To introduce myself, for those of you who don't know me, I'm the pastoral intern here at Christ Reformed. My name is Jack Stauffer, and I've had the pleasure of attending this church for over seven years now. It's just crazy to think about it. But if you will, please open your Bibles with me to the book of Habakkuk. The book of Habakkuk. It is a little past the middle of your Bible, but a little bit before the New Testament. This was one of the minor prophets, one of the 12 minor prophets. Not minor like the minor leagues in baseball. Minor because it's simply smaller than the major prophets, but just as important. So while you turn there in your Bibles, as I begin this series through the book of Habakkuk, whenever I have the chance to preach, I wanna ask three questions. Well, first of all, the overarching question. Why should we study the book of Habakkuk? It's small, it's in the Old Testament. Why should we study it? And here are three answers to that question. First of all, the New Testament commands you and I to study the Old Testament, all of it. including the book of Habakkuk. Paul says in Romans 15, four, he says, for whatever was written in former days, including Habakkuk, was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. Answer number two, the apostles looked to the Old Testament, like Habakkuk, to understand what it meant to be a Christian. This book, this short book, only three chapters, is cited four times in the New Testament and alluded to at least a dozen times. So there's a lot to learn about what it means to be a Christian from this book. And lastly, Habakkuk teaches us about the character of our God, about who our God is. Because there's so many difficult questions that this prophet wrestles with. Questions like, is God listening to your prayers? Is he really just? Especially when evil seems to be running rampant. How does God's justice interact with his grace? What does it mean to live by faith and not by sight? What does it look like to rejoice in God as the chief treasure of your heart? Such questions are the topic of this book. And this book is the story of a man who comes into the presence of God with his questions. And Habakkuk finds again and again in this book that the character of God is the answer to his questions. This book tells the story of a man who carries a dialogue with a living God, and then his heart is transformed from joyless sorrow into sorrowful joy. He came to God seeking a change, and then he left the encounter changed. He came to God wanting an answer, and God was the answer that he got. And God is the answer that he needed. So if you are there in your Bibles, please read along with me. Habakkuk chapter one, we're gonna be studying verses one through 11 this morning. Starting in verse one. The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear? or cry to you violence and you will not save. 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. For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted. And this is God's answer. Look among the nations and see, wonder, and be astounded, for I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome. Their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle, swift to devour. They all come for violence. All their faces forward, they gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on. Guilty men whose might is their own God. Please pray with me as we study God's word. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would open our eyes to help us to perceive wonderful things from your law. Lord, give us a heart of understanding that we may hear what you have to say to us this morning. And as we study the words of this prophet long ago, I pray that they would strike our hearts today and encourage us that indeed, you are at work. I pray this all in the name of the one who made the heavens and the earth. Amen. As Steve talked about in his prayers, there's a lot going on in our world right now. There's a lot going on. Ukraine's war against Russia's aggression has been going on for over a year and a half. Not only that, but within the past few days, there seems to be a new war brewing around Israel. In America, in this next year, we're getting closer to another contentious election cycle. Not only that, but if we zoom in on the church in America, most studies show that church attendance has yet to really reach its pre-COVID levels in America, which is very sad to hear. And not only that, even within our congregation, there's so many of us who are sick, and suffering, have unanswered questions, things that burden us. And such questions can cause you and I as Christians to ponder in our heart, what is God doing? Does he hear his people? Does he pay attention to the hurt of his children? And the answer of this passage is absolutely and irrefutably, yes, God hears. He is at work, even now. He is at work. So let's look at verse one of this passage, this introduction, as we begin to walk through this prophet of Habakkuk. Habakkuk was a prophet who lived in the southern kingdom of Israel. Little bit of a history recap. The kingdom of Israel, you know, had King Saul, and then the first faithful king was David. But then David's grandson, by the time he came along, the kingdom fractured. It broke into two pieces, northern and southern. And the southern kingdom had a good bit of good kings, and the northern kingdom really had no good kings. So at this point in Habakkuk's ministry, the northern kingdom had been invaded by Assyria and led away into exile. And the southern kingdom had been miraculously saved when Hezekiah was king. Do you remember that story where King Sennacherib of Assyria came and 185,000 of his soldiers perished in a night? The Lord miraculously saved his people. And how did they respond? Within a generation, they had completely forgotten God and had fallen into idolatry again. So most likely Habakkuk is preaching during the reign of King Manasseh, or maybe right after King Josiah, and there's a big period of spiritual stagnancy in God's people. They had been miraculously saved, but then they didn't change their lives because of it. Notice in verse one, it says that Habakkuk saw this burden. He saw this oracle, which means that whatever he saw, whatever the Lord gave him was so vivid, it's as if he had actually seen it. It was a vision that was vivid. This is why prophets are sometimes called seers, because they're given kind of a vision into what is to come for God's people. This book can broadly be broken up into two different sections. The first two chapters are a dialogue between Habakkuk and the Lord, while the last chapter is a prayer of faith from Habakkuk. So in these two sections right here, Habakkuk's first complaint and the Lord's answer, we're gonna call Habakkuk's questions, piercing questions, And then the Lord gives a profound answer. So let's look at Habakkuk's piercing questions in verses two through four. He begins in this first part, he says, oh Lord, how long, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear? You get the sense that this was not the first time Habakkuk was crying this prayer. This had been an ongoing process in his soul. And this is not abnormal for Christians to pray this way in the Bible. Psalm 13 one says something almost identical. Psalm 13 begins with, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? There's a reason why in the Lord's Prayer we ask the Lord for our daily bread. Because we ask for God's provision today and then tomorrow we ask for his provision tomorrow. And you get the sense that Habakkuk was asking for his daily bread and seeking the Lord again and again. And we see what was making Habakkuk cry out to God in this next phrase. He says he was crying to the Lord violence. violence. And notice, he's not talking about the nations around him. He's talking about his own people, the church. He uses several strong words to describe morally what's going on amongst God's people. He uses words like violence, iniquity, wrong, destruction, contention, strife. There is a moral quality to what's happening. We live in a world where there are rights and there are wrongs, and Habakkuk is seeing a lot of wrongs. And just to give you an idea, from 2 Kings chapter 21, we can kind of get an idea of what Habakkuk was seeing around him. 2 Kings 21 tells of King Manasseh, and these are all the things that he was doing that displeased the Lord. He worshiped wrongly on the mountains instead of going to the temple. He put pagan altars within the temple. He dealt with necromancers and wizards in order to understand the future. And not only that, but he sacrificed his own son on the fire in order to appease the gods. These are the kind of things that Habakkuk was seeing. As go the leaders, so go the people, so who knows what other things he was seeing amongst his fellow Israelites. And perhaps this is a mindset that you've had before. You wake up in the morning, first thing you do maybe, you check the news instead of reading your Bible, and then you see again there's people who've died, disasters that have happened, things that have gone wrong with this church or that pastor, and you can feel that burden. God, are you listening? Are you at work? which can bring us to this broad question, which is important to ask. Is it wrong for Christians to ask questions of God? Is it wrong for you as a Christian to ask a question of God? When you do it in faith, no. When you do it in a complaint or a haughty spirit, yes. And that is a difficult line of distinction. But when it comes to the Christian life and prayers, there's a huge difference between Coming to God on your knees and saying, God, why? And coming to God with an angry fist and saying, why? It's a big difference between the two. And personally, I think Habakkuk's coming here with a, why, God? Are you listening? So we must check our motivations when we come to pray to the Lord. It is right to ask God questions. The saints do that all throughout the Bible. But we do need to make sure we are asking with a heart that is trusting and not distrusting. And even though it may seem like God is silent, we do need to mimic Habakkuk here and bring our burdens to the Lord. Bring your burdens to the Lord. In the scriptures, this is not a suggestion. Praying to God those things which burden your heart is a command. I was so humbled. by Dr. Campbell's sermon last week. That the antidote for anxiety and worry for the Christian is prayer. Taking those things, bringing them to God, and then filling our heart with thanksgiving. If someone granted you an audience with royalty, it would actually be a shameful thing if you refused that offer. How much more when you and I are granted free access to the throne of grace at any moment? Are we foolish to refuse? So often when things go wrong in life with your job, or with your family, or with your children, or with your finances, we so quickly run to other places. We run to old habits, to distractions, to you name it, work, pleasure, rest, rather than prayer. We as Christians should be those who run most quickly to the foot of God's throne when we are disturbed. So let's continue walking through Habakkuk's questions. Look at verse three. He says, speaking to God, why do you make me see iniquity? And why do you idly look at wrong? Once again, Habakkuk's being burdened because the believers around him seem to be ignoring God's word. And that is a hard thing to see. It is a painful thing to see someone who bears the name of Christian not living like it. I remember in particular while I was in college, while I was on campus interacting with friends, I every day would interact with people who bore the name of Christian, who despised marriage by the way they acted, seemed very indifferent to God and his word, who mocked the Christians who were trying to live a faithful life, and that hurt my soul. It was painful to watch. And I brought those questions to God. But I just want to encourage you, being burdened by the sin that you see around you, like Habakkuk, is a sign that the Holy Spirit lives within you. Because God himself has purer eyes than to simply look at evil and not do anything. And when that God lives within you, the sins that you see will burden you and afflict your heart. So yes, that is tough, but we need to draw some encouragement from that. That is a sign of the Holy Spirit being within you when the sin of Christians burdens you. Habakkuk continues in the second half of verse three. He says, destruction and violence are before me. Strife and contention Arise, so not only are all the fellow Israelites acting the way they shouldn't, but they're not getting along with each other either. There's contention. There is strife amongst them. Unfortunately, Dr. Campbell isn't here to hear this, but I reread Lord of the Rings in this past month, and there's so many hard things that happen to the fellowship, to the nine in their travels, but the hardest one is when the friend betrays them. The hardest one is always when Boromir turns on Frodo. And that's why there's a special kind of pain in this statement when Habakkuk says, I'm looking at my brothers and my sisters and there's dissension and strife between them. And notice the conclusions he comes to in verse four. He says, so the law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth. Between high school and my first year of college, I was a lifeguard for four summers, four years. And thankfully, nothing terrible ever happened on my watch. But during training, I heard many stories of kids who ignored the rules of the pool and dove into the shallow end and had instant paralysis. Those were sobering stories. And Habakkuk is saying, God, it seems like your law is paralyzed. Like it's not doing anything. It's not working. Not only that, but justice, the system of justice in Israel seemed to be out of whack. Those who were in power were misusing justice, and it burdened Habakkuk. The last half of verse four, he says, the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted. Whenever Habakkuk saw someone trying to do justly in the land of Israel, it just, they didn't do it right. And you wanna know what this brought to my mind? There are places in our country right now, and other stories I've heard, where someone can get punished for attempting to maintain the gender of their child. That's a misuse of justice. And there are places and situations where you can get rewarded for aborting a child. And that is sad to hear. There are churches in this country where you can go and hear a works-based gospel. There's also churches you can go to and hear so much grace that you never have to do anything about it. We need to be wary, but we also need to recognize what Habakkuk said then can really apply and speak to us now. So notice how burdened Habakkuk's heart is here, these piercing questions that he brings to God. And before we move on and see God's response, I want to mention two quick applications for us all. First of all, as I said before, bring to the Lord the burdens of your heart. It is so easy to run to other things in a moment of trial. It is so easy to pick up your phone and just look at the news again, to scroll through YouTube, to just do something else, to fill your mind with things. And I urge you, run to God in prayer. Run to the refuge of your soul, as we say. Let us learn from Habakkuk, where he took his burdens. And then secondly, There is much evil in this world. Don't let the evil in this world cause you to forget about the fountain of wickedness within your very heart. Don't let the wickedness out there burden you so much that you forget the fountain of wickedness from your heart. Jesus says in Matthew 15, he says, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. But what comes out of his mouth, this defiles a man. For out of the heart, our hearts, comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. So in a sense, the mindset of a faithful Christian should be one of my sin is huge. And in comparison, the world's sin is small. It doesn't mean that you cease to worry and be burdened by what you see around you, but it does mean that we are just as quick to examine our own hearts as we are to examine the world. And this is a shift that we'll actually see in Habakkuk's heart over the course of this book. One from looking at the burdens around him to looking at his own soul. May we be a church filled with people who are burdened by the sin in this world, especially by Christians, but may we be a church that never stops there. May we be a people who see the darkness of this world and then get on our knees and say, who am I that you have shown me grace? For Lord, if it was not for your mercy, I would be no better than them. We share so much with Habakkuk. Where he's at in history, Jesus hadn't come yet. He was looking forward to the time when the Messiah was coming. And at that point, it seemed like Lord was silent. And so often for us, when we wait for Jesus to come back, it can seem like God is silent. We so often want the Lord to make everything right, right now. And yet, we forget that if the Lord enacted immediate justice upon me, Would I have come to know him? No. So when we come to the Lord asking for justice, we always need to remind ourselves, Lord, thank you for not giving me justice. Thank you for showing me mercy. Because as long as we live in this world where the wicked can prosper and the good suffer, there is time for people to be saved by the gospel. There's time. And before we move on to God's profound answer, I want to urge you to believe in that message of the gospel, whether it's for the first time or for the 10,000th time. Believe in the gospel. God himself became a man and died for the sins of all who would believe in him. Rather than immediately punishing the violence in this world, Jesus took the violence upon his own body. Rather than simply mourning the brokenness around him, Jesus answered that brokenness and took it upon himself on the cross. He rose again, he ascended on high, and he is coming back. And do you want to be a partaker of his love and kindness forevermore? Then trust that he did that for you. Believe in Jesus. because despite Habakkuk's worries and his question, God is at work. God is at work. Let's look at God's astounding and profound response to Habakkuk in these last seven verses. It's as if all of it could be summarized in one phrase, God shouting down at his prophet, I am at work. Seems like I'm not, but I am. Habakkuk asked for an answer from the Lord, and he got an answer all right. He got an answer. My family growing up in the mid-2000s, we would watch American Idol a lot. I don't know how many of y'all I use that as a familial pastime, but you remember the theme song that used to play, the, I'm going home to a place where I belong, right? Sometimes when someone got sent away, you know, that sad music would start. And I just, the bridge of that song always stuck with me, where it says, be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it all. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. And that's kind of where Habakkuk's at. He's saying, God, will you answer me? And God answered him all right. And the beginning of this book called what he saw a burden, because it's not like this was all peachy good news to Habakkuk, but it was the answer that he needed. But sometimes you and I do need to be reminded that. We need to be reminded that when the Lord doesn't give you an answer to a question, it's his love that is shielding you from that. What if the very question that you're asking God for an answer from, what if the answer is being hidden from you out of his love? Sometimes we don't think through things that way. But it should make us amazed at the fact that Habakkuk was responded to by God. So we're going to see in this response from the Lord three truths about God's work. First of all, God's work is unexpected, God's work is severe, and God's work is good. So let's start off with God's work is unexpected. Look at verse five. The Lord says, look among the nations and see, wonder and be astounded, for I am doing a work in your days that you would not even believe it if told. I love the song that we sang before our sermon. Let me just read those first two stanzas real quick. It says, God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill, he treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign will. You realize God is saying as a preface to what he's about to show Habakkuk, if somebody else told you every single thing to the T that I'm about to tell you, you wouldn't believe it, because God's work is unexpected. Perhaps you've heard the old proverb, learn to expect the unexpected. Learn to expect the unexpected. My family does a lot of musicals down in Charleston. Musicals are cool for those of you who don't like them. They are cool. And I'll never forget this one show where my family was putting on the show Annie, Annie the Musical. And it was the final show, and the pianist, actually, who plays for our shows, used to come here. She's phenomenal. And I'll never forget, 30 minutes before the house was supposed to be open, the lead pianist for this show was literally being carried out of the church by her husband. She was just, something came over her. and we were all hardcore stressing out, because you can't really do a musical with no music. And so we're up there praying, we're like, what's gonna happen? And turns out, one of the dads of one of the kids in the cast is a music teacher at a local high school. And so one of the moms goes up to him, actually it was my mom, went up to him and was like, I have a question to ask you. And he looked up at her and was like, I think I know what you're going to ask. Because he was noticing the turmoil. There was like almost 500 people in the room at this point. And that man, with 10 minutes of preparation, sight read an entire Broadway musical. Talk about terrifying. Talk about unexpected. If someone had that morning gone to this man and been like, hey, guess what you're going to do tonight? He wouldn't have believed it. Our God, he works in unexpected ways. And we see this in the Bible. The Lord said to Abraham, I will make you a great nation. But guess what? They're going to be slaves for 400 years in a nation that's going to subject them. Concerning Jesus, it says the Messiah will come, but you have to be sent into exile for 70 years first. Concerning the life of Jesus, Jesus Christ will reign from shore to shore, but he must suffer and die first. Indeed, Paul actually cites this verse in one of his sermons in the book of Acts to talk about how God works in unexplainable ways. And I look through this congregation and I see many beloved saints who are older than I am. Think about your life. Could any of you predicted what God would have done with your life when you were 20? Could any of you have guessed how things would have turned out by the time you were 40 or 50 or 60 or 70? No. Our God works in unexpected ways. And as we saw in our call to worship, there is a profound freedom from saying, Lord, I have not concerned myself with things too wonderful for me, but like a weaned child, my soul is in your presence. We could get stressed out by the fact that we don't know what the Lord has planned, but rather the faithful are marked by saying, God, your plan is better than my plan. God is at work, and we have to hold tightly to that fact, even when it's unexpected. Even when it's unexpected. And perhaps this is a truth that can weigh more difficultly on those of us in here who are young. We haven't been through as much of life. We don't know what the future holds, but I want to encourage everyone here, make your plans, be diligent, look to the future, but hold it loosely, because our God is in control. In these next verses, we see the truth that God's work is severe. At times, God's work is Severe because Habakkuk is getting this vision and to him. He's probably thinking God this doesn't look like good news I'm asking for good news, and it doesn't seem like that's what you're giving to us Perhaps in your household growing up as You or your siblings were disciplined by your parents. Maybe there was that one disciplinary action. That was kind of the last straw You know be it a loss of a privilege you're getting grounded. I don't know When the Lord is telling Habakkuk, this nation will come and defeat you, he's referencing all the way back to the time of Moses. In Deuteronomy 28, the Lord spoke to his people and said, when you act badly, I will treat you this way. When you act well, I will bless you in this way. And the final, the final straw of God's discipline was this, exile by a foreign nation. So it's as if God is saying, Habakkuk, I am at work, and guess what? It's time. That worst punishment, the one that you fear more than anything else, it needs to happen. So let's walk through what God says. He says, for behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, which is another name for the Babylonian Empire, that bitter and hasty nation who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. There's a little bit of poetry going on here with the phrase, bitter and hasty. Maybe a way to think about it to catch the poetry would be, they're speedy and sneaky. Or they're haughty and they're harsh. Not only are they bad, but they're very good at being bad. That's what God is saying. And they're not just coming to make friends with Israel, no. Their goal is to seize dwellings, not their own. Pure aggression. Their goal is warfare. Look at verse seven. They, Babylon, are dreaded and fearsome. Their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. This last phrase is basically saying that once Babylon conquers, what Babylon wants is what happens. Might is right. Justice is not something imposed upon them, it flows from them. And that's scary news. When you've got no one to appeal to, that's a terrifying prospect. Look at verse 8. There's a lot of cool metaphors here for the strength of Babylon. First of all, the Lord says their horses are swifter than leopards. You have to remember, tanks and planes weren't invented at this point. So if an army had a very strong and very efficient cavalry, they could decimate any army that was just foot soldiers. They're as fast and terrifying as leopards. He says, they're more fierce than the evening wolves. I don't know, maybe you grew up with a children's movie where, you know, not only is it a terrifying thing to walk through the woods at night, it's a terrifying thing to walk through the woods at night and you hear the wolves howling. It's kind of the picture that he's getting at here. These wolves are hungry, and that's what Babylon is like. Lastly, once again, he brings back their horsemen up. He says, their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle, swift to devour. Have you ever seen those nature shows where it shows a clip of an eagle grabbing a fish in slow motion from a lake or a pond? It's so quick and it's so precise, except in this picture, the fish is Israel. Habakkuk is hearing, the fish is me. This is what Babylon will be like. Verse nine, they all come for violence, every single one. Their faces are forward, they're set. They gather captives like sand. Perhaps you grew up going to the beach and you'd see little kids with their sand bucket just picking up sand and tossing it around. That's the way the kill count will be for Babylon. They gather captives like sand. Verse 10, at kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it. God is saying, no one's gonna stop them. Why? Because I purpose it to be so. Proverbs 21 verse one says, the heart of a king is like a stream of water in the hands of the Lord, and he turns it wherever he wills. And so in this terrifying vision, Habakkuk is hearing, Babylon will succeed because I, the Lord, have purposed it to be so. For Samuel 17, verse 47 says, the battle belongs to the Lord. God is sovereign over every war, over every battle. Verse 11, then they, Babylon, sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men whose might is their God. There will be no stopping these people. Not only that, but they will attribute their success to their pagan gods. Why did God tell Habakkuk this? Why did the Lord speak all of these words to him? God showed this to Habakkuk to humble him, to humble us. His work at times is severe. It is severe. But we have to have trusting and humble hearts coming to God, recognizing, Lord, you are good, and you would not be sending this unless we needed it. which is the last truth about God's work. God's work is good. God's work is good. In the verses to come in the rest of this book, Habakkuk will be even more humbled and he'll come to learn that even though God uses a wicked nation, he's gonna punish that wicked nation and save his people through all of these terrifying events. Yes, God's work is sometimes severe, but it's also good. I'm reminded of our assurance of pardon from Lamentations 3, which says this, the Lord will not cast his people off forever. What a promise that is. But though he caused grief, he will have compassion, for he does not afflict from his heart. He does not afflict from his heart. Listen to this other verse from the song that we sang. It just fits so well. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take. The clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy and shall break with blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. God is, his work is severe, but it's always good. So guess what? Everything that the Lord said to Habakkuk came to pass. Everything that he said would happen did happen. But in the end, he was faithful. He restored them. His promises were true. And as we'll see later in this book, to be a Christian doesn't mean that everything goes perfectly. It means that the righteous live by faith. And that we trust that God always remembers mercy amidst his wrath. And so when we come to the character of God in this passage, Let me close by pointing us to God's chief work in this world. The most magnificent display of the character of God in history, which is the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ. That work was unexpected. Who could have guessed that God would become man? Who would have guessed that that man must die? The wrath and the fury of God rained down from heaven, not on those who deserve it, but on his son who had never done anything wrong. The cross was unexpected. Not only that, the cross was severe. Why would one who's innocent suffer? The cross was severe. But as you and I know so well, the cross was good. The cross was good. Only through the death and resurrection of Jesus can you and I taste the joys of heaven. Only through the work of Jesus can we say along with Habakkuk from chapter three, though the fig tree should fail and everything else should go awry, yet I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. May we hold this gospel truth before our eyes every day. So in conclusion, I don't know where you're at this morning. I don't know what questions you're bringing to the Lord. or what burdens or sins are on your heart, but I challenge you to believe from the depths of your soul that God is at work. God is at work. His ways are unexpected, they are severe, but they are good. Do you pray like that? Do you talk with your family members like that? Do you do your work like this is true? May we be a people who meditate on that faithfully. Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word to us. It is challenging, it is convicting, and it is comforting. Lord, teach us to rest in the depths of our soul in the work of Christ and trust that even when this world can distract us and discourage us, Lord, you are at work and you are always good. I pray this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.