Let's read the word of God together from Romans chapter one, and then the prophet Habakkuk chapter one as well. Let's stand together. We're gonna read verses eight through 19, Romans chapter one. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if by some means now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you. And I may impart to you some spiritual gifts so that you may be established, that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often plan to come to you, but was hindered until now that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles. I'm a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise, so as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. Now to the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, beginning at chapter 1 and verse 12, through chapter 2 and verse 4. Are you not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have appointed them for judgment. O rock, you have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wickedness. Why do you look on those who deal treacherously and hold your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he? Why do you make men like fish of the sea, like creeping things that hold no ruler over them? They take up all of them with a hook. They catch them in their net. They gather them in their dragnet. Therefore, they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice to their net, and burn incense to their dragnet, because by them their share is sumptuous, and their food plentiful. Shall they therefore empty their net, and continue to slay nations without pity? I will stand my watch, and will set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer when I am corrected. And the Lord answered me and said, write the vision, make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it. But the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God endures forever. They said a moment ago, the psalm that we just sang, or the selection from it, Psalm 49, verses one through five, has a question that many believers have asked, living the life of faith and following Jesus Christ. Why should I to fear give way when I see the evil day, when with wickedness my foes shall surround me and oppose? What are God's people to do in suffering, particularly when that suffering is the answer the apparent answer to the believer's prayer for relief. What are God's people to do and to think when we pray for relief and we get suffering? When we pray for help and it appears that things have only become more dire or more serious. That's really what Habakkuk is wrestling with in Habakkuk 1, verses 12 to 2 and verse 5. He's wrestling with this question. He has prayed to God, already perplexed about God's ways, and the answer he receives from the Lord only increases his sense of being perplexed, only his sense of confusion. It only intensifies his wise. It only intensifies his experience of not understanding God's ways, which are not his ways. Again, here's the simple question before us. What do you do when you pray? And God's answer appears to be more perplexing than the original problem you brought to him in prayer. We're at the place where the prophet Habakkuk begins his second complaint. And when he lifts that complaint to God, believing God's ways now to be completely inscrutable, not understandable by his natural unaided human reason. A little bit of review. The prophet in his times, his name is Habakkuk. He is the main character, 1 verse 1. In 3 verse 1, he's mentioned twice. His office in chapter 1 is a man with a burden or an oracle. He receives messages from God, and his office is to bring those to the people. Interestingly, in chapter 2, we'll see in a moment, it's not only to bring those to the people, but to write them down, write the vision, make it plain on tablets, and to bring to the people of God not only a preaching ministry, but an inscripturated ministry, a ministry of the written word, to write down for all time what God's answer to his questions was. And remarkably, that's why we have the book of Habakkuk today, because he did write it down. He's a prophet with a burden, with an oracle, chapter 1 and verse 1, and that is communicated to the church and has been communicated to the church now in every age and place since he wrote it down. It's also an oracle that has had a profound influence on the New Testament writers. We just read from Romans chapter 1 that the apostle Paul actually quotes the text we're going to be studying tonight. The just shall live by faith. Paul to the Galatians and the writer of the Hebrews does the same thing. His times, the 7th century BC, the transition in world powers from Assyria's dominance, cruel dominance, to the new cruel dominance of the Babylonian Empire, also known as the Chaldeans. You're in this book, the Chaldean Empire. Some of his contemporaries may have been Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel. From the internal clues in the book, it seems that this would have been about the period that this man was writing. receiving oracles, writing them down, and preaching the word to Judah. The central question of the book is, is God just? Similar to Abraham's question before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, shall the judge, shall not the judge of all the earth do right? And he's wrestling with the justice of God and the ways of God in human history. The structure of the book is a series of conversations between the prophet and the Lord. As he brings his laments or complaints, We have to be careful. They're reverent complaints. It's perplexed prayer that he brings to God. And he does so, we saw the first time in verses 2 through 4 of chapter 1, and then the Lord replied in verses 5 through 11. And that's the structure of the book. Habakkuk brings his questions to God, and God answers his questions. It's not an uncommon pattern. Also, in the Scriptures, you think of Job. who wrestles with the purposes and plans and providence of God. And then God comes to him and answers him. The whirlwind with power asking him, where was he when God laid the foundations of the earth? And then this question and answer again are preserved by the prophet in written form for us. Now, last week we studied the first cycle. And the burden of the prophet was first in a narrow sphere, what did he see? Around them he saw the decline of Judah. The covenant people of God were living in abject wickedness and spiritual ruin. He was prophesying in a line that Isaiah and Micah before him and others that there's been a long period that the decline of the southern kingdom, the prophets come again and again and again and plead with the people of God. not to forsake God's law, to remember who redeemed them, to remember who planted them in the promised land, to remember his covenant mercies, remember his goodness, his grace. And they turned and they turned and they turned away from the Lord. And like Ahaz, who offered his son in the fire. He has a good son named Hezekiah. We have a little moment of brightness, but we go generally a trend down with some momentary Recoveries, you think of Manasseh's wickedness and then his repentance. But the line, sadly, as God promised to Hezekiah, slowly fades into worse and worse wickedness and obscurity. And finally, God does bring his discipline. We read about that in First Kings, Chapter 26, the final end. We'll see that in a moment. Habakkuk is asking the question, Lord. Here's your people. The So you use the language of Micah, the rich are eating the poor like bread. There's violence, there's corruption, there's idolatry, there's the desecration of your holy temple, there's the forgetting of your Passover, there's the abject forgetting of your law. The spiritual condition of the church is a high-handed wickedness. And Habakkuk's been asking, Lord, how long is this going to happen? Will you not hear? I cry out to you, violence. You appear not to be saving us. Plundering and violence and strife and contention. The law is powerless. Justice never goes forth. The wicked surround the righteous. This is a description of Judah. Why, Lord? Why, Lord? Why the ongoing, unmitigated spiritual disaster that I see in Israel? The prayer of the perplexed. Yet he was right to pray. God answered him, however, in verses 5-11. And the heart of the answer is this. I see it. It's not going to go unpunished. I have already selected my instrument of rebuke, the Chaldeans, and with a ferocious fury, I will visit my rebuke on my covenant of people by the hand of the kingdom of Babylon. I am coming. I'm coming in my own time, and I will punish the wicked. There you go. There's your answer. I didn't miss anything, Habakkuk. Nothing at all. I saw, I heard the Lord from His throne in heaven sees the wickedness that's on the earth. He did at the flood. He did at the tower of Babel, read Psalm 11. He always sees it all and he's going to deal with it. Habakkuk, here's your answer. The Babylonians will be my instrument of rebuke. So in one way, this answers the question, but in another profound way, it raised a harder question for the prophet. And this is where we're getting to, what do God's people do when the answer to prayer appears to be harder than the original question? The second prayer now is the prayer of the perplexed, verses 12 through chapter 2 and verse 1. The answer of the Lord that the Chaldeans are going to execute His justice drops Him to His knees. He begins with humble acknowledgment. Are you not from everlasting? O Lord my God, the Holy One, we shall not die. He confesses God's majesty, His holiness. O Lord my God, that God is His God, His covenant mercy, that He's in a relationship with God. He doesn't shrink back from an open confession that He is light in Him. There's no darkness at all. He believes that God saves. We shall not die. He's not questioning that there's ultimate salvation in the Lord. Verse 12, keep reading. He believes that God's just. O Lord, you have appointed them for judgment. O Rock, you have marked them for correction. He confesses God's perfect justice in everything. Verse 13, he now heightens his confession of God's holiness. You are of pure eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wickedness. It's actually a striking statement of the holiness of God. God, of course, is spirit. He doesn't have a body like we do. He doesn't have physical eyes like we do. but he's communicating something of his holiness with this image. You know, long before you touch something, you can see it. And you think of Adam and Eve in the garden, saw the fruit, pleasing to the eyes, looked like it was good for food, and then reached out and touched it. You can think about your own temptations sometimes. Sadly, as a pastor, I've dealt with people that, here at Covenant in the last 10 years, who began by just looking at sin, and looking some more, and looking some more, until one day reached out to touch. And the path of descent there, you need to be careful. Habakkuk said, God is so pure, In no way possible can he be infected by, or touch, or see evil. His eyes are purer than to behold evil. He cannot look on wickedness. It is a confession of His perfect, unmitigated, intensive holiness. Habakkuk knows the Lord. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory. Then he moves from that confession in the opening and prayer with the adoration to his problem. Verse 13, the second half. And really what he's saying is this in verse 13, if you go back to the beginning of the chapter, Oh Lord, how long shall I cry? Verse two, how you will not hear even crowd you violence. Why do you show me iniquity? Why is there plundering and violence and corruption and wickedness and strife and contention in Israel? Why are you doing nothing? And then you said to me, Lord, I'm raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation. And not just the Chaldeans, but the Chaldeans who are terrible and dreadful, their judgment and dignity proceed from themselves. They're proud, they're fierce. They eat their victims. They scoff at kings. They worship their idols. Here's the problem. How can verse 6, the Chaldeans are coming, be the answer to my cry for justice? How and when was my question. And your answer is the hand of the Chaldeans. And the horrifying picture has to be in the mind. The picture is that when they come, there will be total subjugation and absolute destruction in the most graphic terms by an unstoppable army of idol worshipers who destroy all they touch. And we know from the scriptures that that's what they did. Matter of fact, if you turn back to 1 Kings for a moment, 1 Kings chapter 26, what God said happened. Kings 26, rather. What God said happened exactly. There's a fall and captivity of Judah. And again, I got it wrong. It's 25. 2 Kings 25. Came to pass in the ninth year of his reign in the 10th month, on the 10th day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and all his army came against Jerusalem and encamped against it. They built a siege wall. Then the city wall was broken through, verse 4, the men of war fled by night, by the way of the gate. The Chaldeans were still encamped. The king bent by the way of the plain, but the army of the Chaldeans pursued the king. They overtook him on the plains of Jericho and all his army was scattered before him. They took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah and they pronounced judgment on him. They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, put out the eyes of Zedekiah, bound him with bronze fetters, took him to Babylon. Then Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, burned the house of the Lord and the king's house, all the houses of Jerusalem, that is, all the houses of the great, he burned with fire. And the army of the Chaldeans broke down the walls of Jerusalem all around. And then they carried away the rest of the people who remained in the city and the defectors who had deserted, and the rest of the multitude captive. Then the king of Babylon, verse 21, struck them and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. Thus Judah was carried away captive from its own land." God said to Habakkuk, happened. And Habakkuk's prayer is this, Lord, it makes no sense. How can my answer to a plea for justice be this? That a more sinful people would be the executors of your justice on apparently a less sinful people. Look at verse 13. Why? Do you look on those who deal treacherously and hold your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he? Children, I want you to imagine how you would feel if... And I trust that none of you will do this. Dangerous illustration. But if you were tempted to take one cookie from a cookie jar and your parents said, don't take any of these cookies and then someone else in your family, one of your siblings took 10, you took one, the other took 10 and you had a messy room and your brother or sister who took more had a messy room and your parents said your punishment for taking one is to clean your room and the room of the one who took 10. What do you say? Can't be fair. Can't possibly be fair. Because that sister or brother of mine is worse than me. It's not fair. We have an instinct in us from childhood. It's a minuscule example. But what's at the heart of the example? a humbling, a deep humbling, a punishment that asks the one being rebuked to let go of all pride and submit to the hand of God. Here he gives a vivid illustration then of that internal struggle within him The depth of the problem that he's talking about is profound. How is it that God could use as His instrument evil men to rebuke His own people? It seems backwards. Why does it seem backwards? In the first place, because we underestimate our own sin, how heinous it is in the eyes of God, and how righteous he is to judge it by any means of his own choosing. Because we think we're better than others. Romans chapter 9. What the prophet is up against, in part here, and we'll get to more of this in a moment, he's up against the great towering wall of the sovereignty of God. But indeed, man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show his wrath and make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory? That the Lord does what he wills. And to use the language of Job in Job chapter 40, when he saw a glimpse of that sovereign glory, he said, I will put my hand over my mouth and I'll stop talking. Second thing about this is that God warned them. He wasn't doing anything in his sovereignty that he hadn't already told them that he would do. He actually was operating according to His very clear revealed will, particularly in the Davidic covenant. In 2 Samuel 7, we read of the covenant that God made with David. He said that David would have a son, and that to this son I will be his father and he shall be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the blows of the sons of men." David, if you have sons, and they depart from me, if the kings in the line of Judah depart from my law, God told at the beginning of the Davidic covenant, I will use the blows of the sons of men to chasten my own son. There's a final intensification here as The prophet wrestles with God. He brings before God in verses 14 through 17 the Chaldean reputation. Listen to what he says about them. He says, why do you make men like fish of the sea? What he's doing is he's thinking about what it's going to be like when the Chaldeans come. And he's saying, God, if you unleash this plague of men on us, this is what's going to happen. The reputation was known. We will be like fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler over them. We will be demoted to not fellow men, but this nation will come and perpetuate inhumanity on us. And if you look through world history, you think of the Holocaust, you think of abortion, you think of the forced repatriation of North Koreans that have fled into China, only to be driven back into their own country. Reports of even them being wired together with wires through their flesh to keep them in line. And today, reports of concentration camps where men and women and children are treated worse than trash. This is the kind of thing he's talking about here. Look, they take all of the men with a hook, they catch them in their net, and they drag them in that net And while they are perpetuating the inhumanity, hear this, they rejoice and are glad. Then they sacrifice to their net, they burn incense to their dragnet, because by them their share is sumptuous and their food is plentiful. The idea is they're rejoicing in conquest because they get the spoils of war, which makes them rich. And as they ravage the land and the people, they get their fill of pleasure. And then verse 17, here's Habakkuk's question. Shall they then empty their net and then continue to slay the nations without pity? Lord, are you going to let them just keep doing this again and again and again? How does, Lord, my question, how long, get answered like this? Lord, I don't understand how this can be an answer. And so he waits, chapter 2 and verse 1. He's finished his questions. I will stand my watch. I will set myself on the rampart. He says, I'm going to go to the wall. Picture the corner of Jerusalem somewhere. I'm going to stand and I'm going to look out. I'm going to wait for God to answer my cry. I'm going to watch to see what he will say to me and what I will answer when I am corrected. The prophet's in his watchtower again like Job. He's finished speaking. He places his hand over his mouth and he waits. What's God's answer going to be to my complaint? Chapter 2, beginning at verse 2, and then through verse 4, the answer comes. He's waiting on the rampart and God speaks. Then the Lord answered me and said... To this answer, there's four parts. First, I'm about to give you a prophetic message. Write the vision. Make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it. Now, this is profound language because if you're thinking about the Old Testament, Words written on a tablet, what do you think about? You think about the Mosaic Covenant and God with His own finger inscribing His covenant terms, His Ten Commandments, the law, and delivering the inscripturated word to the people of God. This is another example of that. We have Moses, not Moses here, but the prophet Habakkuk, but the same Lord who's giving the same instruction. He's saying, my word will be a written word. Just like you have a Bible in your hands, which is the result of many such visitations of God in history. I'm going to write it down for you. And my answer will be for the ages. The vision is yet for an appointed time, that he may run who reads it, that the one who reads it may be equipped. That's part one. The vision is coming. Get ready to write it down. The second part of the vision is this. What I have spoken will not change. The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it will speak and it will not lie." God here is reinforcing. So Habakkuk has asked his questions of God, really the Chaldeans, and God has said, what I have spoken, I have spoken. It will happen in the appointed time. He's confirming what he has said. In the end it will speak and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it. Not in your timing, Habakkuk, but in mine. And not word and word that I have spoken will fall to the ground. They are coming, and they will do this. All that the Lord speaks does not return to Him void. Isaiah 55 and verse 11. It's surely coming. It won't be fully worked out, look at the text again, until the end. Now this seems to be a reference that the vision is yet for an appointed time. The appointed time is when the fall of Jerusalem happens and the Chaldeans actually appear, what we just read from 2 Kings 25. But there also is a longer-term view here, an end, something far into the future. It's language in the Old Testament that has in view something bigger than just the one event. But the whole purposes of God that will culminate at the end of the age, in some way, God is saying, are in this vision. And you're to think more broadly. You're to think about the very end of all things. And for us, the very end when Christ makes all things new. Third part. Habakkuk, I haven't missed the proud. Behold the proud. His soul is not upright in Him. Habakkuk, I haven't missed the proud in Judah. And I haven't missed the proud Chaldeans. I can see it, and I can see inside the heart, the soul, and I can see that these men are not upright. They are unrighteous. declaration that his soul is not upright in him, is God saying to the prophet, I see what is truly inside him and the soul that sins shall surely die. I will deal with the wicked. The next part of the vision in the next weeks, we'll see that God does promise to deal with the Chaldeans as well. But then there's part four. Habakkuk. Write it down. I haven't changed my mind, the vision is surely coming. I see the proud. I haven't missed your point. But now you, Habakkuk, how do you live in light of my answers? Habakkuk, the just shall live by faith. You, Habakkuk, believe what I have spoken. Believe my ways concerning my ways in judgment, which are clear, which is what I'm going to do. And believe my unshakable, unbroken covenant promises. For those who trust in me, Habakkuk, nothing has changed. The just shall live by faith. This echoes an earlier man who in earlier times wrestled with the promises of God. Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. He's getting old. He doesn't have a son. How's he going to inherit the land? How's he going to be the father of many nations? Where are the promises of God? How can there possibly be a way from where I'm standing now to the full realization of glory that God has promised? God was preparing a city, that he was a pilgrim and a wanderer on the earth, that he was a man who was seeking a homeland. He had faith to look beyond the temporal things to things that were eternal. But at the same time, he was perplexed. How will God take me from here to there? So he thought, Eliezer of Damascus, my servant, he'll be the one. Lord, I'll make him my son Maybe that will be the answer. Remember what God did. He said, Abraham, come outside with me. Look at the stars of the heavens. So shall your descendants be. And then we read this little phrase, and Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Here in this phrase, the just shall live by faith, this can be translated, the justified shall live by faith. And it connects these two things in the shadow lands of the old covenant, believing in God and righteousness. And that righteousness comes by faith. And that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And it takes the promises of God against the bleakest and darkest of human backdrops. And it says, let God be true and every man a liar. I'll hold the hand. Habakkuk, the Chaldeans are coming. I meant what I said. But here's the path to life. Here's the beginning of righteousness. Trust Me. Believe in Me. The headwaters of the Christian life is this deep trust in God Himself. a willingness to submit to all His ways, a faith in promises that transcends this life's present troubles and tears. And that's what God says to Bacchus. Trust Him. So ends the second complaint and God's second response. Now some lessons for the church. What are you to do when you come up against things in this life that are completely perplexing, where you no longer, with any natural sight, reason, you can't plan your way, think your way, imagine a way out of your present distress. What do you do? What you do is you pray. You pray like Habakkuk did. I said this a little bit last week. But what we have here with the prophet Habakkuk, particularly in these two prayers of the perplexed before God, is a remarkable open invitation, pattern, and even command of the scriptures to cast your cares on the Lord because He cares for you. God knows that your human ability to plan, to understand is so limited He also knows that your power to carry out your plans or protect yourself or understand His ways, that you really don't have that power in you. And when you sense and feel that, what you need to do is get on your knees like Habakkuk did, and you need to pour out your heart to the Lord. And then you need to sit and wait like he did on the ramparts of the wall of Jerusalem and know that He will give an answer. The pattern of prayer here is profound. You think of the old hymn, have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged. Instead, take it to the Lord in prayer. He's like Abraham again in Genesis 18. Wrestling with providence. God reveals to him, Sodom and Gomorrah are going to be destroyed. God, are you just? Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked? Lord, I don't understand your ways. Interestingly, with Abraham's prayer, you remember what happened. He woke up, and he looked across the plain, and he had never received an answer, a particular answer to whether or not God would deliver Lot. All he saw was the smoke rising from the city. And at that point, surely he didn't fully understand the ways of God. He had to put his hand over his mouth and bow before the sovereignty of God who does right. I do not understand Habakkuk says, so I wait. I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart. I will watch to see what he will say to me and what I will answer when I am corrected." Humility after prayer and waiting. That's what we all need to do more of. The second thing is, you'll learn a deeper submission to sovereignty. I mentioned this earlier from Romans 9, God has the right to do what He wills with His whole creation. And He always and only does what is right. And He doesn't answer to you or to me, ever. He's God. The Lord has established His throne in heaven, Psalm 103.19, His kingdom reigns over all. The response to that is, bless the Lord, all you angels, all his works and all places of his dominion, bless the Lord, O my soul. It's to bow down and to worship. We do not, again, to use the language of the Apostle Paul, the thing formed, say to the one who formed us, why did you make me this way? Or why do you do what you do? The sovereignty of God is to bring us to a place of humility. on our faces in worship before a God who has His own ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are past finding out. His greatness is unsearchable. It is difficult. The only way we can begin to grasp this is if the Spirit of God opens our eyes to see something. of the majesty of His sovereignty, teaching us then to submit and worship. A third thing, a third lesson. Learn to trust that God has ordained suffering to lead to glory. It's built into the structure of reality. Really, we haven't, in a sense, gotten to the depth of the prophet's agony. He wouldn't have been ignorant of God's covenant with David. He wouldn't be ignorant that God would one day use the sons of men to rebuke his people. He knew that would be the case. He knew the law. He knew the Davidic covenant. But surely the crux of his question goes deeper than just these things. It's this. God, if we are your chosen people, and you never break covenant, you never forsake the works of your hands, How is it that this coming judgment will sweep up the faithful with the wicked? When this army comes, the Chaldeans, Habakkuk knows we're all gonna suffer, and everybody did. Daniel and his friends were carried away captive, almost perished in the fiery furnace. Daniel was thrown into the lion's den. The captivity was tears, sadness, Sorrow, separation from the temple, many thousands were slaughtered in Jerusalem, the whole city burned and razed to the ground, the temple gone. The believing people of God would be swept up in this. Lord, why? How? How can this be? Lord, it's really like Abraham. Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked? What does the covenant of grace mean if we are going to be led by the Chaldeans with fish hooks. What does it mean? Why? How? There's a direct line here if we understand the prophet's fundamental complaint that brings us all the way to the cross. All the way to the cross, to Jesus' question, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because the fury of the Calvary visited on Israel. God's own people. The more profound question is how is it that God's people, we as God's often wandering people, how is it that we need rebuke? We just need rebuke. We know that. But how is it that the righteous suffer like the wicked? We go all the way to the cross and we think of Christ who was spit on and scourged and beaten and crucified. And there, The suffering of the righteous is revealed to be the way of the covenant. Peter, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. And all of these streams here and back in chapter 2, all of the prophets' wrestlings about sin and consequences, about suffering and judgment, and about the ultimate ends and purposes of the ways of God in this world. They all come to intersect at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the declaration of the Gospel. And it's only there. It's really there. And that's why Paul uses this verse in Romans 1 when he says, I'm not ashamed of the Gospel, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed. The just shall live by faith, faith in God who sends his Son to be the righteous sin-bearer to take the scourging, sadness, sorrow, beating, rejection, and inhumane cruelty of men in the place of my people. And there's already a little echo of that in Israel's suffering in the exile. The essence of the proper response, then, is that just shall live by faith. Now what this means is God is saying to Habakkuk, in the old covenant already, if you follow Jesus, if you follow the way of the covenant, it doesn't mean you're going to have an easy life. It may mean one of the ways I call you to follow me is through the crucible and to keep believing. Like James who was beheaded, and Paul who was suffered under the Roman Empire and finally was executed, and Peter and thousands more who followed them. Like the saints of the Old Testament, the writer of the Hebrews said, they were sawn in two, persecuted, dying, suffering, weeping, crying, how long Lord? As they followed, in this, in the mysterious, profound footsteps of Christ, the believing people of God, prefiguring them in the Old Testament, following, we follow after Him in the New Testament. Peter understood this principle. Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing is happening to you, but rejoice to the extent that you partake of His suffering, so that you, when His glory reveals, when His glory is revealed, you also may be glad with exceeding joy. Like God said to Habakkuk, the vision is coming. Its final revelation will be at the end, the very end. Between here and there, I may call you with my people. Suffer great things. But believe me, I will be just. I will be holy. You will not die. I will punish the wicked. And the just shall live. by His faith, faith in me. Really, this life can't be understood then without reference to the end, the life to come. The gesture to live by faith is answered, Revelation 21, on that day when God would wipe all the tears from His believing people's eyes. And when the final cries of the martyrs before the throne would still echo in heaven now, how long will be finally answered at the very end, when God reveals the fullness of the righteousness of his plans to destroy the wicked, to discipline his people, to carry all of his children home. Remember, the Lord's last words to the watching prophet, the just shall live by his faith. Let's pray. Lord, we ask for this kind of faith that looks beyond our present circumstances, that is willing to submit to your sovereignty in all things, that receives your fatherly rebukes when we wander, or that looks at suffering and understands that often you ordain it for our good and the advance of your kingdom, that this was supremely so in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and we follow after Him bearing our cross. And we pray that we indeed might live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. Or that you would grant to us his righteousness. Or that we would live by faith in him. We pray these things in Jesus' name.