Living By Faith In Terrifying Times Is

Transcription

1 Living By Faith In Terrifying Times Text: Habakkuk 3:1-2 Series: Living By Faith In A Difficult Time, Book of Habakkuk, #6 Pastor Lyle L. Wahl October 30, 2016 Living By Faith In Terrifying Times Is Introduction Last week we thought about life beyond the guardrail, life trusting in ourselves rather than in God. We looked at five woes, five messages of judgment which illustrate that God will judge all who reject Him, all who do not come to Him by faith. Some of us may have thought, I m glad that s over! I m glad he didn t preach a sermon on each one of those five woes! None of us like to hear and think about sin and judgment. But God s judgment on sin is real. It is an unalterable fact. It is as certain as God s love, grace and mercy. In fact, we need to know the reality of God s holiness, righteousness and judgment in order to really understand and appreciate His love, grace and mercy. Building on all that has gone before, we come to a grand psalm in chapter 3. This is the final leg of Habakkuk s journey that began with his questions and distress at the rampant sin in God s people, went on to His questions to God about that, through God s silence, and then God s answers which raised even more questions, and on again to God reminding him that the righteous live by faith and sinners will be judged. It has been a long, troubling, terrifying journey. The people s sin and God s silence were troubling. God s news that He was raising up the Chaldeans to punish Judah was terrifying. Habakkuk has come to and walked with God by faith. But what does he do now? Judah will be conquered, ravaged. Many people will suffer and die. The nation, land and people will be swallowed up by Babylon. What about the future? What about God s promises? How can he and the people face this, live through this? The righteous one, the one whose heart is right with God, will live by faith, as we saw back in chapter 2 verse 4. But what does that mean? How did he, how do we practically, specifically live by faith in a terrifying time? The brief prayer that opens chapter three shows

2 us three critical answers and concrete steps of faith for Habakkuk and all of God s righteous people. Believing the truth about God. Living by faith in terrifying times is first believing the truth about God. This is not as easy as we sometimes might think, let alone automatic for believers. I think you will see what I mean as we look at Habakkuk. First, look at verse 1. A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionoth. This is his prayer. But what is the shi-gio-noth? The word occurs only one another time in the Bible, at the opening of Psalm 7. It seems to be some kind of musical direction for singing the Psalm, and then this prayer of Habakkuk. We can t be sure what it means. Now we pick it up at the start of verse 2, LORD, I have heard the report about You and I fear. Let s look at a few words in this sentence. Habakkuk tells God, I have heard. While the basic idea of this word is simple, to hear, it often has an extended meaning: to pay attention to, to understand and even to follow or obey. God confronted Adam with his sin in the garden of Eden and said to him, you have listened to [there s our word] the voice of your wife. That is, You followed her suggestion. 1 It s even stronger in Exodus chapter 24 verse 7. Moses read the book of the covenant to the people and they responded by saying, all that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient [our word again]. Habakkuk is saying, God, I have heard, payed attention to and accepted the reports, the truth about You. I believe and will follow, act on what You have said. That brings us to the second word, or phrase, the report about You. The basic sense of this word is secondhand information of any kind good, bad, or indifferent. 1 Kings chapter 10 verse 1 tells us, Now when the queen of Sheba heard about the fame [our word] of Solomon, concerning the name of the LORD, she came to test him with difficult questions. Habakkuk heard, believed the reports of God s great and dramatic works from the creation on through the creation of Israel, His delivering them from slavery and up to Habakkuk s own day. He also heard, believed God s message of His soon coming judgment on Judah as recorded in chapter 2 and the verses after this prayer. All of this is part of the 2

3 report, the fame of God he refers to here. Thirdly, after this, Habakkuk tells God his response to understanding and believing this truth about God. He said, I fear. This word for fear is used frequently in the Old Testament word with several basic meanings. It can mean to be afraid. For example, after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they hid themselves when they heard God coming. God asked them Where are you? Adam answered, I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself. 2 It also can mean awe, to be in awe of, have great respect or reverence. We see this many times in Proverbs where, for example, chapter 1 verse 7 tells us, The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. The setting or context tells us the emphasis. As we look at the setting here, Habakkuk is saying to God, I have heard and believed the reports of Your great works of judgment and, dropping down to verse 16, my inward parts trembled, at the sound my lips quivered. The realization of what God had already done in the past and what He has said He will do in the near future has shaken Habakkuk. He has no more questions to God or debates with Him on patience and justice. There is fear and, yes, also awe of God here. Habakkuk was in a terrifying time as the thunder clouds of God s judgment on Judah were gathering closer and closer, booming louder and louder. But we read his grand closing chorus of praise at the end when he sings in full voice, Yet I will exalt in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. Question: How did he get there? The righteous will live by his faith. That included his believing the truth about God from Scripture and God s messages to him. He worked his way through frustration, questions and fear, and could now say, God, You are God. You speak and do the truth. Your ways are not my ways. In fact, Your coming judgment scares me! But I believe. I know You. I know Your plans are perfect. And so, I will exalt You, I will rejoice in you! Living by faith in our terrifying times also is believing in the truth about God. Terrifying times. Times when your world seems out of control and God seems distant or absent. Times when the path you are on is a nightmare, whether from things outside your control or from poor and wrong choices you have made. Times when cliches and even sound explanations 3

4 don t seem to make any sense. Yes, times when believing God and His truth is not easy, let alone automatic. Habakkuk not only wrote God s truth, he gave us an example to follow, to inspire us. Keep talking with God, question, listen, and keep on believing God and His truth and living it. That is living by faith. Keep living by faith. We can learn from Habakkuk and others in the Bible, people such as Job who lost his health, wealth and children. Or Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers and then was wrongfully imprisoned. But we can become so familiar with those people that we don t readily identify with them. There are many examples of people from our own time. Two weeks from today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Today over 200 million Christians around the world are suffering because of their faith in Jesus Christ. In some countries Christians are thrown into prison while others are put to death. Let me introduce you to a pastor s wife who was the director of a Christian-based kindergarten in China. We have a picture of her [display]. She was arrested and jailed for two years. She was imprisoned in a cell with 15 others, some of whom were due to be executed. The people were tough, the situation was rough, to say the least. For those two years her husband was allowed to see her once a month but her children, who were only 1 and 3 years-old when she was arrested, were not allowed to come to see her during those two years Moms, think about that! Not being able to see your very young children for two years! She traded with another prisoner for a Bible. She read and relied on God s truth. She taught others Bible stories and songs. When she was released she said, God is great! It makes me think of Joseph in the Old Testament. 3 In her terrifying ordeal she listened to, believed, and followed the truth about God from the Bible. She lived by faith. Like Job, Joseph, Habakkuk, this pastor s wife and so many others, you and I can and need to believe the truth about God in our terrifying times in order to truly live by faith. Asking God to do His work in your time and world. Living by faith in terrifying times, secondly, is asking God to do His work in your time and world. We move to the next phrase of the prayer in the middle of verse 2, O LORD, 4

5 revive Your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known. This is Habakkuk s prayer for God to act. Let s check it out. First, he asks God to revive His work. This word revive is based in the idea of having life, to be alive, and being restored to life or well being. 4 Habakkuk is praying for God to revive His mighty work to bring about His purposes. Take a careful, not casual look at this. Judgment is coming. Habakkuk looks beyond his fears and through the eye of faith praying God, show again, show now, even in this terrifying judgment, Your awesome, mighty work. There is more. He asks God to make it known. Centuries earlier King David reflected on all that God had done for him, for God s promises to him and prayed, O LORD, for Your servant s sake, and according to Your own heart, You have wrought all this greatness, to make known all these great things. 5 David wanted all to know who the true God is, how great God is, that God was responsible for all that David accomplished. Habakkuk had the same desire. He prays for God to do this in the midst of the years. There are some technical questions and options for this phrase. The straightforward and simplest view seems best in the midst of all that is going on and will go on, God, revive your mighty work, make it known. So his request, his prayer, rephrased and filled out, is, God, just as You have worked powerfully in the past, do that now in my time, in my world. Yes, I know that means judgment, it means punishment on us. I know it will bring suffering, humiliation and death. I also know from the reports, the truth about You, that You will not abandon us forever, that You have promised that David s throne will endure, that the Messiah will come. So now God, in this terrible day, in my terrible day, work powerfully so that the world will see and know You and Your work. Now let s move from Habakkuk to ourselves. Question: If you were in his place could you, would you pray as he did? In the midst of difficult, terrifying times, can you trust God to truly pray Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done? 6 It can be easy to pray Make me more like Jesus when we don t consider what that may mean, what God may bring about 5

6 to work it through. It may be relatively easy if we add some conditions stated or not. Conditions such as But don t ask me to do this. I can t. Or, Bring about Your will and make me more like Jesus, but don t disturb what I m doing, what is going on in my life. After all, I don t think I could handle changes right now. Or, But don t ask me to give up that. Do you see the progression here? Living by faith starts with hearing, believing, obeying God truth about Him, truth about us and our world. Then there is the next step asking God to work powerfully to bring about His will in a way that people will see it so He will be glorified. As you look at where you are right now, what is your view of God and His truth? How are you really thinking about Him? How are you really responding to Him and His truth? Do you really trust God to work powerfully in you and your world without conditions, without reservations? Pleading to God for mercy. Living by faith in terrifying times is believing the truth about God, asking Him to do His work in your time and world, and alsopleading with God for mercy. The last phrase in verse 2 starts with in wrath. The basic meaning of this term for wrath is to tremble, quake or, rage. For example, in Job chapter 37 verse 2, Elihu said, Listen closely to the thunder [that s our word] of [God s] voice, and the rumbling that goes out from His mouth. We see it on a human level in Proverbs chapter 29 verse 9, When a wise man has a controversy with a foolish man, the foolish man either rages [our word again] or laughs, and there is no rest. God s coming judgment on Judah is an expression of His righteous wrath or anger. Most of us don t like seeing, hearing or talking about anger of any kind. It is shocking and disturbing, and so we try to avoid even thinking about it. Some people go to great lengths to avoid or deny the reality of God s righteous anger. But, as I said earlier, in order to really understand and appreciate God s love, grace and mercy we need to know the reality of His holiness, righteousness and judgment. God s anger is not like ours. It always is righteous. It is His response of holiness and righteousness to our impurity and sin. God s righteous anger toward His people not only upholds His holiness, it also is for our good. Proverbs chapter 3 verses 11-12, My son, do 6

7 not reject the discipline of the LORD or loathe His reproof, for whom the LORD loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. Discipline for godliness. Listen also to God s words through Jeremiah, Habakkuk s contemporary, Behold, the tempest of the LORD! Wrath has gone forth, a sweeping tempest; it will burst on the head of the wicked. The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back until He has performed and until He has accomplished the intent of His heart; in the latter days you will understand this. 7 God uses His righteous anger, as we just read, to accomplish His purposes. God s righteous anger with His people is not without limit and it not forever. As Asaph reviewed Israel s history of unfaithfulness as a warning in Psalm 78, he wrote, But [God], being compassionate, forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them; and often He restrained His anger and did not arouse all His wrath. 8 King David wrote in Psalm 103, The LORD performs righteous deeds and judgments for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel. The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. 9 Judah s sin aroused God s wrath. It is coming. Habakkuk now knows that all too well. In light of this, He prays, In wrath remember mercy. This word has the basic idea of loving deeply. So then the deep feelings and sincere actions of compassion, pity, mercy. God is compassionate. Isaiah records, But Zion said, The LORD has forsaken me, and the LORD has forgotten me. Then there are God s tender, beautiful words in response to that desperate cry, Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me. 10 A few moments ago we read in Psalm 103, The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not always strive with us, nor will He 7

8 keep His anger forever. 11 Almost a hundred years before these events in Habakkuk the prophet Micah wrote, Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot. Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. 12 Habakkuk had heard, read and understood these reports and promises of God. He knows judgment is coming and so he prays the promises he pleads to God for mercy. In the opening lines of this book Habakkuk characterizes the people of Judah s conduct and character with the terms violence, iniquity, wickedness, destruction, strife, contention, perverted justice. He had no part in that. He was perplexed and distressed by it. But he was not idly standing by. He did not wash his hands of the people and respond to God s coming judgment by shouting, That s right God! Let them have it with both barrels! They deserve it! Yes, they deserved it. But Habakkuk had grown in God-like character and faith. He had compassion. He pleaded to God for mercy. Living by faith in terrifying times is pleading to God for mercy. Are we like that? One of the basic themes of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church through the years is praying for the persecutors as well as the persecuted. Yes, it is a lot easier to pray for persecuted believers than it is to pray for their persecutors. But God calls us to bless those who persecute us, to pray that even when He pursues them with His justice, so in that they will seek Him. 13 Bringing it closer to home, there are people who misunderstand and misjudge us, who don t like us, people who reject us as well as the message of Christ, and yet other people who mistreat us badly. It s easy to pray for God s justice on them. But the heart of God calls us to not only pray for justice but to also pray for God s mercy on them. That is part of what it means to really live by faith in that situation. Only God Himself can change our hearts and minds. He does this as we live trusting Him. 8

9 Conclusion. Look back to chapter 2, verse 4, Behold, [look, see, take note] as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; but the righteous will live by his faith. Living by faith in terrifying times requires believing the truth about God, asking God to do His work in your time and world, pleading to God for mercy. As you take a few moments to talk and think with God now, thank Him that He loves you, is patient and compassionate to you. That while you were spiritually dead, totally helpless in your sin, Christ died for you. Think with God about the reports, the facts you have heard and learned about Him, and how much you really believe them right now. Confess unbelief. Reach out in faith to true belief. As you think about God s purposes for you and your world, ask God to breathe life into His mighty works now. Yes, it may mean changes and difficulties. Place yourself in His hands to both care and work. And then, plead for mercy, not just for yourself, but for those who are struggling, for some who seem to be indifferent, and yes, also for those who persecute you or others. 1 Genesis 3:17. 2 Genesis 3: China: Joy in Prison. < 07 October Accessed 24 October For this word in other settings see, for example, Psalm 80:18; 85:6; Isaiah 57: Chronicles 17:19. 6 Matthew 6:10. 7 Jeremiah 30: Psalm 78:38. 9 Psalm 103: Isaiah 49: Psalm 103:8-9. 9

10 12 Micah 7: Matthew 5:43-44; Romans 12:14. Lyle L. Wahl 2016 Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. 10