Please turn in your Bibles to the book of Habakkuk, chapter 3. I know many of us have found the book of Habakkuk to be a very encouraging book in a time of difficulty. The Lord has revealed this book to us, I believe, to help us as we go through circumstances such as those the prophet faced. And one of my goals in going through this book with you over these last several weeks is that for the rest of your life, you'll be able to read this book with more meaning than you ever had before. And that in the future, when you face trouble, and when you face the difficulties that will come in this life, you'll have another place in scripture you can go and read with understanding and know what God says to you. And if this is your first time in this book with us today, if you're visiting, I'm gonna summarize where we are so far. And the circumstance is that Habakkuk, the prophet, is living in Judah about 600 years before the coming of Christ. And these are very bad times in Judah. They're bad because this nation, which is supposed to be a holy nation, the people of God, is living in wretched sin. And they're disobeying the law of God. There's all kinds of injustice and evil and even violence in the land. And the application I've made of that in Habakkuk begins by saying, how long, Lord? In chapter 1, verse 2. And he's asking the Lord, how long is God going to put up with the evil among his own people? And the application I've made to this is that we as Christians living today in the year 2001 can sometimes be tempted to ask, how long is God going to put up with the state of the church in our day in which there is a lack of reverence for God, there's a lack of submission to His Word? How long is God going to put up with a nation like ours where there is violence done to the innocent, to the unborn, and all kinds of evil being promoted all around us? Well, then the Lord answers and says, behold, I'm doing something in your day. You would not believe it if it were told you. I'm raising up the Chaldeans, which is the Babylonians. And what the Lord says in the next part in chapter one is the Babylonians are coming, and they're gonna absolutely wipe you guys out. They're gonna carry you into exile. They're gonna kill a lot of people. They're gonna tear everything down, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Well, that creates Habakkuk's second question. And what's the second question? How can you use those more evil than we are to punish us? We may be bad, but they're much worse. How can you use the Babylonians to conquer us? And Habakkuk is deeply troubled by this. And we come to really the first great climax in the book as Habakkuk has expressed the second complaint to God. How can you do this? And he's just imagining the horrors of the invasion of Babylon, wiping out his country. And he ends his complaint, and in chapter two, verse one, he just says, I'm gonna go stand in my watchtower and wait for God's answer. Well, the answer comes, and it's summarized in verse four, where the Lord says, behold, for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith. And there are two parts of that. One part is developed in the rest of chapter two, which we talked about last week, where there is a taunt song, there's a description, a poetic description of the destruction of the wicked, including Babylon. And the Lord is basically saying, when I'm done with these arrogant people who are gonna wipe you out, they weren't trying to serve me when they did that, they're serving themselves, they're being proud, they think they've beaten me because I let them do this, one day I'm gonna come and I'm gonna destroy them worse than they got you. But in the meantime, the righteous one will live by faith. We don't live by sight. We live as we trust God, even when circumstances are completely against us. And so we finished last week the second answer. And today as we come to the conclusion in chapter three, we have a prayer. James Montgomery Boyce said it's one of the most beautiful prayers, one of the great prayers of the Bible. And it's actually a song. It's not like the taunt song last week that God revealed, but it's a song of praise to God. The prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, according to Shigonioth, something like that. Lord, I have heard the report about you, and I fear. O Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. What we have in chapter three is a prayer of three parts. The first part I just read, which is the prayer, the essential request that he makes, is very brief. Then, we're gonna get to in a moment, verses three through 15, is a glorious, poetic description of God and all of his majesty taking the battlefield and fighting for his people. And then in verses 16 through 19 is Habakkuk's final response, which is very beautiful. and his submission to God. Now, here's what I want you to get out of this today. You are facing troubles, some now, some worse than others. We're all facing national concerns. Many of us have concerns about the state of the church in our nation and in the world today. And some of us have bigger problems in our own lives than others. And one of the great things and the struggles that I've had in my own life is I know what the answer is. The answer is back in chapter two, verse four, isn't it? The righteous will live by faith. I just need more faith, right? And you know, no matter what your trial is, if you just had more faith, everything would be fine. Now here's the question I want you to get the answer to today. How can I get more faith? I know I need more faith. How can I get it? That answer is contained in this chapter. So listen for it. First of all, and actually I've divided into the three elements, pray, remember, and trust. First of all, pray. That's what Habakkuk does in verses one and two. He prays. And I want you to notice, Habakkuk is a new man. His attitude is entirely different. The two previous times when he spoke, what was he doing? He was complaining. Complaining about Judah, complaining about the Babylonians. Complaining stops in chapter three. There are no more complaints. How did he do that? I believe it's because he remembers who God is and he remembers who he is. He stopped talking about the Babylonians, they, and these other people in Judah, they're so bad. He stops comparing Judah and say, well, the Babylonians are worse than we are. I think he has an awareness of his nation's sin, of the justice of what God is doing. He has a vision of God and his glory, which we saw some of in chapter two, as he's going to punish the wicked. He has a vision of God. That's how you increase your faith. One of our problems is sometimes we tend to compare ourselves to others and then think God owes us something. And Jesus told the very famous parable of the Pharisee and the publican. And, you know, how does the Pharisee pray? Lord, I thank you that I am not like other men, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. Can we do the same thing? I thank you that I'm not a terrorist, a Taliban member, an abortionist, a homosexual, a liberal, or an Arminian, or whatever other category. that you're proud that you're not part of. We can get a mentality we have some kind of claim on God. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all that I get. You know, I come to church, I give money, I do all these things. And Boyce tells a story of a man who came to a famous preacher and said, preacher, I've been praying for the same thing for 20 years. And here I've been, I've been an elder in my church most of that time. I've given faithfully, I've served, I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I've done all these things, and still God won't answer me. See the problem with that? What's the problem? And the answer of the preacher was, maybe that's why God hasn't answered you. Because you think he owes you an answer, he thinks he owes you, because you've been faithful. That's not the right mentality. That's the Habakkuk's mentality in chapters one and two, not three. Habakkuk doesn't think God owes him anything. He's humbled before God. And I would challenge you, oh wife, oh mother, why isn't my husband saved? Why aren't my children saved? I'm doing everything right, so it seems to me. Well, God doesn't owe us or owe husband. You know, why can't I get this promotion? Why can't I make more money? Why can't I afford a house? I've tried to do everything right. God doesn't work based upon merit other than the merit of Christ. He doesn't owe us. And now as Habakkuk is finally has this vision of who God is, he's no longer complaining or making demands upon God. Another application is upon our nation. In the past, when our nation has faced crises, we would have national days of prayer and fasting. And even at the time of the Civil War, as I understand it, our president at that time declared a day of national prayer and fasting where there would be repentance over our sins. It's not a matter of saying, we are better, we are good, we are righteous, those guys are bad, therefore God bless America. Now, if God were to give America what she deserved, she would be just as bad a shape as Judah was from the Babylonians, or the Babylonians were from the Medes and the Persians. We can't appeal to God based upon our merit. We can compare ourselves to others and look pretty good. But when we beheld the face of God and we see our own guilt and our own sin, all of our righteous deeds are as filthy rags. And as we're gonna see, Habakkuk doesn't appeal for justice, he appeals for mercy. He reveres God. I have heard the report about you and I fear. The NIV says I stand in awe of your deeds. Gain faith by remembering that God is awesome. I object to the way people use awesome, that word. That was an awesome piece of music. Boy, Michael Jordan is an awesome basketball player. That was an awesome piece of pizza. My friends, can we not reserve the superlatives of our language for the only one who deserves superlative in language? As an analogy, in the news media, I heard a guy who's a director of, I think, a newspaper saying, you know, what was the big news on September the 10th? or on the front page of the newspapers on September 11th. Well, Gary Condit's doing this or that. And he says, you know, we realized on September 11th what news is. There's news and there's news. Well, in the same way, there's awesome and there's awesome. And what we revere and what we magnify in our culture is nothing compared to God and his glory. The Babylonians are nothing. You know, whom do we fear? Do you fear the Taliban? Do you fear anthrax or terrorists? They are nothing. Don't fear. Don't revere. Don't stand in awe of anyone other than God. It is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom, and we are to worship Him with reverence. You know, when I was a young Christian, I was taught in prayer, you go, A-C-T-S. Have you ever been taught that? Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. God is to be adored. It is not just something you do as kind of perfunctory. Okay, I adored him, now let's move on to the important stuff. He is to be praised. He is to be worshipped. He is to be exalted. We need to teach our children to pray, not selfishly. We need to teach in terms of worship. We come to the Lord's table. This is something to be approached with fear, to stand in awe of God, who has sent His Son to die for the sins of the world. and to save the wicked and to redeem us. And we are to come into His presence with awe. This is not just another entertainment event. This isn't just another social event. This is the worship of the Most High God. That's why in the early church, when some people took the Lord's Supper lightly, some were sick and some even died. It's that we might learn to fear God. We're to stand in awe of Him and Him alone. We stand in awe, as we're gonna move on in the next section, the report about him, as we learn of him, the fuel for praise of God is the reports of his attributes and of his deeds, which are contained in scripture. And we're gonna get to that in just a moment. But likewise, as he's praying, he then does pray and make requests. He says, oh Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. Now notice what Habakkuk doesn't ask. That's very significant. What would you and I have been asking at that point? Lord, could you put it off until I'm gone? Remember the guy, the king in Isaiah says, oh, this is good news. The Babylonians aren't coming till I'm dead, so I won't have to see it. Or could you not do it at all? Could you do something else instead? Could you spare us? No, he's given up on that. He's not asking for that anymore. Instead, his only concern is for the work of God. Lord, you know better than I do what to do. You revive your work. You do what you're going to do. But positively, he does pray for revival. Revive your work. Renew your work. Make it known. That's the passion of his heart. that even if it means the chastisement by means of the Babylonians, if God's work can only be renewed by the temple being knocked down, the people killed or carried into exile, and the nation punished that it might be cleansed, so be it. He's saying, Lord, do whatever you need to do to bring forth your work, that your kingdom might accomplish its purpose and your people might be holy. Are you willing to pray that? Do you dare pray for revival? Revival that may come through hardship? Revival for Judah. I mean, you read in Ezra, Nehemiah, as the revival finally comes, there comes a people who actually love and fear God. It comes at a price. Are you willing? God usually sends revival into those circumstances, doesn't he? Revival often comes in times of trouble when people have given up on all of their own means and they cry out in desperation to the Lord. Do you dare pray for revival? He says do it in our days. He longs to see it soon. One of the problems in our day is we have an unbiblical pessimism. Some of it is due to faulty eschatology, which thinks that the rapture's gonna come any day, so there's no point expecting things to improve. We don't know when the Lord is going to come again, and it's perfectly right for us to pray for revival, to expect God might actually make things better spiritually. Not necessarily materially, economically, but God might actually send revival. He's done it before. We are going to celebrate on Wednesday an event called Reformation Day. And that is commemorating that on October the 31st, ran what year? I knew he'd know. 1517, in a day that was spiritually much darker than ours, when virtually the entire invisible church had turned from the gospel, one monk challenges the false doctrine of the church, nails on the church door in Wittenberg, 95 theses, thank you. challenges the false teaching of the church, and a spark is going forth that results in a revival that sweeps through Europe, sweeps ultimately centuries later to our own country, and the gospel is renewed, and there's a tremendous change that takes place. Do you believe God could do that again? That's how we ought to pray. Pray for revival. It happens not through human contrivance, but through divine intervention. As we see the state of our nation and its wickedness and its complacency, as we see the state of the church where our churches have become places of entertainment rather than worship, pray that God might send revival of a fear of God and a love for Him. Pray for personal revival. Look at that verse again in verse 2. Lord, revive Your work. An experience I've had, and I know that others have shared it, that you've been a Christian for a long time, and when you were a young Christian, you had this first love, and you were delighted in Christ, and you loved to read the word, and you loved to pray, and you loved to serve God, and you remember those days when, boy, just every time the doors of the church were open, you were there, and you wanted to be there, and you didn't want to leave. Now it's 10, 15, 20 years later, and you've reached the state of Judah in 605 B.C. You know those things are true, but they've lost their excitement for you. You're living like the world. What should you pray? Lord, revive your work in me. We need revival, don't we? We need renewal from time to time, and a renewal of a sense of who God is, and His glory, and of our longing for Him. The lethargy and the coldness might be put away. Then He also says, in wrath remember mercy. And what he's doing here, what Habakkuk is praying in particular, I believe, is he's remembering texts like Deuteronomy chapter 30, where God had predicted that someday the people of Israel would reject his covenant and that God would send them into exile. But, he said in verse two of Deuteronomy 30, that after I banished you to these nations, you will return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to what I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you, will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you." So God had given hope. And when Habakkuk said in chapter one, we will not die, he knew the promises of God and he's saying, Lord, I know we deserve chastisement. I know we deserve this punishment you're bringing upon us, as awful as it is. But as you pour your wrath upon your people, show mercy, have mercy upon us. It's interesting because the same kind of language is also used speaking of the coming of Christ. And as His coming is being sung of in Luke 1, it's said that it's to show mercy towards our fathers and to remember His covenant. that the promise of God in the old covenant was not fulfilled merely by the restoration of Israel after 539 BC when the temple was rebuilt in a fashion, but ultimately the promise and the hope that they had in the spiritual ruins of Israel was that one day Messiah would come and God would show mercy towards his people and would remember his covenant. This should be our attitude We look back on the mercy that's been shown, but we also need to seek mercy. Our attitude towards God shouldn't be, I deserve this, I want that. God bless America because she is good, but rather to plead to God for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ to show mercy to us as individuals, as a church, and even for our nation. In the same parable, the Pharisee and the publican I referred to a moment ago, the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven. but beat his breast and said, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. That's the prayer that God hears, and that's the attitude with which we should approach him. So, first of all, you want to increase your faith, first pray. Pray in the presence of God with humility and reverence. And then in verses three through 15 comes the answer. Habakkuk said, Lord, revive your work. Lord, stretch forth your hand and do something great in our day. And then he receives a vision of God doing exactly what he prayed for. And the language here is very poetic. It's very vivid. And it's recalling what God has done in the past. It's looking ahead to what he's going to do in the future. And all of it is describing the attributes of God. It's the same thing that happens in Psalm 77, which James read earlier, when the psalmist is in such misery and such trouble, and he feels like God has forgotten him and rejected him. What did he do when he felt so bad? He says, I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely I will remember your works of old. I will meditate on all your work and muse on your deeds. The point is, and this is very, very practical, You're going to struggle with doubt from time to time. Most of us do. But we don't want to admit it, right? You want to come to church and smile and sing the hymns and act like everything's fine. And it's very hard for us to admit that sometimes we doubt. Sometimes our faith, we struggle with it. So I'll help you. I struggle sometimes. I struggle sometimes saying intellectually, well, you know, how can I know the Bible is really true? How can I know that it's not just because that's the way I was raised? Or how can it, you know, my parents told me? How can I not know that it's just my environment? How do I know it's really true? And I've not been deceived like some Muslim in some other situation. Morally, we struggle with doubt. Well, how can God really be good when we see all the evil and the trouble in the world? The terror, how can there be justice and goodness in God with all of these things going on? And we wonder these things. We have these doubts sometimes. Or personally. And this is the hardest one of all, when it's yourself. And it's your feelings, okay? Feelings, we're supposed to live by faith and not feelings, but feelings determine a lot of who we are. And just, you feel down. the trials and the circumstances, the disappointments and the hurt in your own life, and you just don't feel like it's true. I mean, you know it's true, but you don't feel that it's true. What do you do? Well, you do what the psalmist says to do, which is what's happening in Habakkuk chapter 3. You realize that our faith relies not merely on ideas that are hoped for, but on realities. Christianity is a religion not just of kind of theories, but Christianity is a religion of facts, of who God is, and these facts are confirmed by what God has done. We serve a God who has created the world and has been active in human history. He's been active in the history of our own lives. And when difficulties come, Your faith is going to be built up as Habakkuk's was, as you're going to see the response at the very end, by remembering who God is and what he has done. And that's what this vision is in verses three through 15. He's recalling in this vision of God, and I think the vision as we're going to read it, is recalling especially as did the Psalm and in many of the places in the Psalms and the places in the Old Testament, the great work of God, which is typified by his bringing his people out in Exodus. And there are lots of allusions, there are lots of pictures from Exodus there. But it's also looking at that as an example of the way God continually delivers his people. So beginning in verse three, you have a picture of God coming in. Let me say a couple more things about it. What Habakkuk is saying is, remember what happened when we were slaves in Egypt? Remember how God came onto the field, won the victory for us, and delivered us, and wiped out our enemies? What he did then is what he's going to do in the case of the Babylonians. So verses three through seven is the appearance of God for his people. God comes from Taman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor covers the heavens and the earth is full of his praise. His radiance is like the sunlight. He has rays flashing from his hand and there is the hiding of his power. Before him goes pestilence and plague comes after him. He stood and surveyed the earth. He looked and startled the nations. Yes, the perpetual mountains were shattered. The ancient hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Cushon under distress. the tent curtains of the land of Midian were trembling." Now, I'm going to pause there for a moment. By the way, if you're reading, I'm reading from the New American Standard. If you're reading from another version, you may say, well, boy, my version is kind of different. And this is especially true in poetic language and scripture. The NAS from which I'm reading tends to be very, very literal. And it makes you kind of figure out what the picture is. Other versions like the NIV try to smooth it out and explain it some, and that accounts for the differences. But the overall picture is the same. This is an appearance of God and His kingly power and authority. It's a theophany, that it pictures God as a mighty warrior. And I believe just as in the days of Exodus, he heard the cries of his people, and he stepped forth into history to deliver them. In the same way, the day would come, as you read in Daniel 9, when Daniel prays to God, recalling his promise that after 70 years, he would restore his people to the land, that God hears the prayers of his people. And he makes his grand entrance, and his entrance is glorious, indescribably glorious. with power and light, like, you know, lightning bolts and the sun shining. And he has weapons and reminds you of the Exodus, plagues and pestilence as God used these weapons against his enemies. I mean, you talk about plagues and pestilence, anthrax, smallpox, God's got more of that stuff than Saddam Hussein or bin Laden never thought about having, that he can use on his enemies when it pleases him. He's done it before, and those who oppose him are going to suffer again. He is the one who is permanent. He codes and he strides to the earth. The mountains, I mean, what could seem more permanent? But you're looking at the great Sierras, and yet the age-old hills are going to be shattered. They're going to be like sandcastles. He can just kind of kick them over as it pleases Him. That's how great and how mighty this God is who fights for us. And the mention of these nations trembling at Him, some of them are the same places that God drove aside as He established His people in the land. And part of the idea is, my friends, it's foolish to be in awe of anybody else. It's foolish to be in awe of the Taliban or the Afghans or Bin Laden or the United States of America. They are all nothing before our great God who strides to the earth and does His will and controls the very elements of nature for His own glory. And in verses 8 to 15, after he's entered the scene, verses 8 to 15 is another vision describing God taking action. Verse is a question, in verse 8, did the Lord rage against the rivers? Or was your anger against the rivers? Or was your wrath against the sea that you rode on your horses, on your chariots of salvation? Your bow was made bare, the rods of chastisement were sworn. You cleaved the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and quaked. The downpour of water swept by. The deep uttered forth its voice. It lifted up its hands. Sun and moon stood in their places. They went away at the light of your arrows, at the radiance of your gleaming spear. In indignation, you marched to the earth. In anger, you trampled the nations. You went forth for the salvation of your peoples, for the salvation of your anointed. Devour the oppressed in secret. You trampled on the sea with your horses on the surge of many waters. This is a picture of God as a warrior. And he's riding on his chariots into battle. He's firing his arrows. He's wielding his sword. And this picture in verses 8 to 11 of this power over nature, the sun, first it makes the sun stand still, another place it disappears altogether at the glory of his power and of his might, this cataclysm of the rivers and the seas and the mountains trembling at him. And he says it's not because God's mad at those. No, who's he mad at? That comes at the later. He's mad at those who opposed him. He's mad at those who have touched the apple of his eye, his anointed ones, his holy people under the old covenant Israel, under the new covenant, his people, the church. And he is stretching forth his power to save them. Verse 13, why did he do this? You went forth for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. I think particularly pointing Old Covenant to the Davidic kingship, New Covenant to Christ as the head of his new people. And it's describing the carnage that's gonna happen to the enemies of God, what these Babylonians did to you. Verse 14, 15 is describing how they were laughing and exulting because they were gonna come wipe us out, but the Lord pierces them with their own spear. Their laughing has turned to mourning as those who oppose to God are completely wiped out and destroyed. This week, our Secretary of Defense made the statement, you know, we may not find bin Laden. We may do a lot of damage and may break up different things, but we can't be sure we can find him. My friends, our Lord God has the coordinates of the evil one. And he's got ordinance that can blow him up wherever he is. And it is assured that our God has weapons at his disposal that will completely and totally punish the enemy. And then the picture here of the most total triumph, and it's a bit gory if you think about it very long, in terms of tearing him apart, opening him up from thigh to neck. Well, how does this help if you're Habakkuk? How does this help if you're the Jewish remnant, the song is being passed on to you to sing and remember in the days of your exile? Well, what Habakkuk is saying is you remember, remember. Remember those days when you were in Egypt and we were a few people and we had no power, no weapons, no army, and you had Pharaoh and his mighty hosts and his chariots and all the power in the world, yet God stretched forth his hand. God sent plagues and pestilence, and God opened up seas and rivers, and he did amazing things. At Sinai, cosmic disturbances happened, and God delivered us. And he's saying to these exiles who are about to spend 70 years out of the promised land, 70 years of time where there is no temple in which to offer sacrifice and to worship God, when it seems that there will be no longer a people of God, when it seems maybe we will never see the Messiah because we're all gonna be dead and scattered or scattered. He's saying what God did before, he's going to do again. Remember what he's done before is assurance that he will accomplish what he says. The just shall live by faith. During those hard days, you have to live by faith in these spiritual realities. With your eyes, by sight, you're going to see the Babylonians come in and be unstoppable. By faith in your heart, you're going to trust God that one day He's going to wipe those guys out and He's going to deliver His people. It's like the story of Elisha's servant. Remember Elisha and his servant, they're surrounded by An army's about to wipe him out, and the servant's so worried, and he said, Lord, help him to see. And all of a sudden, there was this multitude of God's army of angels arrayed around them, far outnumbering and outpowering these enemies who by sight seemed to be so strong. And that's the answer. I mean, you remember who God is. You remember what he has done. You remember his promises, and you trust him. It helps us thousands of years later. The psalmist says, the Lord is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one. We gain comfort. If your faith is weak, if you're struggling with doubt, remember. Remember what God has done. Remember who he is. He is the same God today as he was then. Remember through reading the scriptures what God has done in the past. That's what is being done in Habakkuk 3. That's what Israel did again and again in the days of trouble, remembering the Exodus. We can remember through church history. That's a benefit of remembering times like Reformation Day. is remembering that there have been worse days in the history of the church in the last 2,000 years, and God revived them then. Remember the days of Whitfield, dark days in England and North America. God sent revival then. God may do it again. Remember in your own life. Remember in the past, the hard times you've had, the times when you were afraid what was most precious to you was going to be lost, and days you might have been afraid that you just couldn't handle the problems and the trials you were experiencing any longer. Remember the hardest days of your life, and remember God helped you in those days, didn't he? Here you are, you're sitting here. He saved your life. He preserved your faith. He delivered you. We all have a history. We can remember God's faithfulness, which gives us confidence in the future. A very few of you will remember, this is the very first passage we preached when we started the church 11 years ago on the first Sunday of October of 1990. And we were people who were discouraged, a bit scattered, with no place to meet, and wondering what was gonna happen. Those of us who were the remnant had gone through a very, very hard time. But God has been so good to us. God has done things far exceeding what we would have imagined 11 years ago, giving us a multitude with whom to worship, giving us the privilege of being involved in missions as we are, giving us a place like this to gather. God has been good. Remember. Recall. And this doesn't come naturally. It's back to the thing Lloyd-Jones says. You've got to talk to yourself. Because the flesh is going to keep looking at the Babylonians. And you've got to look away from the Babylonians and look to God, who He is, what He has done. And we have more to remember than Habakkuk did. We can remember that in 539 BC, what God promised here happened. And the Medes and the Persians wiped out the Babylonians and the people of God were restored to the land and the temple was rebuilt. But even more than that, we remember Christ. The true anointed one has come and he's brought salvation to his people. And the hopeless situation is us and our sin and our guilt. How could we be delivered? God has sent us a deliverer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our sin is a bigger problem and a bigger enemy than 10 armies of the Babylonians. Yet God has sent a way for us to be forgiven, to have a relationship with Him, to be adopted as sons. The Bible says that without holiness no one can see God. That our God is a consuming fire. How could we become people fit for His presence? God has sent Christ that by His death to take our guilt upon Himself. by his resurrection to make us new creatures, new people, fit for fellowship with God, able to enter into his holy presence. Remember what God has done to increase your faith. Remember the resurrection. What could seem more hopeless than Good Friday when the hope, the Messiah, is dead in a tomb? But God has raised him from the dead as we have been raised to newness of life. We also have more to remember because the scripture says we have a savior who can fully sympathize with us and our struggles and our weaknesses. When you are weak, when you're struggling, when you're overwhelmed, he is one who had Gethsemane cried out to the father. He is one who with tears struggled over his own trials and struggles. And he is able to sympathize with you as you cry out to him. Did Habakkuk realize that he was saying all of this, too? Yes, he did. 1 Peter says how the prophets of old, as they were speaking of Christ, were longing to understand more fully what they were saying. What Habakkuk is talking about here when he says at the end of chapter 2 that I mean, chapter two, verse 14, that the earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, as he's describing a great deliverance of God's people and his anointed, that is not satisfactorily fulfilled in 539 BC. It is only truly fulfilled at the coming of Christ the first time and in his return in the days that God should be pleased for him to come. So when you doubt, what do you do first? You pray. You cry out to God in humility. Then second of all, you remember. Remember who God is. Remember what he has done. Call to your mind all of the great works of God which demonstrate who he is and his commitment to his people. Then finally in verses 16 through 19, we have Habakkuk's beautiful response. If you were paying careful attention, one of the hymns we sang had part of it in there. It's a response of trust. It's a response of faith. As Habakkuk sees who God is, remembers what He has done, and hopes in His promise, he's able to trust. Verse 16. I heard, and my inward parts trembled, at the sound of my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones, and in my place I tremble, because I must wait quietly for the day of distress. for the people to arise who will invade us. Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive tree should fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exalt in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he has made my feet like Heinz' feet, and he makes me walk on my high places." As Habakkuk comes to grips with the realities of the hard things that are to come, the chastisement upon Israel, and perhaps also a fear like Job, at the end of the book of Job, when he kind of sees the glory of God and he just says, OK, I'll be quiet now. Or Isaiah, in Isaiah 6, beholding the glory of God, woe is me. He trembles. He trembles. And yet in the midst of this, he has learned to trust God and to rejoice in God. And for all of this prayer and this contemplation, nothing's changed, right, in terms of what's going to happen. It's not like Habakkuk has wrestled with God and now God says, okay, I'm calling off the Babylonians. Everything's going to be fine. No, he says, I must wait quietly for the day of distress for the people to arise will invade us. Instead, what Habakkuk says is when the worst imaginable events are going to happen, I still can rejoice in God. And for us, in our culture, imagine them in their agrarian economy, that the result of this invasion is going to be in this place where people live on what they can grow on their own land, the fig tree isn't going to blossom. There's going to be no fruit on the vine. There's going to be no grapes for wine, for food. The yield of the olive will fail, and the fields will produce no food. And the flock should be cut off from the fold. My friends, that's the whole farm. There's nothing less. We've got a couple of farmers in the congregation. You've got the trees are no good, the fields are no good, the cattle are no good. It's gone. What's gonna happen? It's famine, it's death. It's not like a recession that we're so afraid of. Oh no, I may have to postpone major purchases. I may have to go further into debt. It's a matter of saying the factories aren't closed. They are destroyed. They're contaminated and unusable. They're broken down. There's no electricity. There's no water. The grocery stores are closed. The gas stations are closed. And there's no prospect for any grand opening in the near future. It's gone. That's what Habakkuk is describing. Most of us aren't even facing that. I mean, everything shut down. And yet he knows a day is coming when the fig tree will blossom and the olives will produce and the flocks will be plentiful and the fields will be fruitful. And he's not just going to endure the wait. He's not just going to hang on until he gets to go to heaven. But he's going to live today in spite of those realities, exalting and rejoicing in God. Because God is his strength. The Lord, God is my strength. He has made my feet like Hein's feet. He makes me walk in the high places. He's able to end the book on a spiritual high. This is more fun than Jonah. Remember Jonah? Jonah hit his high in chapter two and crashed in chapter three. Habakkuk ends on a high. Everything is gonna fall apart, but he has such a great faith and the reality of who God is and what God does for his people, he doesn't care anymore. Because God is so great and so wonderful, he can rejoice and exalt in God through anything. And that's the message for us. When you're having trouble, the answer isn't that the Babylonians are gonna go away. They may not. Through much of human history, People have died young, of plague, through war, people have suffered hunger. The lives we have lived in this nation and at this time are unusual. We have no right to expect it's going to go on that way. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, I don't know. We live with uncertainty. And even that's new to us, isn't it? It's uncertain to think, well, maybe they won't be able to do mail anymore. Maybe this is going to happen. Maybe that's going to happen. Maybe anthrax is going to happen. My friends, most people in the world live with the reality of the brevity and the painfulness of life every day. That's what life is like in a fallen world. Of course, Habakkuk, it wasn't uncertainty, it was certainty. They're coming. They're on the horizon. And some of us, especially experiencing a change in our reality for the first time, it's really unsettling, it's troubling, and we're tempted to doubt and struggle and question God. My friends, the answer isn't that some smart bomb is smart enough to find bin Laden and blow him up and everything's gonna be fine again. There's gonna be trouble, and if it's not him, it's somebody else. And by the way, this prosperity theology that some preach on TV, not on channel 19 or 18, whatever it is on Friday nights at nine o'clock, but on other situations saying, oh, if you just have enough faith, everything's gonna be great in this life, you're gonna be rich and everything's gonna be wonderful. No, the scripture warns us, in this life you will have trouble, in this world you will have trouble. But instead of being overwhelmed by these troubles, take your eyes off of the troubles, fix your eyes upon God, believe in him. Turn off the television, switch off the internet. Stop thinking and talking about anthrax and terrorism and unemployment and the problems, and remember who God is. Trust what he will do for you. And realize that if everything in this world is stripped away from you as it was with Habakkuk, if you have faith in him, you can have peace and you can have joy. The key to joy and peace is not the circumstances of your life. If I had a better husband, better children, better wife, if I had more money, da-da-da-da, that won't help. Habakkuk had all those things taken away and he was able to rejoice in God. That's what we need. He will make you strong. He will give you the strength to endure whatever is coming in your life. The world faces trouble. Some just try to be stoic about it. I'll be tough. I'm going to ignore it. Everything will be fine. Some just pretend it's not there and go on with life. That's kind of, I think, what's happening with a lot of people now. Some are heroic, oh, we're gonna win, we're gonna be optimists, everything's gonna be fine. No, for believers, we overcome fear and trouble with faith. Remember what he said, pray. Pray to a God who is able to give you victory over the worst of trials. Ask for his help, for renewal spiritually, for mercy. Second, remember. Remember His faithfulness to you through all generations. And by the way, what a great chance we have today. Do this in remembrance of me. Remember what God has done on behalf of His people, how He stretched forth His mighty arm to save, that your faith would be built up. What we're doing today, hearing His Word, reading His Word, singing His praise, praying to Him, remembering what He has done, builds up your faith. Don't neglect it. And then trust. But trust Him to fulfill His promises. Trust Him to be with you even in the worst of trials. You can rejoice no matter what your circumstances when your joy is in the Lord. Let us pray. Our Father in Heaven, we thank You for the clarity of Scripture and for the fact that we see people like us who have the same kinds of struggles with doubt, with complaining, with comparisons that we are prone to. We see how you've worked in their lives, and Lord, we remember that, and we ask you to renew those works in our lives. Help us to pray as we ought, to praise you as we ought, to know you as you are, to recognize and stand in awe of your attributes, to remember your great works, and to trust you, even in difficulty. Lord, we pray today that if there are those here who don't have this resource because they do not know you, that they would see their own desperate need, that by faith that you would give them, they would look to Christ who has come to save and they might find peace with you, peace for their souls, for the forgiveness of sin, which is offered by what Christ has done. Lord, we pray that as we remember today the work of Christ through the Lord's Supper, that we would worship you as an awesome God who's done an awesome work to save. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.