The reading today is from Habakkuk 1, 1 through 11. Oh Lord, how long shall I cry and you will not hear? Even cry out to you, violence, and you will not save. Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me. There is strife and contention arises. Therefore, the law is powerless and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, therefore perverse judgment proceeds. Look among the nations and watch, be utterly astounded, for I will work a work in your days which you would not believe though it were told you. For indeed, I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation which marches through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards and more fierce than evening wolves. Their chargers charge ahead. Their cavalry comes from afar. They fly as the eagle that hastens to eat. Then comes all violence. Their faces are set like the east wind. They gather captives like sand. They scoff at king and princes are scorned by them. They deride every stronghold, for they heap up earthen mounds and seize it. Then his mind changes and he transgresses. He commits offense, ascribing this power to his God. This is the word of the Lord. Today is the second sermon in the series on the wonderful but not very well-known prophet of God with that funny name Habakkuk. And one time in a Bible study, I was with a group of guys, and I hate to admit that they were actually cadets, but I told them to open to the book of Habakkuk, and one of them started laughing, and he said, you're not going to trick me. There's no such thing as a book of Habakkuk. And he should have known better. But let me, I want to see a show of hands here. How many of you have children or have friends who have children who are named Habakkuk? Let me see your hands. None? I'm shocked. Not even one hand was raised. Are you really indicating to me that none of you have given the name Habakkuk to any of your children? Well, I'm sure raised necks, but we'll see. Well, by the end of this series, you may want to name your next son or have your grandson named after this godly, faithful, but not so famous man. Now, when we read verses 5 through 11, we were reading God's answer to the questions that were posed in verses 1 through 4. How long must I wait? Why will you not hear? Why do I have to see iniquity, which is trouble, and all of those things we saw last week? And we see that Habakkuk is a godly man and a prophet of God, and he is disturbed and burdened by the evil that is all around the kingdom of Judah. And he's burdened by this apostasy that he sees his people committing since the king Josiah has died. All of Josiah's godly reforms and his godly leadership are being overturned, they're being reversed. And so apostasy has come, and the word apostasy is two words, apostasy, which means to leave the truth or to go away from the truth. And that's why, in verse 1, we have read that the burden which the prophet Habakkuk saw, that was his burden. His burden was that the people have become scoffers, and they have become violent, and they have become sexually immoral, and they have become unjust, and they've begun to take advantage of each other, and they think that they're masters of their own destiny, their own souls, they thought so. They were doing their own thing. And doesn't this sound familiar today? Aren't we in America, in fact, isn't the world in that situation today? Do we listen to the news and then after we listen, do we not say, God, our nation is corrupt. There's scandal everywhere. There's corruption everywhere. There's greed everywhere. There's political awful things going on. There's abortion going on. We're killing our children. America is filled with evils. And just about every day in our little beautiful town of Savannah, there's a shooting or some sort of violence. We read about children killing children. And disrespect are commonplace in our schools. And our own teachers, our school teachers, are afraid to confront students about bad classroom behavior. for fear of reprisal from other students, or from the student's friends, or from the parents of the students, or even from the administration. And I had a conversation recently, and I know for a fact that police officers work not with the liberty afforded by a culture of truth and law and justice, but they're handcuffed and jeopardized constantly with their jobs by a suffocating prejudice and political correctness. We in America, like those the Habakkuk was speaking to, are obviously apostatizing. We're leaving our Christian heritage. And we were established on a Reformation heritage, a republic that was founded on God's principles, and we were free to live out the gospel, the gospel liberties. So, the question is, what have we done with what God has given us? Our eyes are fed and filled with violence and greed through the TV and movies that we choose to see. It's amazing to me that we love bloodthirstiness. Our teenage boys just love these killer games, these bang-bang shooter-up games. And I think that's having its effect. Our children are disrespectful, and we sort of expect them to be so. And I could go on and on. So this scroll that Habakkuk wrote under inspiration is relevant to us. It's relevant to you and to me and to the people around us. It's not only an academic study of God's Word, it's practical for us, and it should be sanctifying to us. We can easily identify with Habakkuk. And seeing that the people have turned away, apostatized from truth, Habakkuk cries out in verses 2, 3, and 4, O LORD, how long shall I cry, and you will not hear? Even cry out to you, violence, meaning danger, and you will not save? Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me, there strife and contention arises. Therefore the law is powerless, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, therefore perverse judgments proceeds. Now, this is the condition of the people of God. Not the heathen nations. The people of God had become lawless. They had lost their fear of displeasing God, which is seen by these perverse decisions that are being allowed to stand and grope, the word here is proceed, among the people of God, as verse 4 shows. So, this is not Habakkuk speaking to the heathen nations, this is Habakkuk speaking to God's people, who are wallowing in their sin, and they don't care if they're wallowing in their sin, because they are suppressing the law, and they have lost the proper fear of Him. God's law became powerless, it says here. Literally, in the Hebrew, the word is numb, like you cut off the blood supply to an arm, or you lean on your funny bone, and your arm goes to sleep, your hand goes to sleep. Well, the law had become numb. And it was not that the law itself was broken or itself ineffective. You see, here is a figure of speech that says the authority of God's law was pushed aside, and it was being rejected. And therefore, the people were attempting to live as though God's law had no authority over the way they conducted their lives. They were attempting to invalidate God's law for self-law. And the question for them is the question always will be, until the end of time, are we going to follow theonomy or autonomy? Is it God's law or is it self-law? And when a person attempts to live lawlessly, he is not doing so. It can't be done. He is living under the tyranny as well as the hopelessness of His own law. He is attempting to live autonomously. He is attempting to live by self-law and do so in such a way that would, if it could, invalidate God's law. But as long as God lives, His law abides. Try to break God's law and it only breaks us in the long run. Well sadly, we see here in the scroll that the people of God have adjusted their thoughts and their considerations of God's law to suit their own fancies. And as they try to calibrate their thoughts and calibrate their lives and calibrate their fancies to suit their own lives, they're out of sync. They're out of calibration. They're really messing things up. And can you imagine that the church, the people of God, would come to a state, would come to a position where they would carry the Torah around. That they would always have it at their side, they would keep it in their presence, they would pretend to honor it, they would pretend to be followers of it, and yet the testimony of their the testimony seen in their conduct was that the Torah of God, the Word of God, God's Word had no visible authority to regulate their lives. And the prophet was distressed that the law was not affecting their conduct. Verse 4, they were lip service believers while actually being practical atheists. The fear of God was nearly extinguished by ignoring the law of God, even as it is today. A pastor friend of mine says that nothing is more rare in the church today than a proper fear of God. And I fear greatly the failure of not seeing God truly in His glory. I fear greatly believing in a God who is a lesser God than the true and the living God. And as a pastor, I fear the damage to a life that is caused by the failure of fearing God, the God of majesty, the God of glory, the God of love, the God of grace. Because it impoverishes us, it impoverishes the church, it impoverishes God's people. And so many who claim to be Christians today have lost any real life-controlling concept of the sovereign, holy, fearsome, majestic, righteous God. And we have replaced the true God with this invisible pygmy God in the sky. And having a pygmy God is why the modern church isn't seeking God, just as the Israelites were not seeking God. If God is no bigger and no better and no stronger than a pygmy, then why bother? Why conform our lives to the life and laws of a pygmy God? And because that view of God prevails in the modern church, the church doesn't seek godliness. Why seek help and favors from a pygmy God? Why pray? The least attended, least promoted, least valued activity in the church today is the meeting to pray. And why? Because why pray to a weak, small, little, incompetent, impotent God? And why seek to worship this pygmy God? You know, this low view of God that prevails in the modern church causes us to not want to worship God in a way that we even care if it pleases Him. Why bother to seek to bring honor and pleasure to a little God? Why make Sunday worship our highest commitment in life for myself and my family? if God is low and if my concept of God, the concept that prevails in my life and drives my life and drives the life of the modern church, is that He is so small and so minuscule and such a pygmy. That's why the modern church, isn't joyful. That's why the modern church isn't filled with a sense of awe. That's why the modern church doesn't have an appreciation for God. We don't see this as a great privilege. In fact, we don't see this as the greatest privilege. I know that probably when I was a young boy, my granddaddy used to give me 10 cents to sit in church. And I thought it was the hardest earned 10 cents I had ever earned. Of course, 10 cents back then was like bucks. I couldn't wait to get home to cooking, to eat. I had no idea of the privilege that I was being paid to participate in. I saw it as something to endure. It was something to despise until I saw God for who He is. And then it became everything. It was everything to me because it was everything to Him. And when He is everything to you, then you will want to be with His people, giving yourself and everything else to Him. And one more challenge. Why give good hard-earned money to build the kingdom and support the work of a pygmy God? Because a low view of God prevails in the modern church. The church doesn't tithe. They give a little bit, but they don't tithe. And that's a sin. They don't tithe. You see, my own kingdom is more important to me than the kingdom of a pygmy god. So my kingdom gets my money, my time, my love, my commitment, and my energy. It gets my attention. Bottom line, why follow? Why obey? Why seek? Why honor? Why support? Why fear a pygmy god? So very many people who claim to be Christians today have lost any real life-controlling concept of the sovereign, holy, fearsome, majestic, and righteous God. And they have replaced Him with this invisible, good-for-nothing, irrelevant, pygmy God in the sky. And coming full circle back to the law of God, this pygmy concept of God always follows the loss and the suppression and the alteration of God's gracious law and God's lawful grace. The law is gracious and grace is lawful. The law is gracious in that it reveals the holy and majestic character of God. And we need this. The law is gracious in that it provides the standards God wisely insists we follow. And we need this. The law is gracious and was never given as a means of salvation because everyone who ever tried to be saved by keeping the law by design always fails. God made it that way, it can't be done, so it's a stupid thing to do. And people that try to claim that to love the law is to be trying to be saved by the law, that's a lie. It's a lie from the pit. And the law is gracious in that it drives us to our Savior. It drives us to God's remedy that He gave to deal with our guilt that we incurred for violating His very law. And God's law is graciously written on the hearts of every person everywhere in all ages as the true standard, and as that restraining force that keeps us from utter depravity. That keeps us from when we lust, we just rape somebody. When we get angry, we just kill somebody. When we covet, we just steal what we want. The law of God written on our hearts graciously keeps us. It restrains the evil in our culture. And grace is lawful in that God lawfully fulfills all claims of justice in order to grant His grace. The God of grace is himself the sole source of that grace and can't contradict or overrule his law, even by grace. Grace is not an overruling of law. Grace is proper application of the law and doing so in a way to relieve us of that debt. Grace is applied by God to men according to His perfect legal standards, and in keeping with His holy will, which is defined by Him and His law. Isaiah 33, 22, added with, shuffled in with other verses. For the Lord is our judge. Judgment is an act of law. But our Lord is gracious. The Lord is our lawgiver. That's clearly an act of law. But the Lord is gracious. The Lord is our king. He's an administrator of the law. But that Lord is truly gracious. He will save us. By grace are you saved through faith. And how did he do it? By Jesus Christ fulfilling all of the law for us, ratifying the law for us. So the prophet Habakkuk was distressed that the law was not affecting the conduct of the people due to their attempt at autonomy. And now as we go to verse 5, you may notice in your Bible that there's a paragraph marking in your Bible to call your attention to the fact that this is a change in whose words are being declared in this inspired conversation in the Bible. We see here the fact that God is speaking in verse 5. And this is crystal clear when we read verses 5 and 6 together. It says, Look among the nations and watch. Be utterly astounded. For I will work a work in your days which you will not believe, though it were told you. For I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, which marches through the breadth of the earth. And he says here in verse 5 to look, but he's not telling us just to open our eyes so that photons are hitting our optic nerves. He's not telling us just to do that. This is a command to see. to see what I'm showing you and to not miss it. Don't miss this Habakkuk. Don't turn away from this Habakkuk. Do not apostatize from this Habakkuk. I remember when I played baseball 100 years ago, maybe 150 years ago, I forgot. We played together. Our fundamentals coach always said, keep your eye on the ball and watch it all the way into the glove. And if you miss the ball with your glove, then watch it all the way into your nose. Well, God is telling Habakkuk, watch what I'm going to show you and watch it all the way right into your nose because it's going to hit you in the nose. I am sending these Chaldeans and I want you to see, I want you to watch this action that I'm performing. And interestingly, verse 5 also commands him to see God's actions and have, he's commanding Habakkuk to not just see this, but to actually have an emotional response to what he sees. He says, he commands him, be utterly astonished. Now how can you command somebody to be utterly astonished? Well, because he's going to do something that if you're not utterly astonished just because you have turned your back on it, you have dulled your heart to it. You've hardened your heart to it. You're not going to look at it. You are suppressing what you're about to see. Be utterly astonished. And the Hebrew words here are significant because it's one of those rare constructions where God puts the same word in order twice. And he says here, you are to be unceasingly astounded. astounded, are astoundingly astounded. When Joseph was thrown into the pit, he was thrown into the pit pit. It was a deep pit, dark pit. When Jeremiah was in the pit, inescapable, it was the pit pit. God put it that way for emphasis. And here Habakkuk is commanded to see and to be astounded, astounded by what God is going to show him. What you will see will be so astounding that I'm going to shock you, Habakkuk. I, the great and true God who has all things at my disposal to use, Guess what I've decided to use? Guess what I've decided to bring? And it's not what you've been asking for. In fact, Habakkuk, I'm going to send you something that you have not asked for and would never ask for. Habakkuk, I am using an instrument of judgment that deserves judgment itself. My righteous judgment will come from the hand of a particularly unrighteous heathen nation that I happen to have in my hand. And that nation is the nation of the Chaldeans," verse 6 says. And the Chaldeans were very much like ISIS today. Nothing, no evil that you've ever heard perpetrated against mankind by ISIS was not done to the man, used different means. They didn't have cars and guns and bombs back then, but the Chaldeans were basically products of this mentality. The Chaldeans were like ISIS. And you may remember that it was the Chaldeans themselves who instigated Daniel and his friends to be thrown into the fiery furnace. They were very much for burning people alive. So clearly, God's use of these men to bring judgments were not what Habakkuk wanted, but they were designed by God to get the attention of these people, to help them think properly about just who it was that they were ignoring, that they were apostatizing from, who are they offending, and to learn the error of their ways and to turn to righteousness. Now notice, The dose of this medication that God is going to give these people to remedy their spiritual disease. How much medicine does God think is necessary to prescribe and to administer to cure the disease of hard heartedness? How much medicine does God think it necessary to prescribe and administer to cure the disease of rejecting His law? How much medicine does God think necessary to prescribe and administer to cure the disease of not fearing Him? How much medicine does God think it necessary to prescribe and administer to cure the disease of false worship? Well, it's severely high doses of medicine that are called for here. And a severely high dose of medicine is prescribed and administered when the disease is terrible in nature. I would bet everything I own even my firstborn son, that Dr. Hall would never consider prescribing and administering Kibo and radiation for a cold and a headache. Am I still safe? I still have my stuff? I still have my son? Of course not. So God did not overreact. He was the perfect physician prescribing the exact medicine that these people needed. So to use such medicine means that their disease was a great disease, a deadly disease. And the medicine that God would use here was like chemo and radiation. It was the merciless Chaldeans, the Babylonians. So Habakkuk looked. He knew God could do this differently if God wanted to. He knew that God had the power. He knew that God could turn the hearts of people to himself just by saying so. He could easily deliver them from danger at will. And Habakkuk had read the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. He had read Joshua, and Judges, and Ruth, and 1 and 2 Samuel, and Joel, and Isaiah, and Micah, and Jonah, and Nahum, and possibly even Hosea and Amos. They were written already at the time of Habakkuk, they just weren't in the area. He had read Obadiah, which would have scared his socks off. So Habakkuk had the very Word of God and he had the experience to know that God could deliver the children of Israel from people like Pharaoh. God could hold back the water so that his people could cross on dry land, turn around and laugh at the Egyptians as their wheels fell off of their chariots and as the waters come flooding back and drowning those tens of thousands of enemy soldiers. Habakkuk knew that God could turn the hearts of people toward him and had done so as the children of Israel before the Passover had painted their They'd believed and painted their doorposts with the blood of the Lamb to be passed over. Habakkuk believed in God's power and God's love for his people and his justice and his might. So he wanted God to bring the same change of heart in the same easy way that he had brought deliverance to the Israelites that were in Egyptian captivity. And Habakkuk wanted God to deal with the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, in the same way that he had dealt with the Egyptians. But what's happening here? In Habakkuk's mind, things should happen something like this. God is powerful and just and holy. He wants his people to be holy, loving, and just. He can make this happen because he has the power, the ability to change hearts and minds and change actions. And when he does this, He's going to be honored and glorified by his people for this being done in their lives. And as a result, he will not have to then bring pain and suffering and violence and allow injustice to come among the people. But wait, it wasn't happening. The violence is increasing. And so Habakkuk prays harder. And he's thinking, I can't be wrong. It can't be that God doesn't want his name revered. It can't be that God doesn't want hearts to be changed. It can't be that God wants to allow this violence. Things were going exactly the wrong way, Habakkuk thought. So what does Habakkuk deduce? Well, then God must not be listening. If God were listening, then He would most certainly work things out the way I think they ought to be worked out. And don't we all tend to have that logic and operate according to that logic in our lives? Don't we all tend to think and do the same thing? We think that God is sweet in character. We think that he's just a nice guy. We think that he's sitting on a cloud biting his finger nails, just wanting to bless us and pour out goodies on us. We know he's powerful and we know he's good. So we apply that to our situation and we run with it. He can stop my disease. He can stop the disease of my loved one. And because he's a loving God, he surely will bring healing, right? He can protect me and He can stop me from being mistreated at work or at home because He's surely a kind God and surely He will bring me peace and relief. Right? He can prosper me so that I'm not struggling financially because a generous God will bring me prosperity. Right? Well, what's wrong with that? Are those statements true? No, they are not. They are false. It's true that God has the power to do all those things that I mentioned, but God's power is always and only exercised in keeping with His wisdom. and every other infinite attribute that He possesses, He brings into play as He deals with His people. So whatever circumstances right now are in your life, if God doesn't change your life, I want you to be certain that God is not absent, He is not deaf, and He is not a pygmy God. Be certain that God is loving whether or not He brings healing to your loved one. God is kind whether or not He brings you peace and relief from your mistreatment. God is generous whether or not He prospers you financially. God is just whether or not He allows you to suffer injustice. And when we pray, we need to be askers, pleaders, requesters, not demanders. I have no right to demand anything from God. I already have it better than I deserve. We do not tell God that we are wiser than Him. We do not tell God how to be good. How many of us think we're... gooder than God, using Michael J. Hall's word again. But we do. We do. We should not assume that God should ever act the way we want Him to act, even when it seems logical to us. I am not His testimony. He is mine. We are not God. A major difference between God and us is that God never thinks He's us. Sadly, sometimes we think we're Him. And when you come to this truth, you are then in the same place that Habakkuk was in verses 5 through 11. And God replies to Habakkuk's prayers for relief, and His answer is not what Habakkuk thought it should be or wanted it to be. He is not going to turn their hearts back to Him easily, yet. Instead, or as part of the process, He is going to send those violent, fierce, intimidating Chaldeans. Not at all what Habakkuk had in mind. The sovereign God controls every power in history, including these evil and harsh Chaldeans. And I know that this is difficult for us to accept. But we are informed by the very Word of God, and we do not force Him into our mold." Here very clearly, and in the following verses, is this absolute clear truth that God rules, and God controls evil. God Himself is raising up, with His own strength, this evil force, to go against His rebellious people. He is active. He is intentional. And He is precise. And He guides this evil force exactly where He wants it to go. And He uses even evil. Remember, all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. He uses even evil forces as His personal instrument of discipline and judgment. And we make no apology for that. It is the Word of God. is for us to accept and believe God is in control. He uses evil men as instruments of judgment. And as soon as God declares the words in verse 6 about raising up the Chaldeans, Habakkuk should have immediately remembered the words that he would have read when he read Isaiah's scroll. Isaiah 7, 17. The Lord will bring the king of Assyria. Remember the Assyrians, they were bad as the Chaldeans, upon you and your people and your father's house." It's God doing that. And then the next verse says, "...and it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will whistle for the fly." Anybody here ever whistled for a fly and the fly came? I don't think so. If you say so, I'll see you in my confessional booth in a little while and I'll extract some money for an indulgence from you. But God can whistle for the fly. And what does the fly do? A fly does exactly what God says for it to do. And it says that he will whistle for the bee. And what's the bee gonna do? The bee's gonna come. Daniel came a little after. But Daniel 4, 34 and 35, When he wrote those beautiful words in Ephesians 1.11, God works all things according to the counsel of His own will. It didn't say most things there, it says He works all things according to the counsel of His will. So God is not at odds with evil, as though evil were an equal force aligned against His holiness. It is His tool at His command. God is all-powerful and holy and exercises His power over evil to use as He pleases to exercise people on the earth to do what He wants them to do. And this is the God with whom we have to do. This is the one true living God before whom we should bow in humble reverence and submit. The Chaldeans are instruments under His control, in His hand. They will accomplish God's will in the lives of these people. And Habakkuk says, It's not at all what he was praying for, not at all how he thought God should exercise His power, not at all, not in the least. And the lesson for Habakkuk and for us from these verses is not to presume or demand how God will choose to exercise His great character or power in our lives. We are to humbly pray and know that God has a purpose for everything under heaven. There's nothing that is out from under that statement. Everything under heaven, He has a purpose for. And He is using it as He sees fit. He does all His holy will in our lives. So we need not complain, just ask. Wait and trust His ways, even when they're uncomfortable. We can trust His heart even when we cannot trace His mind. And here is the truth. God's plan is better than our plan. God's way is better than our way. God's plan of bringing the Chaldeans to kick the butts of the Hebrews, to humble them, to show them His power in His way, is the best way. And if Habakkuk or you were God, if Habakkuk were God for a week, I tell you this last week, if you were God for a week, at the end of the week, you could look back and you wouldn't have done one thing differently. You wouldn't change one thing about God's plan. If you, and you don't, but if you loved people as much as God loves people, you would do things exactly the way God does things. If you knew God's way and had his power and wanted the ultimate good, you would do things exactly the way God does things. God loves his people and he protects his people ultimately. So we need to learn to think in ultimates rather than the right here, right now, today. And God will not allow his people to be destroyed. In fact, he will, as we will learn later in this small book, he will prevail against all comers. God wins big, but it will probably not look like the victory that we would like to prescribe or write out for ourselves. So trust him, hang on. So pray expectantly, but not demandingly. Rejoice that you pray to a sovereign God and not to a pygmy God. Rest in Him because He is worthy to be rested in. Rejoice in Him because He is great and He is working His purpose out in you and for you. and you wouldn't change a thing if you knew what He knows. Amen? Amen. Prepare yourself to receive the supper of the Lord.