The Puzzled Prophet - [Habakkuk 1]

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because Habakkuk is going to deal with certain problems, certain questions that all of us deal with.
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I think every Christian that has ever been has dealt with these questions.
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And his first question is, is God really in charge of history? Is God in charge?
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And the second thing is, why do things happen the way they do? And we usually apply that to ourselves.
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Why did this happen to me? You know, never mind the rest of the world. And so Habakkuk is going to deal with this.
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And so as a little bit of background, very briefly, we don't know much about Habakkuk.
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He is not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. But we gather that he must have written, he wrote somewhere between 612
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B .C. and 587 B .C., those two events. The first one is the fall of Nineveh to the
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Babylonians. And the second one is the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. Somewhere between those two dates,
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Habakkuk wrote. And he was probably closer to the second date. Because what's going to happen is that the
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Assyrians have already been put down. The Assyrians have been the nemesis of Israel for years and years and years.
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And they have been put down. They are fading away. And the Babylonians haven't quite come up yet.
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And so somewhere in that brief period, probably a period of about 25, 30 years, we find
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Habakkuk writing. The other thing that would have affected Habakkuk's life, there are two kings which are considered by the chronicles to be righteous men.
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And one of them is Josiah who came to the throne in 639 B .C. Josiah is known as the boy king because he was 8 years old when he started to reign.
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And when he was 16 years old, when he was 8 years into his reign, he looked at his kingdom and said, you know, we've fallen into idolatry.
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This is wrong. And he basically started a campaign to wipe out all of the idol worship in Judah.
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And he did. And he reemphasized the temple worship. And they restored the temple.
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And they did all of these things during his rule. And so Habakkuk would have been a child while Josiah was the king.
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And so with that as the background, let's look at the first few verses of Habakkuk.
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And I'm reading from the English Standard Version. We're getting, hmm, our sound man has flown the coop.
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We're getting just a little bit of ring. But anyway, reading from the
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English Standard Version, the oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw, O Lord, how long shall
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I cry for help and you will not hear? Or cry to you violence and you will not save?
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Why do you make me see iniquity and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me, strife and contention arise, so the law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth.
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For the wicked surround the righteous and justice goes forth perverted. This sounds like us, doesn't it?
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He's asking his question. And the first principle, if you want the correct answers, is to ask the right questions.
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Very often we don't get the right answers because we don't ask the right questions. And so the first thing he asks is, how long must
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I call for help and you don't answer? That's his first question. And don't we ask that over and over and over again?
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Lord, I've called for help. I've prayed about this twice and you haven't answered yet. And why don't you save?
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And what we're really saying there is, why don't you respond at the time and in the manner that I think you should?
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We're not interested in waiting for God's time and God's place. We want right now.
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And especially us, the children of the 21st century in America. We are culturalized to having every one of our problems solved within one hour with time out for commercials.
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And so, why do you tolerate injustice and wrong? Making the assumption that fact that God is in fact doing that.
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And secondly, finally, and wrap it up, are you in charge or aren't you? Habakkuk's very puzzled by all of this.
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And in verse 4 he comes to incorrect conclusions. You know, first of all he asks the wrong questions and therefore he comes to the wrong conclusions.
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His conclusions are that A, the law is paralyzed. You know, for some reason the law has been perverted and it's been stopped and it's paralyzed and it can't act.
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And that justice never prevails. Justice never prevails.
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And as we teach our children from time to time, don't we? That any statement that has the word never in it is almost certainly incorrect.
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You never do such and such. Always provides the same thing. You always do this or you never do that.
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Those statements are virtually always incorrect. The whole situation is like that.
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I'm glad some of you got it. But justice never prevails. Justice has been perverted.
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And nice guys finish last, to coin a phrase. The wicked always triumph.
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It doesn't pay. Basically what he's saying is it doesn't pay to follow God's ways.
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It doesn't pay to follow God's plan. It doesn't pay to wait on God. The whole thing is collapsing around our ears and oh, ain't it awful.
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And so God comes up with an answer. Right away in this case, God comes up with an answer.
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And we see this in verses 5 to 11. Look among the nations and see, wonder and be astounded.
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For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if I told you, says
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God. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans or the Babylonians. That bitter and hasty nation who marched through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.
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And it goes on, he tells all about them. And down in verse 11 it says, then they sweep by like the wind and go on.
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Guilty men whose own might is their God. So in this case,
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God says, okay, Habakkuk, you want an answer? Here's the answer.
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You're asking me, you know, you've been praying about Israel. You're concerned about that and it's a good thing.
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You know, then why don't I do something? And let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to raise up this nation down here.
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And they're going to come and they are basically going to wipe out Israel. They are going to take
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Israel into captivity. And you can imagine Habakkuk saying, whoa, wait a minute.
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You know, I asked for an answer, Lord, but that's not the one I wanted. That's not what I expected to hear.
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I expected to hear that you were going to turn the people back to yourself. That you were going to work some work, a miracle in our lives.
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And we were going to restore the temple worship and all of that. And you tell me that you're going to send this evil, wicked nation.
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And you're going to raise them up by an act of your will. You're going to raise them up and you're going to send them to bring discipline upon us.
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And so I don't understand. Because look at what
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God has said about the Babylonians. First of all, they will be specifically raised up to punish
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Israel. Now without going off down a rabbit trail too much.
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Discipline, divine discipline goes in cycles. Whether it is divine discipline in the life of an individual believer.
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Or discipline in the life of a nation. It goes in cycles.
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Just like we discipline our own children this way. Because a child does something and we discipline them for that.
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And they do it again. And so what do we do? We ratchet the discipline up a little bit, don't we? And finally, the child keeps disobeying.
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We keep increasing the discipline. Until the child finally figures out that we can make it rain longer than they can tread water.
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And they obey. Well, God does the same thing with us as individuals.
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And he does it with nations. He goes in cycles. And at least one Bible scholar has said there are five of those cycles.
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I don't know if that's necessarily defensible. But why not? But anyway, the maximum, the ultimate end of divine discipline to a nation is loss of national identity.
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Where the nation basically ceases to exist as an independent body. Or as what we call a sovereign nation.
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And that's about to happen to Israel. Because they're going to get hauled off to Babylon. And, yes, there will be a few, a little remnant left back.
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Kind of storekeepers and shopkeepers to take care of what was left behind.
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But that's all it's going to be. There's not going to be a nation of Israel for a while here.
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So that's going to happen. And these Babylonians answer only to themselves.
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They do what they want. They are violent people. They do not respect the law or kings.
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They have no respect for anything except themselves. They are totally self -absorbed. By implication, they have no respect for God, certainly.
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They take what they want and they ride on, as he says. They sweep by like the wind and go on.
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And their own might is their God. They totally depend upon themselves.
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They're totally self -sufficient. And for a while, it's certainly going to look like they've got it right.
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Because nobody's going to stand in their way. And they are, in fact, going to conquer everything in their path.
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And it's all going to go their way for a while. And so Habakkuk comes to a conclusion in verse 12.
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Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die.
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O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment. And you,
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O rock, have established them for reproof. So Habakkuk comes to an answer which, as far as it goes, is correct.
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It's not the answer he had expected. It's not the answer he wanted. But he does acknowledge that Israel deserves punishment.
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Israel is certainly deserving of punishment. They have departed from the Lord. They have been following after idols.
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And God has warned them repeatedly. The message of the prophets that have all gone before Habakkuk has all been pretty much the same thing.
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Turn from idolatry or God's wrath is going to fall on you. And yet the history of Israel up to this point has been a history of them repeatedly departing for other gods.
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And God says, all right, I'm going to cure you of this. And you know what?
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The Babylonian captivity did. Israel has had many problems.
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National Israel, I'm speaking of now, has had many problems after the Babylonian captivity.
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But idolatry has not been one of them. The Babylonian captivity will cure them of that.
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God says, you haven't listened to me. Okay, here we go. I'm going to take you out of the land.
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And I'm going to deal with you on this problem. And so he does argue, though, that Israel is still more righteous than the
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Babylonians. Yes, Lord, I understand that we are a people that has sinned against you.
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We have been idolatrous. We have built all the high places. We've been worshipping the gods of the nations that have been around us.
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We have not worshipped you and followed you with our whole heart. And yet we're still more righteous than the
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Babylonians. We are still more righteous than the Syrians.
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We still, to some extent anyway, acknowledge your name. We still hold your name up.
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We are still the chosen people. And so how can you do this,
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Lord? How can you bring this into our lives? And don't we do the same thing?
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Why me, Lord? Why me? I'm a pretty good guy. Why did this whatever it is come into my life?
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Why has this happened to me? And what's implied in those prayers whenever we pray them is
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I don't deserve this. I don't really deserve this. I'm better than that.
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You are being unjust to me, Lord. And fortunately for us,
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God never says, oh, you want justice?
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Zap. You're dead. Because that's what we deserve. We cry out for justice, but we don't want justice.
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We want mercy. We want mercy. Forget justice. If we had justice, none of us would be here.
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But again, ask the right questions. You have to ask the right questions. But this leads to his second question.
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How can God use the wicked to punish the relatively righteous?
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Because as bad as the Israelites have gotten, the Babylonians are worse on a relative scale.
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And so God comes with another answer. He comes with another answer. And basically his answer is everything in good time.
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Everything in good time. God will take care of Babylon in their time. They are executing
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God's purposes. God has raised them up specifically to punish Israel. But nonetheless, even though they are executing
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God's purposes, they are still moral agents. They are still responsible for what they do.
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Each individual Babylonian is responsible to God for what he or she will do.
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They will be called to account. And in the meantime, God's people are to live by faith.
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Skipping ahead to verse 4 of chapter 2. Behold, his soul is puffed up.
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It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. If there is a core verse to the entire
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Bible, that's it. Now you thought that Paul thought this up in the
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New Testament, didn't you? Or the writer of Hebrews thought this up in the New Testament.
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Not so. They are quoting Habakkuk. The just shall live by faith.
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That is the core principle of the scripture. And the key to the entire book of Habakkuk is that phrase right there.
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And we'll see that. And so there are four lessons that we should gather out of this.
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First of all, history is under God's control. History is under God's control.
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Things are not what they appear to be. In Habakkuk's day, here comes this irresistible force that swept all before them.
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No one could stand before the Babylonians. They're going to sweep across and they're going to conquer everything.
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They're going to take the Israelites off into captivity. They are unstoppable until a guy named
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Cyrus comes along with a couple of groups of people called the Medes and the Persians. And he is going to take the
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Babylonians down. So things are not what they appear to be. The Babylonians are not this unstoppable force that they appear to be.
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Neither has Almighty God abandoned Israel as it appears that he has.
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Secondly, all power and all powers in the world exist because God has raised them up.
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I can tell you absolutely 100 % sure who will be the president of the
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United States in the year 2008 after the 2008 election. It will be the man or woman that God wants in that job.
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Absolutely no question about it. Because God tells us that the rulers, the powers that are, are there because God put them there for his purpose.
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And he didn't say the good ones or just the ones that we agree with.
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He said all of them. They're there because I put them there. So history is under God's control.
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That's lesson number one. Lesson number two is history follows a divine plan.
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A divine plan. Excuse me. Nothing is accidental. There is a purpose to history.
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It may seem like things are chaotic. It may seem like things are totally out of control.
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They are not. God has everything in his hands. And he is directing history.
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All of history has been focused on two events. From the
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Garden of Eden, everything that has happened has been focused on one of two events. First was the first advent of Jesus Christ.
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Everything in the Old Testament is focused on that event. That's the key to it. And now that Jesus has come, everything else is focused on his second advent.
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Which is why Paul can speak of everything after the crucifixion as the last days.
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Because we're in the second half. We're in the last half of the game. You know, we've had halftime now.
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And we're in the last half. And all we're waiting for now is the two -minute warning. So history is following the divine plan.
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History is also following a divine timetable. Look at verse 5. Look among the nations and see.
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Wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days. Specific timing.
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I'm doing this work in your days. So God does things at the right time.
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Always at the right time. Not necessarily at the time that we want. But he does it at the time that it needs to be done to fit.
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Jesus came at the fullness of time. He didn't come early. He didn't come late.
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He came at precisely the right time in history. Everything occurs at the appointed time.
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Nations are raised up. Nations are taken down. People are born. People die. Everything occurs at the proper time.
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I've used this quote before, but it's worth mentioning again. General Stonewall Jackson was asked why he was so calm on the battlefield.
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And his reply was, My religious belief teaches me that I am as safe in battle as in bed.
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God has set the time for my death, and I do not concern myself about that. Except to always be ready for the moment whenever it shall overtake me.
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He said, that's the way all men should live, and all men would be equally brave. Now, see, he had learned a very important lesson there.
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God has set the time for my death. And so I'm not going to concern myself about that. I'm just going to get on with the job.
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The fourth lesson is that history is bound up in the divine plan. This is the relevance of everything that has happened in the
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Old Testament. Every nation that has come up in the Old Testament. Every individual that we see in the
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Old Testament. All of those things is all relevant to the divine plan.
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And that's the key question that we should always ask. When we're studying something, or some nation, or some individual.
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How does this fit into the plan? With capital letters.
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The plan. The plan of God. The relevance of every event of history is how does it fit into the plan of God.
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You know, back in the 60s, that was a big thing. You know, the kids in high school and kids in college, mostly.
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Well, we want the courses to be relevant. As if they were somehow qualified to determine what was relevant.
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But God determines what's relevant. And that's what is determined.
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How does it fit into the plan? How does it fit into the plan? And that applies to every event in the life of an individual believer.
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Something has happened in our lives. Whether we call it good, whether we call it bad. Always, what is
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God teaching me through this? God is teaching me something. What is God teaching me through this?
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You know, what does God want me to learn? What is it that needs correcting in me that God has brought this into my life?
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Solomon put it, everything is a gift from God's hand. Everything is a gift from the Father's hand. Because, as Solomon put it, apart from God, nothing has any meaning.
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Everything is vapor. There is no lasting value to anything apart from God.
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But, with God, everything has meaning. Everything becomes a gift from the
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Father's hand if we look at it that way. So, that's the way we are to approach life.
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Always ask who, not why. The question is not why me,
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Lord. The question is, what are you teaching me, Lord? Or, Tommy Nelson puts it this way.
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When we ask, when things come into our lives and we ask why, God does not give us answers.
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He gives us theology. You know, we're wondering,
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Lord, why has this cancer overtaken me?
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Why has this disease overtaken me that's going to take my life? Why have you taken my child from me,
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Lord? Why has this happened? Why has that happened? Why have I lost my job?
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Why has the person who had it in for me at work triumphed so that I got fired and they didn't?
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On and on and on and on. We can look at those kinds of questions. God does not give us answers.
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He gives us theology. He says, my child, know this.
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I love you and have the very best possible end in mind for you.
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And as proof of that, I sent my son to die in your place. I sent my son to die in your place.
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You don't need any other proof by that. The just shall live by faith. In the meantime, you trust me.
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In the meantime, you trust me for what I'm going to do in your life. Now, as we manage to change pages here, look at Matthew.
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You don't have to turn there, but sometime look at Matthew 24. That's Jesus' discourse on future things that he delivered to the children of Israel, to those that were hearing him directly.
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And the one thing that he talks about there, the phrase that he repeats over and over in this, because he's talking about dire consequences.
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There's going to be wars. There's going to be rumors of wars. There's going to be natural disasters. There's going to be all these things.
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And he keeps saying the same thing, do not be troubled. And your reaction to that, our reaction to that might well be, what?
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Don't be troubled. There's going to be disaster happening. There's going to be natural disasters that will make
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Hurricane Katrina pale to insignificance. There will be battles fought that will make the epic battles of World War I and World War II seem like Sunday picnics.
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And you're telling me, don't be troubled. What kind of a ridiculous statement is that?
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It would be a ridiculous statement unless Jesus actually does control history.
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That's the only way he can say that. The only way he can say, don't be troubled is because he's saying,
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I've got everything in my hand. Everything is under my control. Don't worry about it. I've got it all taken care of.
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It's like a father talking to his child when the child is hurt. Their entire world is falling apart.
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And what's the father do? He picks the child up and says, it's okay. It's all right. Now, why can he do that?
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Because he's going to make it all right. He can do that. Well, Jesus can say, don't be troubled because he controls history.
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Now, there's some deep questions here that we're dealing with. Habakkuk is a profound book.
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It's a profound book because it deals with profound questions. It deals with questions that bother every
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Christian that has ever lived. Why are things happening the way they are, and is
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God really in charge? Every one of us has asked that at more than one time. And so there is a procedure.
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There's a procedure that is outlined here in the book of Habakkuk for how to deal with these issues when they come up in our lives.
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Remember I said, you've got to ask the right questions. And so there's a procedure for that. There's four steps.
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First of all, stop to think. Secondly, restate basic principles. Find your footing, in other words.
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Thirdly, apply the principles in context to the problem you have. And finally, when in doubt, commit the problem to the
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Lord. Those four things. Stop to think. Restate basic principles.
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Apply the principles in context. And when in doubt, commit your problem to the Lord. So let's look at how
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Habakkuk did that. First of all, he thinks about the problem.
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What about? What about the apparent success of the wicked over the righteous?
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What about that? You'll notice Habakkuk doesn't write a whole lot about that. But he thought a whole lot about it.
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And we know that because of what he did write. So the first thing he does is he goes back to basics.
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Verse 12. Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my
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Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as judgment, and you,
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O rock, have established them for reproof. You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong.
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So first thing, he goes right back to the very basics, to the attributes of God.
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To the attributes of God. There's one of the truly great football teams of all time, were the
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Green Bay Packers under Vince Lombardi. And they made a movie about it. And there's a scene in there where they have just been absolutely clobbered.
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And Vince is in the locker room. And he says, all right, back to basics. And he holds it up.
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This is a football. And one of the players says, Coach, could you go a little slower? Okay, well, here,
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Habakkuk is going to, this is a football. Back to basics. Point one, God is everlasting.
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Habakkuk is considering the fundamental nature of Jehovah as compared to the nature of the gods, quote unquote, of the
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Babylonians. He starts thinking about God and God's nature. God is everlasting.
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God is everlasting. God's eternal. God has always existed. And so that's going to lead him to a conclusion that we're going to see in a moment.
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And then the second thing is, God is holy. That's also in verse 12. This is the single most important characteristic of God in the
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Bible. Now, in this day and age, we put so much emphasis on the love of God.
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And God is a loving God. But first and foremost, God is a holy
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God. You don't find in the scripture anywhere that it says love, love, love.
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That's the Beatles. But you do find holy, holy, holy.
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You do find holy, holy, holy. And that is the greatest emphasis that you can put in Hebrew because Hebrew does not have the superlatives.
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It does not have good, better, best. The way you emphasize something when you're writing in Hebrew is to repeat it.
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And if you repeat something to the third level, that's the greatest emphasis you can have. And what did the seraphim say as they fly around the throne of God?
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Holy, holy, holy is what they repeat. Go to Isaiah 6 if you want to take a look at that.
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God is sovereign. He's got that too out of verse 12. He has appointed and ordained the
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Babylonians to rise up and punish Israel. They did not rise up on their own. It wasn't a bunch of guys that got together one afternoon and said,
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Hey, you know what we ought to do? Let's rise up and form this great nation and go out and conquer everything in our path.
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They didn't say that. God raised them up. God raised them up for a specific purpose.
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God does not do anything at random. What does the scripture say?
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Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. God is a God of reason. God is a
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God of thought. God plans out what he is going to do. And he assures us repeatedly in the scripture that it is his plans that are going to succeed.
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Men make their plans. But God has the plan, capital letters, and it's his plan that is going to succeed.
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And nothing happens on this earth that does not happen outside of his decree.
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God has decreed what will be. And so God has raised them up at a specific time in a specific place for a specific purpose.
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I raised them up to punish Israel. And so he goes to step two.
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He's going to apply the principles in context. Okay, God is everlasting. God is everlasting.
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What does that mean? That means God was here before the Babylonians. And God will be here after the
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Babylonians. He was here first. He'll be after the
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Babylonians are long since swept away. And they will be swept away in a relatively short period of time.
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It's not going to be too many years before the Medes and the Persians come in under Cyrus and wipe the
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Babylonians out basically. And so this is all going to happen in a fairly short time.
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And the Babylonian invasion is not God's final word. God is eternal.
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And his promise, he has made promises to his people. They are his chosen people.
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He has made promises to them. Those promises trump anything that's happening in the short term.
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So while the Babylonians may rise up and they may be used for the punishment of Israel, that's not the final word.
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That's not the final word. Something is going to be preserved. And sure enough, if you look at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, you see that God does indeed preserve his word.
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And he does indeed bring his children back into the land. And he does indeed restore Jerusalem and all of those things.
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And so whatever is happening in your life isn't God's final word.
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Or as one old country preacher put it, God does not balance his books every Sunday.
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Because somebody was asking, you know, why is it that so -and -so who's a notorious sinner, you know, goes out plowing his field on Sunday and not keeping the
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Sabbath? And the old man's answer was, God doesn't balance his books every Sunday. Everything in due time.
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Third thing, God is holy. Therefore, the ultimate outcome of the coming invasion will be to the good of God's people.
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The coming invasion will ultimately be to the good of God's people. And again, with retrospective in history, we can see that it was because this did cure them ultimately of idolatry.
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They never had that problem again after the Babylonian captivity.
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And so God is holy. God keeps his word. And God knows what he's doing.
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And also God is sovereign. That's the fourth thing he looks at. God is sovereign. Therefore, this invasion is not a mere chance.
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God is sovereign. Therefore, what has happened in my life is not mere chance. Dr. James Boyce.
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God is sovereign. Therefore, this cancer that I have gotten and that is going to take my life in 42 days is not mere chance.
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Someone did ask Dr. Boyce, I am told. Someone asked Dr. Boyce, well, could
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God cure you of this? And his answer was, certainly. He could have also prevented me from getting it in the first place.
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But he had the right attitude. This is not mere chance. This is God at work in my life.
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Whatever happens in our lives is God at work in our lives. Because, you know, we're really pretty rough characters.
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And so what's God going to do? God is going to, he takes the file and he takes the sandpaper and he takes whatever it is and he, you know, works on the rough edges and smooths us off and molds us.
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Because the whole sanctification process is for what? It's to bring us so that we look like his son.
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It's to make us look like his son. And so he's working on us all the time, you know, towards that end.
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Polishing off the rough edges, doing whatever. And finally, God is faithful.
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Therefore, the ultimate goal of whatever he does is for the good of his people.
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He has not changed his mind. He has not abandoned his people. He made promises to Abraham concerning the offspring that he would have.
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And those promises are still in force. God is an eternal
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God. Elsewhere in scripture it says, you know,
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I am the Lord. I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed.
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And so whatever happens, Habakkuk comes to the conclusion, whatever it is,
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God is going to work this out. And ultimately, it's going to be for the good of his people.
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And so therefore, he comes to the conclusion, the coming invasion is a tool in God's hand for the correction and the purification of his people.
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Ultimately, it's for their good. Now, he still has a second question.
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He's still puzzled. Lord, you're a holy
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God. I've just gone through all of that in my mind. You're a holy God. How can you use evil people as a tool for your end?
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Because, as he says in verse 13, God is too pure to look upon evil and cannot tolerate injustice.
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You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?
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He's still puzzled. How can you use the Babylonians as a tool,
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God? How can you do that? And so Habakkuk goes through the procedure again.
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Only this time, he doesn't get an answer. This time, he doesn't get an answer.
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First time, he got an answer. And so what does he do? He commits the problem to God in faith.
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That's Habakkuk 2 .4. The just shall live by faith. That's the ultimate answer. And that is the ultimate answer for ourselves.
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When we go through this and we don't get an answer, what do we do?
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We leave the problem with God. And I know what you're all thinking.
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It's easier done than said. And you're absolutely right. It is easier done than said. It sort of has the feel to it of be warm, be filled, doesn't it?
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So how do we go about leaving a problem to God? Well, there are several things.
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And he talks about this starting in verse 2. I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what
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I will answer concerning my complaint. So what's the first step? The first step is to detach yourself from the problem.
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He's going to go get up in the watchtower. Now, what's the watchtower? The watchtower is a place where you go to keep watch.
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I mean, that's not too much of a stretch. The base camp that we had, the base camp that I was in in Vietnam, we had towers every few meters, every so often around the perimeter, and up in there, there were two guys all the time, big .50
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caliber machine gun. And what they did, when you got up that, you were detached from what was going on in the base.
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Those guys never stood up there looking back at the base like this, wondering what's going on in the base.
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They were totally unconcerned with what was going on in the base. They were looking out. So they were detached from the problem.
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It's a place of isolation. It's a place of detachment. It's a place where you can be undisturbed and concentrate on the problem at hand.
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It's a place where you watch for the enemy. So Habakkuk says, well, that's what
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I'm going to do. I'm going to detach myself from this problem. But I'm going to do it with an air of expectation.
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I'm going to expect God to answer me, and I'm going to watch for the answer.
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It's going to come. I'm going to watch for the answer. I'm not going to completely forget about the problem.
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This is not a be, don't worry, be happy type of philosophy. This is not a fatalistic philosophy.
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What will be will be. I'm going to expect God to answer, and I'm going to watch for that answer.
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When Hannah got down on her knees to pray for her son, she expected God to answer her, and she wasn't going to get up until she got the answer.
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Whatever it was going to be, she was going to wait for that answer. And so she said,
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I'm going to be detached, but I'm going to be alert. I'm going to keep watch. I'm going to keep at the job. And so where do we go to look for the answer?
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How does the answer come? Is it through an open door? You know, an opportunity appears, and we say, oh, that's what
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God wants us to do. Is it because of deep personal feelings that we have?
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Well, certainly those things may enter in, but the reliable source of information from God is the
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Bible, is his word. The answers come as we continue to prayerfully and quietly look at the scripture.
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We will read through something, and all of a sudden a verse will pop out that you never saw before.
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You have read this 100 times before. You have read this chapter 1 ,000 times before.
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You've never seen this verse. But all of a sudden, there's that verse. God just stuck it in, and it answers your problem.
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You see, that applies to my problem right now today. I see how that applies. God speaks to us through his word.
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And finally, the one place you do not go to find God's answer is man's wisdom.
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You do not need man's wisdom. The scripture is sufficient. The scripture is adequate.
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The scripture is complete. Everything you need, everything we need is contained within its pages.
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And finally, be persistent. Stay in the watchtower as long as it takes, because we get impatient, don't we?
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That's one of our characteristics. We're a fairly impatient people. Again, we want all of our problems resolved inside of an hour, a timeout for commercials.
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And that's not the way it works most of the time. But he does get his answer.
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He does get his answer. God raises up evil forces. God will put them down.
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The individuals, those individuals remain morally responsible for what they do.
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Jesus said the same thing, referring to Judas, you know. Yes, he was born for this specific purpose.
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Better for him if he'd never been born. He is responsible, morally responsible for what he did.
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God will judge everything in his time, and the unrighteous will suffer his wrath, and his people will be purified.
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And so that brings us back to his ultimate answer, that just shall live by faith. And there are three key words here, just, live, and faith.
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And we need to go to the commentary on those three words, which is found in the
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New Testament. First of all, for just. The life of the justified man.
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Well, Romans is the commentary on the justified man, especially the first few chapters.
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The first chapter is 1 to 4. Tell us about the justified man. How you become justified.
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How can we be justified in God's sight? Paul goes into all of that, and he goes to the issue of forensic justification, where we are not made righteous, we are declared righteous by a legal act.
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We are declared righteous on the basis of the actions of someone else. Someone else who is righteous paid our penalty, and therefore the judge can declare us righteous.
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And so then we can go to Hebrews as well for the commentary on faith. This righteousness is received by faith, and faith is defined in Hebrews as believing
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God and acting on that belief. Real faith implies action.
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Real faith is not mere intellectual assent. You go down the street, you can stop anybody on the street and ask them, do you believe in God?
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And 99 .99 % of the time the person will say, of course I believe in God. Do you think
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I'm an atheist? But that's not what we're after. We're after do you believe
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God to the sense that do you have faith, have you acted on the faith that you say you have.
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Faith is never passive. Action is demanded. And finally, Galatians defines faith as the believer's life principle.
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The just shall live by faith. We don't come by faith and then proceed on some other basis.
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We come to Jesus by faith, and we proceed from there on the basis of faith as well.
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It's a life of faith. It's a pattern for life. You know, 365 days a year for the rest of our days.
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And so even if the world seems to be crashing down around your ears, the just shall live by faith.
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Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we rejoice in this message that you have given to us, that the just shall live by faith, that you are there, that you do have history in your hands, that nothing is happening by chance, that the seeming chaos of the world is all well in hand.
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Nothing escapes your notice and that you do care for your children and you watch over us. We thank you for that,
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Lord. We pray for the remainder of the service this morning. We pray for Pastor Mike as he begins to open the word to us, and we pray that you prepare our hearts and the