Well, Pastor Phillips has finished a series in Mark, so I thought we'll do just a dip into the book of Habakkuk. So if you would, turn with me to Habakkuk chapter 1. We'll look at verses 12 to 2, to chapter 2 verse 1. Why start there? Well, I prayed about it and here we go. Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 12 to chapter 2 verse 1. Habakkuk, if you're trying to find it, if you open somewhat in the middle and then keep going right. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, you might know the song, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk. So when all else fails, you can, most of you probably have the table of contents, you can look up. But Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 12, let me read this for us. Are you not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. 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? You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook. He drags them out with his net. He gathers them in his dragnet, so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore, he sacrifices to his net, makes offerings to his dragnet, for by them he lives in luxury and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever? 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 I will answer concerning my complaint. Father, we thank you for your word. We pray you would teach us from it, give us instruction, help us to inwardly mark it, learn it, digest it. We pray for your glory and our good. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Well, as you turn to the book of Habakkuk, or as our British friends say, Habakkuk, you wonder how many K's does that name have in it? You're somewhere in the 600's BC, this is just prior to Babylon coming. So the Babylonians are on the horizon and Habakkuk knows this and he's, some say complaining, he's putting forth his complaint. This is not a, I don't think this is a picture of a cynical person. You know, sometimes, I think Pastor Wendt addressed this when he was going through Ecclesiastes. People can look at Ecclesiastes and say, oh, this person's just... down in the doldrums all the time, so cynical about life. And actually that's not the case at all. He's pointing us to God and things that matter. And I think Habakkuk is teaching us something like that too. There are complaints, if you will, but he's pouring out his complaints to God. And that's the language of the Bible. You see that everywhere. He's praying about what's concerning him, what's troubling him. And he's seeing these Babylonians come and It's a series of praying and the Lord answering, praying and answering. We could spend a lot of time, couldn't we, thinking about the wonders of that, that God actually listens and responds. What an amazing thought that is. He could just say nothing, be silent. He could just initially say, who are you to talk to me? Now, here's a God who encourages His people to pray, encourages them to lay their petitions, their troubles, their worries, concerns. Now, Peter would even say that, I know you're anxious. Well, cast your cares upon me. Cast your anxieties upon me for I care about you, right? So, we have Habakkuk doing that very thing and he's troubled with all these things. And in many ways, the whole book of Habakkuk isn't it? It's a picture of someone waiting and a picture of what it looks like to wait. I haven't done this research, shame on me, but I took one of my pastor friends at face value. That concept of waiting on the Lord, that it's just below second behind all the Bible's admonitions to fear the Lord and that's very prevalent in the Bible isn't to fear the Lord and just second to that is to wait upon the Lord so Waiting is a big deal in the Bible. Waiting comes difficult to us, doesn't it? It's easy to beat up on us in our instant everything world. We push buttons and get access to anything, right? We have it on our watches now and our phones and we can get anything like that. We can flip on a switch and the lights are on and things are instantaneous for us. It's not like that in the Christian life. There is waiting. It's a lot of waiting upon the Lord. Sometimes we don't like that duty. We want to get things done. We want to make things happen. And I want to change things now and I want it to happen now. And the Lord says, not so fast. And so much of this is teaching God's people to wait. I think from the book of Habakkuk. You know, life might be difficult. Circumstances might be overwhelming or even seem impossible. There might be an indifference towards God sometimes, facing trials. And yet the Lord, through all of those things, is teaching his people to wait upon him. Waiting is a key component, isn't it? And a praying to the end. The Bible ends that way, doesn't it? Jesus makes a promise. I'm coming and the saints respond, amen, come Lord Jesus, come quickly in fact. There's a prayer for that but we're having to wait upon that time. So waiting is a part of our lives. But it's often in the context like Habakkuk, isn't it? It's often in the context of something that's difficult to take, it's hard to swallow. I heard one commentator said, sometimes the medicine tastes, sometimes the medicine is worse than the sickness. It seems that way, doesn't it? We're to be a people continually waiting upon the Lord, even in our distresses, even when things don't make sense. At the end of Job, Job is never answered, really, is he? He's never given the why all of it happened. He doesn't know all the back story that we knew or know as we read it. And he just eventually gets to the point where it's trusting the Lord. Well, I'd heard of you, now I see you. And it's that kind of growing in the Lord and isn't that what it's like? The John Newton song that we love. I think it's in our new hymnals now, isn't it? The, I ask the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and those things. But the Lord taught it to me in such a way as it almost drove me to despair. Taught it to me in a difficult way. And the Lord does that for His people, teaching them through trials and pain and persecution and difficulty and I always think, I don't know why they come readily to my mind, illustrations of, you know, how is a, I think I've used this before, how is a pearl formed, right? It's constant irritation. How is a diamond formed? There's constant pressure. The Bible will use the language of silver being refined by fire and an illustration of that's what the Lord's doing for your faith and it's heat sometimes. That's all that's going on here in Habakkuk and it's what's going on here in Chapter 1 and in verse 12 especially. I think you see that from the very beginning. How do you deal with something that doesn't make sense? I think Habakkuk teaches us what to do. And the first thing is to focus on the character of God. If you look in verse 12 and verse 13, He's asking a question but you can tell that Habakkuk has been thinking about these things as God has responded to him and he's now reflecting upon who God is. Are you not from everlasting? He's thinking about the character of God and since that, well, he's eternal. That's something good to think about, isn't it? How often we need to remember in whatever situation it is, whatever the problem is, isn't that a good thing to remember? Well, God is from everlasting. He is eternal. Whatever the problem is, it's not everlasting, is it? Sometimes we make it sound like that. We think that it is, that the problem is actually bigger than it really is. You know, we get all worked up, don't we? Maybe a little bit, rightly so, but we get, maybe we overdo it when we hear of elections and politicians and who we don't like and we do like and what's going to happen if this one gets elected. Is the world going to fall apart and on and on and on it escalates, doesn't it? We have to stop and pause, don't we? God is from everlasting. This thing, whatever it is, is not. It will pass. Tyrants, the worst of them, die. They do not last forever. God is eternal. It's helpful. That's what Habakkuk is doing. Are you not from everlasting? And we think about those wonderful words from Deuteronomy 33 as Moses talks about everlasting arms being underneath his people. And what a A rich passage, what a wonderful thing when troubles and trials seem immense and unending. There's nothing quite like focusing on the God who is from everlasting to strengthen our faith. I think that's what Habakkuk's doing here, helping us do that. He goes on to think about a second thing regarding who God is. He's from everlasting, he's eternal. That language, you know it well, oh Lord, my God, that language, Lord, it's the Yahweh word, right? It's that He's the self-existing one. He was not created. He is self-existing. Try explaining that one to your children. It's an I don't know. He is. He is the great I am. And He has always been and always will be. And that's the response that the Lord gave to Moses when he's asking, well, who should I tell the people sent me? I am. That's who you tell them. And sometimes that's the answer, isn't it? As you're thinking about what's going on in life, you know, there's a self-existing God who's everlasting and he's also the God that that language Lord that Yahweh language is also connected to is not just the one who self-existing but the one who stoops down and enters into a covenant with his people draws near to them covenant Lord covenant itself existing without amazing that is to think about that we could it's hard to wrap your mind around that always isn't it The one who has neither beginning nor end is not constrained by time. He just is. And he has drawn near to the likes of us, entered into a covenant with us. And so you also get that idea. As the open theist would say, he's not sort of wringing his hands. What do I do in this situation? I don't know. And he's not bound by time. He's not bound by the things in our world. He can handle it. That's why Jesus would teach us to pray our Father who is in heaven. He is not bound by this world and the things of it. He's able to handle it, all of it. He's the great I am. Martin Lloyd-Jones on this passage, on that particular point of God being the Lord, the Great I Am, he says, here again is wonderful reassurance. I am certain that God is not dependent upon this world, but that He is self-existent. He is Lord, He is Jehovah, the Great I Am, and the problem begins to fade. I think that's what Habakkuk is teaching us, that very thing. God is almighty, isn't He? There's that language. He's not only Yahweh, He's Elohim, He's the Lord my God. He's almighty. That's what that language means, the Creator God who made everything and He's almighty, omnipotent. What can he not handle? Certainly anything. He is the holy one, again in verse 12. God is holy. He is other. But don't you love Martin Luther said that the heart of religion lies in its personal pronouns. And you see what he says there Habakkuk? Oh Lord, my God. my holy one." This is not Habakkuk thinking about God just being out there letting the world spin and can't do anything about it or that he's watching from a distance far removed from... No, he's my God in a personal way and he knows everything. I love, some of you may have heard me say this before, but Matthew and Luke record the same incident, and I think, I like Luke's, it's hard, it sounds terrible to say that, doesn't it? Sometimes I like Luke's version better, I don't know, that sounds weird to say, but how Luke, when Jesus is wanting to encourage his disciples not to fear, And he begins telling them, I want you to take notice of the sparrows. Not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of the Father, without him knowing it. And he says, even the number of the hairs on your head, the hairs on your head are even numbered. He knows them, he says. You are not, but Luke says, I want you to realize you are not forgotten before God. He takes note of little sparrows. That sounds pretty insignificant, doesn't it? Even more so here on our head. Who counts those things, right? Some more than others maybe, but he knows all of them, everything. And you've not forgotten before God how he's intentionally drawing his people to say, you don't need to fear. God knows you in that level of detail, that level of intimacy. He is your God. It's why that very kind of language, isn't it? It's why Paul would say in Romans 8, if God is for me, he can be against me, right? If he's for us, he can be against us. Another thing that you see here, again, Habakkuk is contemplating, he's thinking about the character of God, who he is. He's also sovereign. Do you see it there again? Verse 12, O Lord, You have ordained them as a judgment. You have established them for reproof. God is in control, not the wicked Babylonians. Isaiah, we use the same language, will say they're like a rod of discipline in God's hand. How encouraging that is, isn't it? We dare not say or talk like or think that the devil is in charge or in control. Sometimes we can tend towards that. Maybe others use language that sounds like that. And the devil made me do this and the devil's in charge here. And God is in charge. God is in charge of everything and he is sovereign. That's why we love, don't we, all the time to read the first portions of Job and realize that God is in charge of that whole scenario. Because he says to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? And God was telling him how things were going to go. God ordains, don't we? We love to use the language, whatsoever comes to pass. This is the language of our catechism. Whatsoever comes to pass. Devil is not in charge. We get sick, don't we? We lose possessions. We get cancer. We have rebellious children. We have financial troubles. On and on it goes. The Lord is in charge. He's sovereign. You have ordained them as a judgment, O Lord. It's not happening by randomness, chance. It's not the devil in charge. Another thing, God is unchangeable. He says that, O rock, right? He wants to, how often that language is used about God being unchangeable or maybe even more so immovable. It's permanence to him. He can be counted on. How helpful it is to think about those things. When life is crazy and swirling and you can't make sense of everything, God is holy and sovereign and a rock. He is immovable and firm. He's solid and trustworthy. Even when His providence might look terrifying, sound terrifying, He never changes. He's also fatherly, if I can put it that way. Notice the language that's used there again in verse 12. It's not just that he's ordained them as a judgment, you have established them for reproof. That language, reproof, is like a father disciplining those whom he loves. It's that kind of reproof, God correcting. We don't like to think about those kind of things, do we? Here's Habakkuk, he's having a hard time with this. How the Babylonians, and he'll get to that in just a moment even more so. And I think the point of the text, in part, is to get us to focus on who God is and even to see behind the discipline, if you will, the hard thing, and to see God right behind a frowning providence hides a smiling face, as we've seen. God moves in a mysterious way. It is mysterious often, isn't it? It's hard to see, and this is a text that helps us think through that and see beyond it and see a God who is at work, who is in all these ways, the eternal, everlasting, covenant-keeping, almighty, holy God who is sovereign over everything and ordains everything for even the good of his people, for reproof. Isn't that good? And the language that we find Paul telling to Timothy, as he instructs him to make good use of the Bible, that all of it that is breathed out by God and it is profitable, is useful for doctrine or teaching and reproof, correction, training and righteousness. The Lord reproves, disciplines those whom He loves. How good that is to remember. You might remember David, this is after his great sins and that dastardly fellow Shammai, I might be corrected by our Greenville Seminary professor in our midst, Shammai, however you pronounce it, right? He's going along and he's throwing things at David and kicking dirt on him and cursing him. And the mighty men see it and they say, you want us to go cut this man's head off. David says, leave him alone. There might be something from the Lord in it. And he's willing to take reproof, take rebuke, thinking about those things. Isn't the Lord often working in our own lives that way? Reproving, rebuking. We ought to take that and listen and not chafe under it. Well, Habakkuk is still struggling though, isn't he? In verse 13, you who are of pure eyes than to see evil. It's a transition, isn't it? He's still saying, look, God, you're holy and pure and you can't stand to look at evil. You can even begin to see a little bit of, maybe there's some deficiencies in the way Habakkuk is seeing things. His own sin, the sin of the people of God, and that sort of thing. But he's reasoning this way. Look, I know we're sinners, but we're at least more righteous than those wicked people. They're worse. And he's right. What do you do with that sort of thing? How do you take it all in when you look out and you see in the world the wicked, right? Again, we know we're sinners. We have the blood of righteousness that has made us clean in God's sight and yet we know our ongoing struggle with sin. And so in some sense we say, well, we're righteous by the grace of God alone, surely by the precious blood of Christ and all He's done for us. We're righteous in Him. We know we struggle with sin, but we're righteous in Him and we see all these wicked people who aren't righteous in Christ and they're foul and evil and they seem to get away with murder, with everything. They seem to in fact be flourishing. It sounds like Psalm 73, doesn't it? How do I make sense of all this? That's what Habakkuk is asking and thinking about. Almost seems like it, doesn't it? Almost almost accusing God. Why do you idly look at traders and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he, um, he goes on to describe the Babylonians, how, how proud they are. And they just, it seems like it will never end. They go on and they keep getting their way and they're swallowing up nations. God, what are you, what are you doing? Well, I think that's part of the second thing you learn here, and I'll just briefly say this. It's that not only is Habakkuk teaching us, the text teaching us what it is to wait on the Lord and what that looks like is recounting God's character, dwelling on it, thinking about it, but also realizing that in God's providence, he uses it to refine us, to test that kind of language. How often do we find in the Psalms, how often are the Psalmist saying, how long, oh Lord, why, how long, when, and asking question after question. And God doesn't always tell them, well, tomorrow it'll be over. No, often there's often an encouragement to keep praying and to keep trusting and to keep waiting without all the answers. Sometimes it's a struggle, isn't it? We want to have, we like everything in a nice, neat little box, and I want to know why this is happening, why that's happening, what to do here. When this happens, I can push button A and make this happen, and I got everything in a nice, neat little thing. And that's not the way life works, is it? And that's not the way God has it working. He doesn't always tell us the answer why things are happening. And it's often messy, isn't it? And things don't always make sense. And God doesn't always tell us. Some things, as we love to quote Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the Lord, but those things He's revealed belong to us and to our children. There's some secret things aren't there. And God doesn't always reveal it. And I think Habakkuk is struggling with that. He's struggling how to make sense of all this and the holiness and righteousness of God and he's letting these wicked people do this sort of thing. Isn't that a little bit of the dilemma that some had as they viewed the cross? What's going on here? It's a holy, righteous, God, and there's wicked people putting them on the cross. And Peter is actually preaching in Acts 2 saying, and perhaps alluding to Isaiah, right? It was the will of the Father. This was God's idea. And we see how the Lord works in that way as well to punish sin, to free us from it. And there's an ongoing application to that, isn't there, in God's providence and what He's doing in our life. He's not condoning sin ever. He's not condoning wickedness ever. But He often uses it, like the constant irritant and the pressure and the heat, the refining fire. to grow us and mature us. That would be another interesting study, if you ever wanted to, to go through. And look at how often the Bible talks about that, particularly as you read in the New Testament, the encouragements to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, the encouragements to maturity and what God is doing. And this is God's will for you. You know what it is. What is God's will for you? Your sanctification, right? How does God bring that about? It's through trial and difficulty and things you can't always understand and say, oh, I see, God wrote this in the stars for me. I know why this is happening in my life. It doesn't always work out that way. And God's providence is difficult. As John Flavel said, God's providence is best read like Hebrew, backwards. Sometimes you don't fully understand it until it's after the fact. So I think that's what's going on here as Habakkuk details all those things. But just notice, lastly, something that he wants to focus us on in chapter 2 and verse 1. As he makes all this, he doesn't fully understand it and he stops. All right, I've said my piece, right? I've prayed, I've cast my cares upon the Lord. Now let me stop and wait. And he's using language much like maybe a soldier would be described or someone who's watching out. This is watch pose, I think it's symbolic language to say he's gonna wait upon the word of the Lord. And actually when he says, and look out to see what he will say to me, There might be a possibility of that being what He will say in me. In other words, waiting to listen for the Word of God, not that He... I mean, He is a prophet, of course, and this doesn't mean that we all have some kind of private, secret revelation from God. I don't mean it that way. But an inward understanding of things, the Lord speaking to him. And so we do have the Word of God, don't we? that we are to attend to, to read and think about and meditate upon. How will the Lord answer? He's drawing away a little bit, waiting upon the Lord, watching, looking to the Lord. Isn't that why we read our Bibles? How the Lord will teach us and rebuke us and correct us and train us in righteousness by his word. And we need the Holy Spirit, don't we? Implanting that word in our hearts that we would receive with meekness the implanted word, grow from it and grow by it day by day. And sometimes that is the answer. You remember, some of you are deacons in here and you heard this a little bit at the deacons meeting, but don't you love the story with Martha and Mary? Martha is about lots of busy things. She's doing lots of serving. And Jesus recognizes that she is troubled and anxious about many things. And highlights, so Martha surely loves Jesus as a follower, believer, true believer. But Jesus wants to highlight Mary who has chosen the good portion, that which will never be taken away from her. She's sitting at the feet of Jesus. And he's wanting to encourage that and highlight. She's doing the thing that is most needful. You know, you love, sometimes it's very clarifying, isn't it? Jesus says, you know, you hear this sort of question, what's the one thing I need to be concentrating on? We love those kinds of lists. What's the one thing I need to focus on? Here's the one thing Jesus said. It's what Mary's doing. Sitting at my feet learning. Drawing near to Christ. Isn't that the answer? Sometimes through our troubles and our pains and our sorrows and all the confusion and we don't know all what's going on. Sometimes that is the answer. In fact, I think always that's the answer. To look to the Lord and how the author of Hebrews describes it in Hebrews 12. How are you going to run that race? By keeping your eyes fixed upon Jesus, the author and finisher of faith. So waiting on the Lord is hard, isn't it? It's difficult. The Lord would have us, as we have here in Habakkuk, to be a people who pray, call out to the Lord, focus on who God is, think about His providence and what He might be doing in our lives, and realizing that He's a sovereign Lord controlling all things and growing His people, and we look to His Word. We want to be a people of His Word, that it has this life-giving effect upon us and in us. It's really that simple, isn't it? We maybe sometimes think of it as more complicated than that, more complex. It's not. It's dwelling upon who God is, trusting Him in His providence to lead and guide and direct us, and constantly looking at His Word, meditating upon it, hiding it in our hearts. That's how we wait upon the Lord. eagerly, as Paul would say, be awaiting the return of Christ, looking for His coming. May God help us to do that. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word and pray that You would give us great encouragement in it as we think about the troubles and trials in life and maybe things that perplex us. We pray you would help us to think about who you are and that we might rely upon your word. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ and all the assurances that we have in him. Would you help us to keep our eyes fixed upon him? and to trust you, you who are always holy and righteous and doing what is right and good. Lord, teach us to be a people of prayer who cast our anxieties upon you and would you grow us in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, we pray in Jesus name, amen.