Our brother Jared was supposed to preach this morning. He called me Friday and said, can you preach? I guess when you've been around a lot, they assume you have this file of sermons. I used to when I threw it away and asked God forgiveness for preaching about 90% of them. But there are some texts that I have just grown to love over the years a pleasure to dust off and polish up and share again with God's people this morning will be in the minor prophet of Habakkuk toward the end of the Old Testament one of the minor prophets you find Daniel that's a major prophet longer than that and then after Daniel you find Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. That's what happens when you have to learn the books of the Bible when you're five years old. I can't remember where my car keys are, but I know the books of the Bible. I want to preach to you this morning on how to pray when you don't understand what's going on. 2020 was not the worst year ever. I can remember 1968. I was 21 years old. Our country was strongly divided over the war in Vietnam. There was rioting in the streets. Neighborhoods were being burned. The Democratic National Committee had their meeting and there was rioting outside and there was rioting inside. I was a Democrat in those days. I supported candidates. And at the National Convention that year, the candidates who won the primaries got ignored and a nominee was made for whom nobody had voted for. And that added to the anger. Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Martin Luther King was murdered. The Hong Kong flu killed some one to four million people. I wasn't alive in 1945. when 400,000 servicemen had been killed in the war, the Second World War. 1933, an Austrian house painter named Adolf Hitler elected leader of Germany. We could go way back to 1348 when the Black Death, the bubonic plague, killed one-third to one-half of the people in Europe and Asia. something like 75 to 200 million. But as C.S. Lewis said, reflecting on the fear of possible nuclear war in his time in the 50s, let's not begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. We hear people in the media and on the street saying, I'm afraid. But remember, our Heavenly Father has repeatedly told us not to be afraid. Fear not. Be not afraid. Over 200 times. God is sovereign. He's in control of everything. Everything that happens is by His decree or permission, and nothing surprises Him. I recall being in a church history class, and we were applying the teacher with questions about plots and mysteries and conspiracies. And he put us all at rest when he said, I sleep very well at night knowing that no one draws a breath without the permission of Almighty God. But speaking of years, bad years, let's go back to 587 years before Christ. Habakkuk, is one of the minor prophets of the Old Testament. They're called minor not because they're less important, but because their books have a tendency to be shorter than the major prophets. Civil War divided Israel into two nations. There had been a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. The northern kingdom, often called just Israel, it had a succession of evil rulers, one after another. They'd been in continual idol worship since their beginning, and their continual sin and lack of repentance had finally resulted in God judging their wickedness by allowing the violent Assyrian kingdom to come in and destroy them and conquer them that was about a hundred and thirty years before Habakkuk and Habakkuk had seen this now the southern kingdom which is still in existence called Judah It had both good and evil kings, kind of an up and down history. They'd fallen into adultery, idolatry. They'd followed that by repentance and restoration, and then they fell back into idolatry again. And at the time of Habakkuk, there'd been a time of reform under a young king named Josiah, but now they're back into idolatry. Habakkuk is a faithful prophet. He is troubled by what he sees, but while most of the prophets address the people about their sin, Habakkuk in this short book addresses God with a sincere question. How long are you going to tolerate this? How long before you're going to do something? How much of this can you take? You're a holy God and this country is just ignoring you again. Well, God answers Habakkuk very directly. He says, you know, the Assyrians are bad. But you know, over here there's this kingdom called Chaldea, the Babylonian kingdom. They're worse. They are a bunch of mean people. and they're going to come in and they're going to destroy a syria and then they're going to come down and destroy the southern kingdom this place is going to be a wasteland the majority of the citizens are going to be hauled off to babylon in captivity and then i'm going to destroy the babylonian a backpack his son uh... could we just Another little redo. Can't we have a do-over? Can't we press control-alt-delete and just start it again? No. This place is going to become desolate. Well, Habakkuk 3 is Habakkuk's prayer. It reflects a familiar verse that's found in chapter 2, verse 4. that the just, the righteous person will live by his faith. Faith in God is trusting Him in the middle of difficulty. And so Habakkuk prays. Now we begin our year here by looking at some of the aspects of the Christian life and one of those is prayer. Sometimes we overcomplicate prayer. Prayer is simply talking to God. Now that I'm retired and I have time around the house, I'll confess that my prayer life has kind of turned into a rolling conversation to the point where one day the fix-it guy was coming by our apartment and I hadn't heard him come in and I'm having a little talk with God in the back room and he wondered who was in there with me. Now once in a while an old Puritan will take over me, take me over and a bee in the vow will sneak into my prayer, but It's just wonderful to talk to God. It's what happened in the Garden of Eden. Do you understand that? Adam and Eve, every day, strolled around the Kula Day, talking with God as they strolled through the Garden. Sin entered, and the last thing they wanted to do was take a walk with God. Redemption happened with Jesus Christ, and we can walk with God and talk with Him anytime we want. Just talk with Him. Just don't worry about a proper opening and a proper close and proper grammar and King James English. Just talk to God. It's a wonderful privilege to be able to talk with Him. When the news is bad and getting worse, when the news from the doctor isn't good, when your financial portfolio is tanked, when your home or your hopes are sitting there in ashes, talk to God. How should we talk to God when things are bad and look like they're getting worse and we have no idea what God's doing? How should we talk to God? That's what we're going to look at in chapter 3. Look first at the first two verses. This is a prayer of Habakkuk. The prophet, according to Shigenath, O Lord, I have heard the report of You and Your work, O Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known in wrath. Remember mercy." Shiginoth is a musical term. Like Selah, we're not sure exactly what it is. Here it may mean to praise with strong emotion. The kind of praise that resists the trial you're in. Shouting out when you're losing. Begins with a plea for revival. Now some of us have grown up in a culture where revival was a week of special meetings. Or an evangelistic set of evangelistic meetings where we seek to reach those without Christ, or pep rally that produces emotional decisions that don't last very long, or the result of us trying to do the right things to get a result. The Bible tells us revival is a sovereign work of God in which he restores something that was once alive and it died and he brings it back to life. It involves a tearing down and a rooting out and a cleaning house and things being made better. And it is a work of God. It's not a work of man. And he prays, okay, this place is going to be devastated. You're going to destroy it. You said you're going to. It's going to happen. But in that, would you please revive it? Would you restore it? Would you not cast it off? because coupled with the prayer for revival is this plea for mercy. You're going to beat us down, but be merciful even in the beating. Give us grace to sustain us in difficult times. Give us strength to endure the difficulty. That prayer is answered. It's going to be answered historically in small ways with the regathering after the 70 years of captivity. And then someday it's going to be restored with Messiah reigning. But first is going to come a terrible time. But in the middle of this, God be merciful. Be gracious. Revive your work. It's natural to despair when trouble comes. But don't rely on yourself. Don't turn inward. Don't raise the white flag of surrender. Plead and pray and rely on God's mercy. He's a merciful God and has said over and over, His mercy endures forever. Next, in the bulk of this, verses 3-15, We praise God in prayer for his mighty works in times past. Now this is a piece of poetry. And like for some of us who struggle through literature classes, some poetry is kind of hard for us to get the nuances and the details. To Habakkuk and the Jews of this time, this is probably calling up a lot of things they are very familiar with. or people who love Hebrew history oh yeah and people who don't know anything about Hebrew history some of this stuff they're going to recognize some of it they won't get but listen to this wonderful piece of poetry God came from Timon the holy one from Mount Paran seal His splendor covered the heaven, and the earth was full of His praise. His brightness was like the light. Rays flashed from His hand, and there He veiled His power. Before Him went pestilence, and plague followed at His heels. He stood and measured the earth. He looked and shook the nations. Then the eternal mountains were scattered. The everlasting hills sank low. His were the everlasting ways. I saw the tents of cushion and affliction. The curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord? Was your anger against the rivers, or your indignation against the sea when you rode on your horses on your chariot of salvation? You stripped the sheath from your bow, calling for many arrows. Selah. You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and writhed. The raging waters swept on. The deep gave forth its voice. It lifted its hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their place at the light of your arrows as they sped at the flash of your glittering spear. You marched through the earth in fury. You threshed the nations in anger. You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck." Selah. You pierced with His own arrows the heads of the warriors who came like a whirlwind to scatter me, rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret. You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters." This is a poetic overview of God's gracious and mighty acts to the people of Israel, to His people. In here are references to their deliverance, From Egypt. We've thrilled as we've read and we've enjoyed sharing the story of the Jews' deliverance from Egyptian slavery. There for 400 years. Then, God miraculously leading them out through the Red Sea into the Promised Land. Miraculous deliverance. Not instantaneous. There was a lot of waiting going on. But still a marvelous deliverance. And then in the wilderness, for them to see and hear, even at a distance, God's power at Mount Sinai. To see the Shekinah glory above in Sinai and then in the tabernacle. That physical representation of God's presence that was so awesome that man could only see it veiled. Moses could only see it just kind of passing by as he hid in a rock. Once a year the high priest could go into the presence of God. But to be aware of that presence, awesome in the real sense of the word presence of God. Then the wilderness wanderings that they look back on. For 40 years, this cycle of purging, repentance, redemption. Same thing at the time of Judges, this continual circle of Oh, we do bad. Oh, we're sorry. Okay, you can come back. Oh, we'll do bad again. Oh, we're sorry. You know, this wheel. And they think back on this. They think of the promised land when they entered in, and how the enemy couldn't stand before God. That victory over the Ammonites at Gibeon, when they needed a little more time to fight, so God just stopped the sun. That's better than overtime. Everything stops. Wow, our God did wonderful things for us. Yes, He did. He preserved His people in difficult times. There's this wonderful reference to His salvation through the Anointed One. And they're going, Moses! And we go, Jesus Christ. The one greater than Moses. The one who's delivered us from more than slavery. The one who's delivered us from slavery from sin. And that's the way He does. Salvation through His anointed one. Through Moses. And through the one better than Moses. One of my favorite verses in the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament is in chapter 6. that He brought them out to bring them in. He didn't bring them out of Egypt to leave them in the wilderness. He brought them out to bring them in. He brought many of us out of the prison house of sin. Not to live in the world, but to bring us into His presence. Here we're in the wilderness. But He brought us out to bring us in. There's always a purpose when He brings us out. He moves us to a better place. And the Israelites were told to tell these stories to their children all the time. That's what the book of Deuteronomy is about. You tell it to your children in the morning. You tell it to your children at night. You tell it to your children when you're eating. You put it on the doorpost of your house. You put it in front of your face. Orthodox Jews would do is they would put little mezuzahs outside their door and they would hang little frontlets. Just tell your children what I've done and drill it into them. We should be able to tell our children of the stories of the deliverance of God's people. And we do. We tell Bible stories to our children and we impress upon them that this is a real thing that God did for these people. But often when I think of this, you know what is even better for our children? If we can tell him what he's done for us. This is what God did for me. to look at our children and say, you know what God did for Dad? You know what God did for Mom? Or to tell the kids in your Sunday school class, or the kids in your children's group, or wherever you're with children, you know what God did for me? To be able to rehearse not also what God did for Moses, and God did for the Israelites, and God did for David, but to rehearse what God did for you. someplace and I will find. I keep wanting to find it in the Psalms, but I keep reading through the Psalms and enjoying the Psalms and not able to find it yet. Maybe you can help me. There's a phrase where the prayer is, God, you've done great things for Israel that they tell their children about. Would you not do great things for me that I can tell my children about? To be able to share personal experience with your children. The final thing is in the last verses, verses 16-19. To be able to rejoice in who God is more than what He's done for you. A man named Daniel Henderson wrote a book called Transforming Prayer. And in it, he talks about worship-based prayer. He says this, worship-based prayer seeks the face of God before the hand of God. God's face is the essence of who he is. God's hand is the blessing of what he does. God's face represents his person and his presence. God's hand expresses his provision for the needs in our lives. I have learned that if all we ever do is seek God's hand, we may miss His face. But if we seek His face, He will be glad to open His hand and satisfy the deepest desires of our heart. To seek God's face before we seek His hand. It is so easy for us in prayer to ask for things. And we are supposed to. It is good. We need to let our requests be made known unto God. Don't ever say, I shouldn't ask God for anything. He delights in that. Just like before Christmas, our kids asked us for lots of things. But you know what happens when kids get older? Sometimes they sit down and they just like talking to you because they like you. And they don't ask you for anything. They just spend time with you because they love you. They don't ask to be left in your will. They don't ask you for something at Christmas. They just like you. And sometimes it's good to sit down with God and just tell Him what you like Who He is. More than what He's done. One of the first disciplines of prayer that I was taught was that in my prayer life, while it was good and wonderful to pray for things, I was challenged with trying to spend five minutes without asking God for anything and without thanking Him for anything. Just spend five minutes complimenting him. We would call it praising him. And then try to make it ten. And the men at the time who were challenging me with this were having a week-long minister's prayer meeting. And I came to spend mornings with these men. Mornings. Hours. But we never asked for anything. We try to do that here on our prayer meetings when we normally have our prayer meetings in the morning. We have a time of adoration where we just praise God for who He is. That's a good discipline in prayer. It's worship-based prayer. To rejoice in God more for who He is than what He's done for us. The verses go, I hear, and my body trembles. My lips quiver at the sound. Rottenness enters my bone. My legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us. Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive oil in the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will take joy in the God of my salvation." This is an emotional paradox. He is trembling at the expectation of the trouble that's to come. His country is going to be devastated, that the people who devastate the country are going to be devastated, and yet he's quietly waiting for what's going to come to pass. knowing that it will pass. And he rejoices in what's important. The Babylonians are going to come. They're going to destroy the country. The country is going to cease to exist. The people are going to be taken into a foreign land. Their earthly pleasures and treasures are going to be gone. The agricultural society is going to be finished. No crops, no flocks. In our terms, that means no money. No things. Everything normal and predictable is gone. Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. Now, it has been a long time since I've used my children as an illustration in sermons. I'm going to do that now. I'll ask for forgiveness later. Brother Dave offered me his children as illustrations this morning, but I'll pass on that. When our home was destroyed in a hurricane, we were unloading everything we had into this 60-foot dumpster. And I'm sitting there watching our stuff. And I have a 16-year-old son who's standing next to me, and I'm just And he looks at me and he goes, that's okay, Dad. I wasn't going to throw it all away when I put you in the home anyway. Welcome to my family. Then he looked at me and he said, Dad, it's stuff. It's just stuff. We have what matters. When everything else is gone, we have God. Isn't that love? Oh, you know, house would be nice, health would be nice. God is enough. Now we know that. We'll say that. We'll amen that. But like it said, Romans 8.28 is great unless it's your house that burns down. And then it's hard to take. When all is gone, He is there. God Himself is my source of joy. I may lose everything, but I still have God. And He will hold me fast. When I fear my faithful fail, He will hold me fast. I'm kept in the hollow of His hand. I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me. It was not I that found O Savior true, no, I was found of Thee. I didn't take hold on Him. He took hold on me and He will never let me go. Joy in God is never out of season. God is my strength. He'll hold me up. He'll keep me stable. He'll make my feet as stable as the deer's. We just never trip over anything. He will hold me fast. It was a bad year for Henry. The year before, his wife had been burned in an accidental fire and after much suffering, had died. Henry was there when it happened and had tried to put the fire out. It burned him so badly that he grew this enormous beard to cover the scarring on his face. In the country, America, New York City was rocked by murderous riots, upset the government's intervention, particularly their persecution of lower classes and poorer classes. There were race riots, murders, different races killing each other in the streets. There was also a war going on. The death toll from the war was mounting. Henry's son, had joined the army and Henry didn't like that but his son had joined the army against his wishes and then Henry had just received the news that his son had been seriously wounded Henry was having a bad year but Henry liked to write so Henry sat down and wrote poetry and in his poem were these lines And in despair, I bowed my head. I said, there is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill toward men. Then peal the bells more loud and deep. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail. The right prevail with peace on earth, goodwill to men.