I apologize for being a little bit late today we left at a timely fashion but there were two roads out and a train and I was amazed that we actually made it before the time so it's good to be with you all. If you would turn to the book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament, those are the pages that are still stuck together in your Old Testament. You might notice that you've not spent as much time in those as some other books. And I think it's important to hear the word of the Lord in this book. It wasn't one of my books I read very much, to be frank. But then, as the Lord grew me as a Christian, I came to appreciate the so-called minor prophets. And Habakkuk in particular, I think, has a word for us today. I'm not going to read verses 16 through 19 as in the bulletin yet. I'm going to wait and see if that will stay up there. OK. If you're living in America and you're aware as a Christian what's going on, these are very troubling times. Some might say these are the worst times in their life in terms of what's going on in our nation. The church is not doing well. The churches are, as your pastor mentioned, there's a lot of churches that have conformed with the culture, not with the scriptures. And as a result, they, They're losing the favor of God or have lost the favor of God. And the nation is incredibly corrupt. It's probably the most corrupt in my lifetime. And so if you love the glory of God, if you love Christ, you want to see his churches be a beautiful bride and not looking like a streetwalker of some kind, you're grieved at the state of the churches, but then you're grieved at the state of your own nation. There's a temptation to see the nation, to think that the nation's swirling around the drain, about to go down the drain. And what's going to happen to my children or my grandchildren? How are they going to make it in this corrupt land? Well, we're going to see in the book of Habakkuk that Habakkuk was very concerned about the people of God, Old Testament Israel, in this case Judah. But he was also going to see that God was going to do something that he never expected. So let's read the first part of the book of Habakkuk. We're going to get to 16 through 19 in chapter 3, which will be the culmination of the message. But we need to always read something in context. There's a phrase that a text, without a context can become a complete pretext. And by that I mean, one can argue, the Bible explicitly says there is no God. Psalm 14, there is no God. That's what the text says. What's the context? Oh yeah, well the context says the fool has said in his heart, There is no God. So context has a lot to do with how you interpret the text. So we're going to look at the whole text of the book of Habakkuk. I'm going to try to teach you the book of Habakkuk today. And I understand that this service goes till 2.30, so we're good. No, it's not going till 2.30. But we're going to look at most of Habakkuk and see, I think, how applicable this passage of scripture is to our day and time. Hear the word of the Lord. Habakkuk chapter 1. the burden, or the oracle, which the prophet Habakkuk saw. Oh Lord, and this is a review, I know you know this, but in our English Bibles, when it's all caps for Lord, capital L, capital O, capital R, and capital D, that is a English way of saying that the Hebrew word is Yahweh, God's covenant name. I'm the sovereign God, I'm in covenant with you, you are my people, I'm your God. O covenant God, how long shall I cry and you will not hear? Even cry out to you violence and you will not save. Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? Apparently he's been watching too much TV at night and he sees all the stuff that's going on in ancient Judah and it grieves him. For plundering and violence are before me. There is strife and contention arises. Therefore, the law is powerless and justice never goes forth. Depending on which TV station you watch, people are concerned about the lack of justice, what violence controls the street. For the wicked surround the righteous, therefore, perverse judgment proceeds. Well, yeah, that's happened in ancient Judah, and it happens in America today. So he's praying that God would do a work to revive the people of God. Now, he's not praying for the pagan nations around Judah. He's praying for the people of God. Those people who purport to be your people are living gross, ungodly, disobedient lives. And it bothers me. Doesn't it bother you, God? I mean, I've addressed you by your covenant name. Doesn't your covenant mean anything to you? Don't your covenant people mean anything to you? You know, if you read Romans chapter one, the apostle Paul tells the church in Rome that first century Rome is under the judgment of God, just as ancient Judah was under the judgment of God. And Romans chapter one, beginning in verse 18, it says, the wrath of God is being revealed. Now, I was an English major in college, and I don't remember a whole lot, but I do know that that's a present continuous tense, meaning this is an ongoing thing. Judgment just doesn't happen at the end of time. The final judgment, we stand before the white throne of Christ and give account of our lives, and we're either sheep or goats on that day. But judgment can be meted out by God in space and time history. In other words, think back with me, even if you didn't like high school history and didn't read any history beyond that, but there used to be civilizations that don't exist anymore. All over the world, on every continent, there were great civilizations, mighty kingdoms, so to speak, that don't exist anymore. Well, what happened to them? God judged every one of them. What happened to the ancient Greeks, and Romans, and Egyptians, and Babylonians, and Persians, and Sumerians, and in South America, the Aztecs, and the Incas, and the Mayas, and what about in North America, some of the ancient Indian empires? All over the world, there have been empires that have come and gone. What happened to them? In space and time history, God judged them, and they are no more. Now, keep that in mind. In Romans 1, Paul says there's two conditions that brought about God's judgment. He said, first of all, the people were not thankful that God was God, but they became two things. They became ungodly and they became unrighteous. What's the difference? We tend to conflate the two or push the two together. To be ungodly means I will not have God to be God over me. I want to run my life. God, you do your thing and I'll do my thing, but leave me alone. I don't want to have anything to do with God. God is not the focus of my life. He's not the being upon whom I center everything. And so when you're living an ungodly life, the natural result is unrighteousness. Righteousness has to do with conformity to God's law, to God's word. I don't want to live by God's rules. I don't want to live by the Ten Commandments. I don't want to live by the Bible. Just be quiet and leave me alone. And that's the state of America today. As Paul goes on to say in Romans, they get to the place where they know it's wrong to disobey God, but they don't care. And they encourage other people to do it. And that's the culture we live in today. So God tells Habakkuk, I've heard your prayers. But then his subsequent answer isn't exactly what he thought it would be. Look with me in verse five and following. The Lord's reply, look among the nations and watch. Be utterly astounded. For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe though it were told you. Martin Lloyd-Jones says in this passage that one of the problems of the people of God is we don't believe what the Bible says. He has a little book on Habakkuk called From Fear to Faith. And it's on the internet, but it's published in England, not in the United States. So you have to go to someplace like Amazon or something to find it. But it's a great little devotional book on the book of Habakkuk. It's very profound. But he says, one of the problems is God tells these people stuff and they go, whatever. They don't really pay attention. For example, he said, most people read the Bible as if it's a bunch of ideas, not that it's a bunch of truth. This is truth. This isn't an idea. It's not a philosophy. It's not suggestions. These are actual truisms. God has spoken these things. And they have already come to pass. They're coming to pass. They will come to pass. And he says, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do, but sadly, people won't believe it. For indeed, I am raising up the Chaldeans. Now, the Chaldeans is another name for the Babylonians. You go, well, whatever. Ancient people who were warlike, who were monsters, who were conquering everybody around them. For indeed, I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, which marches through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. In other words, it's an aggressive nation that has powerful military, and it gobbles up small countries. They're terrible and dreadful. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves, meaning they only look to themselves. They don't care about God. They don't know the one true and living God. So their analysis of themselves, their judgments, everything of their dignity proceeds from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards and more fierce than evening wolves. Their chargers, meaning their battle horses, charge ahead. Their cavalry comes from afar. They fly as the eagle that hastens to eat. They all come for violence. Their faces are set like the east wind. They gather captives like sand. They scoff at kings and princes are scorned by them. They deride every stronghold. They mock. So here's a walled city. We don't care. We'll defeat it. For they heap up earthen mounds and seize it." In other words, when you used to have walled cities, what you'd do is you'd heap up dirt and rocks up until you could reach the top of the wall. And you'd breach the wall, and you're in. Then his mind changes and he transgresses. He commits offense ascribing this power to his God. We serve the false gods of Babylon and we don't really care about these local deities as they sought of these other cities. We do what we want and we're taking your country. And you can imagine if you're a godly person, you're fervently praying. You know, sometimes you pray in your easy chair and sometimes you pray down on your hands and knees. And you've been fervently praying that God would have mercy on your country and change the believers, make them God-centered, God-focused, not merely, I check this box, Protestant, Christian, whatever, but I don't really know the Lord and I don't care. It's like if you've ever driven in a cab in a major city. Cab drivers in American cities are rarely people who are American-born. But one of the things you notice about them, and you certainly see it in other countries, is they have all these talismans and statues and things on their dashboard, good luck charms. They might have a cross hanging from the rearview mirror. Everything, every god they can think of, they've got something to them on the dashboard to hopefully avoid danger and avoid an accident. And so many Americans kind of live their lives like, right, I don't know, I want to live my life for myself and I'm hoping God will be my good luck charm to get me through a happy life. And when here is Habakkuk praying for this, and then he hears God say, well, I've heard your prayer and I'm sending the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, and they're going to gobble you up. They're going to gobble up the whole nation of Judah. At that point, you and I would be astonished, grossed out. We'd want to time out, Lord. Maybe you didn't hear what I said. Let me repeat. I'm praying that you would be gracious and revive the nation. He said, well, I'm going to be gracious in the long run. But in the short term, I'm going to chasten these people, as you would a child who's been really disobedient. This child was, I can't sit down for six weeks. Well, God says, you won't be able to sit down for a number of years. But I will chasten you, and you will learn a lesson. In chapter 2, let me go back to verse 12. Are you not from everlasting, O covenant God, my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O covenant God, you have appointed them for judgment. O rock, you have marked them for correction. You are of pure 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 have no ruler over them? They take up all of them with a hook. They catch them in their net and gather them in their dragnet. Therefore they, the Babylonians, 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? How can you use the Babylonians, how can you use these gross, reprobate people, you might say in the New Testament sense, how can you use these godless people to chastise your chosen people? I mean, we're bad, I get it, but we're not that bad. God says, well, I don't really grade on the curve. Now, for those of you who haven't been in public schools in a while, to grade on the curve means test scores are so bad, we're gonna count a 50 as an A. And we're gonna count a 40 instead of saying, well, you have to get 90 above or something to get an A. To grade on the curve means that you're gonna make all kinds of allowances and not really be straightforward in how you're grading the people. And God says, I don't grade on the curve. So he says in chapter two, verse one, okay. I'm gonna watch and see if this is what the Lord does. He says, I will stand my watch and 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 so then he begins to hear the answer in verse two. Then the Lord answered me and said, and again, it's all caps for Lord, so it's the covenant God. I know I've made a covenant with Judah and I've made a covenant with Israel. Israel's already gone, Judah's left by itself. Judah had a godly king named Josiah who stopped the downward plunge briefly. And in fact, it got so bad. And every time I think about this, it's amazing. They were cleaning out the temple. Now, the temple was a huge structure. It wasn't like a small building. It wasn't a small worship area. It was several acres. And there was all kinds of rooms and stuff in there. And they were doing a cleanup job at the temple. Guys went, hey, look, we found the Book of Deuteronomy. We wondered what happened to that. It's like, what? The Book of Deuteronomy was the covenant book of Israel. All of God's stipulations are there, what I want you to be. It's a long sermon about what the people of God are to be and what kings are to be. And Josiah hears they found the book. He reads the book. He comes under tremendous conviction of sin. He tells the people, we have found God's stipulations for our nation. We've been blowing it left and right every day. God have mercy on us. And he began something of a change. But then he's killed in battle. against the Babylonians in 603 BC. And he is no more. And his successor picks up where the previous gross rulers before him were. And they don't teach the word of God. They don't follow the word of God. They have false gods they introduce, they bring into the temple. And God says, fine, your punishment is just. So then in chapter 2, he goes on and talks about what's going to happen. In verse 4, again I'm skipping over parts of it, he says in verse 3 and 4, write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it, for 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. When God gave this vision to Habakkuk, it didn't happen the next day, it happened a few years down the road, but he said, don't let the time lapse fool you, this is gonna happen. Every one of the words of God is sure, all of the prophecies of scripture are sure. Then he says in verse four, behold the proud, which I'm thinking is both the Babylonians, but also the proud Judeans who, yeah, I'm a Jew, so what? Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him. But the just, my righteous one, shall live by his faith. Now this is a famous verse. You go, yeah, I've heard that. That was big in the Reformation, Martin Luther. The just shall live by faith. And it's in the New Testament. In Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, this verse is quoted. My people shall live in both testaments throughout their whole lives by faith. Faith in what? I once, when I became a Christian, was too foolish to know I shouldn't get a job in any church, so I got a job in a liberal church as a youth director. So I would teach the Bible and the gospel to the Sunday school class, to the youth, and to youth group, and then we'd hear garbage in the pulpit on the Lord's Day. And I can remember a famous sermon where the minister was talking about having faith in faith, which is kind of like saying, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Faith is not something vague and specious and kind of airy-fairy. Faith is something that I put my trust in. For example, let's say we're all out in a pontoon boat. You guys give Greg a gift for being a faithful pastor, and he buys a pontoon boat with it. Not what every wife wants, but guys do weird things. He'll later sell the boat and buy his wife something else. But right now, he's got a pontoon boat. It takes all of you out fishing. And you're out in the pontoon boat, and he notices that, you know, maybe the reason this pontoon boat was on sail was because it's not real sturdy, because we're not just taking on water. The pontoons are sinking down into the water. So what do you do? Well, we need to either be close to the shore, or we need to jump in the water and grab some kind of life preserver. Okay, so each of you finds something to grab a hold on, a cushion, a life preserver, something. And one of you, perhaps not thinking real clearly, grabs the battery or grabs the big Merc motor on the back and say, well, this is sturdy. It's not going anywhere. It's going to go right to the bottom when the boat sinks. That's true. But if you're clutching it, you're going to go with it. Now, let's say that other people kind of wonder, is this flimsy flotation cushion going to work? Or is this life preserver going to keep me bobbing in the water? And they're not sure, but they kind of sort of hope it will. Their faith is in something that's better than their faith. But for you who have strong faith in something that's not worthy of your faith, you will still go to the bottom. Having great faith in clutching the anchor or the battery or the motor isn't going to save you. You'll go right to the bottom. It's not simply, what do I have faith? It's not something, do I have faith, but what is my faith in? Is it a saving faith? Is it a faith in something that will turn out to be helpful, that will really help me, that will help me make it? And so the just are to live, we are to live our lives by faith in God's word at all times of our lives. How do you begin the Christian life? I believe what God's word says, that God is holy, holy, holy. that he's given us, that he's created us, he owns us by right of creation, he's given us his laws, we blow them off and ignore them. And now, brother, can I get you some water? Okay, I'm not bothered by your coughing, I just feel bad. I don't want to lose anybody during the service. Okay. that we've ignored God's laws, we've broken His laws, and God's not gotten old. You know, one of the reasons we don't read our Old Testaments like we should is we think, well, that's the Old Testament, and that's a long time ago. It's long enough to the New Testament. That's 2,000 years ago. We're talking about something 800 years before the coming of Christ. 900 years. So, God's probably gotten old and he's probably sitting on a rocker in heaven looking down. You boys be nice down there, don't hurt one another and just kind of no energy to do anything and doesn't really care. That would be so foolish. The same God who just spoke the world into creation. I can do that with both hands. The same God who spoke the world into creation is the same God who exists today. We live and move and have our being in him, the apostle Paul taught to the Athenians in Acts 17. Every millisecond of our lives were dependent upon him. I see that I have offended this God, that he has pronounced judgment on every lawbreaker, every rebel who doesn't want to have anything to do with him, and I've been that person. I was 21 when I came to Christ. I saw very clearly who God was and who I wasn't, that I was a violator of God's laws and a disrespecter of his person. And I saw that Christ was the only way to God. The great chasm, the great gap between me and God was no one could ever go across that on his own, but Christ had done that. God had become a man to save me. And he took my place on the cross. Now I'm rehearsing what you already know, but it's interesting that the point I'm trying to make is, I believe on this Christ, though I've never seen him, but the Bible portrays him very clearly. Christians for 2,000 years have preached this Christ. If I disbelieve the word of God, then my judgment be on my own head. He's spoken very clearly in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son does not have life. These things that I've written to you, John says, in order that you might believe that Christ is the Son of God and you might have life in His name. And so I can remember coming to a saving faith in Christ by believing what God's Word says. I've never met Christ personally. I'm indwelled by the Spirit. By faith I apprehend Him in the Word. But I've never met Him personally. But I believe in him as surely as I believe in you, who I can see and go up and touch right here. He's just as alive. He rose from the dead. So my Christian life, your Christian life, the life of every true believer is always by faith until we get to heaven. And faith will be turned to sight. And we don't have to trust him anymore in the face of overwhelming obstacles. We don't have to trust him during great trials, because he'll be right there, and the trials will be behind us. Obstacles will be behind us. Faith shall be sight, and ultimate rest will come. His soul is not upright in him, the proud man, but the just, my just one, shall live by faith. A quick question. Are you living by faith this morning? Are you trusting in what you can read in the scriptures or you're trusting in your feelings? I don't know, I just don't feel very whatever today. If you've ever had a bad head cold, one of the things you know is you don't feel like a Christian. You don't feel like anything, you just feel miserable, okay? I don't take my spiritual temperature, I don't take my spiritual pulse when I have a bad cold or if you got COVID or something like that. You don't live by feelings, you are to live by faith. What has God said? What does God's word say? In verses 18 through 20, looking ahead, he's pronouncing five woes in this chapter upon the Babylonians. And I'm not going to take the time to work through it because we're really not going to go through the whole book of Habakkuk. But the short version of this chapter is five different times he pronounces woe on the Babylonians. And then finally, when you get down to verse 18, he says, what profit is the image that its maker should carve it, the molded image, a teacher of lies, that the maker of its mold should trust in it to make mute idols? He goes, how stupid is idolatry? You just made the thing. And now you're turning around and worshiping it. I mean, can't you put two and two together and come up with four? You made the thing. It's not sovereign. It doesn't have an essence of its own. You made it. And now you're turning around and worshiping it. Woe to him who says to wood, awake to silent stone. Arise, it shall teach. Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, yet in it there is no breath at all. Well, what about the God of Judah? What about the God who spoke the world into creation? But the Lord, the covenant God is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him. What does that mean? Shut up, be still and know that I am God. And one of the first things you discover when you become a Christian is there is a God and it's not you and it's not me. There is a God, it's not you, it's not me. So God is going to ultimately use the warlike ways of the Babylonians. And he's going to scourge, like with the cat and nine tails, Judah. But then in turn, he will later use other nations to punish the Babylonians. In fact, the Persians did it, I think, 100 years or so later. Persia came in and wiped the Babylonians off the face of the map. So in chapter 3. He's picking up, okay, I'm getting what you're doing. I'm not saying I'm liking it, but I'm getting it. A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet. Oh Lord, again he speaks to him as the covenant God. I have heard your speech and was afraid. Oh covenant God, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the middle of all this, it's about to happen. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. If God ever takes you out to the woodshed, you want him to remember mercy in the midst of whipping your behind, so to speak. And that when God does it to a nation, eventually we know that in AD 70, the Romans under Titus got tired of the rebellion of Israel. And he came in there and destroyed the temple, tore it down stone by stone, poured salt all over the area around there, and depopulated the nation of Israel. And Israel was no more as a nation as of A.D. 70. And the Jews for 2,000 years have struggled to have a sense of who are we. Has God abandoned us? Now, thankfully, we are not Old Testament or first century Jews. We're Gentile Christians. Perhaps some of you have a Jewish background I'm not aware of, but most of us are Gentile Christians. And Paul says in Romans that we're wild olive branches grafted into the native olive tree, so to speak. But God is going to eventually do something with these Jews who are scattered all over the world. God's in his old holy temple. Keep silent. I back a praise. I see what you're going to do. I'm not enjoying seeing what you're going to do, but I just pray that in wrath, you would remember mercy. Has God ever taken you to the woodshed? Have you ever gone through a very difficult time with chastening and you knew that you deserved it? And did that mean he doesn't love you? Well, doesn't Hebrews 12 says the Lord chastens those he loves? I never get his wrath. I will never get his wrath because of his grace, but he is a faithful father. Who should I love more than anyone else in the world? My God, my savior. Who should I fear more than anyone else in the world? My God, my savior. You and I should love the Lord, but we should learn never to play fast and loose with the Lord. One Englishman said, I'll do such and such, and God will forgive me because that's his job. I wouldn't want that on my conscience or on my record, because he may discover that he's not a believer at all, but he may spend a lot of time on the witshed. In the 18th century, England was so bad, that John Wesley said, our nation is so gross, so ungodly, it's a nation ripe for revival. What does that mean? Well, if a transforming work happens in 18th century England, no one's going to get credit but God because no one person can do all this. In years past, we used to have a seminary class on the Great Awakening. And one of the books you had to read was England Before and After Wesley by John Wesley Breedie. And it's still available. We didn't read the second part of the book. We read the first 176 pages. Well, what's that all about? This is what England was like before the Great Awakening. And I encouraged them to read it. They had to read it, because I wanted them to see, whoa, things have been as bad in America today, and God still revived the church and turned the country around. It's not an irrevocable situation we're in. I don't know what God's going to do. Perhaps we're going to go down the drain. Perhaps he's going to use something we never imagined in America. We'll be like every other great empire, great nation that once was on the face of the earth. But I also know that there have been times when people like England in the 18th century were amazingly turned around by the saving grace of God. What was the nation like? Well, there was a speculative finance called bubble financing, and there was all kinds of rich zillionaires at that time, and most people were living in poverty. What were the sports? Bull baiting, that's where you put a bull in a ring and stick a bunch of dogs on it until they tear it apart. kind of crude. Or how about bear baiting? You do the same thing but you put a bear in the ring and you stick dogs on it. The bear kills some of the dogs and the dogs eventually kill the bear. That's gross. But the most popular of all sports was going to public hangings, because they were all public, and betting on how long the guy's legs would twist after they dropped him and he was hung. That's really crude. How serious must your conscience be to find that as fun? Well, maybe you can say that at least they didn't have babies born like crack babies and all these parents whose kids grew up dependent on drugs. Well, they had gin babies. Gin was a nickel a pop. You could get drunk for a nickel. And so there were a lot of people addicted to gin, and babies were born addicted to gin. They were alcoholic babies at birth and had to overcome that. And I could go on and on and on. The church was desolate. The church was filled with unbelieving men in the pastorate, men who didn't even give attention to what they were supposed to do. God raised up mighty preachers of the gospel. And over years of preaching, the inauguration did a 180. and all of the laws that they instituted to make civilization civil, to protect people, to protect children. For example, if you were an orphan and went into an orphanage, you'd die there, because every orphanage was a workhouse. They were free workers, and you worked them all to death. Nobody graduated from orphanages. They were workhouses, and you died in that orphanage. And they passed child labor laws. Britain came up with its own anti-slavery laws, and all kinds of other righteous things happened on the change of what happened in that country. In fact, eight different historians said it was the Great Awakening that saved England from the French Revolution that went on. It was 20 miles from the coast of England to France, and 20 miles away they had a bloody revolution. Tens of thousands of people were killed. Napoleon was the ultimate outcome of that. Now the one saving grace for us is God because God's not a man and he's not like, he doesn't do what we would expect to do. Let's say the communion table here was covered with fleas. Doug had gone to a flea circus and bought it and brought it here and put it on the table. During a quiet moment, you say, I think I can hear a sound coming from the table. And so you bend down. And the fleas are actually, they're saying things. You're not quite sure what the language is, but they're talking to each other. And then you find a flea interpreter, and they come and tell you, they're cursing you. They're cursing the rest of the people in this room. They're saying ugly things about you. They're plotting against you. You go, no problem. Go in the kitchen, a giant thing of raid. No more rebellion, no more mouthing off, no more fleas. Would God have been just to do that planet Earth, take his giant can of raids, so to speak, send the death angel and take us all out? He would have been just to do it. But God's not like a man, thankfully. But at the same time, if he's not going to destroy everyone, but if he is going to scourge his people, if he's going to chasten them, or maybe if they have a wound that needs to be needs to be cleansed. Have you ever had a wound that was pretty deep and it wasn't simple, I can put a band-aid on it because their stuff had worked into the wound and we need to get it out? I can tell you the time I was riding my bike on Highway 301 in Wilson, North Carolina after visiting a baseball game of the local minor league team and riding home. And my chain slipped, and I did a faceplant on the highway. Now, I was about to have a pity party. I was going to call people over, have violins play. My knee was really scraped, and the palms of my hands were scraped. And I hear a truck go, wah, wah. I better get my carcass off the highway, because if I don't, I'm going to have a bigger problem than a scraped knee and scraped palms of my hands. And so I got myself off the road, and I got home. You know how it's like when, and the problem was, there was gravel in the palms of my hands and gravel under the skin of my kneecap. Now it wasn't simply, well, we'll spray some Bactine on it. Bactine was great, because it didn't hurt, but parents sometimes have other things, like iodine, or they used to have really gross things, or alcohol that hurt as bad as the wound. Now, what if you're, sometimes among your parents, one was more gentle than the other? And one might use a soft cloth and some water to help work out those things. What if your dad says, I got just the thing in the garage. He comes back with a steel brush. Dad, wait. I'm not a piece of metal. This is my kneecap. Please don't use a steel brush. But if God wants to do a thorough, deep cleansing, he can use the equivalent of a steel brush to cleanse his people, to cleanse their wound and make sure that's not going to happen again. So we get to chapter three. You go, I knew you were going to come to chapter three. Well, in chapter three, beginning of verse 16 is the end of all this. And let's read what God's word says. When I heard my body trembled. In the first 15 verses he's talking, he's doing a little quick review. Do you remember everything I've ever done for you here in Judah? Do you remember all the stuff I've done over the years? And these verses in the first part of chapter three are all the things that he's done. How I brought you out of Egypt, I conquered the people who were against you, I fed you, I opened the Red Sea. You know, he's making allusions to all the things he's already done for them. And this quick reminder of God's goodness to them, is what kind of takes Habakkuk's breath away. In 2012 and 13, my wife and I were going through a very hard time and it was one of the critical hard times of our lives. And to encourage my wife, I wrote out a review of our whole life together. Everything that's happened that I could remember, all the times that God's blessed us and kept us. We're probably not going to die in a pile. We're probably not going to die of starvation. And I went through all the things that God had done for us, all the blessings. And that's what God's doing to Habakkuk here. And Habakkuk becomes overwhelmed with the sense of God's goodness to him. He said, when I heard my body trembled, my lips quivered at the voice, the idea that I can't even say the words. Rottenness entered my bones. You know, you became an even jellyfish. You know, an even jellyfish is a fish without bones. And there are so many evangelicals who have no doctrinal foundation. So they're like, in the days of Gary Larson, who used to write the Farside cartoons, one of his cartoons was a boneless chicken ranch. And all the chickens were laying on the ground as blobs because they didn't have bones. And so many professing Christians today are like that. They don't have any doctrinal skeleton. Rottenness entered my bones and I trembled in myself. I have forgotten all the goodness you have done for me. I have forgotten how great you are. I've really forgotten about who you are. I can recount all the things you've done for me, but it's not like I'm just taking a chart of goodness. This tells me who you are. When I see all these things you've done for me over the course of my life, I remembered who you are because these things that can't flow out of you, flow out of you. You are the one who's blessed me. And he says, I'm gonna rest in the day of trouble. When he comes up to the people, he will invade them with his troops. And then the conclusion of the book here is something that I don't think, I remember the first time I read it, I was kind of shocked by it. He's going to say something very hard. He goes, what if everything that you currently love other than me is taken away from you? What if everything that you love that is important to you is taken away from you and all you have left is me? What will you do? What will you think? You can look at the loved persons in your life sitting by you or at home. You can look at things the Lord's given you over the course of your lives. But if this is all taken away and all you have left is me, Though the fig tree may not blossom, conquering armies would come in and they would cut down groves of trees. And you might have a 500-year-old olive tree. Boom, they cut them all down. You can wait a couple hundred more years till they're mature trees again. Nor fruit beyond the vines. There goes the grape vines. Though the labor of the olive may fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the field and there be no herd in the stalls, You know, ancient Israel was an agrarian economy like the Midwest. No food, no civilization. Okay, all this stuff has been taken, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. And then look, I like how the New King James translates the second half of verse 18. I will joy in the God of my salvation. Most modern versions say, I will take joy or I'll find joy. But I think it's a better and a literal translation to say, I will just joy in the God of my salvation. What's going on here? God is still worthy of being loved and served, even if all the stuff he gives us and has given us over the course of our lives has been taken away from us. It struck me back in 2012 and 13 when I was going through this hard time and made a list of all the blessings God had given me. It struck me that behind whatever circumstances you face in your life, there's Almighty God sovereignly reigning over all these things. I can choose to look at circumstances. I can choose to look at people who are Maybe treating me not like I want to be treated or circumstances that are not going the way I want. I can focus on them. Or I can focus on God who stands behind them and says, these things didn't slip through my fingers. I've ordained them for your good and my glory. And I will use them for your good and your life. And we decided that we were going to focus on the Lord and not on circumstances or people. And so our sanity was quickly returned as we focused on the Lord and not on people. I was reading something by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, who's one of my favorite authors, and he said something that was a rebuke and also an encouragement. God is God, and he has an eternal plan. Check, check. And that plan involves you if you're a believer. Check. But it's not about you. Oh, wait, wait. But I knew when I came to the doctrines of grace, life wasn't about me. For the first time in my life, I got oriented. But what does, you know, our hearts are like a black hole. They can suck everything in. You know, and I've heard people give sermons like, hey, look at all that God's done. Look at his eternal election. Look at the work of his son. And he did it all for you. And your black heart goes, yeah, it's all about me still. And it's not. It's not about you. And it's not about me. It's about God. And I've slipped back into that. You know, the prophet's trust isn't a mere resignation. He says, yes, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will join the God of my salvation. I've been reminded my mind's been cleared. I'm not saying that God's gonna destroy America, I'm not saying God's gonna destroy your life, but he could take away all this stuff. My entourage, Glenn, was reminding me on the way over here that he had family living in Zimbabwe, and he said the poorest person in America lives better than the average person in Zimbabwe, because this is a very poor country in Central Africa. I've been to Nigeria and South Africa, and there are some, Very poor people in other parts of the world. We can have so much of the stuff taken away from us. But can you be happy in the Lord if you don't have all the stuff? God is to be the joy of his people, not his gifts, not his rewards, the Lord himself. And why that's important is God himself can't be taken away from us. In Romans 8, at the end of the chapter, early in the chapter, Paul was talking about how suffering was a part of the Christian life. And suffering has to be endured until the end of time. But he says, in Romans 8, what, 28? That's a verse you learn early as a believer. What does Romans 8.28 say? For all those whom are loved of the Lord, who love him, all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are the called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, that he, Christ, might be the firstborn among many brethren. And who shall bring a charge against, and he proceeds to elaborate on all the situations that you may think, yeah, but, and there's no yeah, but in the text. It says this might happen, this might happen. Nothing shall separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. He's the only thing that can't be taken from you, literally. The Lord could take my wife. The Lord could take my health. The Lord could take my children or grandchildren. The Lord could take my home. The Lord could take my possessions. The Lord God is my strength. Verse 19, the Lord God, the covenant God, it's Yahweh Adonai, the covenant God, sovereign God is my strength. He will make my feet like deer's feet and he will make me walk on my high hills. Now, again, you have to think a little bit. They're talking about something that I'll bet not a single lady in this room has ever gone into a store and said, I'd like to look at your shoes that make my feet look like deer's feet. I'll bet not a single woman has ever asked that. Hey, look, Shabazz, she wore her deer's feet shoes to church today. I was like, ooh, thank you. Why does he say you're going to have feet like the deer? There was a book written years ago called Hind's Feet in High Places. It's not a very good book. It's a weak theology of sanctification. But she takes it from the King James, I believe. You ever watch these mountain goats, mountain deer, rams, scamper on the high places on cliffs? How do they do that? And here's a mountain goat kid, only a few days old, scampering around. It's very nimble. The Lord God is my strength and he will make me nimble and he will make me walk on the high places. Meaning that one of the reasons those animals live way up there is nothing's gonna go up there and get them. And the Lord God is your strength and he can't be taken from you. Nehemiah says the joy of the Lord is our strength. If I'm not rejoicing in being a Christian, if I'm not enjoying my Christian life, if God isn't himself the joy of my heart, then my life will be kind of humdrum. I may succumb to having pity parties. This happened to me. Do you want to come to my pity party? Nobody ever comes to my pity parties. I mean, I sit at invitations and nobody comes. Do people ever come to your pity parties? No. But if I'm a person who lives in pity parties, then my life will be humdrum, and I won't be a good testimony to the Lord, and I won't be really reflecting glory back to him. In Psalm 73, Asaph, after going through a hard time, and, man, look at how pagans live. They're like all these fat cats. They have everything. Their lives are sleek and happy and full of stuff, and I'm trying to live a holy life, and what is it getting me? Very little. And he's, you know, you can hear the violins playing in the background. And what happens? He says, I was like a dumb beast before you. I was tempted to run my mouth and complain about you. But I didn't want to poison the hearts of the people coming up behind me, the younger generation. And then I went to the sanctuary. I went into temple. And I was reminded of who God is and who these people are and their ultimate end. And it zipped my mouth and it changed my perspective. And he concludes Psalm 73 by saying, well, whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. He can't be taken away from you. Let me close with a couple of applications. Do you and I plead for God to be merciful to his people in America in this time of crisis? Do we pray, not just so our grandchildren don't have to grow up in a cesspool, just so our lives aren't hard, but do we pray that God's glory would be restored to the American church, such that people are astounded at how great it is to be a Christian, what a privilege it is to know Christ? Do I praise God for his past faithfulness? You know, Habakkuk's breath was taken away when he realized how good God had been to Judah. Have you purposed in your heart to trust God no matter what? No matter what may come. And I've tried to be sober. I try to keep abreast of what's going on. I try to analyze trends as you do too. And I don't know what the Lord's going to do, but if the Lord is the only thing I have left, am I prepared to find him as my chief joy, my main joy, perhaps my only joy, and to trust in him? It says that Jesus was willing to go to the cross for the joy set before him. I'm losing everything. I'll even temporarily lose the smile of my father. But on the other side, I'll wake up to his smile, so to speak. For the joy set before him. I have a pastor that I knew in Romania. And for those of you who are under 45, maybe, you wouldn't have known about the Iron Curtain that used to control Eastern Europe. And all these nations came under the control of what was called the Soviet Union after World War II. World War II was 1939, 1945. And then Russia just sucked up all these small countries in Eastern Europe and made them satellites dependent on Russia and controlled them with armies. And Romania was one of the last ones to go back to democracy, so to speak, or at least not to have a communist government. And its leader, Nicholas Ceausescu, was one of the most violent and wicked and oppressive of all the satellite countries' leaders. Joseph Zahn was a pastor, a Baptist pastor in the city of Oradea, a university town. And he was a leader of the Baptists in Romania. And he was preaching fearlessly, despite what the government told him to shut up. And he wouldn't. So finally, one day, they came to his house, told his wife to stay there and his 10-year-old daughter to stay there. They took him, and they beat him. They beat him with rubber hoses. They beat him with rubber hoses on the bottom of his feet, which is very, very painful. And he didn't quit. And they said, you know, we can kill you. He goes, I'm sure you can. I'll go be with my savior. That's better for me. Well, then we'll let you live. Then I'll keep preaching. And the colonel of the secret police was very frustrated because he couldn't put this man in a position where the man was in anguish. So he took him home. Then he took the wife and left the daughter and the husband there and took the wife. Thankfully, they didn't beat her, but they scared the bejabbers out of her. Are you gonna give up? I'll follow my husband. You can kill me, or you can let me live, but either way, the Lord wins. Took her home. Took the 10-year-old daughter, left the parents at home. Thankfully, they didn't beat her, but they scared the bejabbers out of the daughter. You know, we can kill you. Well, I'm a believer in Jesus and he said he'd take me to heaven. Well, then we'll let you live. Well, then I'll live for Christ like my parents are living for Christ. The secret police couldn't win. Now to compare that with a closing illustration. In the 1980s and into the 90s, there was a religious TV, which I call the Heresy Channel. Anyway, on 24 hours of programming, there's like one hour of orthodox Christianity, and the rest is just con artists and money grubbers. So there was a man called Jim Baker and his wife Tammy Faye, and they had the PTL. It was originally called Praise the Lord, then it was shortened to PTL. And they had a television extravaganza. And it got so big, they raked in so much money, that they opened a theme park on the North Carolina-South Carolina border. And he had a giant mansion. And even the word got out, they had an air-conditioned doghouse. Because what dog wants to live in the South during the summer? But if you have an air-conditioned doghouse, the dog's happy. Anyway, they had all this extravaganza going on. And they started a theme park, an amusement park. Son-in-law is a pastor on the south suburbs of Charlotte, right on the border. In fact, their house they live in, I teased my grandson, your bedroom is on the two states. You can either go in-state in South Carolina to university or in-state in North Carolina, because you live right on the border and laps over into South Carolina. Well, from their home, you can see a bunch of trees in the distance, and out of it raises a big gray. What is that? Well, it was to be a hotel for the Heritage USA theme park that Jim and Tammy Faye Baker were building, but he was arrested and eventually tried and convicted and put in jail for swindling money and doing a bunch of other things that weren't illegal, but they were immoral. And his empire crumbled. It disappeared. And a lot of Christians at the time were kind of glad because they were glad this charlatan was exposed and wasn't pumping out garbage all the time on TV. Well one day, when I was living in the Atlanta suburbs, I was driving down Sandy Creek Road toward railroad tracks. And I was channel surfing and this guy on the radio said, there's an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that Jim Baker is being interviewed. And he was saying that My TV empire was taken from me. My heritage theme park was taken from me. My mansion was taken from me. My reputation was taken from me. All I have left is my faith. And the guy stopped reading. Wait, wait, wait, Jim, now come on. Jim, for years you've been telling us, if you have Jesus, you have everything, and send me your money. And so now everything's been taken from you but Jesus, and we're supposed to feel sorry for you like you got stuck with Jesus. So which is it? Is Jesus great? Or is he just something that you've manipulated with us? And I'm going, yeah, give it to him, twist that knife. And I was kind of And then I have a sense of, I don't hear voices, but if you have a sense the Lord's calling you buster, what about you, buster? And I just about hit the railroad tracks and I started crying. Why? Well, the Lord goes, well, what if I took this from you? Or took this from you? Or took this from you? Or took this from you? And all you had left was me. Would you be happy? Would you be tempted to complain you've been ill-treated? And I started crying because I knew I was Jim Baker writ small. His greed glands were huge. But my finding my joy in things other than the Lord was shown to me as a problem in my heart too. The just shall live by faith, Habakkuk learned. At every stage of their life, in both Testaments, the just shall live by faith. May God give us grace to find Christ as our joy and walking by faith in him and with him be the one thing that sustains us. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Would you send your Holy Spirit to continue to remind us that you are great and glorious, and it is an unspeakable privilege to be saved by the grace of your Son, His perfect life, His atoning death, His resurrection? Would it be an unspeakable privilege to be indwelled by the Holy Spirit? Would it be an unspeakable privilege to have your word to read anytime we want to? Would it be an unspeakable privilege to be part of a Bible-believing Christian Church, would it be an unspeakable privilege to be a creature made in your image to live the rest of our lives for you and not for ourselves? Lord, we are each Jim Baker or Tammy Fay. We are each tempted to fall back into, it's all about me. And it was never about me. It's always been about you. Forgive us for making it about us. Please keep us in your wrath and your chastening. Remember mercy. Should you tarry and Christ not return soon? May it be spoken of for a thousand years that God did such a revival of the church in America that it astounded the world. And these people who were so consumed with materialism and material pleasures left them behind to follow Christ. And some of them went all over the world as missionaries and spokesmen to tell other people about this great Christ. Would you receive the honor and glory? We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you, Brother Martin, for sharing God's words with us today. I don't know about you, but I've been sensing a theme in the text that the Lord's really been speaking to us through His Word regarding faith, patience, and endurance. We have been in Hebrews chapter 6 as a pulpit ministry. And just as a reminder, beloved, you remember that the inspired author who wrote the book of Hebrews, he said, be followers of them, including Habakkuk, who through faith and patience inherited the promise. And so we had a good encouragement today that, you know, don't look to the size of our circumstances and complain.