Habakkuk. Let's pray together, and then I want you to turn to the very last chapter of the book. We're going to read from the very last chapter first. So let's pray together. Father, as we open this book and as we look at this prophet, Lord, speak, speak mightily to our hearts. Let us hear from you. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. I want you to look at the very end of the book. Habakkuk chapter 3. Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 17. Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls. Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord is my strength. He will make my feet like deer's feet, and he will make me walk He will make me walk on my high heels. The book ends with this reference to the chief musicians and with my stringed instruments. Let me ask you just a very simple question. A very simple question to start with. And think about it, because when you hear it, you may go, well, of course. But listen, here's the simple question. Do you want to know God? Do you want to know Him? Again, think just a minute. Because I know that the response would be, well, of course I want to know God. Unless you're some self-proclaimed atheist who would say, ah, there's no God. What do you mean, know Him? I want to know me. I'm my God. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about as a believer, do you want to know Him? I'm talking about about Him. I'm not talking about just learning things about Him. to be able to say things about him. But I mean to know him, to really know him. Keep your finger here in Habakkuk. I want you to go to Jeremiah chapter 9. Go to the prophet Jeremiah. Go to the left. Go to the prophet Jeremiah chapter 9. Jeremiah chapter 9. Jeremiah would have been a contemporary of Habakkuk. Or you could say Habakkuk was a contemporary of Jeremiah. They would have been preaching about the same time. They would have been preaching to the same people. Okay? This is what we read in Jeremiah chapter 9, and let's pick up at verse 23. Jeremiah is talking about judgment, the people mourning in judgment, and they're crying out to God. Let me read this in verse 23. God says something to the people, and I want you to pay attention to what He says to them. Thus says the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. This will sound a lot like Paul when he writes to the Corinthians about the wisdom of man is foolishness. Let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches. Don't you glory in your wisdom, in your strength, or in your riches. But let him who glories, glory in this, that he understands and what? Knows me. that I am the Lord exercising loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight, says the Lord." Now you want to complain in your judgment, you want to complain in all your Listen, don't glory in your wisdom, don't glory in your power, don't glory in your riches, don't glory in your technology, don't glory in the strength of your army, don't glory in your political wisdom, don't glory in your science, don't glory in any of that stuff. But let him who glories, glory in this, that he understands and knows me. Well, I would say that if that's what we're to glory in, to know God, then that has to be the source of our greatest joy, right? I mean, that would have to be the one thing that would bring us the greatest satisfaction in life, the greatest joy in life, the greatest fulfillment in life. would be that I know God. In John 17, Jesus is praying, and the first part of that prayer, the first part of our Lord's Prayer, He makes this statement. He says, this is eternal life. This is eternal life. That they may know You. That they may know You. They may know you. And then he says this, the one and true, the only God, the only true God. This is eternal life. But then he adds this, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. John will tell us in 1 John, when he writes in 1 John, he will say things like this, there in that second chapter. He will say things like, you can't say that you have the Father and reject the Son. And you also can't say, well, we want the son, but we don't want the father. You know what he identifies that with? He identifies the rejection of Christ as Jesus as the Christ. He identifies that with the antichrist. This is of the antichrist. So John says, you can't say, well, I like the Father, this Jesus I'm not sure about. Or you can't say, we really like Jesus, but it's this God that we're not sure about. I mean, my gosh, have you seen what he says and what he did to the prophets? My gosh, can you believe that? I don't know that we need any of that stuff. This Jesus fellow, though, yeah, we could do with a little bit of that. Yeah, we could. This is eternal life, to know the one true God, and His Son, whom He sent. This is what you should glory in, Jeremiah says. That you know Him. That you know Him. So, we know Him through Christ. That's what we understand. We have the Scripture. We have the Old and New Testaments, so we see the fulfillment of the Old Testament, all that the Old Testament's pointing to. And we understand that in that fulfillment, the Messiah comes, and that it's Christ, and that He dies on a cross, is buried, raised the third day. He is the Savior. He is the one mediator between God and man. And He is the one whom we are made right with God through Him, right? So we understand that. We know Him through Christ. That's how we know the Father. So, if knowing God through Christ is eternal life, then when we ask the question, do you want to know God? What we're really asking is this. Do you want to be saved? Do you want salvation? That's what we're really asking. We understand that God has set before us, right now, as we open His Word together and look in His Word together, He has set before you and He has set before me death and life, blessing and cursing. That's what's set right here. That's what the table has been set with right now. You will choose the way of death, or you will choose the way of life. You will choose to know Him, and in choosing to know Him, you will choose salvation, or you will reject Him. and you will choose the way of death. There's no in between. There's no halfway. You've made that choice already. And it's before you right now. Right here. It's before you. He said before us, life, death, blessing, cursing. Which one do you want? Which one are you going to choose? Which direction are you going to go? Which one do you want? Well, how do I get it? Well, you get it through faith. You get it through repentance and faith. You get it through knowing God. How am I going to know Him through Christ? It's through repentance and it's through faith. And let me say this. It is through genuine faith. It is through a genuine faith and belief in Christ. Not some hypocritical faith. Not some flimsy, whimsical faith that's strong and when things are good and then when things get bad, then you just totally reject it and walk away from it. It's not that. It's a genuine faith. It's a lasting faith. It is, by the way, a faith that is a gift from God. Understand this. Saving faith is a gift from God. It's a gift from Him. So which one do you want? Habakkuk teaches us this And Habakkuk's one of my favorite prophets because he teaches us this in this personal encounter that he has with God. Habakkuk's not so much like we've seen with some of the prophets where they stroll into town and they begin to preach, and they preach that God and His righteousness is sending judgment, but yet as he preaches the law, there he offers Christ, he offers mercy, and God says, just turn. Habakkuk's not like that. Habakkuk teaches us something about this faith, and we see it in two sides of Habakkuk. Because we see it in this impersonal encounter that he has with God. He has this personal encounter with God over the sins of the nation. And it's a remarkable give and take that happens. So we're asking again the question, how do we engage a post-Christian culture? And again, we're not going to see, OK, well, here's strategy one with Habakkuk. But we are going to see something that helps us and helps us to understand how to engage a post-Christian culture in this personal give and take that Habakkuk has with God. Now, we need to set some background here. So I need you to keep your finger here in Habakkuk again. I need you to go back to the beginning of the Old Testament. I need you to go to the book of Deuteronomy chapter 28. Because what I need to do is we need to lay some groundwork here so that you understand, and we've tried to do this throughout with the prophets. Because if you're not careful, you may read the prophets, and you may read what God's saying to the northern kingdom or to Judah, the southern kingdom, and you may come away, for instance, reading in Nahum, when Nahum says, God says, I'm jealous, God. You may come away thinking, oh my gosh, this God's unstable. I mean, in one moment he's blessing and loving, in another moment he's flying off the handle and judging and people are dying. But we have to understand the foundation here of how we got to the point of where we are in the prophets, with the nation of Israel. Deuteronomy 28, this is what they're told. This is the ratification of the covenant, the blessings and the cursings, and then look at verse 47. God says this, because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything. Therefore, you shall serve your enemies. If you break this covenant, this is what's going to happen. You're going to serve your enemies, whom your Lord will send against you in hunger and thirst and nakedness and need of everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, and from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly, nor show favor to the young, and they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed, and they shall not leave you grain, nor new wine, or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks until they have destroyed you. If you disobey this covenant, God says, you break this covenant, then one of the things that's going to happen to you is a nation's going to come and just overthrow you. Now we saw outbursts of this in the history of Israel. But it's ultimately fulfilled with the destruction of the northern kingdom in 722, the Assyrians. We've already seen that. Nahum's dealing with that. Some of the other prophets have dealt with that. The Assyrians. God raises them up and bam! Wipes out the northern kingdom. 722 BC. They threaten Judah in 701, the Assyrians do. They threaten Jerusalem, but they can't take it. But Judah didn't repent and say, Man, that was close. We better get right with God. Judah kept on in her idolatry. Kept on in her sin. Until finally God says, okay, I'm raising up the Babylonians. And the southern kingdom is wiped out in 586 BC. Now on our way back to Habakkuk, we need to stop in one other place. Now understand, when I give you this history, I'm leaving a lot out. There's a lot that I'm leaving out. It's that I'm going after one thing here. So don't think that what I'm giving you is a full history of everything that happened. There's one narrative we're following here. Okay? I want you to go to Jeremiah. I want you to go to the book of Jeremiah, and I want you to go to chapter 25. Jeremiah 25. We just read Jeremiah 9. This is what you need to glory in, that you know me. Then we also get some explanation here in Jeremiah 25 of what's happening. Why God's about to do what he's about to do. And again, it's not that God's just unstable and wakes up one day and just feels bad and decides just to throw out judgment. It's not that. They've been warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned over and over and over again. Some of it's hard to understand. You remember Jonah? My gosh! Assyria? You're going to save them? And then Nahum comes along and says, yeah, well, he's through with them now because they've turned back to their gods. And Nahum says, God's going to destroy them. And we go, I just don't understand that. Well, in Deuteronomy 29, at the end of Deuteronomy 29, Moses is going to tell the people, there's going to be a lot of things about God you don't understand. And guess what? The secret things belong to Him. But what belongs to you is what He's revealed. You better be obeying what He's revealed. You better be obeying what He's revealed. Well, we get to Jeremiah 25 and He reveals some of the reason. He reveals This is why this is happening. Jeremiah 25 verse 1. The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah. Habakkuk's preaching at the same time. Jehoiakim's king. Jehoiakim was an evil king. His father Josiah was a good king. There was a great revival, a great awakening that happened under Josiah. Jehoiakim's become king and he's led them back into idolatry. So king of Judah, which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, same Nebuchadnezzar, by the way, the Babylonians we saw with Daniel, which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, from the 13th year of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, even to this day, this is the 23rd year in which the word of the Lord has come to me. And I've spoken to you rising early and speaking, but you have not listened. And the Lord has sent to you all His servants, the prophets, rising early, sending them. But you have not listened, nor have you inclined your ear to hear. They said to you, repent now, every one of his evil ways and of his evil doings, and dwell in the land that God has given you and your fathers, forever and ever. Do not go after other gods to serve them and worship them. Do not provoke me to anger with the works of your hands. And I will not harm you. Stay faithful to the covenant and I won't harm you. Yet, you have not listened to me, says the Lord. But you might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, to your own hurt. This lies at your feet. This is on you. This is not God just getting His kicks watching people writhe in pain. This is on you. You see, when Adam sinned in the garden, and the curse is made, this is on you. You did this. Verse 8, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, because you have not heard my words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, says the Lord. And Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant, will bring them against this land, against the inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them and make them an astonishment, a hissing of perpetual desolations. Moreover, I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of millstones, the light of the lamp. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment. And these nations shall serve the king of Babylon. And there's one thing said right here at the very end that should have given them such great hope. You will serve the King of Babylon 70 years. It's only gonna last 70 years, guys. Jeremiah says basically this, you broke the covenant, stop whining and complaining and take your medicine. Stop whining and complaining and blaming God, take your medicine. He warned you. He sent you prophets. There were outbreaks of awakenings and revivals and so forth, and times where you got serious, but for the most part, you've done what your heart wanted to do, and that is follow after your other gods. But it's only going to last 70 years, in which it did, and after the 70 years, there was the restoration. This is Ezra and Nehemiah coming back. Now, with that little bit of background, that little bit of history, Now comes the prophet Habakkuk. The question then becomes, at the end of this book, Habakkuk is in such a place where he says, even though I lose everything, if you take everything from me, I will still rejoice in you. I'm still going to rejoice in you. I will join the God of my salvation. Doesn't this sound a lot like Job? The Lord giveth and the Lord what? But, what did we just sing? Blessed be the name of the Lord. Right? Habakkuk is going to be a lot like Moses. If you destroy these people, the Egyptians are going to laugh at you. And the Egyptians are going to say, you're no strong God. Because you can't keep these people. And there's this personal give and take between Moses and God. There was this give and take that Job wanted to have. God didn't give it to him. But Job wanted an audience with God. You need to speak for yourself. I've done nothing wrong. What are you doing? But then when he did have a personal encounter with God, it was totally changed, wasn't he? The same thing with Moses, because you know it says there that God spoke to Moses face to face. That's an amazing thing. Moses, He speaks face to face and it says He speaks with him as friend to friend. He's going to speak with Habakkuk face to face. He's going to speak with Habakkuk friend to friend. And the beautiful thing about it is He does the same thing to you and I, and He does it to us in Christ and in His Word. When we read His Word, we speak to Him face to face. Isn't that amazing? It's beautiful. So how does Habakkuk get to where we see him at the end of this book? Even though I lose everything. One of the early funerals that I did, there was a knock at my door about two or three o'clock in the morning, and the son-in-law of an elderly couple in the church, dear, dear, precious couple, banging at my door, wakes me up and says, we got to go see Mr. Earl. I said, for what? His grandson was just killed. He was killed in an accident at college. Very tragic. If I remember right, he was the only son of his daughter. So we wake them up, they stagger in the room, they know something's up, and we tell them, your grandson's just been killed. There's what you would expect, the weeping and the wailing, but then there was this calmness and assurance because they had a deep abiding faith in God. When I did that funeral, it was packed. Place was packed. College kids everywhere. professors packed. And I preached from the very end of the book of Habakkuk. And said, even though everything's taken, you feel like everything's taken now. True abiding faith says, yet I'm going to trust God. And I'm going to rejoice in Him. So how did Habakkuk get there? I found out yesterday. Shea was telling me this horrific. A father puts his three-year-old son in a car seat. Doesn't strap him in, puts him in the car seat, doesn't strap him in, gets busy doing something. The vehicle must have been cranked. And he's doing something, and by the time he gets back around to the vehicle, the little boy had stuck his head out the window that was down, put his knee on the up and down button, choked him, strangled him to death. In an instant. Now I don't know anything about this family. I don't. I just heard about it and I'm thinking through Habakkuk and I'm trying to think through how could a believer get to the point to where at the end of the book of Habakkuk you could say, I've lost everything! And yet I'm going to rejoice in my God. How in the world could a believer do that? How did Habakkuk get there? That's the question. There's two sides to Habakkuk. This book starts with an encounter. This first encounter. We know nothing about Habakkuk. We don't know anything about where he is from. We do know that what he's about to be told by God is going to blow his mind, because what God's going to tell him is, I'm going to raise up the Babylonians and wipe my people out. And this causes a back-up problem. We don't know anything about him. We don't know where he's from. But this is the way it starts. The burden. This is serious. This is the way Nahum started. This burden. which the prophet Habakkuk saw. It's a vision. He's going to be told to write this vision. Then there's this first round. And in the first round, this is what Habakkuk says to God. You know what? I'm sick and tired of seeing violence, wickedness, corruption. I'm sick and tired. And it's an emotional outburst that he has. It is. It's an emotional outburst. Lord, how long? I'm crying out to you. And the reason I'm crying out to you, he says, is because you have shown me the sin of this nation. You've shown it to me. I see it. How long am I going to cry out? How long are you not going to hear? I cry to you violence. You're not saving, where are you? You show me iniquity, you let me see trouble. Plundering and violence is before me, strife, contention. The law is powerless, justice never goes forth. The wicked surround the righteous, therefore perverse judgment proceeds. This is bad. This nation is bad. They're wicked, they're perverse, and it's growing worse every day. And what are you doing? Where are you? In the midst of this chaos, and it was chaos at the time, it was social chaos, it was political chaos. Sound familiar? Don't we sometimes as believers feel like, God, why do you let us see the wickedness that's before us? Because the rest of the world goes along as if nothing's wrong. There's nothing wrong. You Christians, y'all have always been sticks in the mud. And yet we look at God's Word and then we look at the world and we go, wait a minute! Where are you? Well guess what? God answers. The Lord replies, and this is what he says in verse 5, look among the nations. This is a command. I want you to look and I want you to watch. I want you to see, I want you to see this and be utterly astounded. This is going to blow your mind. For I'm going to work a work in your days, which you would not believe though it were told you. I'm going to do something, Habakkuk, that is going to blow your mind. And here it comes, verse 6, for indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans. This is the Babylonians. Now remember I told you how bad the Assyrians were. The Babylonians were bad as well. And God says I'm going to raise them up. In 612 BC they destroy the Assyrians. That's what we saw with Nahum. Nahum's talking and saying to Assyria, you're going down. You're as good as dead. 612, they destroy the Assyrians. Habakkuk's probably preaching, probably somewhere after that, shortly after that, 605 BC, 610, somewhere in that neighborhood. And what happens in 605, the Babylonians decide that they are going to take on Egypt. So Egypt marches up from the south. The Babylonians are coming from the north. The Babylonians in 605 take a group out of Judah and take them back to Babylon. Guess who was in that group? Daniel. They do it again in 597 BC. They take a group out, take them back to Babylon. Then finally, finally, in 586, they completely wipe away the southern kingdom. But what happens in 605 is they meet the Egyptians at a place called Carthage, and they defeat the Egyptians. The Egyptians are pushed back, and Babylon just marches straight into Palestine. Here they come. God says to Habakkuk, I'm raising them up. I'm bringing them here. And the reason why I'm bringing them here is because I'm about to judge my people with them. Yeah, they're bad. And this description that we see of them, they're bad. Bitter, hasty nation. Man, when they come, they come. And they did. They were brutal. They were brutal. And you see, you can continue on through this. They're prideful. Their judgment, their dignity proceed from themselves. Verse 9, they all come for violence. Their faces are like the east wind. They gather captives like sand. They scoff at kings. Babylon was the world power. Who's going to stop them? And then verse 11, then his mind changes and he transgresses, he commits offenses and he scribes all his power to his God. Babylon's on the march, Nebuchadnezzar's on the march, he's full of pride and he's saying, look at the victories our gods have given us and they're coming after you, Habakkuk. And I've raised them up. I'm bringing them in. Oh my gosh. I mean, I thought you would judge us. But you mean to tell me you're going to judge us with a bunch of transgendered people? You mean to tell me you're going to judge us with the evil that we see before us now? You're going to judge us with this? That does not compute. Surely, surely there's got to be a group of people somewhere, on the backside of some desert, that love you and are following you and are keeping the law, that you could raise up and let them come. We could understand that. This is where Habakkuk is, and you see what happens in the second round. Go back, it says, are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die, probably should read, you shall not die. O Lord, you have appointed them for judgment. O Rock, you have marked them for correction. Your eyes are purer eyes than to behold evil. They are 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? Now he's a little less emotional here, but he is backtracking in his mind. Because the first thing when God says essentially this, you want to know me? Let me show you this. And he goes, whoa, hang on. And he starts reaffirming everything that he believes about God. No, no, no, no. I know this about you. And I know this about you. And I know this about you. And I know this about you. When God rocks your world, one of the first places, one of the first things you need to do is stop and rehearse and reaffirm what you believe about God. Because if you don't, you will get lost. You will be lost in a fog and a haze. But you stop and you say, I know this about my God. And that's exactly what Habakkuk's doing. This bothered him. Now Habakkuk's not whining. Some have said Habakkuk's whining. He's not whining. He's having an honest intellectual conversation with God. Wait a minute, you're holy and righteous, and you can't look on evil, and you're going to take evil and judge your people? That just does not fit. And he goes on and he talks about them, how using these fishing metaphors, the Babylonians were into fishing and they had fish gods and so forth. And then at the end, the first part of chapter 2, he says at the end of this first round, I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart. I will watch to see what he will say to me and what I will answer when I'm corrected." Habakkuk has taken a bold stand. Again, it's almost as if Moses, when Moses is saying, wait a second, you don't want to wipe these people out. Because when you do, again, the Egyptians are going to say that you're just a sissy God and can't take care of your people. I don't get this. So what I'm going to do is keep silent and I'm going to wait for you to say something. I'm going to wait. It's another thing we need to understand and when it really gets, when it really, really, really gets hard, I'm going to, I'm going to go back through and reaffirm what I believe about God. And then I, there, there, there comes moments and there comes times where you just need to be silent and wait for him to speak because out of your pain, if you're not careful, you will say some of the most foolish things and you will do some of the most foolish things. You will say things that you have to walk back. You will do things that you have to repent of. I'm just going to wait because I don't get it." Well, God really doesn't give an explanation. It's like He does to Job. He doesn't really give him an explanation other than just to simply say, listen, the Lord answered me and said, write the vision. It's another command. Make it plain on the tablets that he sees it, he reads it, he can run. It's coming. It's going to delay. You think it's going to delay, but it's coming. Ultimately, 586, they're wiped out. And God's saying, I'm not inactive. I'm not. Don't accuse me of not knowing and not doing. I'm doing. It's just that maybe what I'm doing doesn't compute with you. But then verse 4. Here comes such a key. Because there's a contrast here. Behold the proud. This is Babylon. The proud. His soul is not upright in Him. But... Here comes the contrast. But the just shall live by His faith. Habakkuk, you are to live by faith. Even when you may not understand everything that I'm doing, you are to live by faith. Paul picks this up in Romans 117. He picks this up in Romans 1.17. You remember I told you Deuteronomy 29.29, the secret things belong to God, but the revealed things, we have those revealed things. You see, that's what faith says. Secret things belong to God. I may not understand everything He's doing. I may not understand why He took that. I may not understand why this horrible thing happened. And sometimes those things rest with Him. And I have to, by faith, trust Him. Habakkuk is called the grandfather of the Reformation. Because it's Romans 1.17 that Luther picks up on. Which is a quote from Habakkuk. But then he goes on, God goes on in these taunts. And there's five, there's several woes here. There's five woes that happen. Remember Nahum? Nahum taunted the Assyrians. You fight like a bunch of women? You're a bunch of weak ones. God's going to wipe you out. Here comes some taunts again from God. I don't know if this is meant to be sort of a comic relief. You know how sometimes you get these tense shows and it's tense and then there's this zinger, this one-liner that's meant to be sort of like comic relief, break the tension. I don't know if God's breaking the tension here with Habakkuk. Because he taunts the Babylonians in this series of woes. Basically what he's saying is, Habakkuk, I'm going to take them down, don't worry. When I'm through with them, they will be destroyed. And guess what? They were. Guess who wiped them out? It's the Persians. This is the history of Daniel. It was the Persians. Raises up the Persians, the Persians wipe them out. But God uses them in this instance. Here are these woes, verse 6. You see, woe to him who increases what is not his. Woe to him, chapter 9, another woe. Woe to him who covets evil gain for his house. Verse 12, woe to him who builds a town with bloodshed. Verse 15, woe to him who gives drink to his neighbor. Verse 19, woe to him who says to wood, awake, they're stupid idols. Woe to him who says to that piece of wood, will you please talk with me? This is Isaiah 2. That's why I'm wondering if this isn't some kind of maybe relieving the tension, showing the stupidity of idolatry. But he says, To silent stone arise, it shall teach. Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, yet in it there is no breath at all. Verse 20, But the Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silent. That's how these woes, these taunts end. Some have taken this to say, well, when we come to church, we should be absolutely silent. I don't think that's what he's saying. I think what he's doing is he's contrasting here. They're crying out to these idols and saying, speak, speak, arise, teach, teach. There's no breath in them. But you know what? God's in His holy temple and God's speaking. He's speaking. Let all the earth keep silent when He speaks. You better pay attention when he speaks. What was the old commercial? Who was it that when they speak, you listen? E.F. Hutton. E.F. Hutton. Yeah, you remember that commercial? E.F. Hutton. I don't even remember how it goes. When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen. Whatever. So there's the first side of Habakkuk, these encounters, these personal encounters. Man, he's changed. He's transformed. And then the second side, we actually see the outplaying of this faith in Habakkuk. And it's interesting the way it's done, because chapter three, the first part of chapter three, down through verse 15 is actually a hymn. It's a song. And this is the way it starts. It starts by saying a prayer of a back at the prophet on Shigalinov. We know nothing about that word. We don't know what it is at all. But then he starts and he says, Oh Lord, I've heard your speech and was afraid. Oh Lord, revive your work in the midst of your years. In the midst of your years, make it known. And then here comes a line that I love. In your wrath, remember mercy. Your wrath is coming. I get it. I understand. You are bringing judgment. But please, in that judgment, will you not remember mercy? This is the one prayer that I think we should be praying right now for our society and our culture. Oh God, I get it. I understand why your judgment's coming. But oh please, in your judgment, in your wrath, remember mercy. Remember mercy. God came from Tima. The Holy One from Mount Paran. What He does here is He goes through a history of God coming to His people. God comes to His people. He comes, and when He comes, He comes as this divine warrior. You see it down in verse 8. Oh Lord, were you displeased with the rivers? Was your anger against the rivers? Was your wrath against the sea that you rode on your horses, your chariots of salvation? Your bow was made quite ready. What's also interesting, let me point this out, at the end of verse three, in between verse three, that section where it says, God came from Timan, the Holy One from Mount Paran, the word Sela appears here. It's the only place outside of Psalms that it appears. It's a song. There's this break, this pause, this rest, and we go into the next one. And then after verse nine, there's another one. Selah. You divided the waters with rivers. The mountains saw you. They trembled like Nahum. And Nahum says, He came down. And when He came down, the earth quivered. Verse 12, you marched through the land in indignation, and you trampled the nations in anger. You went forth for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You struck the head from the house of the wicked, and by laying bare from the foundation of the neck, you thrust through, you thrust through with His own arrows. the head of his villages and came out like a whirlwind to scatter me. Their rejoicing was like feasting on the poor in secret. You walked through the sea with your horse. You walked through the sea with your horses through the heap of the great waters. Sea here is chaos. Here's the picture. God throughout history has come down and waded through this chaos. And he's done it in judgment. And He's done it saving His people. That's what He's done. That's what He's done. That's what this great song, this great hymn is saying. Oh God! You are God! When He gets to the end of it, then verse 16, When I heard, Habakkuk says, my body trembled. Literally his belly. You know when Isaiah sees God in Isaiah 6? Remember that scene? I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Isaiah jumped up, gave everybody a high five, did back flips. No. Isaiah did what? Fell on his face. The first thing he confessed is I am unclean. John sees those visions in the book of Revelation and what does John do? Fall in his face. Habakkuk, seize this God! And here comes this faith that wells up out of him. My body trembled. My lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness entered my bones. I trembled in myself that I might rest in the day of trouble. When He comes up to the people, He will invade them with His troops. God's coming. I get it. He's coming in judgment. I understand why He's coming in judgment. But I also understand that throughout history, He has rode through this mess in judgment and in salvation. He is judged and He is saved. He is laid before you. Go all the way back to the book of Deuteronomy when this is said. What's laid before you is life and death. Blessing and cursing. Do you want to know me? You want to know me? You want to know me so that you end up where Habakkuk ends up, where we started at the end of this book? Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food, though the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord is my strength, He will make my feet like deer's feet, and He will make me walk on my high heels. You want to know Him that way? How did Habakkuk get there? He got there through this personal encounter with God, in which he came to understand something about God. I wonder if Habakkuk thought he knew God. And God says to Habakkuk, let me show you something else here. And Habakkuk came to know Him in a deeper way. This personal struggle, the struggle that we see, the struggle that we're facing, the struggle that we're wrestling with, and this wickedness and the evil days that we're faced with. Where is God? What is He doing? How can this seem to keep going? How can it seem? How is it that every day we wake up, something else has fallen? How is it that we wake up every day and something else crazy has gone on? This personal struggle that we have as believers. But it's in that struggle that we come to understand something about God. Yeah, I'm bringing judgment. But I also bring salvation. I also bring salvation. Knowing God transforms Habakkuk. It transforms him. This true repentance and faith you see, and I think that's what's behind here with Habakkuk. Habakkuk is unique in this personal struggle that we see with God among the prophets. It starts with looking at society's condition. That's where it starts, this struggle. Look at the days, they're evil. But then it quickly moves to something personal with Habakkuk. It quickly moves to Habakkuk's own personal complaint against God. But then he comes to understand what faith, and a transcendent God is all about, because God's not like us. And what this faith in a transcendent God is all about, so that he gets to the point to where I've lost everything. Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet, because he writes the book of Lamentations. And when he writes the book of Lamentations, he's sitting there after the Babylonians have destroyed Jerusalem, And some have said it's as if Jeremiah is sitting there, literally, watching the very smoke rise of his very home place burning to the ground. And he writes Lamentations. And yet, out of that lament come some of the greatest words about the faithfulness of God we have. Habakkuk. Man, you're going to take it all down. What if God is going to take America down? What if He's going to take everything from you? What if you're going to lose everything you've worked your whole life to build? And He says to you, I'm going to do it with a bunch of wicked, vile people. And you say, hold on a second, that's not right. And God comes back and says, the just live by faith. And even though you lose everything, I'm going to rejoice. Why? Because ultimately I know this in my home, right? What does this say about engaging a post-Christian culture? Let me say this. And there will be more to say along these lines a little later as we get to some of the other prophets. But listen, before we engage a post-Christian culture, we had better know God. And if we don't know God, we need to keep our mouths shut. Because we end up spouting heresy after heresy. And that's exactly what's going on in some Christian circles today. Not only do we end up spouting heresy after heresy, but we come across as babbling hypocrites. And the world ignores us. Until we have something to say from God, until we know God, we're better off keeping our mouths shut. But when we do know Him, and when we do understand what's going on, then what do we do? We proclaim. This is His judgment. And God set before you life and death. Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Where are you going to turn to? There's another thing we need to understand in this engaging of post-Christian culture, is that God will use anything at His disposal to bring judgment. Don't put Him in a box. Don't put Him in a box. Be careful saying what He would and won't do. Be careful. Well, you want to know Him? So the question then is, do you want salvation? How do you know Him? Knowing Him is eternal life. You know Him through Christ. You know Him through the one who died, was buried and raised the third day, and the one who says, come, come, just come to me. You want that kind of faith where Habakkuk ends up? It comes through knowing God, and knowing God through Christ. It's the only way you're going to get it. There's no other way. There's no other means. There's no other way to get that. There's no other means through which it's going to come. There's not another Savior coming. He's it. He's it. What do you want? I want true joy and happiness. It's not in wisdom. It's not in power. It's not in riches. It's knowing God. And knowing Him through Christ. Knowing Him through Christ. This culture is choosing death. But we choose life. And we're going to call this culture to life, aren't we? We're going to call them to life. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for Rebekah. Thank you for giving us the insight and glimpses into this personal encounter that you had with this prophet. There's a lot we can learn here. There's a lot we can see and a lot we can take away from this and look at our own lives personally and look at how we live in a culture in which we do. Thank you for this book. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.