herds be there,
Yet God the same abiding, His praise shall tune my voice.
For while in Him confiding I cannot but rejoice.

Amen.

Let's pray. God, thank You for the truth of Your Word. Thank You that we can go to a book like Habakkuk, written so long ago, written in a different context, on a different continent, in a different language, that we can go to it, mine truths from it and apply the truths that we learn this morning to our lives in Christ. God, I do pray that we would heed the lessons of Habakkuk, this section of Habakkuk, that we are to wait patiently on You, God, and to trust joyfully in Your perfect plans and purposes and ways. God, I pray that for those who are in Christ that this would be a morning of refreshment as we remember that we do have You the living God who is our source of strength and hope and guidance, and that Your plans are not our plans and Your ways are not our ways and they are better, certainly, than ours. For those who may not know You I do pray that today would be the day that they would not try to will their way to a better life or higher living, but would rather trust humbly, trust fully in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, that they would turn from their sin and turn to Him, the Savior of the world in repentant faith. We give You all the praise for this time together and for the day ahead. In Jesus' name, amen.