telling Janelle on the way up here that John MacArthur wouldn't be happy with me today because I'm not doing just a couple verses. I'm going to do an entire book of the Old Testament. I want you to get your Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, we have a few Bibles that are in front of you. And I want you to turn to the book of Habakkuk. It's a little tiny book, fairly near the end of the Old Testament. You have a few minutes to turn there while I kind of prepare you for what it is that he's dealing with in this book. I want to take you back to about 1400 BC, sometime around that time. And I want you to think about being in the middle of a wilderness around Mount Sinai. And God has been speaking to Moses in terms of the covenant. The book of Deuteronomy is a record of this covenant treaty. You can read the entire book of Deuteronomy as a covenant treaty document of what God was doing in those days with Israel. Deuteronomy is filled with both laws and, believe it or not, prophecy. One particular prophecy concerned a time some 350 years or so in the future when Israel would break covenant with God, their king, and demand to be like all the other nations around them. And I want to read this for you. It's found in Deuteronomy 17, verses 14 through 20. It says, when you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me. You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose one from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother. He must not acquire many horses for himself. He shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest he turn his heart away. He shall not acquire for himself excess silver and gold. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests, and it shall be with him. And he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers." Now, 350 years later, that prophecy was fulfilled. Madness had racked the intervening years when they were going into the land and conquering it, and then they were just living with judges. Anarchy was the rule of the land. The book of Judges ends with these words, everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So the people come to Samuel, the judge and the prophet of Israel, and they said, now appoint us a king to judge us like all the nations. Almost word for word what is read in the prophecy. But it says, this thing displeased Samuel. And the Lord said to Samuel, obey the voice of the people and all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. They are simply doing what they have done to me ever since I brought them out of Egypt, God says. Now, the date is about 1050 B.C., the place is Jerusalem. Four hundred years of kings and of judges, and it had come to this. Learn them and show them the ways of the king who shall rule over them. He will take your sons and draft them into the army. God says he will turn your people into slaves. You will reap his harvest of war. He will take your daughters to be cooks and bakers. He will take your land and give it to his servants. He will tax you. Then you will cry out to me, but it says, finishing that section up, In Samuel, I will not answer you in that day. I will not answer you in that day. It says the people did not heed Samuel's warning from God. They refused to listen and they said, no, send us a king. Put him over us so that we can be like all the nations. That our king may judge us and go out before us to fight our battles. So what does God do? He chooses Saul to be king. Even though he wasn't from the line of prophecy from the tribe of Judah. And he did this in order to teach the people a lesson. Saul would have been president in our own country. He was tall and handsome. He had the face made for television. Which seems to be pretty much all that matters to Americans anymore in politics, doesn't it? But Saul was wicked. And this proved to be the way that most of the kings of Israel would end up being. After the years of grace, when God gave David and Solomon to rule, the kingdom was divided. Rehoboam came to power in the south, in Judah, and he sought the counsel of his young advisors, spurning the counsel of the old wise men of Israel that had ruled with Solomon. And this is what they told Rehoboam to do. It became kind of a precedent for the entire rest of Israel's history with kings. They said, Tell the people who asked you to make their hard burden of Solomon lighter. Have you ever thought about that? I think Solomon's this great, wonderful king. He built this house and palace and temple for God, but he did it with slave labor from his own people. So the people come to Rehoboam and say, take this away from us. And the people say, no, no, this is what you tell them. Say, my little finger is thicker than my father's thighs. Whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I'm going to add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. Here's the point of this steady decline of Israel. Under this kind of leadership, what do you think the nation of Israel began to look like? It isn't hard to guess, is it? Wicked, oppressive, uncaring towards the poor and the alien and the widow. idolatrous and violent. Now, 400 years or so later takes us to about 600 B.C. The northern half of the kingdom of Israel, which is called Israel, has fallen to the Assyrian Empire decades earlier. And these brutal savages murdered and raped and took the people into slavery. But God preserved the southern kingdom, Judah. Yet, Scripture says she didn't learn a single thing. In fact, as Ezekiel tells us, she became more wicked than her older sister in the north. More idolatrous, more corrupt, more violent. Less and less people even knew who God was. The law, the very heart and soul of Israel was actually lost. Can you imagine that? No one alive even knew what God had said or what He had done in years gone by. True religion had become folk superstition, a collection of pagan traditions and whispers of what God had done in the days of bygone glory, which God they didn't even really care. Now the end was upon Judah. But see, the people living in 600 A.D. would not have suspected that the end was coming upon them. That's exactly why they continued in their sin, even though Israel had fallen. They didn't believe that God was behind what happened to Israel. They didn't believe that. To them, everything was going on the way that it always had. Times were good, and then times were bad. An economy was good, and then they go into a recession. And the rich are happy, and that's really all that matters. It was simply the way that all nations were. It's just the way of the world. There's no reason to think that it would ever change. But the Lord had a remnant that he preserved, and a few righteous people that were left in the land, and they were disturbed at a profound level. True religion had been passed down from generation to generation through the families. And God was still speaking at this time through the prophets. And one of those prophets now went by the name of Habakkuk. This little book tells the story of the struggle of the righteous during times of great sadness, random violence, and terrible idolatry. Today I want to tell you about this book. You can divide the book of Habakkuk, it's only three chapters, into really two parts. The first two chapters are the prophet who is speaking on behalf of Israel. It's the prophet wrestling with God in the face of titanic evil. Perhaps you can understand why I chose this book today. The prophet and the Lord exchange words back and forth until chapter 3 when Habakkuk composes a majestic song of faith in response to God's answer to his question, which is basically why. That's what I titled the sermon today. Just simply why. Now I want you to see, without even looking at any of the details, just the outline of the book, you can learn a great lesson from this. In God's Word, we find the saints wrestling with God's mysterious ways. They question Him. They wonder in great bewilderment at what He is doing. And God responds to these saints of old. And what He tells them causes them to worship Him. You see? Not to doubt His goodness, not to question His plan, but to worship the One who sustains all things by His breath and upholds all things by just His Word alone. What Israel did not understand as a nation, these Christians of old knew perfectly well. God is the absolute monarch of Israel. Not any of these people that they had put over themselves. He is the Sovereign and Holy One. whose judgments are just and every way is good. Now, take your Bibles, and I'm going to lead you through this book. This is the complaint of Habakkuk after it opens with this is the oracle of Habakkuk. Verses 2 through 4. How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you violence, but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are always before me. There is strife and conflict abound. Therefore, the law is paralyzed and justice never prevails. The wicked him and the righteous, so that justice is perverted. Now, what Habakkuk is asking here is basically the age-old question that philosophers call the problem of evil. But I want you to think of the context. This is Habakkuk living in a day that's not unlike our own, when violent crime is so completely out of control that students taking high school classes in Littleton, Colorado, or college courses in Blacksburg, Virginia, or going shopping in a mall in Omaha, Nebraska, or worshipping in Brookfield, Wisconsin, or our own son and brother doing nothing but warming up his car in Anchorage, Alaska, are murdered for no reason. These are not anomalies of a good civilization. These are the marks of a profoundly sick and dying civilization. One that is on the cusp of self-annihilation. And those within are too terrified by the truth to look at it in the face. Except for maybe the victims and God's people, which sadly often overlap. This troubled the Prophet. He wonders why the righteous are forced to look upon evil personally. See that in verse three? Why do you make me look at injustice? Now, so often when we deal with the question of the problem of evil, we stop here. We stop at ourselves, at our loss, at the wrong that's been done to us. But the prophet does not stop here. He wonders why a holy God, whom he says in verse 12, he says, your eyes are so pure you can't even look upon evil. Why does that God tolerate what's done to him? Why do you tolerate wrong? It says in verse three. I want to ask you. In the face of what has happened to us this week, when evil abounds, is that your concern? Do you not realize that evil is first and foremost an attack on God? He has been putting up with it for thousands of years. That is how long his patience extends. Evil does not fit his nature, yet he lets it continue. Now, if we were to stop here, we'd be guilty of falling into the same logical trap as the atheist who does not care about either what God has done in the past about evil or what he is going to do in the future to put an end to it. What does the atheist say? He says, you know, if God is all powerful and he doesn't stop evil, then he is evil and he's not to be worshipped. Or he says, if he wants to stop evil, but he doesn't, then it must be because he can't. And so therefore he's not powerful, and so therefore we shouldn't worship him. Now the atheist presupposes in those questions that God has not done anything in the past to stop evil, and that he will not do anything in the future to stop it either. He has stacked the deck in his favor before he ever begins to play the game. Atheism is completely biased from the get-go, something that they don't often admit. But I want you to look at how God answers the prophet Habakkuk. He says, Look at the nations and watch, verse 5, and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told. Now, that little phrase is rife with irony, and I want you to think about this. What is God doing? Well, he's telling Habakkuk what he's going to do. But it says he won't even believe it when it's told to him. Now, later in the book, of course, Habakkuk will believe it. For a very important reason that we will see in chapter 2, verse 4. That reason is that the righteous live by his faith. But those who do not live by faith, they won't believe God. Even when he tells them, and then it happens, they still will not believe. If they can't put it in a test tube, then it must not be real. That's what they think. Their natural eyes are blinded to spiritual things, even though God has revealed the future to them before it ever happens. And then it comes to pass exactly as he said that it would. Now, remember, Habakkuk's in a place where this predicted future has not yet occurred. Keep that in mind when we come to the Song of Faith at the end. Now, God's prophecy is detailed and specific. He says, I'm going to raise up the Babylonians. Who are they? The ruthless and impetuous people who sweep across the whole earth and seize dwelling places not their own. He would have known exactly what was going on because Assyria was going down in power and Babylon was becoming the power of the world as that was being said. Now, a long, detailed description of their lawless and godless ways takes place in the next few verses, and the Lord concludes in verse 11 that these people are so unconcerned with what they're going to do to you that it says, they will just sweep past like the wind and go on. They're going to think about you. You're nothing to them. These are guilty men whose own strength is their God. So what is the purpose of God's response? That's His response. Well, it's to tell Israel that God's justice is swiftly coming upon them because of their own wickedness. Contrary to what it looked like, God is not letting evil go unchecked, Habakkuk, even though he thinks that it is. This is not an easy lesson to see while you're in the midst of great suffering and evil in your own life. We only seem to be able to look as far as our own noses sometimes. Habakkuk has not seen any vindication here, has he? But he was quite concerned with the kind of vindication that God says that he's going to bring. What is the problem? What's the problem with this? Isn't it obvious? How in the world can God judge evil with something that's even more evil than that? Israel is wicked and violent. That's true. But by God's own admission, Babylon is even more so. He says they're a law unto themselves. They promote their own honor. And on and on it goes. Now, surely it can't be that God will do away with evil by using something more evil, can he? What kind of an answer is that? Well, that's what takes up Habakkuk's next complaint. This complaint is mixed with faith and doubt. Look at verse 12. Oh, Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die. Well, what's the faith? He says, Oh, Lord, are you not from everlasting? Habakkuk knows that God is the eternal one. There's no one like him. Where's the doubt? He says, We will not die. As one commentary says, Habakkuk cannot see the justice in Judah's being punished by an even more wicked nation. And he thinks that the Babylonians surely would not be allowed to conquer Judah completely. I think that's actually kind of funny. Habakkuk reacts exactly like God said that he would. Remember, God said you wouldn't believe it even if you were told. And what does Habakkuk do? Once he's told, he doesn't believe it. And he says so. We're not going to die. Right there in the prophecy fulfillment within just a couple of verses. The next six verses begin with another declaration of faith. O Lord, you have appointed them to execute judgment. O Rock, you have ordained them to punish. Your eyes are too pure to look on evil. You cannot tolerate wrong. The prophet acknowledges that what God has said is true. He has ordained this. He's already seen this come to pass in northern Israel, just as Isaiah and Amos and others foretold that it would. Habakkuk is not a Pelagian. He knows that God has ordained this. Neither is he some New Age Eastern guru who thinks that good and evil mix in the divine. God cannot tolerate wrong, he says. And Habakkuk knows that. But then the complaint about evil resurfaces. Isn't it interesting how he asks why, and then he has faith, and then he complains again. And that just seems to be the way that it goes here. And I want you to notice, there's a shift here. You may not catch this. Habakkuk is not concerned in the second complaint with God tolerating Israel's sin. Now he's concerned with God tolerating Babylon's sin. He says, why do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? He goes on to say things like, men are like fish and the wicked pull them up with nets and hooks just as easily as a fisherman takes a fish out of the sea. Now this does not seem right and it certainly is not good because it's a form of idolatry on behalf of the Babylonians. He says that as much, he says he sacrifices to his net. That is, he makes violence empower his God. And in this way, the Babylonian lives in luxury at the expense of the human fish that he eats. The prophet is as vivid as he is truthful. This cannot go on forever, the prophet asks. And therefore, he will watch and he will be on the lookout for God's reply in chapter 2, verse 1. And it should be remembered at this point that God has already acknowledged everything The Prophet is complaining about it. God is not fooled by Babylon. He says, these are guilty men in my sight. So, if God knows they're guilty, and Habakkuk is still asking the question, what in the world can God possibly say that's going to satisfy him? Before I tell you the response, it must be understood that God judges people and nations today, sometimes through the instrumentality of other people and nations. This shows that God will not tolerate wrong. When you ask that question, God does not tolerate wrong. He is being vindicated in a way even now. When a nation falls, it is because it has sinned and deserves to fall. And sadly, this is true of individuals as well. When we die, it is because we deserve to die. Because death is the result of sin. Death is not some bizarre twist of a fatalistic world that evolved by chance and you just, well, I guess that's the way it works. No. Death is divine punishment for sin. And everyone dies because everyone sins. Well, that doesn't do much to appease us if that's all that the vindication of God is about, though. Punishing wickedness with more wickedness. Now you're ready to hear the full response of the Almighty. The Lord says, 2 3 Write down the revelation, and make it plain on tablets, so that the herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time. It speaks of the end, and will not prove false. God answers Habakkuk's complaint about Israel by focusing upon Babylon. Now he answers the complaint about Babylon by focusing upon the end. A lot of you visiting here, you're off the hook for this. But those of you who've been in this church for a while, I want to say that if your mind immediately skips to the second coming, and you read that, then you're not yet learning to read the scripture the right way. Because in the New Testament, the end begins at Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension, when all things are put under his feet. The cross is the inauguration of the end. These are the last days, Hebrews says. The consummation of the end is the second coming. So there's an inauguration. There's a consummation. That's when Christ will make all his enemies his footstool. So these are two acts of the same play. And I'm going to talk about this more in a moment. The second thing God says is, though it linger, wait for it. It will certainly come and it will not delay. God tells us to wait in the face of evil. What a hard thing God asks us to do. Be patient. Wait. But there's nothing more. This is nothing more than what he has to do himself. The temptation is to give up, to say it really won't come. God isn't really going to do anything about this evil. This evil before me is completely out of his control or his care. But that's both a denial of what he has done and what he will do. You know, I'm not just making that up. In the New Testament, Peter says the exact same thing about God's final vindication. Except he focuses upon the flood, the way he talks about it. He says, scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own evil desires. They will say, where's the promise of his coming? Because ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. For they deliberately overlooked this fact. That the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. And that by the means of these, the world that then existed was deluged in the water and they perished. But by the same word, the heavens and the earth that now exist are stored up before fire, being kept until the Day of Judgment, in destruction of the ungodly." Now, I brought up Peter for two reasons. Peter talks about that attitude, but he also has a connection that I think is part of God's reply to Habakkuk. It's the connection of dealing with the judgment of Babylon through the imagery of the flood, which was a real event in Earth's past. And now, at first you may not see this, because God, when he answers the question, he goes into another rant against wicked Babylon. He calls him a drunkard and greedy. He says he will become a taunt to the nations. Then a woe was pronounced upon this most ancient of evil cities, and upon any who follow in his footsteps. In chapter 2, verse 6, Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion. His debtors will not put up with it forever, but will suddenly arise and make him a victim. We've seen part of this in our study in Revelation on Sunday nights. Then it says in chapter 2 verse 8, For shedding man's blood, your blood will likewise be shed. Now, that verse is the first clue that the story of Noah is being recalled to mind. Remember that the earth in those days was filled with violence. It says that specifically in Genesis, which is the way that this book starts off. And after the flood, God comes to Noah and he says, whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image. So when God says that Babylon will fall at the hand of another, he's recalling this most ancient of post-flood laws. Okay, the woe continues. Verses 9, 10, and 12. Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his net on high to escape the clutches of ruin. The stones of the wall will cry out. Now, this is the lesson. Even though God sent Babylon against Israel, Babylon sinned a great sin in his heart when he took over Israel. And he's become guilty of a worse punishment. And so God concludes in verse 13, the Almighty has determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire. The nations exhaust themselves for nothing. Why is it for nothing? Because God will be vindicated. These people think they are getting all the power, but God will be vindicated. God will be proved righteous. Now, there are several candidates in the book of Habakkuk for the greatest verse in this book. One of my top three is chapter two, verse 14. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters covered the sea. Now that's an image of two things. It sounds like creation prior to any of God's activities when water covered the whole earth. And it also sounds like the flood. And I think that the flood is better Because it has both judgment and salvation themes to it. God's response to the problem of evil is not just about judgment. It's also about salvation. Several more images from the flood story come up in quick succession now. God talks about people who give strong drink to neighbors. Then it talks about doing it for the sake of gazing on their naked bodies. And there's only two or three stories in the whole Bible that even sound like this. And one is Noah's drunken stupor. when Ham gazes upon his nakedness after what I call the fall of Noah. Next it talks about the violence that's done to Lebanon, shedding man's blood, as well as that of animals. Now, I don't want to make too much of this, except to remember that animals were being saved on the ark, and that's obviously an important thing to God. Now this cruel invader is like Michael Vick, attacking even animals for sport. I never thought I would put Michael Vick in a sermon, but I did. It's not too much to say then that the fall of Babylon will be for very similar reasons that the sins that caused God to send a flood. These reasons were things that God wiped out the whole world because of. You know, it concludes and it says, it kind of prefaces it and then it ends, the flood, with very similar language. I read one of the verses yesterday in the memorial service, and this is the companion to it. Genesis 8, 21, the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. The one I read yesterday is, every intention of the thought of man is only evil all the time. That's why God destroys nations and people. Sin is another word for idolatry because all sin is idolatry. Every time you put something before God and you sin, that's an idol. That's how God concludes the fall of Babylon when He spreads His glory across the universe by vindicating His name. What is an idol? Habakkuk 2.18, it says it's a teacher of lies. Idols are teachers. They teach you lies. It's one of the reasons why I think images are so dangerous in the worship of God, or at least they can be. Because they are subjective, and they let you think whatever you want to about them. Not like the Word, which tells you exactly what to think, and to know what God is really like. Well, then it finishes, The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth be silent before Him. Why? because he will judge and he is holy. That's basically the answer that God gives to the prophet, isn't it? Nothing in the world escapes his attention. No evil is beyond his sight and in the end he will not stand up to evil and he will gain glory for himself and all the world. Not even Babylon, the rod of his own hand, is going to be able to stand up and defy him in the end. So you think about what God has said in response to Habakkuk. And you ask, what is our response to be? When we ask why, what is to be our conclusion? I think verse 20 gives you the first response. You know, of all the things that Job's counselors said, the best thing they said was nothing. Silence at first. Let all the earth be silent before him. After we're done questioning God, which is not wrong, and we receive His reply, then we sit in silence. What else is there to do when you think about what happened to Jason? You sit in silence. When God sees fit to bring one of our own home to be with Him in such a senseless, violent way, what else is there to do but sit in silence? and ponder what the Almighty has done. When you see the demonic face of a killer laughing in his picture that you're forced to look at, what else is there to do but remember what God says here and believe? Is anybody else disturbed by the picture of that man? profoundly disturbing, on a deep level. What else can you do but be silent when you think about what God has done? Now, I skipped probably the most important book in Habakkuk, and I've saved it for now, Habakkuk 2.4. It says, the righteous will live by his faith. This is quoted several times in the New Testament. It's a very important verse. Romans 1.16 is one of the most familiar of these places. Paul drops the his faith so that it just says the righteous will live by faith. When you question and ask why you are to trust God by faith. That's how I want to encourage you today. In the midst of questioning and mourning and waiting, Hear this most practical verse in the entire Bible from this tiny little book of Habakkuk. The righteous live by faith. What is faith? Well, faith is not a human quality or virtue. It's not something good in yourself that you're trusting in. Faith is not some work that merits your salvation, like it's the one good thing that you do. No, it is an instrument. It receives God's grace. That's all it does. It's like, I think about it like a bowl that you pour milk into or something. What does the bowl do? Nothing. It receives the milk. That's all it does. That's what faith does. It receives. It does not try to work. It does not try to be good. It believes. It receives. Faith is a gift of God. It recognizes and understands the gospel of Christ to be the only hope of salvation from God's judgment against sin. And I think you need to understand this because people are talking about faith all over the place in our culture, aren't they? Faith is like the buzzword. Have faith. Just have faith. It's not just faith. It's faith in something that has happened. It's faith in a reality that took place 2,000 years ago in history, that men touched, and they saw, and they talked to. It's faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that he's not dead. It's faith in the fact that His death was not just some pointless thing. That it's not some example for you to follow. It's faith that Jesus' death becomes your guarantee of life. Because His obedience is credited to your account through faith. What I talked about yesterday. It's not just faith. It's not just believe, brother. It's faith in Jesus Christ that what he's done will make you acceptable before Almighty God. That's what faith is. I want to ask the question that we ask in our Bible study regularly. Where's the gospel in Habakkuk? I think, first of all, it's in chapter 1, verse 12. O rock, you have ordained them to punish. I don't want to focus on the ordained. I want to focus on the rock. Who is the rock? The rock, as we have heard so many times recently in our study of Matthew, is Christ. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. Christ is the ordainer and the judge in this verse in the Old Testament, because he is the Lord God Almighty. When Isaiah saw the Lord in his temple, who does John say that that is? The Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel judgment. you are to believe is that in his death, he took the punishment of your sin upon his body. If you do not accept this truth, then it is not for you. And you will receive the judgment ordeal like the flood. Not that Noah was saved through, but that all the people were drowned in. Except for this time, as Peter says, it's a fire that consumes the enemies of God. But you know something? If you believe this, and you receive this message by faith, then God's hand of judgment is stayed indefinitely against you. You need not fear the mystery that comes after your own death. Beloved, Peter continues his passage that I read earlier by saying this. Do not overlook this one fact that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises. Some count slowness. But he is patient towards you, not willing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with the roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed for what it is. Briefly, let me consider the response of Habakkuk. It's a song to be sung in God's temple on stringed instruments. That's what the last verse of this book says. It is a song of faith. Lord, one of the great verses of the whole Bible, Lord, I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. The prophet has received his response, and now he doesn't doubt any longer. He believes. He trusts that what God has said will come to pass. It's a song of faith. It's a prayer of hope. Finish up that verse. Renew them in our day. In our time, make your deeds and your fame known. But in wrath, O Lord, please remember mercy. Now that he understands that God is not unjust and that the problem of evil is not a problem for him, the prophet does not want God's wrath to come down upon Israel. You see his response there? How many people who think that they understand the day of the Lord really haven't got a clue? Habakkuk understands what God will do now, and he greatly desires for the people to be saved by his mercy. For them, Unless God saves by His mercy, this is not a day of light, but a day of darkness, the Book of Amos says. And yet, you know, in the midst of all of it, the Prophet praises God for the rest of this song, for His mighty works and His deeds, for His fame that He's just recalled in the face of terrible evil. Imagine that. The deliverance of evil out of the Red Sea is now recalled. The Holy One who is enthroned on His mountain be praised. His glory covered the heavens and His praise filled the earth. He's basically saying that what has happened in the past is a preface for what will happen in the future where God made that promise. Glory of God will cover the earth like the waters cover the sea. Habakkuk says as much in chapter 3 verse 3. If you doubt that His glory will fill the earth, remember the past. Even as if you doubt that he will be proved just, you're to remember the past. Habakkuk speaks of the Exodus. He recalls Deuteronomy 33, verse 2. His splendor was like the sunrise, raised, flashed from his hand. And this was hiding his power. Verse 4. I love that verse. All of the awesome things God did in the Exodus. And just think about them for a minute. The plagues, the Red Sea, the killing of the firstborn, deliverance, the angel of the Lord coming. This hides God's power. Plague went before him. Pestilence followed his steps. This is a hiding of his power. Egypt, the mightiest force in the world, was swallowed up and God delivered his people. It says, And she just takes some time to read this song, because I can't do it justice by explaining it. The images do a much better job. God did not walk. He merely stood. And the earth shook. He simply looked with his eyes and the nations began to tremble. The nations began to hear about all that God had done in delivering the people from Egypt, and they were terrified. You know the story. So mighty was his display of power of old that it appeared that he was angry at the rivers and the streams and the sea. He uncovered his bow and his arrow and he split the rivers and the mountains writhed and the torrents and the water swept by and the deep roared and the waves lifted high. The people walked across on dry land, but the horse and rider was thrown into the sea. Habakkuk recalls God's deliverance of Joshua and Gibeon. Remember, God fought for Israel that day and five nations fell. God was so awesome. The sun and the moon in the sky stood still. They saw what God was about to do, it says, and the sun and the moon were terrified by his anger, by his arrows and his flashing sphere. That day he threshed the nations in order to save his anointed one. Friends, do you remember the first time you heard those stories? Habakkuk does and he says, I heard and my heart pounded. My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled. Maybe you've been a Christian so long and you've heard these stories so many times that you don't even think twice about them anymore. That is not right. That is not good. The Lord has done awesome things in the past in human history. This is what we are to think upon as we wait patiently for the Lord. Even as Habakkuk had to wait for the day of calamity of the Babylonian invader from the east. Tradition tells us that Habakkuk saw the day when Babylon came and invaded. A legend has him ministering to Daniel in the lion's den in the apocryphal book of Bel and the Dragon. This would have been well after Nebuchadnezzar invaded and pillaged and destroyed Judah. But in the foreshadowing work of God, another day is told by Habakkuk. In verse 17, the day that the fig tree does not bud. Perhaps you remember that Jesus cursed the fig tree, which was like a trumpet blast that the final judgment was about to occur. The final part of the verse goes to the end, to the day that Peter talks about. And so what is to be our final response in the face of such great power as this? The last couple of verses. May it be your prayer today, even as we grieve together and consider anew the judgments of the Lord. This is the response of God's people in the face of evil. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of the deer. Let's pray together. Lord, I want to come before you and ask you that as we contemplate this book, as we've gone through it much too quickly, that you would recall to our minds the simple outline of it. It's okay to ask why, but you give an answer. You give an answer that satisfies for today. Our minds naturally ask, why again? And you give us an answer that goes, at least for Habakkuk, to the future. And for us, it's both past and future. And we think about, in faith, what your word tells us that we read in John today. And not just about Jesus' death, but also about his resurrection and his life. Help this to be a great anchor for Mason and Debbie, Charlie and Ruth and the girls, for Tim and Angie and Ben, and for the rest of us who grieve. Lord, may our thoughts go towards heaven and not towards ourselves. Even as we mourn and grieve and are sad, I pray that we would have faith and that we would respond in joy and in worship in the midst of our grief, and that it would be a testimony to the world And I want to praise you for the testimony of these families that they've been, even to me this week, to see how they have gone through this and have dealt with it. And I pray that you would give them strength to continue to deal with it. That you would give us all strength as a church when difficult times come to us. Father, hear our prayer. Answer it for your sake, for your glory. Strengthen us, I pray, in Christ's name. Amen.