All right, good to see everyone this morning. I know that's a season where a lot of sickness goes around, so people are probably not offended if you don't shake hands. If you do, that's okay as well, but just be mindful of our older folks, especially, and be mindful of one another. as sickness comes along, and then there's always a season in the future where we'll be able to, you know, fondly, you know, embrace or whatever one another, and just be mindful. And be, of course, in prayer for those who have, during this time, come down with an illness and just be mindful of your brothers and sisters in the Lord. If you would, take your copy of the scriptures, turn all the way back in the Old Testament to the book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk. I'm back at chapter 1, and we'll be looking at verses 12 to the end of the chapter, as well as verse 1 of chapter 2. So from 1, 12, to chapter 2 and verse 1. I don't think it's quite the same as what your bulletin says. The bulletin goes a little further with the passage, but this is what I would like you to look at and follow with me as I read from the New King James Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Habakkuk chapter one and verse 12. Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have appointed them for judgment. O rock, you have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wickedness. Why do you look on those who deal treacherously and hold your tongue when the wicked devours? A person more righteous than he, why do you make men like fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler over them? They take up all of them with a hook. They catch them in their net and gather them in their dragnet. Therefore, they rejoice and are glad. Therefore, they sacrifice to their net and burn incense to their dragnet. because by them their share is sumptuous and their food plentiful. Shall they therefore empty their net and continue to slay nations without pity? I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart and watch to see what he will say to me and what I will answer when I am corrected. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Thank you, Father. for your Holy Word, for the struggle that we'll see today, a struggle that is not an unwarranted struggle. It's a struggle that every Christian goes through. as we wrestle in prayer, seeing the world around us, yet beholding your glory and your beauty. We pray, Lord, that we would work through this together, that we would be strengthened in the faith this day as we give you glory in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. So this little book at the end of the Old Testament, Habakkuk, could be remembered by just the idea of a backpack, a burden. Think of these young men that walk the trails of City Forest, which is a park near us. They have this sport, they call it rucking. Have you ever heard of this? Anybody? And they put weights in a backpack, like 50 pounds extra, and they walk around with it to build endurance. Habakkuk has a burden. He expressed it in the very first verses of the book. He's crying out because he looks at his own people, the people of Judah, and their living lives that are not consistent with the word of God, acting violently, contentiously, ungodly. And he struggles with that, so he cries out to the Lord, asking, Lord, how long can this go on? And the Lord gave him a response last week, which really wasn't to his liking. And what was the response, anybody? Remember what the first response was? Keeping you on your toes today, anybody? I know it's not always easy to chime up in a morning service. Well, he called on a nation that was more wicked than Judah, to come and be the actors of judgment upon Judah. So they were the Chaldeans, the Babylonians. Now if you were to look at the geography, Kerry and I were talking about this this week, the Babylonians had to travel about 700 or 800 miles, because they didn't go through the Arabian Desert to conquer Judah. They came all the way up through Assyria. They took Nineveh. The Assyrian nobles were running from them. Carchemish, they took Haran, and then they started working down the coast, coming towards Judah, and their judgment was impending. The Babylonians are the Chaldeans in early, the second, the first response in the book of Habakkuk, and they were coming, and they're a fierce people, and we described them last week, how God, and we don't understand how he's able to use things that we understand as evil and he can weave them for good and for his glory without being culpable and accused of being evil because God is holy. He's righteous. There's no shadow of turning within him. Every good and perfect gift comes from him. That's our Lord. These things seem very difficult to reconcile, but that's what Habakkuk was dealing with. So the first week we saw his cry to God, then we see the Lord's response, and it wasn't quite to his liking as we read today. Now Habakkuk is wrestling with God's response. There's a proper and an improper way to question God. Now, somebody might say, you should never question God, but you know that that's not true, actually. That's not true. There is a proper way to question the Lord, a faithful way, and there's a faithless way. There's a way that's fruitful and a way that is fruitless. There's a way that leads to growth. or sanctification, and there's a way that leads to a non-growth process, a bitter way, a tender way, appropriate, inappropriate, whatever way you want to describe it. There are two ways to question God. One is a way that is full of faith and trusting in him, but not understanding. It's saying, why, Lord, I believe you, I trust you. Almost like in the New Testament where the individual says, Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. Help me to understand. There's another way to question. It is not based on genuine saving faith. It's skepticism. It's looking at God trying to poke holes in his existence, doubting his authority. Now Spurgeon says this, he says, it's no sin to inquire of your God. It is no sin to pour out your griefs before him. Let us not fear to bring even our doubts and difficulties to the mercy seat. Sproul said, there's a difference between a reverent question and an irreverent demand. The former seeks understanding, the latter calls God's character into question. Packer, I don't know if you remember J.I. Packer, wonderful, beautiful mind, author, Sovereignty of God and Salvation is a little book he wrote that I recommend highly. He says this, the Bible shows us faithful men and women questioning God. not to challenge his authority, but to align their understanding with his purposes. Their prayers teach us that lament is part of faith, not its opposite. In fact, the Psalms are filled with this process. So if somebody says you should never question the Lord, that's not true. The Psalms are filled with individuals who wrestle with God, struggle, but yet remain in belief and are faithful. And that process leads to sanctification. It increases our faith, shores us up. Now, wrestling with God is appropriate, but there is an inappropriate way that's mentioned in the scriptures as well. The Apostle Paul, in Romans chapter nine, talks about an individual who questions God, saying, why does God find fault when he just makes everything his own way? He's in control, he's in power, right? This is Romans nine, 19 and 20. Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will? And the answer is, but indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing form say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? In Romans nine, Paul references instances where man is not believing in God, but is doubting God, doubting his character, doubting his authority. It's a skeptical mindset, a mindset that is not full of belief, but full of unbelief. The questioning that Habakkuk uses is a faithful and a faith-filled questioning. And it will lead to him, and at the end of the book you're gonna see, he kind of comes full circle. Just like any lament, if you read the Psalms that are the laments, they usually start out and they take a deep dive, right? I remember, Matthew, you did quite a bit of deep diving into the Psalms, but the penitential laments were like this. The psalmist goes, and he goes down into a deep dive, and then he starts to come up, and he sees the glory of the Lord in the land of the living. He rejoices in God. Did you know we're like that? Our lives are like that. Our spiritual walk is like a penitential lament, and that's a part of the faith journey. Everything is not always rosy in terms of, I don't know if, I try not to use pop culture references, but there was a movie called The Lego Movie a few years back, and this little character, his only expression was everything is awesome. Well, that's not always true, right? Sometimes we go through struggles, And we go through those struggles taking hold of God in faith, trusting Him, and we can come out the other side by His grace, for His glory, seeing His goodness. So there's an appropriate questioning, an inappropriate questioning. Habakkuk is doing the former, not the latter. So let's take a look at verse 12, and here we see, as we dive into this passage, this is now Habakkuk's response to God after the Lord had responded to him about using the Chaldeans as an instrument of judgment. And he begins His fruitful struggle here of questioning begins with a reflection on God's attributes. So when we enter into this phase of struggle of faith, we begin by looking at the attributes of God, and that's what he does in verse 12. He starts out and he cries out, are you not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We shall not die, you can just kind of feel his, he's going back and forth, he's conflicted. You have appointed them for judgment, oh rock, he cries out. You have marked them for correction. He takes hold first of God's eternality. He says you're from everlasting. What does that mean even? What's its significance? Moses prayed a prayer similar to what we read here. Moses, as recorded in Psalm 90, he said, before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you, our God, from as far back as we go to as far forward in the future, The Lord himself has not changed. Tozer noted this. He said, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God, said Moses in the spirit. From the vanishing point to vanishing point would be another way to say it, quite keeping with the words that Moses used then. The mind looks backwards in time till the dim past vanishes, then turns and looks into the future till thought and imagination collapse from exhaustion, and God is at both ends, unaffected by either. The everlasting nature of God ties in with another attribute, his immutability. He doesn't change. He remains steadfast in his way Notice how in the same passage, Habakkuk cries out, oh my rock, you're my rock. The rock nature of God is his immutability. You have appointed them for judgment, oh rock. You have marked them for correction. God's immutability means his promises and purposes are reliable. What he says is true. His word is faithful. We take hold of his word even in the midst of great trial where we can't see the end from the beginning because we anchor our souls in the everlasting God, the rock. We set our feet on his attributes because he's firm. He calms the soul. He's immutable. Not only is he immutable, but in verse 12, we see he's sovereign. He says, you've appointed them for judgment, O Rock. You've marked them for correction. We trust in an everlasting God, an unchanging God, a God who is in control. And as we go through trial, we take hold of that. As we see struggle, we take hold of his sovereignty. And we also take hold of his holiness. Notice Habakkuk says, oh Lord, my holy one, my holy one. The Lord himself is holy, he's distinct, there is none like him. Nothing, no creature. No creature is like him, he is alone. His holiness speaks of his otherliness, meaning there is no one like him, he's a creator and everything else is a creation. These are the attributes that Habakkuk goes to in his mind. When we go through great struggle and we wrestle with the circumstances of life, as dire as they may be, we find similar strength when we reflect on God. When the rubber meets the road, right? You're in the midst of a conflict. By the way, There are a lot of bad things that happen, even to believers, right? I mean, we like to have life without any ill. We like a flowery bed of ease, one of the hymnists wrote. You know that's not the case. We just live a little longer and we can see that there are conflicts and there are struggles. But when we go back, the first thing we do in reflection and in working through this process of struggling and wrestling with God, we've got to go back to his character, his attributes, and we've got to fasten our feet upon him. When all else is failing, God never fails. When all else is falling away, he doesn't change. His word is true. He's faithful. He's in control. Those are words of comfort. The world doesn't have that. Notice that Habakkuk says, my holy one. He has a relationship with God, right? You and I as a believer in Christ, we take hold of God personally. He cares for us, he calls us. He loves you with an everlasting love. He is your holy one. We have that. We have that comfort. So that's how we begin the struggle, but the struggle continues. The faithful struggle of questioning continues, and it continues with Habakkuk as he sees what he perceives to be a contradiction between God's attributes and the circumstances of the conflict. Look at verse 13. He cries out, he says, you are of purer eyes than to behold evil. and you cannot look on wickedness, why do you look on those who deal treacherously? And hold your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he. So, he's not talking about God seeing evil in an omniscient way, right? The scripture says, makes very clear that the eyes of the Lord's omniscient behold things that are both good and evil. all men, good and bad, with their actions. But God does not look upon the sins of men with pleasure, nor approve of them. And that's what he's talking about here. Habakkuk's crying out and saying, Lord, you're too pure to behold evil, and his perception is that he's approving of it. And that's really not the case. But there's an expectation that God's holiness when it confronts evil, should cause a great tremor. Remember on Mount Sinai when the law was given, the mountain was filled with smoke, it trembled, it shook. One of the psalmists says, when the Lord looks on the earth, it trembles. He touches the hills and they smoke. His presence has an effect. And so here Habakkuk's crying out and saying, Lord, Look at all that you've taught us. He's a man who believed, and it was a man who was taught in the law of Moses, and he remembers back how the holiness of God, as it confronted man, it caused the earth to tremble. Habakkuk wrestles with this seeming contradiction. How can these evil Chaldeans, the Babylonians that are being used for punishment, How can you look at that and not do something? You know, we have similar struggles, don't we? We can look at the earth around us, and if all we're looking at are the evil things, and by the way, depending on what news channels you watch, that's probably what you're mostly getting, all the evil. You know, one of my friends said, well, I'm, I had to have my husband switch news channels. He was getting too grumpy, right? He was just focusing in on the things that were evil. And as we look around us, we do see that there are circumstances in this life which unfold, which do not seem to align with God's holiness. And one of the questions that, it's just a logical question that comes is, Lord, if you were so holy that the mountains trembled and smoked and shook, How is it that these things are allowed to go on? Wrestling with an ancient problem, by the way, this problem of evil. The world has dealt with this, right? If you go way back in history, there was a Greek philosopher, his name was Epicurus. He came up with the arguments against God based on evil, called the logical argument against evil. It went something like this. And it's logical because it's deductive. If you agree with all the points, then you agree with the conclusion. That's why it's called the logical argument. It's first premise is if God is willing to prevent evil but unable, he's not omnipotent. That's the first premise. The second is if God is able to prevent evil but unwilling, he's not omnibenevolent, or he's not good. The third, if God is both willing and able, then evil should not exist. And the fourth is evil exists so God cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. And this is something that, by the way, if you listen carefully, this sort of thing gets repackaged and thrown at Christians all the time, right? This is an argument that comes out. And so the world wrestles with this from the perspective of evil, but like Epicurus, They don't believe in the holy God. There's a lack of belief, a lack of faith. And so it comes at God from a perspective of judging him, judging his quality, his character, his attributes. It comes from a perspective of skepticism. There were other arguments similar that affected probably American culture more. More recently was David Hume. He was an English philosopher, and his thinking really did influence some of the early ideas of our country. There were a lot of Christian values, and there were a lot of deistic values as well. He came to a similar conclusion. Both men didn't believe in God. They did not have that predicate of faith. As they approached life, all they had was the here and the now. Their philosophies became a philosophy of seeking happiness here because this is all there is. There was no hope, no eternal hope. Part of the wrestling, part of the struggle is trying to to work through these issues where you see these evil things happening, and yet we know that God is good. As a believer in Christ, we come at it from a perspective where we come at it by faith. We believe the Lord is good. We believe that he is sovereign, as the author Habakkuk did. and the Lord himself is gonna bring that together and coalesce it in our heart. He'll settle the soul, and that's what happens. This is a process. There's an unsettling that we go through, especially when something's happening directly to us. Maybe you're in the workplace environment and you're watching a person who's evil. They're doing evil things. And they're wounding people, and you're saying, Lord, why is this allowed? And you're wrestling with it. But you're a Christian, right? You're a believer. And as you're wrestling through those things, the struggle is so important. And then coming out full of faith in the way that Habakkuk ultimately will is another part of the process. So we see that first of all, Habakkuk struggled reconciling aspects of God's attributes with what was going on. The second struggle is, in this fruitful struggle, as he questions God, he sees the helplessness of men. at the expense of wicked men. He's looking out and he's gonna see people, and he's gonna say, look at these shepherdless, rulerless people who are really quasi-innocent, just getting swept along by evil, all right? This is like the news every morning, right? We look out there and we say, how could this have happened, right? The terrible thing that happened in Israel in the past year, right? Where individuals come in and they just kill people, right? That's a horrible thing. It's horrible. No way to look at it. And you look and you say, why did these people get caught in this crossfire? And in verse 14, you can see Habakkuk's rationale. He says, why, Lord, he doesn't say Lord there, but he says, why do you make men like fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler over them? There, you know, in the fish of the sea, right, there's lots of them, we don't really, Fish don't have a leader, right? They just kind of school around and they instinctually go where they need to go. And fishermen, they fish for them and they take them. He's comparing what he sees as Judah or the innocent people who will be kind of overrun in this process. He's saying, why do you allow this? Humanity is likened to fish and creeping animals without a ruler for protection. The author here suggests that God has allowed his people to become vulnerable to the Chaldeans, leaving them without leadership or defense. You know, and this really brings into question why difficult things happen to helpless, vulnerable persons. Up in the commotion, there were a lot of people in Judah who would be negatively affected by Nebuchadnezzar. who were like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, right? They're whisked off to Babylon, and they're men who are full of faith, all right? When you question and say, why does it have to happen to these people? Why do these difficult things occur? Part of that, in answering this, you know, the Lord, when he ministered on the earth, there's a passage in Mark's gospel that says, when he looked out and he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion. Because, and I'm reading from Mark 9, chapter 36, verse 36, it says, he was moved with compassion for them because they were weary and scattered as sheep having no shepherd. He looked about and he had great compassion for a people who had no spiritual direction And of course, we kind of have that in our own souls. As we look out into the world and we see the world, we have compassion for a world that is lost. All of us who are like sheep, we've gone astray. We've turned everyone to our own way. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. At the end of the day, the helpless multitudes have been there. They're always there. There's multitudes that are being swept up in Judah, but guess what? The multitudes exist in the world today all over the place. There are bad things that seem to happen to helpless people. Our compassion for them should not be one of judgment or derision. but it is seeing that God and His sovereignty has a bigger picture and a bigger plan. Out of the multitudes that Christ ministered, some were brought to the redeeming and saving grace. In the process of God judging Judah, there were some, a remnant by His election of grace, who would turn and they would place their trust in Him. In God's sovereignty and His plan, and we don't know how this all comes together, but he is doing a work of redemption. He's drawing souls to himself. He was doing it back then, he's doing it now. He was doing a work that was bigger than the comprehension of our own minds. If we were to do it our way, I think we would say, oh no, let's take the struggle out of the equation. I would, but that's not the way the Lord has it. The fields, by the way, are white under the harvest. Did you know that? The Lord said that. He said the fields are white, the multitudes that are out there, swept along by troubles and trials, these wildfires, right? There are a lot of innocent people with their houses that were burned down. People that really, but God uses these things. and he can use them for his glory and our good and he can use it for the gracious work of redemption as a part of his plan. As we look on and we look at verse 15, the fruitful struggle of questioning God looks at the ruthlessness and wickedness and the gloating and the rejoicing. It struggles with it. Verse 15 says, then they take all of them with a hook. He's talking about the people who were kind of helpless. The Babylonians are coming, and it's like he says, they're like fishermen taking a hook and just reaping, I guess, what would you call that, where you're not catching fish by the mouth, but you're, what's it called? Snagging them, okay, just snagging fish, right? That's the idea here. Innocent people are captured and plundered, and the Babylonians, it says, they are glad at the misfortune of others. They see somebody who's succeeding in the world, and they're succeeding, and they're doing great, but the way they get to their position is by stepping on everybody else. Have you ever watched that occur? All the time, all the time. Some of the bright up-and-coming stars in most corporations are like that, right? You wonder how many people they stepped on to get to where they are, how many people they stabbed in the back, and it does happen. Not with everyone. Not everyone's like that, but many are. David would contrast in Psalm 37. He'd say, don't fret because of evildoers. nor be envious of workers of iniquity, they will soon be cut down like the grass and wither as a green herb. Psalm 37 continues, verse seven, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him, don't fret, because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Same psalm, a little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of many wicked. for the arms of the wicked shall be broken. The Lord upholds the righteous. And what's gonna happen with the Chaldeans is this is a temporary thing. This isn't gonna be something that lasts. We have to remember that. As we look about in the world and we see maybe unrighteousness prospering, that is only for a season. As a believer in Christ, we have an eternal hope. We lay up treasures in heaven. We focus on things that are above, right? We're not focused on the things here. We don't use people for our own advantage, right? We don't do that. As Christians, we want to be, as much as we can, givers, right? We wanna be givers. not takers, sometimes we do need to take. When we're given a gift, right, and we graciously do so, there's a time for that, but it's more blessed to give than to receive, and the philosophy of the world is contrary to that. In verse 16, it continues, the fruitful struggle of questioning God looks at the shamelessness of the idolatry of the wicked and struggles with it. you know, and this is so common, right? Look at verse 16. Let me read that. It says, therefore they sacrifice to their net, and they burn incense to their dragnet, because by them their share is sumptuous, and their food plentiful. I think we talked about this the other week, the Babylonians capture and they plunder, and at the end of the day they, they, attribute their success to their own hands, their own nets, their own strength, right? If we watch enough sports, we see this, right? The guy after the game says, well, why do you think you had such a good name? Well, I'm just the most awesome guy in the world, right? Once in a while, you'll have a guy who's pointing up to the Lord. I do love to see that in sports. I do love to see genuine believers in sports who say, the reason is because I give glory to God because He made it so I can run and breathe and walk and work hard for His glory, right? And it bothers us when we see somebody full of pride and they're exclaiming, yeah, the reason that we're doing so well is because we're worshiping our own strength. The Chaldeans compared are compared to fishermen. They capture and destroy nations like fish, and then they are glad at the misfortune of others. When they succeed and someone else doesn't, they rejoice in it, which is absolutely contrary to the Christian faith, right? When we see others, we rejoice with those that do rejoice. When a brother is exalted in the congregation, we're not jealous and envious, right? We're like, praise God. You got a promotion, brother, sister? Praise God. Not like, oh, I wish I had a promotion, you know? It's like, no, no, stop. That's not how we think. As Christians, but the Chaldeans, the Babylonians were ruthless conquerors. They trusted in their own strength, their own idolatry. And this was not the way. And this is the part of the struggle. And we struggle with these things. We look about in the world around us, and we say, how can these things be? And yet, we're trusting in God, who we know is from everlasting. He's holy, He's immutable, He's sovereign. We struggle. The faithful, by the way, struggle. And finally, in verse 17, they question God, contemplating how these things keep going on and on. All right, verse 17, we read, here's Habakkuk, he says, shall they therefore empty their net and continue to slay nations without pity? Right, it's just going on and on. It seems like it never stops. And that's one perspective that we can, that's actually not a true perspective of the world. If we look at the world and say the world succeeds, it will always succeed, it's doing evil, maybe I should do that. Because all we can see in our little stilted vision is a world that's doing evil and succeeding. That's not true. It's only for a season. It's only for a while. We need to be reminded of that. Right? Be reminded of that. God is using evil for judgment and correction. The Lord limits evil. He redeems evil for good. He'll judge evil ultimately. There's a judgment day coming. There's a time when he's gonna wipe it all away. Toward the end in that eternal state in Revelation chapter 21, it says God will wipe away every tear. He'll take away death, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain. They will pass away. God works with evil, even though he's not culpable, he's not responsible, he's not the creator of it, but he's not governed by it. He doesn't control him, he's greater. He allows evil somehow in the sovereign plan of God to display his glory and to bring about good even in our lives, even through trial. Now as we end today in Habakkuk chapter two, we read verse one. Here Habakkuk has expressed his complaint to God and now he's gonna wait. So a part of the fruitful struggle of expressing in a proper way, struggling, wrestling with God, questioning God, it involves coming to this point where we wait, where we wait. Here it says in verse one, I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart and watch to see what he will say to me and what I will answer when I am corrected. What's a rampart? Anybody? It's a Hebrew word. It's got a little bit of a multiple, like what I call pools of thought, but it seems to be a mound, maybe a little elevated fortress. He sets himself there. He's sitting there in isolation, and he's waiting. He's waiting on the Lord. Now, he's a prophet. Things were a little bit different with Habakkuk than with us. We don't sit and wait for the Lord to speak with us audibly, but he does speak with us in many ways through his word, right? He works also through the Holy Spirit, and we are very cautious, relying on inner promptings, but the Lord is not beyond that or incapable of that, because he works with his word, and he works through the law of conscience, enlightening the path of the believer But one thing we wait for is we wait for the settling of our soul. When we're wrestling with God, we're wrestling with the things that we don't fully understand, we wait on the Lord, and our soul ultimately will come to a point where we're settled. The mental agitation that's there, and you know what I'm talking about. Every time we're in the middle of a trial, we go through it. There's a struggle. And we come to a point where we rest in Him. Habakkuk says, I'm gonna wait on the Lord. I'm gonna wait for Him. I'm gonna wait patiently. Those that wait on the Lord, Isaiah says, shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. The process of waiting on the Lord and the struggle to get there is one that results in renewed strength. And we'll see that as it unfolds in this book. The promise of renewed strength is given to those who patiently wait on the Lord. Are you struggling? Do you struggle? Are you in the midst of a struggle? It seems like we're always on one end of the cycle or in the middle of it, right? Where we're wrestling with God or we're coming out victorious with our minds renewed in his strength. Listen, if you're a believer, you have faith in a God who is sovereign, he's immutable, he's from everlasting, he's a God who's holy, and he's a God who loves you. And he loves you with, guess what? An everlasting love. As a believer in Christ, the Lord has said, I will never leave you. I will not forsake you. The Lord never leaves us. He never forsakes us. He's always faithful. He loves us with an everlasting love. That's the God we believe in. And that's the God of the Bible. May God bless us as we continue in our study this day and as our minds and hearts are set upon him. Thank you, Lord. Let's pray. Father, we do rejoice in you. We rejoice in your holy word. We wrestle just like the prophet. We wrestle with things in this world that we do not understand, but we go back to you and we rest in you and your holiness. Your faithfulness, so many attributes which strengthen us to the core. You are such a blessing to us. Thank you for your people. Thank you for this local church, this body of believers, Berean Baptist, Lord. We pray that as we, each of us individually, work through and wrestle with you and seek the triumph, the renewing of the mind, the strength that comes, as Isaiah has said, Lord, help us to hold one another up in prayer and in affection, Lord, as we give you glory in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Thank you. Amen. If you would stand with me please.