Well, I appreciate you being here tonight, Amen. Take your Bibles and let's turn to Habakkuk chapter number two. Habakkuk chapter number two. I know there's some folks who will preach through this book and they can preach through it probably in four messages. I'm not that way. I look for what the Lord has for us, and I think in this chapter 2 and verse number 1, we're going to find a nugget that will really be a help to us in the days that we live, the times that we live right now, and as we're perplexed about what's happening in our nation. Back at chapter number 2, and then we're going to read verses 1 through 4, but we're mostly going to look at verse 1. and we'll touch on verse two and verse four, and we'll come back and deal with two and later, verse two and following later, okay? Let's read one through four. I will stand upon my watch. I'll get it right there, amen. I will stand upon my watch and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. And the Lord answered me and said, write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is set, the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie. Though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his soul, which is lifted up, is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith. In the first chapter of this book, we saw how the prophet Habakkuk was troubled on really two different levels. He questioned why the Lord wasn't doing anything about the wickedness in Judah. Why was the Lord seemingly allowing the wickedness to continue unrestrained? Habakkuk's problem was that God's thoughts and ways were higher than Habakkuk, and that's usually our problem too, when we don't understand something that God is doing or not doing. He was trying to understand eternal things from an earthly perspective. Now, he was a finite being questioning an infinite God, and you know, God doesn't answer to us. we must answer to God. But God was gracious to answer Habakkuk. And to answer that question, the Lord showed him a bit about what was coming. The Lord was going to bring the Chaldeans, also known as the Babylonian Empire, to bring about the judgment of his people. Well, to Habakkuk's finite mind, That only carried him a little bit. He had a problem. He took his confusion to a whole different level. He took his questioning of God also to a whole different level. He questioned why the Lord was going to use a nation that was more wicked than Judah to judge Judah. It didn't make sense to him. He was trying to add those things together, and to him it was like some sort of new math. It wasn't adding up. And so we left off last week by just reading verse 1 of chapter number 2 with Habakkuk waiting on the Lord, and he appears to be expecting a rebuke from the Lord when the answer comes. Understand that the Lord at this point had not judged Judah's wickedness. Habakkuk was experiencing a problem that many in the church experience even today when it comes to the things of God. And that is we need to view things from a different perspective. We all have been guilty at times of viewing things through our earthly carnal vision rather than through the spiritual eyes of our faith. You know, we're, we're to view things as a matter of faith. I, I like what he says there. The just shall live by faith there in verse number four. It's the reason why, why I wanted to read down that far because that's the whole gist of, of what I'm talking about when we talk about viewing things from a different perspective. And we do not understand that spirituality and carnality do not mix. just like water and oil do not mix. The Apostle Paul said these words, he said in Romans 8 verse number 7, because the carnal mind is enmity against God. For it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. You know, that's why a lost world doesn't get God's ways. They don't have anything but, they don't have a mind of God, they don't have a spiritual mind. 1 Corinthians 2.14, but the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Now, one cannot decipher spiritual things with a carnal mind. However, we believers have an additional perspective that's available to us, don't we? We have the perspective of the mind of Christ. Because it's two verses right after 1 Corinthians 2.14, verse 15 to 16 say, but he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. So the way we view any situation is dependent upon the perspective that we use, and we know that to be true, don't we? I mean, just take the circumstances that we see a lot of times in news media. Sometimes the things that we see are only seen in partial context, right? You see a clip from somebody's cell phone video, and you make judgment based on that video. But then when the whole thing comes out, and the context is there, it changes your perspective, doesn't it? It just really does. Now, our perspective will influence the way we see things. And one of my great challenges as a pastor is saying things clearly so that people understand what I'm saying. And I know what I want to convey, but some people often hear something quite different than what I intended. And I've said this before, you know, I know you understand what you think I said, but I'm not so sure that what you heard is exactly what I meant to say. And that's often true because we have different perspectives. It depends on your perspective as to how you look at it. And that was Habakkuk's problem. He wanted and expected the Lord to revive his people and wake them from their spiritual sleep. And we've seen him cry out to the Lord to the point of even questioning him and accusing him of inactivity. But the Lord's revelation of his future intervention doesn't ease Habakkuk's problem. It only added confusion to it. And that had to do with his perspective. Sometimes we long for display of God's intervention and power in the present circumstances even in our own dear country, don't we? Sometimes you just wish God would just move in there and take care of it. We want God to display His hand to prove He is working in our situations, but when He does display His hand, and it's not like what we expect, we want to question the Lord's ways of doing that. Don't we? We just do. We need to get back and be reminded of Gideon And the book of Judges, and I'm going to have you turn to Judges chapter number 6 for just a minute. We're going to be back in the book of Habakkuk in just a second. But just to give you an understanding of what I'm talking about here, I'm going to go back and be reminded of Gideon here in the book of Judges. Gideon says in Judges chapter number 6 and verse number 36, It says here, and Gideon said unto God, and I want you to get this, if thou wilt save Israel by mine hand as thou hast said, did you get it? He's questioning God's word. See, God had already given him his word back in chapter number six in verse number, let's see here, verse number 16. And the Lord said unto him, surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. You got the word of God on it. That's really all you should have needed, right? But Gideon's like we are sometimes. I know what the Lord said in His Word, but I'm just going to throw this fleece out there. He threw a fleece. Not just one, but two. He says in verse 37, Behold, I will put a fleece I will put a fleece of wool in the floor, and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said. Oh, really? The Lord did that, and he didn't believe him. Verse 38, and it was so. For he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wrung the dew out on the fleece, a bowl full of water. And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once. Let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece. Let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. And God did so that night, for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew all on the ground." We get that way sometimes. You know, God has told us so much in His Word of what He's going to do. Amen. And then sometimes we have the audacity to question God. Question Him about His Word, rather than just take Him at His Word. We want God to prove that He's going to do what He said He will do. Does He need to prove it to us? Really doesn't. He's going to do what He said He was going to do. We want Him to prove that He's aware and working on our behalf. He's just wanting us to trust Him and take Him at His Word. That's all He wants. Romans 8, 28, we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose. We know that God's in purpose of putting all together, amen? He's working all together and it'll be for our good. Doesn't mean it's gonna be good, but it'll be for our good. We love Him. And we're called according to His purpose. So after posing the second question to the Lord, listen to what the prophet says there, and I'm back at 2.1, back in our text. He says, I will stand upon my watch and set me upon the tower and will watch to see what he will say unto me and what I shall answer when I am reproved. Now, we don't like waiting, do we? We just live in a society where we've gotten used to not having to wait. And waiting is not one of our better qualities. But the Lord tells us to wait on Him. God is not under any obligation to do things in the time that we expect Him to. We need to grab hold of that concept, I mean. But listen, God's timing is impeccable every time. We can think He's late, but He's never late. There's many biblical examples. And we can get in a heap of trouble when we choose not to wait on Him. Well, I didn't hear from God. I guess I'm just going to choose what to do. And you jump out there and you do something. And it's the wrong thing. Psalm 27 verse 14 says, Wait on the Lord, be of good courage. He shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. And we see here that he's waiting on the Lord, and that's a good thing because we're told to wait on the Lord. Most of the time, we need to simply learn to just wait on God, don't we? Because God has got our best interest at heart, And when He says wait, He's going to give us the answer in the time that we need it. Psalm 37 verse 7 says, Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Fret not thyself because of Him that prospereth in His way because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Psalm 37 verse 34 says, wait on the Lord and keep his way and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it. Psalm 40 verse number one, the psalmist said, I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. Now we're told here that he stands upon the watch, he sets himself in a tower and he's waiting here. We're not told. But there was probably some interval of time that passed between verse number one and verse number two. Don't you imagine? I don't imagine God got back with him right away. Could have. We're not told. We're not told how long he had to wait. He only records his determination to wait for an answer. You know, sometimes the Lord tests our determination, doesn't he? Are you determined to wait? We don't know how long the Lord tested Habakkuk here. And so at this point, we find the prophet waiting and trusting the Lord for an answer. And the Lord did answer him in the Lord's time. And in this lesson, Habakkuk was about to receive, he would learn the importance of having a spiritual perspective. Now, the title of this message is A Change of Perspective. See, the only perspective he really had was the earthly perspective. He was looking at things from an earthly perspective, not a spiritual perspective, and he turned to God in his moment of perplexity, and he sought the Lord, and believed that the Lord would answer his petition. And let me pause here and remind you that God does reward faithful seekers of Him. We read in Hebrews 11, verse 6, that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Now, all too often, some believers are prone to quickly abandon what the Lord has revealed to us about Himself. When problems come knocking on our front door, we get perplexed about what in the world is happening, and that's because we live in this sinful, finite flesh, and God's perspective is at a much higher level than ours. Problems come, and instead of drawing closer to the Lord for comfort and grace and guidance and trying to gain His perspective, Many push God off and abandon their service and worship of Him. They respond to God from a lower perspective rather than reaching for the Lord's higher perspective. Now, in the time of Habakkuk's perplexity, we see here he refused to waver. He poured out his heart to the Lord, and then he waited and stood his watch, and this is a picture of Habakkuk's expectation from the Lord, even though Habakkuk was expecting the Lord to reprove him. He stood his watch, even not knowing when the answer would come. He stood his watch. Notice that the prophet removed himself from the wicked. He got above what was happening around him. He got up in a tower. I will stand upon my watch and it set me upon the tower. He got in a high place. I believe he was looking toward the Lord. I believe he was up there just waiting on the Lord. and trying to keep his mind on the Lord instead of the things that were happening down on the earth. And it was necessary for him to have a different perspective. He placed himself in an elevated position physically and I believe spiritually as well. And he moved from the midst of the problem and placed himself above it. He set himself upon a tower of which the psalmist spoke of the Lord as being his tower. Listen to Psalm 18 verse number 2. The Lord is my rock. and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my strength, and whom I will trust, my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. Psalm 61 verse number 3 said, For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy. Even Solomon said, In Proverbs 18, verse number 10, that the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. Now, when you get up in a tower, we always used to love climbing trees. That's what boys did. And we had a favorite tree that we climbed there on the property where I grew up the first 11 years of my life. It stood there for a while. When they came through with I-95, they didn't cut it down for a while and always had that tree to remind me of the days that we used to climb that tree. But finally, it disappeared. But we would get up there to get a higher and wider perspective of things. that you can't see when you're at ground level. And that's what a physical tower does. It gives you a higher perspective. You ever been to a place where it got you to a high and lifted up place and you just looked out there and, boy, you could just see for miles and miles. It was a different perspective than if you were just, you know, there on the ground. If the Lord is our strong tower spiritually, he wants us to run to him to gain his perspective that we cannot see while we are in the midst of our problems. It is only when we remove ourselves from the midst of the problem and run to the Lord that he can change our perspective. When we are in the midst of the problem, we can become so overwhelmed by our problems that we can't see God working. And when we can look down on our problems from a higher perspective, listen, God's perspective, that we look at it through, they cannot look as bad from His perspective as they do from ours. So most of the time we just need to simply learn to change our perspective by running to our high tower. Now, Habakkuk shows his confidence in the Lord in waiting for Him to respond with an answer. The Lord is about to challenge him to move beyond his limited understanding, and we do have limited understanding, don't we? And that's why we're told in Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6, to trust in the Lord with all thine heart. and lean not into thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. I just want to take a few things out of those verses. I know those verses are familiar to us. But think about trusting in the Lord with all your heart. What does it mean with all your heart? With your intellect, your emotions, your will, everything about you, trust the Lord. Lean not into thine own understanding. Understanding is, you know, don't try to reason it out yourself. And we're real good about trying to reason things out and going with the human reasoning rather than waiting on the Lord and listening to the Lord. In all thy ways acknowledge Him. Our ways are a road, a course of life, or mode of action. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you acknowledge Him in what you're doing. And it says, and He shall direct thy paths. He'll make your paths straight. That word direct means He'll make it straight. The Lord wants us to keep straight paths, doesn't He? Never seek to be independent of the Lord. We must consider all of our perplexities through the perspective of the Lord and not man. So therefore, our thoughts must be elevated beyond our limited understanding. We must acknowledge the Lord and simply trust Him for guidance and direction. Now, remember that no matter what we are faced with, there are always two perspectives. There is our perspective and there's God's perspective. When we forsake our perspective and embrace God's perspective, we can learn just to simply trust the Lord, whatever our circumstances may be. Now, when we're crying out with our complaints like Habakkuk, we're viewing the situation through what? Through our perspective. And that's okay. God's patient with us. God was patient with Habakkuk. And aren't you glad God's patient with us? Then when the Lord speaks to us through His Word, and that's how He speaks to us, through His Word and His Holy Spirit He's given to us. And the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to speak to us, by the way. You're not going to hear no audible voice, but God will use the Word of God, and His Spirit will take the Word of God about our situation, and He encourages us to respond. and behave in a God-like fashion. And that's when we can begin to see the situation through God's perspective. Now, I want you to note the importance given to what God says in verse number two. Look at verse two. And the Lord answered me and said, write the vision and make it plain upon tables that he may run that readeth it. Now, the phrase here where he talks about making it plain upon the tables. It denotes the importance and serious nature of what is being said because the Lord wanted this to be preserved and passed on. And it kind of reminds us of what the Lord told Moses about the inscription of the law. If you remember when the Lord was giving the law to Moses in Deuteronomy 27 verse 8. The Lord told him, Thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law very plainly, very plainly. The implication here is that there's much gravity in what God is about to say. And listen, this is of absolute importance. It's essential that not only Habakkuk but people at large be aware of what God wants them to know and recognize the severity of what is about to transpire. God reminds Habakkuk there in verse number four that the just, the righteous remnant will not be abandoned. The just shall live by his faith. What we're to do is we know what God says in His Word. We know some things that are coming. And we are to live by our faith in God. We are to look at things through the eyes of our faith. Simply means that we're able to live in the midst of perplexity and even frustration by trusting in the fulfillment of the promises of God, even when our understanding of what God is doing may be lacking. So let me ask you, how are you seeing what's going on right now in the world? I'm talking about both in your life and in the world, really. If you're perplexed, maybe what you need is a change in perspective. Why not ditch that faulty, worldly perspective and trade it for the Lord's perspective? Get on a higher plane. In that song that we talk about, we sing higher ground. Lift me up, let me stand, I'm in. A higher plane I've found, a higher ground, that's what we need, don't we? Our God is still sovereign. He's still the sovereign Lord of the universe, and that includes everything that's happening in our lives and around us. Even when things are out of control, He's got everything in absolute control. There's no need for us to get anxious, no need for us to fear, no need for us to get in a tizzy. Because the Lord does have everything in control, and as we fully trust Him with all our heart, and we don't lean into our own understanding, we don't try to reason it out ourselves, we look to the Lord for our understanding, but rather we acknowledge Him, He will direct our paths, He'll keep our paths straight the way they need to. And listen, He will do what He says He will do in His Word. We can count on it. We don't have to be like Gideon. Really, three times he's challenged the Word of God. I want to make sure that you're going to do what you said you were going to do. Just take God as a Word. God's going to do what He said He's going to do. Amen. I'm glad that for our salvation's sake, God's going to do what He said He would do. We're safe, we're secure in the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a blessing that is, just to know that. That whatever can happen in this world, and you know, there's a lot of bad things that can happen. And I'm not saying that some bad things aren't going to be coming our way down the pipes. But what I'm saying is that through the Lord, we're going to be okay. We're going to be alright. We don't have to worry about those things because of our security in Christ. We have a secure salvation. We've got a secure home in heaven. Amen. And we have a Lord that loves us. What more could we ask for? The sovereign Lord of the universe. has our very interest at heart in all that He's doing. And He will be faithful to treat His children rightly. Amen. But what He expects from us is for us to live by faith. He said there in verse 4, but behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him. He's talking about those that are prideful. Those that are lifted up in pride, they're not upright before the Lord. But the just shall live by his faith. And I trust that you're just tonight, that you're just before Him. How can you be just? Well, the Lord is the justifier, isn't He? He's the one who gives us that justification by grace through faith. Praise God for that. Amen. Well, let's pray. Father, we just thank You so much for the perspective that You give us in Your Word. And Lord, many times our perspective is so low. We gain our perspective a lot of times from what we hear from friends and family and from the news reports and different things around us. And those things will cause us to have a wrong perspective of what's happening. Lord, help us to go to your Word and get your perspective. And Lord, when we're tempted to not trust You, help us to trust You anyway. When we're tempted to question You, Lord, help us to just trust You rather than question You. Lord, help us to believe Your Word. Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus. Lord, just help us to remember that. God, we just pray now that You'd help us in the knowledge of these things that we might have not only perspective for us, but Lord, that perspective, that heavenly perspective that you give to us will give us a testimony to those that are around us. People are worried about what's happening in the world. They're in a tizzy. But Lord, we're not to be that way as your children. We know that what's coming down the pipe, but the best thing we know is we're on the winning side. And Lord, give us the comfort we need from that, and give us the testimony to be able to tell folks about you, so that they can change their perspective. Yes, if a person is lost in this world, things look scary, real bad scary. But Lord, with you in our life, Things change. Thank you so much for being in our life. Thank you so much for the life that you give us. Help us to be a good witness for you in these last days, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.