Habakkuk: The Prophet who Questioned God (Week 4) | Adult Sunday School

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Well, good morning, everyone.

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Good to see you. We're glad you're here this morning. Welcome to Kootenai Community Church adult

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Sunday school class. We're going to continue and finish off our study in the little minor prophet

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Habakkuk this morning. There is an outline available out there. Some of you already have them, but they're either back there in the back or on some of the chairs here someplace.

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So help yourself to that as we finish off our study in this minor prophet with a major message.

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I'm always fascinated by how God can pack into even these shorter little biblical books and letters some of the most potent and powerful doctrinal and theological issues that are there for us.

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So let's commit our time to our Lord as we study his word together. Our Father, we thank you for this time that we have in your word and to fellowship together.

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And we know that you have made it all possible through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so we gather in his name and pray that you would be our teacher as we look into your word this morning, change our hearts and minds, conform us to the image of Christ, cause us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And may you be glorified in it. We just thank you in his name, amen.

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Well this morning we're going to be looking at Habakkuk chapter 3. The basic outline of Habakkuk basically is just two parts, which is commonly how it is outlined.

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Chapters 1 and 2, Roman numeral 1, and then this final section is the prayer of Habakkuk in Habakkuk chapter 3.

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And that would be Roman numeral 2. So we're going to look at that this morning.

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And it begins in verse 1, a prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, according to shigionot.

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The Hebrew word that is the root of that, shigion, it means to, very literally it means to err or to stagger to and fro.

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So in other words, this is a prayer of Habakkuk that is in the form of a staggering prayer.

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In other words, what it's trying to tell us there is that it moves very, from one topic to another to another to another.

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That's what it means. It's not that Habakkuk himself is staggering, it's a form of a prayer that moves from a topic to a topic to a topic.

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And since it says there, a prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, according to this form of a poem, it is actually sort of a formal prayer.

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In other words, it's not just the prophet praying to Yahweh that we are given insight into.

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It's actually designed by God to be used in the worship of Yahweh himself. And so there's actually five musical notations here, very interesting.

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And that shigionot is one of them. The other three, the next three, are found in verses 3, 9, and 13.

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You see there it says, has the word silah, silah. Now outside of the

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Psalter, this is the only passage in Scripture that uses that term. It's used 71 times in the

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Psalter. You commonly see the Psalms going on and then you see that word silah off to the side.

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And it's used three times here in this prayer of Habakkuk. It's not really known for sure what silah means.

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It could probably mean a musical interlude or a rest in the singing of the

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Psalm, probably designed to give the worshipers a moment or two to contemplate or to meditate on what they have just sung.

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It could also be a shift or a change in the music, like a key change, that type of thing, or even a crescendo in the music to emphasize or stress some part of the

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Psalm. And then the fifth musical notation is found at the very end of this prayer, to the choir master with stringed instruments.

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So this prayer is a Psalm, it's designed to be used by God in the worship of Yahweh, in the temple worship.

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Remember the temple worship had been restored after Josiah came in and made all those restorations that we saw.

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So this chapter of Habakkuk is also an extensive theophany, the theophany being a vision of God as he comes in judgment.

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Some commentators have even called it the greatest theophany of God found in the Old Testament.

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So it's very significant in that way. So it's not only a reference to Habakkuk's immediate situation, and you remember he was looking at the southern kingdom of Judah, where he lived, in Jerusalem, and he saw the degradation and the crime and the violence that was there.

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And he's crying out to God, how long will you wait on this? And God came back with the answer that he's going to see the solution to this in his time.

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So there's an immediate reference here to what he sees around him. But this

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Psalm is also a look into the future as a vision of God, a theophany, as God comes in his future judgment.

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And you remember how the prophecy started, again, Habakkuk bringing this problem before Yahweh, and he takes it to Yahweh.

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One of the things that makes this prophecy so unique is that he doesn't take this to other people, you know, and complain about this.

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He takes it directly to God. So way back when, we saw that this prophecy itself is an oracle or a heavy message, because he sees this problem that he has, and he keeps taking it to God.

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And it's as if God is not even paying attention to him in all of this. And so he says, back in chapter 1, verse 2 and following, how long, oh

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Yahweh, will I call for help? And you will not hear, I cry out to you, violence, yet you do not save.

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And you remember, when he got his first answer, he was shocked at that answer. Because God says,

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I am going to judge Judah for their sin, oh yes, and I'm going to use the Chaldeans to do it.

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And Habakkuk came back then with his second problem, he had, how can a holy God use an unholy people, a people that is more sinful than our people, to judge our people?

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And the answer in the second round of answers was something also that it actually doesn't really answer that question, because that's not the issue.

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The issue is not who's more sinful than who in Scripture. The answer came back in that great statement in chapter 2, verse 4, behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith.

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The issue is not who is the more wicked sinner, Habakkuk, the issue is will

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God fulfill His covenant promises to the nation of Israel and to all who put their faith in Yahweh.

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The righteous will live by his faith. And that word there translated faith here in this particular passage is the

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Hebrew noun emunah, emunah. In Genesis 15, 6, the very passage where it says that Abraham believed in Yahweh, and he counted it to him as righteousness, that's the verbal form of that.

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The word translated believe, wahemunah, okay? Now you don't have to take notes.

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In Nehemiah chapter 9, verses 7 and 8, remember Nehemiah is a post -exilic record,

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Nehemiah came back to oversee the reconstruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and so on.

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So it's a post -exilic, it's after the exile. The exile is because they were being punished for their sin against Yahweh.

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But after the exile, Nehemiah, part of his ministry was to re -establish the

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Abrahamic covenant. And Nehemiah says in chapter 9, verses 7 and 8, you are Yahweh God who chose

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Abram and brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees and gave him the name Abraham.

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You found his heart faithful before you and cut a covenant with him to give him the land of the

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Canaanite, of the Hittite, of the Amorite, of the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the

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Girgashite, to give it to his seed and you have established your promise for you are righteous.

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Again, this covenant faithfulness of God is in view here. But when he says you saw his heart faithful, that's the adjectival form of that same word.

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It's ne 'aman. The root word of all three of those is the Hebrew word amen.

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And you're hearing the very word that we use just drug into English and it's actually just transliterated even into the

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Greek New Testament, amen. It means steadfast or truly.

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And when it is pronounced as an oath, amen, it means so be it. So technically you could say that Abraham amened

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God and God reckoned it to him as righteousness. So the righteous man or woman will live out their life on earth by their steadfast or their amen faith in Yahweh's faithfulness to carry out all of his covenant promises regardless of what the situation is around them.

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The just or the righteous will live by their faith. And we saw last time as we moved into chapter two that this prophecy of Habakkuk also included that taunt song against the

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Chaldeans and he uses five woes there. Remember that? And he goes into great detail, detailing their sins.

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And we also saw then that there's going to be a cataclysmic reversal, eschatological reversal.

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All of these sins are going to get reversed. And so this prayer here is a victory prayer based on everything he's seen, based on knowing that God is going to judge all sin.

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And the greatest eschatological reversal to happen is going to happen at the second coming of Jesus Christ.

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And that's what he begins to talk about here in this theophany where he gets this vision of the return of Christ and the accounting that takes place by him of all sin on earth in a cataclysmic reversal of the sin of this world.

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It's a prayer for the justice of God to come quickly and to set right a sinful world.

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And he also, we've already seen some of this, he uses some of what

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God has already done. Back in the first chapter when he says, God says in chapter two, he says, write these words down and write them down on stone tablets, okay?

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Now that would have been an echo of Sinai, right? When God wants to do something very important, wants you to record something, wants you to remember it, write it on stone tablets.

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So here, write this great truth down, the just will live by his faith on stone tablets.

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That would have been an echo of what God said on Mount Sinai. So he says in verse two,

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O Yahweh, I have heard the report about you and I fear,

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O Yahweh, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known.

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In rage, some of your translations say wrath, remember compassion.

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So this is a public prayer spoken through the prophet by God to be used in public worship and it's kind of an official prayer requesting two basic things, okay?

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Requesting swift judgment, carry out the judgment that is going to happen, do it very quickly, and in the midst of that judgment, demonstrate your mercy.

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He uses the word here, revive your work. The word revive, it's not a prayer for spiritual revival, okay?

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It really is a prayer for the swift execution of the judgment that he just spoke about in the last chapter.

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Swift execution of chastening upon Judah, chastening of Judah, but the swift judgment and destruction of the

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Chaldeans. And he says, in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years, make it known.

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Very literally in the Hebrew, in the middle of your years, in the middle of your years, revive your works.

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Since this prayer not only looks at the situation in Habakkuk's day, in the immediate issues that he's dealing with, it also foreshadows the coming of Christ and what will happen during that tribulation period that the

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Bible talks about, just before the return of Christ. And many commentators have linked this with the events during the seven -year tribulation period.

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It's as if God plants Habakkuk in this vision right in the middle of the tribulation period.

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And so in the book of Revelation, when you read that, the seal judgments of chapter 6 and the trumpet judgments of chapter 8 and 9 happen in the first half of the seven -year period.

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This is followed by a period of silence in heaven. And then the severe, bold judgments of chapters 15 and 16 are poured out in the second half of the tribulation period.

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And if you look at those passages, the bold judgments are uniquely called the wrath of God in those passages.

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And it also states about them that this will finish the judgment of God. So Habakkuk sees himself in the middle of the tribulation period with the most severe judgments yet to be poured out.

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And he's praying for God to finish the judgment. And though he prays for the wrath of God to happen and happen quickly, he also prays that in the pouring out of his wrath,

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God would remember mercy, which He does. Now remember that His covenant with the descendants of Abraham guarantees their perpetuity.

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To you and your descendants forever, that covenant says. In Exodus chapter 32, after the

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Israelites sinned by worshipping the golden calf, remember that? The covenant that Moses made had been cut and ratified in chapter 24.

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And even the Israelites said three times in that passage, they said, all that the Lord has said, we will do.

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And so when He cut that covenant, the blood of the sacrifice, part of it was poured out on the altar, which represented

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God's portion, God's obligation. But the rest of it was spattered on the people, okay?

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It was spattered on the people. They had that blood on them. That signified their obligation to keep the covenant upon pain of death, right?

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And then you remember when Moses went up onto the mountain again, the people, through Aaron, worshipped the golden calf.

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Now at that point in time, they were guilty of rebellion against God, guilty of idolatry. Their lives were essentially gone.

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Except when Moses came back down and God said, I'm going to destroy this people, Moses intervened for them.

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And remember, the Abrahamic covenant had been in existence for more than four centuries. It's the overarching covenant, and that's a unilateral, unconditional covenant that God made.

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And in Exodus 32, Moses says, why should the Egyptians speak, saying, with evil intent

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He brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Remember, the issue is the

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God of one people versus the God of the other people. And Moses is saying, if you destroy this people, the

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Egyptians are going to say, well, you just brought them out of there to destroy them in the wilderness. That's what's at stake here.

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And he says, turn from your burning anger and relent concerning doing harm to your people.

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Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by yourself, and you said to them,

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I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which

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I have spoken, I will give to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.

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So, a unilateral, unconditional, transgenerational contract, or covenant, that Moses invokes in order to save them from their demise, because they have broken the

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Mosaic covenant. Essentially, he appeals to the Abrahamic covenant to save their bacon, okay, while they're

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Jewish, save their bagel, okay? And it's an example of God demonstrating

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His mercy within the context of judgment. Because remember the story, they were severely judged and chastened, thousands of them died, but they lived on as a people group because of the

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Abrahamic covenant. This is also what Mary, in the New Testament, Luke chapter 1, praises

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God for, in what commonly called her Magnificat, you know, when she knows she's carrying Messiah.

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At the very end of that, she says this, He has given help to Israel, his servant, in remembrance of his mercy.

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And the structure of this is an explanatory statement. She's going to explain to you what she means by his mercy.

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As he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.

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Mary was not only a very godly, young Jewish woman, she was an excellent theologian, okay?

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She understood the Abrahamic covenant was in force, was in place, and this is an example of the mercy of God.

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And starting in verse 3, Habakkuk portrays the second coming and the glory and the power of Christ.

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Verse 3 says, God comes from Teman, that's in southern Edom, and the

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Holy One from Mount Paran, that's in the Negev Desert, also in the south.

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Now we know from other prophets that at the second coming of Christ, Christ will most likely return to the city called

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Basra, or Petra, south of the Dead Sea. And this then begins the judgment of the nations that have come against Jerusalem in that day.

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This is spoken of in Isaiah chapter 34, also in chapter 63, the mention of the city of Basra.

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Also Micah chapter 2 verse 12 says this, God speaking through the prophet

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Micah, I will surely assemble all of you, Jacob, I will surely gather the remnant of Israel, I will put them together like sheep in the fold, like a flock in the midst of its pasture.

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They will be noisy with men. He first says he's going to gather the remnant of Israel.

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These are the believing Jews of the day. The remnant of Israel, you have to meet two requirements to be a part of the remnant of Israel.

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You have to be Jewish, but you also have to be a believer. Luke goes to great pains in his gospel to set forth in the very first chapters some very godly people,

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Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, and even

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Anna and Simeon. And what he does with each one of these people, he certifies them in two ways. He certifies their

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Jewishness, he also certifies their piety or their belief in Yahweh. They are examples of the remnant.

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And he says, I will put them together like sheep in the fold. You say, well, where's the issue of the city of Basra there?

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Well, the Hebrew phrase, or the English phrase, sheep in the fold is an

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English translation of the word Basra, okay? So sheepfold is the word Basra in Hebrew, the city of Basra or Petra.

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And he says, like a flock in the midst of its pasture. And he's going to gather them together and he's going to show up there to save that group of people and to execute judgment on the

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Gentiles who have surrounded them or are ready to destroy them, their persecutors. This also fulfills

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Jesus' own words concerning His second coming in Matthew 24. It says, therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, let the reader understand, then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and they will.

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And that's where the Lord will return. Matthew 24 also speaks of the darkness that will cover the earth at that point in time because of the sun and the moon being darkened.

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It says, but immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

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And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn.

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And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.

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The rest of the verse, three through five, describes this brilliant, blazing presence of Christ.

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And you see this all through the Scriptures, right? It's sometimes called the Shekinah. But it's this, when

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God is there, there's a brilliant, blazing light that He gives off. Verses three through five say,

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His splendor covers the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. His brightness is like the sunlight.

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He has rays flashing from His hand, and there is the hiding of His strength. Before Him goes pestilence, and plague comes after Him.

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So this is one of the reasons Old Testament scholars believe this is not just addressing the time of Habakkuk, that it's a look into the future return of Christ.

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It moves from a localized situation with Judah, and what's going on there, to a worldwide issue here.

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And not only that, it's not just worldwide, it's cosmic. The return of Christ will have global and cosmic implications when

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He returns. And one of the things that will first be noticed by the whole world is this brilliant, blazing light that lights up the world and the universe as He returns.

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This next section pictures Yahweh as the conquering warrior, standing over the whole earth.

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So again, it's not just Habakkuk's immediate issue that's going on, that's going to happen.

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It's a look into the future at the return of Christ. It says in verse 6 and following,

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He stood and measured out the earth. He looked and startled the nations.

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So the perpetual mountains were shattered, the ancient hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting.

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I saw the tents of Cushon under wickedness, the tent curtains of the land of Midian were trembling. When Christ comes, and you see this even throughout the

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Old Testament, when God is there, things that look like they are stable tend to come undone.

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Remember Mount Sinai. He's up on the top of the mountain and there's the thunder and the lightning, but there's also an earthquake.

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I grew up in Southern California and spent a fair amount of years up around the Bay Area. I have only experienced,

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I think, three or four times an earthquake, and it was very mild. I was far away from it. It wasn't very severe.

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But when the whole building shakes, even a little bit, it's kind of unnerving.

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Anybody been in an earthquake before? Yeah. Was it kind of unnerving? A little weird? Yeah. When God is there, that's what happens.

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That's why it says, the perpetual mountains were shattered. The ancient hills collapsed.

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Oh, and by the way, His ways are everlasting. What He has done in the past is a good indication of what

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He's going to do in the future. When He comes back, other passages in Scripture talk about greatest earthquake that ever happened.

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If you've ever been in a big one, that's going to be nothing compared to what will happen in the future when

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He returns. He's going to shake and shatter His own creation, and of course,

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He has the right to do that. He made it. He owns it. He can do what He wants with it. The pictures of everything that's stable gets disjointed and shaken.

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He's going to do it again at His second advent. And the Gentile nations that assembled to attack the

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Jews will be crushed. And because of the cataclysmic effect on the natural world that Habakkuk sees in this vision, he begins to question, are you angry at creation?

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So verse 8, did Yahweh's fury burn against the rivers? Or was your anger against the rivers?

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Or was your wrath against the sea that you rode on your horses, on your chariots of salvation?

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And this next section tells us that it's not that God is angered with the natural creation.

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That's not the point. Oh, He's going to impact it. He will. It's that it's part of His salvation of His people.

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He's going to use that to save His people. He says in verse 9, your bow was made bare.

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Rods were sworn unto battle by word. In other words, this is something God has decreed to happen.

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You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and writhed. So now He's going to use some personification of these created things.

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The mountains saw you and writhed. The downpour of waters passed by. The deep gave forth its voice.

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So there's cataclysmic upheaval. The ocean is swirling and basically crying out.

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It lifted high its hands. Sun and moon stood in their lofty places.

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Probably a reference to Joshua. And when Joshua, God, what He did, remember He extended that day.

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And the reason He extended that day was for Joshua to continue on with judgment, which was what was going on there.

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So this is, again, an echo of the past judgment of God. The sun and moon stood in their lofty places.

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They went away at the light of your arrows, at the brightness of your flashing spear. In indignation, you marched through the earth.

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In anger, you trampled the nations. Now a little bit of a comment just on, I'm using the

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Legacy Standard Bible here, which really deals with the verbs here better than some of the other translations.

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And even though in the English, these tend to sound like past tenses, it's not at all in common for past tenses to be used to speak of a future event.

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Because it's designed to communicate the certainty that it's going to happen.

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There's only two tenses in Hebrew, not like the Greek multiple tenses, okay, they're just imperfect and imperfect.

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So you have to look at the context more significantly in the Hebrew. But this is simply something that's going to happen.

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And in verse 13, you went forth for the salvation of your people.

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For salvation with, there again, the Legacy Standard Bible says with your anointed.

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Some of your translations might say in your anointed, with is a better understanding. And he says with your anointed.

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The actual Hebrew word there is Mashiach, Mashiach. We get Yeshua HaMashiach from that,

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Jesus the Messiah. This is the word that is transliterated Messiah. It means the anointed one, the one that has been smeared with oil.

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Why? Because he's the rightful king, okay. And it's translated into the Greek text

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Christos, okay, Christos. So when you say Jesus Christ, you're saying Jesus King, okay,

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Jesus King. And he uses that very word, the salvation with your anointed. And now it gets very particular.

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You crushed the head of the house of the wicked to lay him bare from thigh to neck.

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The first victim, and he's not a victim of the return of Christ, the first one to die in judgment will be

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Antichrist. This is a reference to him there. And then it says you pierced with his own sharpened rods the head of his throngs.

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They stormed in to scatter us. Their exaltation was like those who devour the afflicted in secret.

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You tread on the sea with your horses on the surge of many waters. Again, we see this incredible eschatological reversal that's going to take place.

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Antichrist, as you know from scripture, is going to develop universal world power. And he's going to essentially look to take over the entire earth.

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And at a point in time, Christ will return and he will be the first one to be crushed. And his power that he supposedly had is going to be used against him.

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So Habakkuk's response and the response of the remnant in verse 16.

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He sees all of this. And then he says in verse 16, I heard and my inward parts trembled at the sound.

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My lips tingled, decay enters my bones and in my place I tremble because I must wait quietly for the day of distress for the people to arise who will invade us.

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He understands Judah will be chastened. The Chaldeans will be destroyed.

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And he simply then must wait for that to happen. But he's also waiting for that future ultimate cataclysmic judgment that Christ will deliver when he comes back.

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He's fearful, but it's not the fear of an unbeliever. Not the kind of fear that if you don't know

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God, you're going to experience. Okay. It's the reverent awe that the true believer in Yahweh experiences when they understand the righteous and just judgment of God that's about to happen because he's holy and he is powerful.

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But it's not the kind of fear that moves him from his faith either, because his faith is the steadfast faith of one who believes in Yahweh, right?

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He'll live his life by the same faith that justified him in the first place.

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Justification is through the instrumental means of faith, but then that our lives are lived out day by day by that same faith and it's really the work of God in our lives.

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So what does it look like when the righteous live their lives by faith and what does it sound like? Well, it sounds like verse 17 and following.

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Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no produce on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in Yahweh.

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I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. Yahweh the Lord is my strength and he has set my feet like hind's feet and makes me tread on my high places.

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This issue of the fig trees and the vines and the livestock and all of that, this is what would happen when an invading nation would come through and take over in Israel.

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They would not have crops, they would not have flocks because the conquering people would not come in during the foul weather because it's too hard to maneuver around.

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They would wait until the crops stood, right? Until the figs were on the olive trees. When the vines were heavy with the grapes, then they would invade.

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Why? Well you get their stuff, right? It makes more sense. There's an economy of labor there. But even though that happens

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Habakkuk says, I will exult in Yahweh. Look how personal it is. I will rejoice in the

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God of my salvation. Yahweh the Lord is my strength. He was weak, He was trembling back in verse 16, but when

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He contemplates God and who He truly is and His promises and how faithful He is and how powerful

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He is to carry out His promises, His confidence now is restored. The Lord is my strength,

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He has set my feet like hind's feet. The deer is able to run up a slope, sure -footedness and makes me tread on my high places.

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Other passages in scripture picture the unbeliever as on slippery slopes.

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They're not sure -footed because their faith is not in Yahweh. But Habakkuk's trust is in Yahweh and Habakkuk's strength is also from Yahweh.

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So that's Habakkuk's prayer and his praise. Do you have any thoughts or questions about this passage or about anything we've seen so far in Habakkuk?

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Any thoughts or questions? Okay, how about back of your outline, page 8, some practical principles.

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We've seen some of these already and certainly you could think of some more as you maybe read through this again and think about it and think about how it even applies to our time.

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Very, very practical. When I first started thinking about this, so several months ago, I knew

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I had taught on it before and I went back and dug out, dusted off some of the old notes and it turned out that I taught on it well over 30 years ago, but I also preached through it in 1997.

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So I'm looking at these old notes and in each one of these I'm mentioning contemporary things going on back in those years because I'm looking at what was out there in the news and all that.

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And it's amazing to see what was very similar to what

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Habakkuk dealt with 25 or 30 years ago. Wow, is it ever different now, right?

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I mean, we can all see that. So Jim should probably preach through this maybe in 2 or 3 years and we'll see how much more degraded this culture is, you know, compared to what it is now.

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It's hard to imagine it can get worse and worse, but we'll see what happens there. Well, some practical principles.

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Number one, even when God is justly pouring out His wrath on sin, His mercy is also being dispensed.

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OK? The Abrahamic Covenant, given 4 plus centuries before the Mosaic Covenant, guarantees the perpetuity of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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OK? It just does. Number two, in fulfillment of His covenant promises, God will destroy the enemies of Israel and preserve

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His covenant people even though they will be severely chastened. And the history recorded in Scripture records the history of that all the way through.

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And even secular history records the very same thing. You can just track it right straight through history. They are severely chastened at various points in time because of their disobedience, because of their rebellion against God.

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But because of the covenant promises that God made, they will survive as a people.

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And number three, God's past revealed attributes and actions are the basis for our future trust and hope.

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What He was in the past, He still is. And the past is a good measure of how

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He'll respond to things in the future. And four and five sort of go together.

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The majesty of God that Habakkuk saw is not diminished with time. And also the power of God that Habakkuk sang of in this psalm is not diminished with time.

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He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. You can trust Him today just like Habakkuk did in his day.

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Number six, we who are justified by means of faith can live in a wicked world also by means of faith.

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We can and should. A steadfast faith in a steadfast Savior.

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And number seven, when we focus on the nature and power of God during times of great trial and stress, and maybe it's not the trials and stresses of a nation, but also maybe personal issues as well, personal trials, personal stress, we can rejoice and take joy in the

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God of our salvation. Amen? It is steadfast.

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Let's pray. Oh Father, thank You for this message from Habakkuk. Thank You for the encouragement we get.

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We enter into his worry, his discomfort, and his inner turmoil as he looked at his surroundings.

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We see the same thing, Father, as we look around us. We see the degradation. Because people have rejected

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Your Word, marginalized Your Word, the spiritual decline follows and then the practical, moral implications of that certainly will follow after, and they do and they are.

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We see that all around us. But Father, we also know we have faith in our Savior, our

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Savior who will never leave us nor forsake us, who will return, who will set all things right.

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We just thank You for Your grace in our lives and pray that You would be glorified through all things now and in the future.