The Trinity Hymnal, which you're using, and I'm going to pray here in a second, but the Trinity Hymnal, which we were just singing from, is a great hymnal, but it's really great to the proportion that you know your Bible. Because most of the lines in the Trinity Hymnal are allusions to biblical things, and it's like, I don't know what this verse is talking about, or another hymn. He blasted my gourds and laid me low. What's that all about? Well, got to read the book of Jonah to find out that, but the point is, is that we just sang a spectacular hymn. It may have been a little difficult. It hit some high notes, but the theology behind it is very solid, and I wanted to encourage you to If you don't have a copy at home, buy one. I'm sure the church has one or two they can, no, maybe? We do, okay. Such a deal. And anyway, and to try it at home, singing as a family and learn the hymns. Anyway, let's pray that the Holy Spirit would be here tonight and we didn't waste our time coming to worship the Lord. We've worshiped him already, we've prayed. We've read scripture, we've sung, and now let's pray that he would speak to us through his word. Father, the best part, not the only part, not the only important part, but the only part that you, in a service, speak to us is when your word is preached. You can speak through reading scripture, you can speak through singing hymns based on scripture, you can speak through prayers uttered in scriptural ways, but you ultimately speak to us through your word when it is preached. Lord, we are a needy people. There have been times when we were full of ourselves, and we thought we had life and the world by the tail, and we didn't know the half of it. And we've been humbled more than once, and we've struggled, and you've shown us how desperately we need you. Would you meet with us tonight? Would you glorify yourself? Would you shower yourself with glory? I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. You'll turn to the book of Habakkuk in your Bible. Habakkuk's among those pages that are still stuck together in your Bible. The Old Testament minor prophets. You know, I can tell you the books in order right until I get to the minor prophets and I go, I'm not sure which follows which. But Habakkuk, or as they say in the UK, Habakkuk, and does anybody want to correct me? Is it Habakkuk or Habakkuk? Don't ask me. Don't ask you, okay. Sal? Jonathan? Okay, we have unanimity. And ignorance, okay. As I said this morning, looking at the book of Joshua and Rahab, her story and the scriptural testimony of her life, we don't know the Old Testament maybe as well as we might, We sometimes don't get the context in which things are happening and so we don't really have a good beat or good take on what's going on. Habakkuk is only three short chapters. And it's a very powerful book, and it may be the most relevant book for us in America today, as the church in America today, in my estimation. To set the context, Israel is going down the drain. You can see it swirling around the drain. Apostasy has taken hold. You know, everybody in Israel was a nominal Jew. But how many of them were believing Jews? How many of them? had a new heart, how many of them loved the Lord God. And so apostasy was a frequent battle, and in this particular time it was really bad. And so you have a man of God, a prophet, who's pleading with God, I see the crud that's going on all around me, please, please, bring a revival to the people, bring a reformation to the leaders, bring some cleansing. And God's gonna say, got that, I heard your prayer, and I'm bringing the Babylonians, and they're gonna wipe you off the map. Time out. Lord, maybe you didn't hear me. This is what I ask for. Now, obviously that's not exactly how it's phrased, but he's shocked that God would say that. Have you ever prayed for a revival in America? Have you prayed that things would be different, that the tide of evil would be turned back? I mean, I'm old enough to remember, and I told you I'm pretty old, but I'm old enough to remember when in the 1950s, the biggest problem in the public schools were running in the halls, not having your shirt tail tucked in, and sticking gum in places it shouldn't be. You go, whoa, you feel like you died and gone to Disney World, if that was the only problems in our public schools today. Divorce was rare. I lived in a community north of Atlanta. It was a fairly large developed area. There was only two known marriages that weren't intact, and one lady was a widow, and there was only one other divorced person. Divorce was very rare in the 1950s. The idea of rampant killings, government corruption, just so many things that we take for granted today were relatively rare back in the day. Now, I'm not hearkening for the good old days. I'm not saying the kingdom of God looks just like an outline of the United States. But I am saying that there have been times when, because of the salt of Christianity in the culture, the culture looked very different. How are the churches today? I mean, I used to tell my people this, and they just thought I was proud or arrogant, but that could have been the problem, but I don't think it was in this case. I used to tell them how bad it was out there, and we had a couple who became Christians in Las Vegas. He was a blackjack dealer. She was a druggie. They both got saved. They found each other. They got married, started going to a church, and out of the clear blue, this church started to reform, and they started seeing the doctrines of grace. Wow, that's amazing. But he got transferred, got a job in Atlanta, moved to Atlanta, found our church, attended, loved it for a while, but they live 45, 50 minutes away. That's just too long. We'll go shop around. We'll let you know. Good luck. Again, we weren't the only church. I'm not some great person. Our church was not any great thing. We were trying to be a biblically faithful church, just like this church. But when they shopped around, they came back a year later and their saying was, you don't know how bad it is out there. It's terrible. as maybe some of you have just come from attending a church that's more like a rock concert, or, well, I'm not gonna get into all the things, ways churches might go bad, but what happens is, there's an old-fashioned saying, if there is a mist in the pulpit, there's a fog in the pew. If the people up here don't know what they're about, what the gospel is, what the church is to be, well, then good luck for the people who are supposed to be hearing that and applying it. So it's a really bad day in our nation's history. I happen to study a lot of church history, and I'm not sure that America's churches have ever been weaker than they are today. Every single facet of what's called theology is under attack. From who God is, is scripture true, can I trust it? What did Christ really do? Who is Christ? I mean, everything, as you go down the list in the table of contents in a theology book, every single area is under attack. To have faithful pastors is no small thing. So I don't say that to puff the church or puff your pastors, but just to say, be thankful for what you have. But do you pray for a revival and reformation? Do you pray that God would change the hearts of the leaders? During the Reformation, you know, most of the leaders were former Roman Catholic priests. who came to see that what Martin Luther says is true. This is what the scripture teaches. I'm not sure how God might work a reformation today or a revival, but I pray that it happens. Well, Habakkuk's going to pray that God would do a work in ancient Israel, and God's solution to that problem was different. Let's read chapter one. His problem, then we're gonna read chapter 2 and 3, his plea. Chapter 3, the end of the chapter, God's praise. And finally, Habakkuk's purpose. I purpose to do this. I don't care what happens. I don't care where the country goes. This is what I want to be, what I want to do, what I purpose in my heart. The burden which the prophet Habakkuk saw. Oh, Lord, again, no, it's all caps. Oh, covenant God, how long shall I cry and you will not hear? Even cry out to you, violence, and you will not save. We're not the first generation that's been plagued by violence in the cities. Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? I see all this stuff. For plundering and violence are before me. There is strife and contention arises. Therefore, the law is powerless and justice never goes forth. Sound familiar? For the wicked surround the righteous, therefore, perverse judgment proceeds. That's the prophet's question. Why have you let all this stuff happen in your covenant family, in your covenant community? This is Israel. We're not one of the pagan nations. We're not among the Gentiles. This is your chosen people. And look at all the garbage that's going on. The Lord's reply, look among the nations and watch or see. Be utterly astonished or 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, the people's ears were so deaf that even as God told them what he was going to do, they really didn't believe it. For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, which is another name for the Babylonians, a bitter and hasty nation which marches through the breadth of the earth to possess dwellings that are not theirs. They're terrible and dreadful. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves, meaning they're important in their own eyes, but that's not reality. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and more fierce than evening wolves. Their chargers, their steeds 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. I don't care who's in charge of this country. I don't care who these people are. They deride every stronghold for they heap up earthen mounds and seize it. Then his mind changes and he transgresses. He commits offense ascribing his power to his God. These are pagan people. They have a pagan God. They're ruthless. They're warlike. They're conquering people all around. I don't have the Lord audibly speak to me in my prayer time. But if he did audibly speak to you or me in our prayer time, and this is what he told you was going to be the future of America, wouldn't you have grown within you? So, like we looked at this morning, as in Romans 1 and other places in scripture, when people throw away God, they throw away holy thinking and holy living. Again, I said, what does ungodliness and what does unrighteousness mean? Josiah had been the first godly king in a long while. He had led a partial reformation. You know, it's sad to hear about, but one day the priests were cleaning out some rooms in the temple, and the temple wasn't just a small building. It was a huge, vast complex, so to speak. And in the back room, they, hey, look at this. We found the book of Deuteronomy. We wondered where that was. Now, that's the, you know, the last messages of Moses, but this is the charter of Israel. You guys lost it? Obviously didn't value God's word to them. But Josiah led a reformation, and it went on for a while, and he did do some good things. But then he got killed in battle against the Egyptians, and there went that reformation. And the people who came after him added to the misery that had been going on before him. Habakkuk is obviously, I think, grieved, and we should be. My wife, Cindy, is one of my theological advisors, and she has remarked to me, she said, you know, as we get older, one of the idols of older people is comfort and ease. And I don't think it's just older people, because I can remember as a young Christian, well, this can't be God's will, that would be hard. Perish the thought that we would ever have to do something hard. And Habakkuk is really anxious. He's torn up about this. And I have to ask myself, and I would ask you, how torn up am I about what's going on among the churches in our country? If it doesn't come to us here in the Quad Cities, then we'll be okay, that's fine. But really, it wouldn't be, because if the rest of the country goes down the drain, the Quad Cities will follow. I once had an elder who didn't have a great vision for what the church was to be, and he wondered why I spent time trying to encourage churches at other places in the state of Georgia. mostly Baptist, but an occasional Presbyterian church. And I told him, I said, if we're the last church standing in the state of Georgia, it won't be long before we fall too. I care that the churches of Jesus Christ make it, that they be healthy, that they glorify the Lord. Habakkuk was deeply grieved. And the answer that God gives him is even more grievous. I hear your prayer. I see exactly what's going on. I see how my name is being trashed. I see how my people are living in an ungodly fashion and their lives do not give credit to me. They don't glorify me. But what I'm planning to do is not what you asked me to do. I'm going to give you something. As he said here, you wouldn't have believed it even if I told you. Well, let's look at verse 12 then, through 17, because Habakkuk would respond like you and I do. Lord, it's these people that you're bringing on us. They're the ones that should be punished. They're the ones that need to be nuked. Verse 12, are you not from everlasting? Oh, Lord, my God, my Holy One. Oh, Yahweh, my God, my Holy One. We shall not die. Oh, Lord, you have appointed them for judgment. Oh, Rock, you have marked them for correction. You're 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? Why aren't you saying something? Why are you holding 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 order over them, excuse me, 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 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? In other words, look at all the bad things they're doing, and he's speaking in metaphorical language or he's speaking in picture language, like these other countries and people are just so many fish to be caught in a net disposed of. And then he says in verse one of chapter two, I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart. It's like at the Alamo, you stood up with maybe the top of the wall here and you, you could look over and shoot your gun over the top of the rampart is a walkway just below the top of the wall. I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart and watch to see what he, God will say to me and what I will answer when I'm corrected. Now in chapter two, he begins to look and see what God's going to show him. And what he sees isn't any more encouraging than what he's already seen. He says in verse three, then the Lord answered me and said, write the vision and make it plain on tablets, not just on the scroll, but put it on a tablet. It'll last longer 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." In other words, this stuff is going to happen. You can write it down. You can let people read it. This is going to happen. The Bible is not a bunch of ideas. It's not a book of philosophy. It's a book of the declarations of God and what he says he will do. And when God says he will do it, he says, I don't change. I don't take back my word. Behold the proud. His soul is not upright in him. But the just, the righteous one, shall live by his faith. What are we to be doing until Christ returns or until he sends a major revival that changes the face of our country or Western civilization? We're to be people who are to live by faith in his promises, in his declared purposes. God has said where history's going. God has said how he wants us to live. We're to live by faith. Not in the evening news, not in the stock market ticker, but to live by faith in the living God and his promises. It's interesting, this phrase here, the just shall live by faith, it's mentioned in Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. That's one of the verses that jumped out on Martin Luther when he's teaching Romans. He's teaching Romans and he's teaching Psalms. And he hates the righteousness of God because for him and his background, that means the righteousness by which God is going to judge the peoples. And then it dawns on him one day and the spirit gave him illumination. This righteousness that God demands that every person in his presence have, he gives by faith. You don't earn it, you trust him, and he gives it to you. But the just, the righteous one shall live by his faith. That's a keystone in Romans, it's a keystone in Galatians, and it's a keystone in Hebrews. But it's a keystone here in Habakkuk chapter two. If we're to follow the Lord through thick and thin, and it looks like thick ahead, then we have to live by faith in him and his promises. Verse 20, I'll drop down to there. You know, you can read the woes that are coming along here, and I don't have time to exposit the whole book, but there's woes that are given. And it's conjudgment on the idols of the surrounding nations, the idols that the Hebrews are tempted to turn to. Verse 20, but the Lord, it's all caps, but the covenant God, Yahweh, is in his holy temple, that all the earth keeps silence before him. You know, if you watch too much of the news, it's not good for your health. You can, you know, I have had relatives who'd watch the stock ticker all day. Whoa, that's gonna be a roller coaster for your blood pressure. Well, sometimes we as Christians wanting to be well-informed gobble up too much news and it makes us worried, upset. What's gonna happen? Is life as we know it gonna go away? Are we gonna be persecuted or killed? What kind of a world are my children or grandchildren gonna grow up in? God is not up there wringing his hand and going, oh no, we just need the right politicians in Washington, then they'll be happy. If you believe that, I have property in Florida that I'd be glad to sell to you, which means you're very naive to believe that there's going to be a human answer to our earthly dilemmas. God doesn't share his glory, not even with smarty pants evangelicals. God is in his holy temple. He's not sweating it. Things are working out exactly as he planned. Let all the earth keep silence before him. Be still and know that I am God, Psalm 46, from which a mighty fortress is based upon, a great hymn that comforted Luther. Imagine you're Martin Luther. Everybody in Europe is a Roman Catholic, except for Eastern Europe, and you have Eastern Orthodox. Nobody is into justification by faith. What do you think the pressure must be on one person standing against this monolithic culture, cultures, multiple cultures? I don't care what they say. This is what the scriptures say. And I have to go with God. The Lord's in his holy temple. He's sitting on his throne. Let all the earth keep silence before him. He's just pronounced five woes upon the Chaldeans, the Babylonians. And he will use their warlike ways to destroy Israel. But then he will turn around and judge the Babylonians because they did that to Israel. He's not making them cruel and warlike. They're already that on their own. But he's using what they're like to accomplish his holy purposes. Motive determines everything. Who planned and executed Christ? both the Romans and the Jews, and God the Father. But the Romans and the Jews had malevolent evil motives, and the Father had a benevolent motive. The worst thing that's ever happened on this planet was the killing of the only innocent person ever on this planet. And what's the greatest event that's ever happened on this planet? The terrible, wrongful killing of this one person has meant the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Millions of people have profited from the cross of Christ. It was hell for him, it was blessing for us. So here we have Habakkuk being rehearsed by God about, I'm not asleep, I know exactly what the Babylonians are doing, and I will pay them back for what they do to my people. But they're my instruments to chasten these people. Let's look at chapter three. A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet on Shigiel Nath. Do you ever sing to Shigiel Nath here? We're not even sure if it's a musical instrument or a musical term. I think you can look in a jukebox a long time and never find that listed as one of the songs there. O Lord, O covenant God, I have heard your speech. and was afraid. Oh Lord, oh covenant God, revive your work in the midst of the years. And he repeats it for emphasis. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. And then the next number of verses is really, he strings together a bunch of quotes or allusions to things that have already happened and God's dealing with Israel. They're leaving Egypt, they're being in the wilderness, they're the parting of the Red Sea. All the things that God has done to get them to be a little nation in the middle of the Middle East, surrounded by pagans. And let's go down to the last verses of the chapter. When he repeats and reviews all these things that God has done for his people, and it's a healthy thing to do. We went through a very difficult time as a couple in 2012 and 13, and one of the things we did for Christmas of 2012 was go over everything that God had done in our lives as Christians. And let's sit down, and you know the song, Count Your Many Blessings, name them one by one. You ever done that? You ever done it for 15 or 20 minutes? Get out of a yellow pad if you're conscientious and have much of a memory left. You can fill up a yellow pad with all the stuff God's done for you. Well, we did that. We went back to all the way to the beginning of our marriage in 1972. Tremendously encouraging. Has God been for us? Yes. Has God taken care of us? Oh, yes. Has God treated us as we deserve? Thankfully, no. He's treated us like we're in Christ. but it didn't mean the hard times went away, but that we had a different perspective on them and a different attitude. Let's look at verse 16. So after God's recounted all these things, he says in verse 16, when I heard my body trembled, my lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness entered my bones. They suddenly became brittle, so to speak. And I trembled in myself that I might rest in the day of trouble. When he comes up to the people, he will invade them with his troops. God's on his throne. God's going to do what he's going to do. And the reality of what's coming scares the bejabbers out of Habakkuk. And it's making him physically weak, probably psychologically weak. I trembled in myself. My lips quivered like somebody who's getting ready to cry. And the thing I wanted to emphasize tonight was this verse 17 through 19, because that's the culmination of the book and where the Lord would have each of us to be. Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit beyond the vines, though the labor of the olive may fall, and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls. In other words, he's picturing a national devastation. The farms are all wiped out. And I said to the, I think to the retreat people, I said, People who live in New York and LA and Washington and Boston and San Francisco, they don't want to live in the Midwest because who cares about corn and soybeans and winter wheat and all the things that we grow here that supply the country and much of the world with food. But if for any reason the Lord should ever wipe out the Midwest, The rest of the country would starve or have to buy food from overseas. He's picturing here a terrible plague. Have you ever seen pictures? Nobody here is, not even me, is old enough to remember the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. But I've watched documentaries about the Dust Bowl, watching people's farms blow away, going to school and hoping your kids made it to school because there was a dust cloud over the land from Oklahoma back into the Midwest. for days and it was just so scary and nothing was growing. What would it be like? Figs, no figs, no fruit, no olives, nothing in the fields. The flocks of sheep and goats are gone. There's no herd of cattle in the stalls. What in the world are we going to do? And his answer is the answer that really Christians of all times and all places have had to come to at one time or another. Do I love and serve the Lord because he gives the best stuff, or do I love and serve him for himself? And if he takes the best stuff away and I'm just left with him, will that be okay with me? And I know I can say the words, but it's a reality we have to grapple with. You know, you can turn to the person after you and say, oh yeah, I'd do that in a heartbeat. Maybe. But I think we need to seriously think it through. God, would you in your wrath remember mercy? Would you not utterly destroy us? John Wesley said in the 18th century, our nation is so rotten that we are a nation ripe for revival. Because nobody is going to get the glory for the change in England. It's so rotten. But if you should work, you'd get the glory. The secular British historian William Lackey, who along with eight other prominent historians said that the evangelical revival of the 18th century, called the Great Awakening here in the colonies, was the thing, the only thing that saved England from a bloody revolution like France went through just about the same time, 20 miles across the English Channel. Why don't we have riots and revolution and the downfall of our culture? Well, it was the grace of God in the evangelical awakening. Have you ever had a wound, and this reminded me of something from childhood, have you ever had a wound that was kind of deep and maybe had dirt or grass in it or something? I used the illustration with the youth group one time. I was on Highway 301 outside of Wilson, North Carolina, and the chain slipped on my bike, and I did a face plant on the highway. I know I can always, some of you are more sympathetic than others, and the violins are playing in the background of my head. And I scraped up my knee, and I was blood, and this is terrible, and whoa, I hear a semi coming. And he started, you know, and so I had to pick up my bike and myself and scamper off into the gravel by the side of the road. And the semi went by, and I'm obviously here. But when you get home, you got to clean out the wound. Now maybe in your family, one parent is a little more empathetic, sympathetic, kind, gentle. You know, dad goes, I'll take care of it. I'll go out in the garage and get my steel wool brush and we'll clean out this. No, not dad. Well, if you really want to get down to make sure you get everything out, if you're like God, you don't just do a surface cleansing, you do a deep cleansing. And so God's been telling the nation through Habakkuk, I'm going to use a steel wool brush on you. These are not small problems you have. They're not superficial wounds. There's dirt and gravel and yuck under that, and I'm going to clean it out. And so really Habakkuk is saying to the Lord, I don't want this to happen, but if you're gonna have us be hurt, then get on with the hurting, and we wanna trust you. So, I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will joy, look how it's phrased, I will joy, not just find joy. The verb is here, will joy. I will joy in the God of my salvation. You know, what's the one thing that can't be taken away from you? is the Lord. God could take away your health, he could take away your spouse, he could take away your children, your parents, your job, any number of things that we have here on planet Earth can be taken away from us. There's a great little devotional book called The Blessed and Boundless God by a Puritan, George Swinnick, that's been modernized to a degree so we can appreciate it. And all the chapters, they're short chapters, you know. I read four chapters tonight. Well, it's about six pages. But anyway, I read four chapters, and it was marvelous. And for family devotions, I highly recommend it. The Blessed and Boundless God. It's a Reformation Heritage title. But the last chapter is so wonderfully powerful, it makes you weep. Because all through the book, we get to the culmination that we don't have anything of our own, but we do have the Lord, and he can never be taken away from us. Never. Romans 8, 31 to 39, pounds away at that. Either life nor death nor principalities or powers, you know, death and all these things, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. I will rejoice in the Lord and the God of my salvation. I'm cutting things out so I don't win the award for the longest message. So you can just bear with me a second here. If we find our strength in the Lord, and that can't be taken away from us, then that's a mighty powerful thing. In fact, aren't there verses in the Bible that says the joy of the Lord is your strength? Where's that? Do you know? That's not a rhetorical question, that's a real question. Do you know where that is? Nehemiah. The joy of the Lord is our strength. I know a man who prior to the fall of what's called the Iron Curtain in 1989 was a pastor in Romania, a Baptist pastor in Romania. And he was a gutsy guy and he wouldn't cave in to the communists. And he was leading kind of a mini revival going on there. And they would arrest him and they would, one time they came to his house and left his wife and 10-year-old daughter at home and they took him away and they beat him. And he wouldn't quit and he wouldn't cave. And the colonel in charge of the secret police at his group said, don't you know what power I have over you? I can kill you. I can have you killed. Great. I'll go to be with my God. I'll let you live. Great, I'll preach about my God. You can't take away what you didn't give me and what you have no control over. Christ is my God and you have no power over me, really. It was very frustrating to the colonel, so he took him home. He took the wife next and took her away and left the father and the 10-year-old girl. He didn't beat his wife, but you can imagine it was a very scary proposition to have stormtroopers, so to speak, giving you a hard time and yelling at you and threatening you. They brought her home. Then they took the 10-year-old daughter and took her to headquarters and scared her half to death. Very, very, very cruel. But he didn't cave in. We know the living God, and he is our God. And you can threaten us, and you can kill us if you want to, but you can't take our God away from us. And the Colonel had apoplexy. He was so frustrated that he couldn't make these people quit. The Lord God, the covenant God, is my strength. He will make my feet like deer's feet. Now, ladies, I bet there's not a lady in this room who said, when I go shoe shopping, I want the shoes that look like deer's feet, because that's really in style today. Does anybody, any ladies here wearing deer's feet shoes? Let the tape know that nobody raised their hand. What do you think that means, he'll make my feet like a deer's feet? Well, he will make me walk on my high hills. You know, one of the things if you see mountain deer or mountain goats, they're very nimble. They live in places that are inaccessible to many other creatures. where I'm going to be living, you can't touch me. I'm gonna be inaccessible to the threats of man because the Lord God is my strength. I will have the ability to go places, not literally in the mountains, but I think he's speaking metaphorically or picture words here. He's saying, I will put you in a place that even though all this stuff's gonna happen, and they may beat on your body, they may take loved ones away, they may drop bombs on your village or town, but you will have the grace to stand and to persevere. He will make my feet like deer's feet and he will make me, he will make me walk on my high hills. He will be the one to sustain me. It's not that, I've been reading books on self-discipline and being tough, and I can do this. Well, that's not gonna cut it when the really hard times come. But the Lord can make you, can make you into what you are not. How does the 23rd Psalm go? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. In other words, the Lord, the shepherd is the one taking care of the sheep. And they're going to see these things happen. Not because, you know, I've been working out at the gym and we're pretty tough Jews here. Or we're pretty tough Christians. No, because we have a great God and he can take care of us. In Psalm 73, Asaph struggles like many of us have struggled. You're trying to live a life for the Lord. You're pursuing holiness. And you know, look at the people in the culture who don't give a rip about God, and look how they're living. And they seem to be prospering and getting on, and I'm trying to live the straight and narrow life, and I don't seem to be getting anywhere. And we find ourself getting a little envious of the wicked, getting a little jealous of what they have that you think you don't have. But as he works through where he is, he says, I'm tempted to run my mouth, but if I do, I'll make the next generation I'll put them in a difficult place. So if you get a bad attitude, don't tell others about it. Don't sit around the family table and tell your kids how crummy the Christian life is and how you're miserable. You don't want to poison their well because you're going through a hard time. It says, he said, I was like a dumb beast before the Lord. Then one day he came into the sanctuary of the Lord. Oh, I forgot. I perceived their end. So where are the movers and shakers of 21st century America gonna be if they don't have Christ a few years from now? Facing hell, facing judgment. Eternal poverty. So he gets to the place by the end of the psalm who says, whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail. He didn't think of himself as Superman. But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. You can't take him away from me. We'll think about that for a minute. And my closing application is this. Do you plead for God to be merciful to his people in our time of crisis right now? Are you a pleader with the Lord? Would you like to see righteousness exalted in the nation? Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. Yes, he's holy and just and does not wink at sin. But as what happened back in the time of the Evangelical Awakening in England, there's a book that I encourage those of you who like to read to read it, England Before and After Wesley. Now, obviously, the hero of the book in this author's eyes is John Wesley. But you can say England Before and After Evangelical Awakening hit. And when we had some classes in Atlanta and taught men, they had to read the first 176 pages. And that's all they had to read. Why? It was everything that was going on in England before the good news, before the gospel changed it, before Wesley or Whitfield or other men I could name hit the fan and the truth went out there. And believe it or not, it was just as bad, maybe even in some ways a little worse than America. How could that be? Well, drugs were not a problem. There were some people who were addicted to laudanum and opium, but the biggest problem was gin and nickel and pop. Imagine if for a nickel you could get wasted, how bad drunkenness might be. And it was a huge problem. And children were born gin babies, not crack babies and things like that. And the treatment of women was horrible. The treatment of kids was worse. They had orphanages. And most of the orphanages had a death rate of 100%. You went into the orphanage and they worked you to death. Kids didn't come out of those orphanages. They were just little young worker bees. What were some of the national hobbies and pastimes? Let's go, they're having a bull baiting down in the square. Or they're going to sick some dogs on a bear. Or the top grossing one, the one that had the biggest crowds was, when there was a public hanging, people would go and bet on how long people twisted in the wind before they stopped kicking. You have to be very scarred in heart. You have to have a seared conscience to participate in sports based on sadism and cruelty. You go, well, I know, but what about America today? Well, we won't ruin a good lord today by talking about politics, but I'll say this. There were times when Parliament couldn't meet because they didn't have enough sober men to have a quorum, which is what, usually 25% of the total? Now, whatever you say about Congress, it hasn't been so bad So many people were drunk or on drugs or something that they couldn't meet for days upon end because they were just so out of it. That's how bad England got. It had this huge change. Hundreds of thousands of people became Christians. Hundreds of thousands of people demanded that laws change. Hundreds of thousands of people demanded that children be treated right. Hundreds of thousands of people demanded that women be treated right. And hundreds of thousands of people got off drinking and things like that. The nation was given a reprieve. Plead for God to be merciful to his people in our time of crisis. Oh Lord, for the sake of your name and your covenant, and for the sake of your covenanted people, your name is attached to us. Would you have mercy on our wicked nation? Would you make the church a different church, a beautiful church, a beautiful bride? What's the difference between a beautiful bride and a streetwalker? Well, I think you know the difference. Do you praise God for his past faithfulness? You know, Habakkuk recounted here all the stuff that the Lord had done for them to get them where they were then. And now they had despised it and they were going off in a bad way, but that didn't mean that God hadn't been faithful in the past. And recording in your mind what he's done in the past is a great way to buoy your faith. How did you get here today? Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to love to tell the story, and it got so in my church that kids would tease me about it. A man came up to him after service and said, this is like 1950, and said he'd been in the submarine corps for the British Navy, and he was in the Mediterranean, and their submarine got hit by depth charges, and he cried out, down, down, down, we went to the bottom of the Mediterranean. Lloyd-Jones looks at him. Then what? The guy goes, down, down. He does this three or four times and finally Lloyd-Jones goes, hey, wait. How did you get here? We're not at the bottom of the Mediterranean right now. We're here. How did you get here? But the man was stuck on something horrible that had happened in the past, and he had missed the fact that God had delivered him and many of his shipmates, and here they were. But God doesn't want us to be stuck in the past of bad things. He wants us to praise him for his past faithfulness. Have you purposed in your heart to trust God no matter what? It's good to be thinking about it when things are relatively good because When crunch times come, you may be thinking on the run. And so, to soberly assess your life and what you're committed to, could you live with less? What if so much is taken from you and all you have is the Lord? There have been times that your pastors know about in church history where people would say, there's gonna be a meeting at the old barn down on Highway 27 at midnight tonight and believers are going to gather. And they would slip out in the dark because there weren't nightlights and they'd work their way down to this barn and they would have a secret meeting because it was illegal to meet. And they weren't playing violins and people weren't feeling sorry for themselves. They were thankful that they could meet and they wanted to praise their God. Is God worthy of being loved and served, even if things don't go the way we had hoped for, no matter what I face? I've seen in my own life, and perhaps you've seen in your own life, that it's tempting to love the Lord because he's the best giver of gifts. But then you fall in love with the gifts, and the giver is just the guy who supplies the gifts. You don't really care about him, you care about the gifts. I know a missionary working with Muslims in France, and he had a little book table giving away free Bibles and stuff, and these two Muslim young men came up to him and he engaged them in conversation. He goes, now, let me see if I understand this right. In Islam, you do all these good works to get on Allah's good side, but on the Day of Judgment, Your fate, and that's the word fate, is determined not by your good works actually, because Aloe might be having a bad day and he goes, no I'm not accepting you and your good works. They go, yep that's how it works. So what if you could find out now in your early 20s, If your Allah is going to accept you down the road on Judgment Day, well, that would be good. We'd find out early. What if he found out he's not going to accept you? Oh, wow. So they put their heads together and they said, well, we're just going to go out and get it on with the world. Visit prostitutes, drink, carouse, party. And this person said, well, you've just tipped your hand. You've showed your heart. You don't love Allah. You don't care a bit about him. You're just using him to give you what he wants. And if he's not going to give it to you, you're out of here. He called their bluff. Now, professing Christians would never be that way, would they? Would we ever be the way that as long as God gives me the good stuff that I want, I'm in. But if he starts taking away the things that are important, I'm out of here. It's not really about loving the Lord, it's about loving his gifts. Joy in the Lord can be an enduring thing. Something that no matter how bad things get. Hebrews 12, for the joy set before him, Christ endured the shame and endured the cross. For the joy set before him, he went through the hell of a cross. And joy can be that in your heart. One of my heroes, a heroine, was known as Mama Luka in the Congo. Helen Rosevere was a medical missionary from Great Britain. She'd gone to Cambridge, went to medical school, was serving in the Congo in the 1960s. Unfortunately, there was an uprising And a group called the Simbas became the revolutionaries, and they were determined to kill all white people and terrorize them. And so one day, one night actually, when everybody in their medical compound was going to bed, there was gunshots and loud music, and the Simbas were upon them. And they shot many of the men. Helen Rosevere said, my door was kicked in, and I jumped up, and a man was standing there. And he came over and punched me and I was down on the ground like that. And then he kicked me in the face and he broke my jaw and knocked out several teeth at the same time. This is like in a couple seconds. And she said, but an amazing thing happened. I didn't know it was possible. You could have absolute peace and abject terror at the same time. I don't know what these men are doing or going to do. But I'm trusting you, Lord. I believe you're in control. You can read her first story when she went to the Congo. We asked for a mountain, you know, like Caleb and Joshua. And Caleb said, Lord, give me that mountain. Her subsequent books she wrote after all these experiences were, he gave us a valley. There was periods of hell we had to go through. She was raped numerous times, beaten up numerous times. Some of the religious workers with her really lost their minds in the terror. But her knowing the Lord and her joy in Him couldn't be taken away from her, though it was the worst time of her whole life. Let me close with something that's kicked me in the backside several times. I shared it I think one time when I was here before, but I think it's important to review. For those of you who are under 45 maybe, you wouldn't remember a religious con artist of the late 80s called Jim Baker and the PTL Club. It was Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and they had something called the PTL Club. And in fact, where my son-in-law is a Presbyterian pastor in Charlotte, and where their house is, Charlotte's right on the border of South Carolina, and my grandson's bedroom is kind of in two states. And so I tease that he can get in-state tuition either in South Carolina or North Carolina. But there in Rock Hill is where Jim Baker had his Heritage USA theme park. It was like a Disney World, but for Christians who watched his show. And he had a giant hotel going up. And it didn't get finished, and so now, rising out of the trees, there's this specter of a concrete building that was never finished that was a testimony to Jim Baker's folly. Anyway, he had a TV show that was the best-selling religious show on the Heresy Channel. The Heresy Channel is that religious channel that people watch. There's maybe one Orthodox hour in a 24-hour schedule. The rest of it are con men and heretics. Well, Jim Baker was caught misusing money, committing adultery, other things. He went to jail. His marriage broke up. His reputation was trashed. And I was driving down Sandy Creek Road in our suburb of Atlanta just before the railroad tracks. My wife knows where that is. And I was channel surfing and a guy came on the radio. It was an obnoxious local news guy from New York who moved to Atlanta. And he was reading an article out of the Wall Street Journal about Jim Baker. And Jim Baker's quote is saying, I've lost everything. I've lost my TV ministry. I've lost my Heritage USA theme park. I've lost my mansion, which had an air-conditioned doghouse. You live in the South and you like air-conditioning. I'm not sure a dog needs an air-conditioned doghouse. But anyway, he went through a litany of all the things he had lost. I have nothing left but my faith. And the reader stopped, and with a New York cynicism, he goes, well, Jim, what is it? What's the deal here? For years, you've been telling us, if you have Jesus, you have everything, and send me your money. If you have Jesus, you have everything. And now, everything but Jesus is taken away from you, and we're to feel sorry for you. So which is it? Is Jesus everything and wonderful, or was he just a con that you were using to get money from people? And I'm listening and my very self-righteous self, twist the knife, that's right, just give it to him, he deserves it. And then the Lord gave me a sense of Buster. When he calls me Buster, I know good things aren't coming. Well Buster, let's look at your life. Have I given you any blessings? Have you loved these blessings? What if I took these and he, in my mind I thought of some of the blessings in my life. What if I took those from me? This person or that person? This thing or that thing? What if you were left with only me? And I started crying because I was Jim Baker. I just wasn't doing it in an ugly fashion as he was. that just shall live by faith. May God give us grace to honor him with whatever comes to live by faith in his character and his promises and finding out that the joy of the Lord is our strength. Let's pray. Father God, we're not theological superheroes. We're not The Navy Seals of the Green Berets of Christendom. We are garden variety centers saved by your grace. But we pray that we would live by grace and through faith all the rest of our lives that we would honor you no matter what. A book of Habakkuk and Romans chapter one looks awful lot like America today, Lord. And we hate to see our nation that we have loved and that we have lived in and sweat in and sacrificed for, we hate to see it going down the drain. But even more so, your church has become such a disaster. All across America, there's unfaithful pastors, unfaithful people, terrible teachings that dishonor you, that mislead the people. The nation has no one to tell them the truth. There's no one to look to in the churches. And so the nation is swirling around the drain. If you let us go down the drain, you'd be perfectly just to do so. But as Habakkuk said, Lord, in wrath, please remember mercy. Be merciful to this nation because of your covenant people who really do exist here. We're your people by grace. We weren't the brightest bulbs among the pagans, but you chose to save us and make us into recipients of unspeakable grace. Lord, may we honor you with our lives by trusting you. If things get harder, if things get really hard, if things get terrible, may we honor you and live by faith in your promises, in your revealed purposes, and in your character, forever displayed in Jesus Christ. Lord, honor yourself in our nation, come what may, in our lives by helping us to trust you. May you be our joy and therefore our strength. I ask this in Jesus' name alone. Amen.