The Just Shall Live By Faith, Part 1 (Habakkuk)

Hebrews 10 and the Promise of Endurance

Hebrews chapter 10, we're gonna read together.

Verses 35 through 39, and before we do,.

Let's pray together. My father, it is with great expectation that we come to your word, for we know that in the pages of holy scripture that you speak, your voice is heard, it is pertinent, it is relevant for the time in which we live, for the ages that we face now, and we pray that you would bless the preaching and teaching of your word, our understanding of it, we pray that you would open our eyes and our hearts to your word and grant us the illuminating blessing of the holy spirit this morning.

Be honored here, we ask in Christ's name, amen. Hebrews 10, verse 35, therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

For yet in a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay, but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.

In the last few weeks, we've been looking at the things that belong to us, the things that are ours, this great possession that we have, the great reward, a better possession, and a lasting one mentioned in verse 34, we've been looking at the promise of the coming of Christ that is mentioned in verse 37, and we have been seeking to set our hope and our affections and our minds upon those things to do as Peter says in first Peter chapter one, to set our hearts entirely upon the grace that is to be revealed to us at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we may have a heavenly perspective and a heavenly focus, knowing that we will receive those things that are promised.

If he who has promised these things is faithful and true, and if he keeps his word, and he will and he must, and if he has promised these things, then we know that we have them, that we will receive them in full, and this is the precious certainty of all of those who have faith.

We see with the eye of faith what the eye of the flesh cannot behold. We count those things that are promised to us as if we already possess them, because we do, even though we are not enjoying those things in full just yet, we do already possess them, they are ours.

They have been granted to us, it is just a matter of time until we receive in full all of the experiences of the great blessings and joys that have been promised to us. Those things that are promised, the faithful see as a reality with the eye of faith, not beholding it with the eye of flesh at all, and so we are creeping ever so slowly, almost inexorably so, toward Hebrews chapter 11, and it does seem slow, and it is slow, but we are getting there, and I hope you're seeing the connection between the list of heroes in Hebrews chapter 11, the faith heroes, and this warning passage that is at the end of chapter 10.

The end of chapter 10 tells us that those who have faith all the way to the end, not seeing the fulfillment of the promises necessarily in their lifetime, but they have faith all the way to the end to the preserving of their soul.

We are not like the apostates, we are not like the false converts, we're not like the make-believers, who shrink back to destruction in the face of the world's hostility, in the face of the world's opposition, in the face of their hatred to the truth, we do not shrink back.

Instead, we continue and we persevere, seeing it all the way through to the preserving of our soul. That is the promise, and we look forward to faith's reward because we are those who are willing to endure faith's reproach.

And last week, we looked at this quotation that we find in verse 37, for yet in a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay. We saw that, it was from the book of Habakkuk, and we just dealt with the first part of that, and I promised that we would jump into the more familiar quotation, which is in verse 38, but my righteous shall live by faith.

Habakkuk as the Source of the Reformation’s Battle Cry

I promised that we would do that today, and that is what we are doing. That is a more familiar quotation from the Old Testament, probably because you see it multiple times in the New Testament, it's quoted not only here, but we also find it in Galatians chapter three and in Romans chapter one.

It is the battle cry of the Reformation, that the just shall live by faith. It is that statement that Martin Luther nailed his hope and faith to, as it were, his confidence to, that sparked the Reformation, that the just live by faith, that we are not accounted as righteous because of anything that we have done, or because of anything that other saints have done on our behalf that are credited to us, but that we are given the righteousness of Jesus Christ solely on the basis of faith, and that our righteousness comes not because of anything that you have done, or that I have done, or that other saints have done, but because of what a sinless one has done, namely the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is the battle cry of the Reformation. It is the heart of the gospel. I would say that it was the battle cry of the Reformation because it is the heart of the gospel. James Montgomery Boyce once said that this statement, found in Habakkuk chapter two, verse four, could rightly be considered not just a great text of the Bible, but the great text of the Bible.

Imagine that. Of all the statements that we find in Scripture, this one could be regarded as the great text of the Bible. The heart of the Reformation, the battle cry of the Reformation, the heart of the gospel, the great text of Scripture, and where did we find it?

In Habakkuk. Did you see that coming? Habakkuk, of all places. Now, if the author of Hebrews thought that the book of Habakkuk was worth quoting, and if the apostle Paul thought that the book of Habakkuk was worth quoting, and if those two authors were so familiar with that verse, which has had such an oversized significance all the way through church history and biblical history, then wouldn't it be advisable for us to be familiar with the book of Habakkuk and to spend at least one sermon on it?

Well, that's what we're gonna do, so turn back to the book of Habakkuk. And again, if you struggle finding that, just go to the end of your Old Testament, start turning toward the beginning of the Old Testament, and you will find about five books back in is the book of Habakkuk.

Your bulletin says that the title of the sermon is Just Shall Live by Faith, Part One, so here's what we're gonna do today. Today, we're gonna look at this verse in Habakkuk and its context, and next week, then we're gonna come back to Hebrews chapter 10.

We're gonna see how the author uses it here in verse 38, and then we're going to finish up chapter 10 next week. Have you found the book of Habakkuk? A little bit more time? All right, here's what we're gonna do today.

We're gonna set the book of Habakkuk in its historical context. I'm gonna describe to you the life and times of Habakkuk so you understand him and what he was facing, and that helps sort of set the book in that context so we can understand what is being said there.

Then I'm going to give you an overview of the whole book with plenty of details. We're gonna cover all three chapters and most of all three chapters, and then you're gonna see in chapter two, verse four, this statement, the just shall live by faith, and then we're gonna connect it to everything that is in the book of Habakkuk so you can see how it relates to its entire context, and how did Habakkuk, a just man, how did he live by faith in his life and times, and then I'm gonna show you how Habakkuk chapter two, verse four is used in both the book of Galatians and in the book of Romans and here in the book of Hebrews, and I'm gonna tie together Hebrews, Galatians, Romans, and Habakkuk.

I know that sounds very ambitious. I know some of you, your eyebrows are up, and you're like, really, from you, Jim? I know that that is a bit ambitious, so we need to get started, and the evangelism training thing doesn't start till 1 .30, so I have a tool at least that to do it.

Habakkuk’s Historical Context Under Josiah, Jehoahaz, and Jehoiakim

The book of Habakkuk. Now, a little bit about Habakkuk in his historical context. By the way, if you pronounce it Habakkuk, that's fine, I've heard it both ways. Habakkuk, Habakkuk. If you pronounce it Hubakook, that's not right, that means you're from Clark Fork, so if that's how you pronounce it, then just understand that those of us out on the outside with electricity and running water, that's not how we pronounce it, and if you're a kid counting the references to Habakkuk, Habakkuk does not count, so take that tally mark off of that.

In fact, my Habakkuk that I just said and that one I just said, those don't count either, so only Habakkuk or Habakkuk.

Those are the only two.

I had a Bible professor who gave a real convenient and easy way to remember how Habakkuk is spelled. It's spelled with an H and an A and a B and an A and a K and a K and a U and a K. Now, if you were keeping notes, and you wanted that a little bit slower, it's an H and A, B and an A and a K and a K and a U and a K.

If you can keep all that together, you know how to spell the book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk has a number of unique features, and I'm gonna give them to you real quick. First of all, Habakkuk is prophetic, though prophetic, though a prophetic book, I should say, though a prophetic book, it is very similar to the Psalms in that there is a long prayer that is a part of the book in chapter three, this long prayer, and it has poetic descriptions of God that are very similar to what we find in the Psalms.

A second unique feature is while other prophets declared God's message to the people, Habakkuk dialogued with God about the people. It's a little bit different. The other prophets declared what God said to them to the people.

Habakkuk is God and Habakkuk having a dialogue back and forth about the situation of the people. That's a little bit different. And third, other prophets proclaimed judgment against sin. Habakkuk asks God for judgment against sin.

Little bit different, isn't it? Lord, when are you gonna deal with this? Other prophets simply said, here is how God is going to deal with it, and Habakkuk is actually asking God, can you come down here and deal with these people?

Because they're just really starting to get on my nerves, asking God to judge the people for that. Now, the timing of the book, the book was written somewhere between 612 and 587 BC. Remember, when you go back that way, you're counting backwards, centuries prior to Christ, about 600 years before Christ, Habakkuk was written.

Written somewhere in that 25-year period of time between Babylon conquering the city of Nineveh, which was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and Babylon conquering the city of Jerusalem. Remember that there was a divided kingdom at the time of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk lived a long time after King David, so after David, Solomon reigned for 40 years. At the end of Solomon's reign, the kingdom was divided into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. In 722 BC, the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrian Empire, capital city in Nineveh.

Gentiles who came in destroyed that Northern Kingdom and took them captive, and Judah persisted for another 100 and roughly 150 years after that until it fell finally in 612 BC. During Habakkuk's lifetime, and so he's writing right about 600 years prior to Christ, during Habakkuk's lifetime, the nation of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, had just come out of one of the darkest periods of time that that nation had ever faced.

Let me describe it to you. In 698 BC, Manasseh became king. Now, you remember Manasseh was the son of Hezekiah. Hezekiah wasn't a quasi-good king, and he had some good things and some bad things, but toward the end of his life, remember God predicted or promised through the prophet Isaiah that Hezekiah was going to die, and Hezekiah said, no, let me live, and so God granted him another 15 years.

During that 15 years, hindsight's 20 -20, Manasseh was born during that final 15 years. Remember at the end of Hezekiah's life, what happened, the Babylonians came in, and Hezekiah showed him all of the kingdom, right?

And Isaiah came to Hezekiah and said, what have you shown him? He said, oh, I showed him everything. I mean, I showed him my throne room, my king, my treasury, all my gold, my silver, I gave it to him all.

And Isaiah said, well, look, there's gonna come a time when they're gonna come in and they're gonna take everything from you. Remember what Hezekiah said? At least there'll be peace and truth in my days, right?

That's after I die?

All right, that's good.

I'm good with that, as long as it happens after I'm gone. That was all he cared about. Well, his son Manasseh became king in 698 BC. Manasseh ruled for 55 years. If you think the present administration of this country is going on forever, imagine 55 years of this.

Manasseh introduced religious prostitution into the temple worship of Yahweh. He introduced human sacrifice into the temple. He killed the priests and set up altars to his God. He sought to extinguish all true worship from the nation of Judah.

He was the one who killed the prophet Isaiah. He later repented, but the sin of the nation was so ensconced that it really sealed their fate. After Manasseh died, his son Ammon became king and ruled for two years.

He was killed by some servants of his. That was in 643. In 641, Josiah became king. He ruled for 31 years. He was eight years old when he became king. Now, that's a little bit of history bringing you up to Josiah because that's the life and times of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk lived during the lifespan and the rule of Josiah. So Josiah ruled 31 years, became king when he was eight years old, and here's what 2 Kings chapter 22 says of Josiah. He did right in the sight of the Lord and walked in all the way of his father David.

He did not turn his side to the right or to the left. That's commendation, isn't it?

He was a good king.

He did right in the sight of the Lord his God and walked in the way of David in his righteousness and his justice. Now, David wasn't a perfect man, but David had a heart for God and so did Josiah. When Josiah was 26 years old, he led an effort to rebuild and to cleanse, really, and to sort of revamp the temple because it had been so broken down and so torn down by the false idolatry and the false worship that had gone into it.

And in the process of that reconstruction of the temple, Josiah found, or the people who were rebuilding the temple, found a copy of the Old Testament law and they brought it to Josiah and he read it.

And when they read it in his presence, he came undone. He repented because he realized how far the nation had fallen and he realized that God was gonna judge the nation for its sin. And so he led a comprehensive reformation of the entire nation, drove out all the false gods, broke down all the false idols, and all the altars.

He burned and razed the houses of prostitution. They were destroyed. And Josiah led a reformation in which they celebrated the Passover for the first time in hundreds of years. So 2 Kings 23 says this, "'Moreover, Josiah removed the mediums and the spiritists and the teraphim and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord.

Before him, there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him. However, the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath with which his anger burned against Judah because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him.

The Lord said, I will remove Judah also from my sight as I have removed Israel and I will cast off Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen and the temple of which I said, my name shall be there. Now Habakkuk lived during the life and times of Josiah and those were good times.

Josiah had made Jerusalem great again. He had led a national reformation and a revival over the whole nation and had expunged idol worship from the land. And Josiah, sorry, Habakkuk would have remembered celebrating that national Passover for the first time in his life.

And if Habakkuk were 45 years old when he wrote the book of Habakkuk, if he were 45 or older, he would have had some distant memories of the reign of Manasseh and Manasseh's sons and then the reformation led under Josiah.

And the only memory that Habakkuk would have had was that the memory of, probably the best memory that Habakkuk would have had was that memory of the reformation that took place under Josiah the king.

He could have remembered possibly if he were an older man, the dark days of Manasseh's reign and then he would have remembered how that light dawned and how there was that reformation, there was that revival and Yahweh worship was instituted once again and the nation turned around and good things were happening.

He would have remembered the reforms, the revival, the repair of the temple, the purging of idol worship and the first Passover, national Passover celebration of his life. Those were good times. Those were really good times.

And he would have had that firm in his memory. But then Josiah died. In 610 BC, Jehoahaz became king. He reigned three months. Here's what 2 Kings says about Jehoahaz. He did evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that his fathers had done.

And by fathers, he doesn't mean Josiah, he means Manasseh. He did evil in the sight of the Lord just as Manasseh had done. Egypt eventually deported Jehoahaz and appointed his brother Jehoiakim as king in 610 BC and Jehoiakim lived and reigned, sorry, reigned for 11 years.

And here's what 2 Kings says of Jehoiakim. He did evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that his fathers had done. So Habakkuk saw the reign and rule of Josiah and then when Josiah died, his son was put into place and Habakkuk saw his son undo everything that Josiah had done.

He was only there for three months and maybe when he was taken away to Egypt and they put Jehoiakim in, he would have thought, oh, that's good. Three months was dark enough, that was bad enough. Now we got another shot at this.

Maybe Jehoiakim will get it right. No, Jehoiakim did what was evil in the sight of the Lord just as Manasseh had done. So here was Habakkuk's quandary. He had known a righteous administration. He saw the blessing of God upon a nation and Josiah had been a godly king and then he saw rapid change.

We may even say that the administration that followed Josiah's administration did, undid with executive order everything that the previous administration had accomplished. They just undid it all. They just walked it all backwards.

In a matter of months, he did, he restituted the sin and the immorality and so Habakkuk would have seen this rapid change, rapid change, and not just rapid change but a massive change from one type of morality to an entirely different type of morality.

He would have seen the nation take a 180 degree turn away from walking in righteousness to walking in sin and wickedness and depravity. He saw a nation rapidly descending into sin, immorality and idolatry.

People rapidly turning to support their wicked leaders and following after their immorality, the re-institution of idol worship, cult prostitution and human sacrifice. Habakkuk would have seen all of that.

And the fact that the people so quickly followed the subsequent kings into those immoralities is probably the reason why the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of his anger because he knew that although Josiah was leading a reformation on a national level and people were going along with this externally because that's what the king was doing under threat of death, that the hearts of the people were not there with him.

And so when the next king became king, everybody went, wow, God, we got rid of that Josiah character, now we can just let our passions fly and we can have it the way that we've always wanted it. And the people went right back to the previous way that it was under Manasseh.

Very quickly, the idol worship returned, the immorality. And in Habakkuk's day, they faced international forces that were also at play. There were three nations who all vied for dominance during Habakkuk's lifetime.

Assyria was always on the horizon, conquering people, located 500 miles away, their capital city from Jerusalem. They were always a threat. Egypt was to the south of them, Assyria to the north, Egypt to the south.

Egypt was kind of a main player on the stage at that time. And then you had this upstart, Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian horde, they were kind of coming onto the scene and conquering nations. So you could sit down in Habakkuk's household at any given evening over some lamb chops and some herbs or whatever they ate in those days and you could ask your family around the dinner table, so who do you think's gonna invade us?

You think it'll be the Babylonians, the Assyrians, or the Egyptians? You didn't know who you were gonna fall to. But you did know one thing, that your nation was not strong enough to stand up against any of them.

So here's what Habakkuk's life and times were like. They had a weak military that could not fend off Egypt. Because remember, the king who became king after Josiah, Egypt came in, deported him, took a whole bunch of the gold and went back, they appointed another king, a puppet king there, and said, you collect taxes and we'll be back to get that in a couple of years.

They had a faltering economy, they were being taxed heavily just so they could send their money to another nation to prop up other nations. They faced international threats of invasion, a nationwide apostasy, the moral fiber of their nation was disappearing before his eyes, people were not interested in justice, they didn't pursue justice, people pursued pleasure, violence and bloodshed were national pastimes, child sacrifice was a national sacrament, homes were falling apart, crime was soaring, idolatry was everywhere, there was corruption at the highest levels of the government, and the nation was at a historic low, had never been lower.

It's hard to relate to that. If only, if only the Bible were a little bit more relevant to the times in which we live, right? So even though we might not be able to learn anything from Habakkuk, we're gonna go ahead and study the book anyway.

Do you feel like I just read to you the headlines the last 12 months?

Yeah.

How many of you have read Habakkuk in the last year? Don't raise your hand. I hope you have. You see what happens when you dive into the Old Testament? Aren't you glad we don't unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament, like Andy Stanley says?

Habakkuk’s Complaint and God’s Answer of Babylonian Judgment

Here's the book of Habakkuk, chapter one, in chapter one, Habakkuk dialogues with God regarding sin and judgment, in chapter two, God explains the judgment that is to come, not only upon the nation of Israel, but also upon the Babylonian empire, and then in chapter three, we have Habakkuk's prayer.

So if you were finding the book of Habakkuk all the way through that whole introduction, I hope that you're there now, Habakkuk chapter one. Now we're gonna read the entire book with commentary. I promise you we'll get through it.

Habakkuk chapter one, the oracle which Habakkuk the prophet saw, how long, O Lord, will I call for help and you will not hear? I cry out to you, violence, yet you do not save. Why do you make me see iniquity and cause me to look on wickedness?

Yes, destruction and violence are before me. Strife exists and contention arises, therefore the law is ignored and justice is never upheld, for the wicked surround the righteous, therefore justice comes out perverted.

That's a lament for the common man today, isn't it? The wicked surround the righteous, and so justice comes out perverted, justice is never upheld. Lord, why do you allow this nation to slide into such wickedness?

It's almost, Lord, as if you have taken the restraint off of it and just allowed this whole nation to plunge headlong over the cliff into political, moral, spiritual, and economic disaster. And yet I gotta look on this.

Will you not do something to stop this? Obviously Habakkuk had seen so much change so quickly, and he wanted God to do something to stop it. And he had to have felt like the psalmist when the psalmist said, when the foundations are destroyed, what do the righteous do?

You look around, you see that all of the foundations of entire society begin to crumble. What do the righteous do in such a situation? That's what Habakkuk was seeing, that's what he was facing. This is how he was feeling, this is a lament.

Lord, why do you cause me to do this? Are you not gonna come in and stop this? I cry out to you, violence, and you do nothing. I beg of you to stop this, and you don't even answer the prayer. There's frustration and angst and anxiety in Habakkuk's lament.

So here's God's answer in verse five. Look among the nations, observe, be astonished, wonder, because I'm doing something in your days you would not believe even if you were told. For behold, Habakkuk, here is the answer to the question.

Will you stop this, will you judge this? Verse six, behold, I'm raising up the Chaldeans, that is the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous people who march throughout the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs.

They are dreaded and feared, their justice and authority originate with themselves. What he means by that is they consider nothing outside of themselves a standard of justice or authority. They view themselves as the ultimate authority.

It's almost as if they would say, I am the law. Whatever the king says, that is the law, that becomes moral. And so there is no justice outside of them, there is no authority outside of them. They view, that is the Chaldeans view themselves as their own standard of justice and morality.

Verse eight, their horses are swifter than leopards and keener than the wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping, their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour.

All of them come for violence. Their horde of faces moves forward. They collect captives like sand. They mock at kings and rulers are a laughing matter to them. They laugh at every fortress and heap up rubble to capture it.

Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on, but they will be held guilty, they whose strength is their God. He's describing the Chaldeans there. They will be held guilty. Their strength is their God.

They worship their own strength, but they will be held guilty. And so the answer is the judgment was coming soon that it would be swift, it would be thorough, and it would be brutal. The Chaldeans were the most powerful army in the world at the time.

They were the most feared army in the world at the time, and they were also the most brutal army in the world at the time. Nebuchadnezzar was scandalously prideful, scandalously violent, merciless, and brutal.

So this passage describes the nature of the judgment. They're coming in fierce, dreaded, swift, keen, and violent, and they're gonna clean house. And I wish I had a moment to just highlight for you how the description of the judgment that was gonna fall upon the nation matched almost point for point their sin.

In fact, if Israel had become a nation of violence, and God says, okay, violence, I'm gonna punish you with violence.

You like violence?

All right, well, we'll give you a little bit of violence. You like lawlessness? All right, well, I'll give you somebody who thinks he is the law. You like idols? Oh, have you met my servant Nebuchadnezzar?

Because when he comes in,.

He's gonna introduce you to idolatry. In fact, he's gonna take you back to the idol capital of the world, Babylon, and there, you're gonna serve idols. In fact, if you don't serve idols, they will throw you into lion's den.

That's how fun idol worship is gonna be when you get to Babylon. Almost point for point, the sin of Judah is answered by the judgment that is to come. Now, notice Habakkuk's shot, verse 12. Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One?

We will not die. You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge, and you, O Rock, have established them to correct. Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and you cannot look on wickedness with favor. So why do you look with favor on those who deal treacherously?

Why are you silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they? Yeah, Lord, I understand that we are bad, but the Chaldeans, have you seen the Chaldeans? If they come in and they conquer us, if they are an instrument in your hand to punish us, then how can you look on favor and grant them success, military success, against us, your people?

I mean, yeah, we've got a lot of problems, which I just spelled out to you in verses one through four. We have a lot of problems, we do, but we're no Chaldeans by any measure. Those people do, well, they do violence.

Those people are, well, they're lawless. I mean, those people are, well, they're wicked. I mean, we're violent, we're lawless, and we're wicked, but I mean, those guys are even more so. And so how can you look on wickedness with favor?

How can you be silent when the wicked swallow up those who are more righteous than they are? You see, when Habakkuk compared the condition of his people to the law of God, he saw how wicked they were.

But when he compared them to the Chaldeans, they looked marginally better. So how could the Lord use the Chaldeans to punish the Israelites? That didn't make any sense. If you are holy, how can you approve of what they do and grant them success?

Habakkuk one, verse 14, he continues. This is Habakkuk, why have you made men like the fish of the sea, like creeping things without a ruler over them? The Chaldeans bring all of them up with a hook. They drag them away with their net, gather them together in the fishing net.

Therefore, they rejoice and are glad. The Chaldeans come into a nation like an empty net. They just swoop up people, gather them, carry them away to Babylon. Verse 16, therefore they offer a sacrifice to their net, burn incense to the fishing net.

These are idolaters. They're worshiping their own military might, their own abilities, because through these things, their catch is large and their food is plentiful. Will they therefore empty their net and continue to slay nations without sparing?

Are they gonna go back and empty their net and come back for another round, just take people again? Come through and just wipe up everything, mop up everything, take everything from us? Is this what they're going to do?

And these Chaldeans, they won't even acknowledge that God is behind their strength. They give glory instead to an idol. So this is Habakkuk's response to God, and he is pushing the envelope a little bit.