Let us pray. Father, be gracious to us and give us again your spirit, that he might open our eyes to behold wonderful things in your law. Give us your spirit, that he might take these things and seal them to our hearts. Do God with the diversity of need represented in this congregation would you grant your spirit that he might apply this word to those very diverse needs. You know and love your people. Now here are prayers for the ministry of your spirit among us, for your glory and our good. We ask in Jesus name, Amen. Maybe seated. So it was told last week that I was off to the wilds of Mississippi while I survived the wilds of Mississippi and had a wonderful time with a group of people in a Presbyterian church in New Albany, Mississippi, which is about 70 miles from Memphis or Memphis as they are inclined to say there. Lots of wonderful conversations with people and maybe sometime I'll explore with you why a trip like that is good for the soul and why there's a lot that is very attractive, very appealing about rural America. It was a good, good and interesting time. And one of the things that I realized very quickly while I was with this group of folks in Mississippi is that everybody, I say this to you all the time, but I have to say it again, everybody is affected by the fall. Everybody is ravaged by the fall. And the same kinds of struggles that people have to deal with here in Orlando are struggles that people deal with in New Albany, Mississippi. In conversation with a couple of women, both of whom have a similar problem, similar difficulty, but for very different reasons. One had a brain tumor diagnosed about four years ago, five years ago, and had some radiation therapy to deal with that brain tumor, but there were some side effects from that radiation. One of the most obvious of which is a very great difficulty which she has in maintaining balance. She has to focus all of her energy and concentrate her energies, both her intellectual energies and her physical energies, to walk a straight line. And then I met another woman. They had a little biscuits and gravy breakfast every morning while I was there, and I did a devotional time during that time. That's one of the things it's attractive about New Albany, Mississippi. And I was sitting at breakfast with another woman who about two years ago fell down a flight of stairs and hit the back of her head on each one of those steps as she went down. And ended up having to have some brain surgery, and one of the side effects for her was a similar thing. A tremendous amount of energy has to be focused simply in maintaining her balance, keeping her feet under her. Now, I don't remember if I said to either one or both of these women what I thought subsequently, but I thought, boy, that describes what the Christian life is like. You feel the ravages, you feel the effects of this business of the fall, and the struggle of the Christian life. And it is a struggle. I mean, if you've been reading and listening to the back, this man is engaged in a struggle. The struggle of the Christian life is maintaining your equilibrium. It's maintaining your balance. It's keeping your feet under you. And you remember from our previous looks at Habakkuk, that Habakkuk is struggling, struggling to keep his feet under him. The struggle to maintain his balance, his initial problem, the initial conflict or difficulty with which he is wrestling, is sin in the midst of his people. Now, again, reading some of the background material regarding this period of time, and just even reading the Old Testament passages which describe what life became like in the Southern Kingdom at this particular time, is enough, I think, to reinforce this idea that this was an awful and very low time in Israel's history. Israel was experiencing what we would call an art day, an apostasy, a departure from the one true God. They were breaking the covenant. They were engaged in following after false idols, false gods. They were making treaties with foreign nations and in making treaties with foreign nations. They were denying their primary allegiance to God and they were seeking help at this earthly level at this horizontal level. They were seeking men and their wisdom and resources and political strength as solutions to their problems. You can extrapolate out from that some personal application. There was a lot of compromise going on in Habakkuk's day and he was deeply distressed by it, but that led to his second problem. His second problem is that as God responded to his pleas that he do something in the midst of Israel, God said he would do something and what he was going to do was bring the caldians, this obviously pagan and wretched people as an instrument of purification, cleansing, and judgment in Israel. God was going to do something but he didn't answer Habakkuk's prayer in the way that Habakkuk wanted for it to be answered. How many of us have wrestled with that?
So he has a second problem which leads then to a third problem and that is the theological problem, the theological difficulty of reconciling a holy covenant-keeping God, who always desires what is the best and the highest for his people. That's reflected in the teaching of Jesus from the sermon on the Mount. You come into this business of being a Christian, one of the things that needs to be settled right from the get-go, right from the beginning is that God, your heavenly Father, always and only desires what is the highest and best for his covenant people. And if you, Father's parents know how to give good gifts to your children in perfect as you are, isn't it therefore the case that your perfect Father and Heaven will always give those things which are good to his people. And Habakkuk struggles and wrestles with this holy, just, righteous, pure covenant-keeping God employing an unrighteous and ungodly and pagan people as his instrument. And so he's had three problems and three struggles and his wrestling with God persists. It is an ongoing kind of a struggle. Somebody was telling me this morning about a sermon that she heard preached by the Reverend Evie Hill, who was a pastor out in Southern California, who was talking about the difficulties that people will encounter and the struggles that they will encounter in the course of their lives, and that those struggles can be lifelong struggles. And this great, very, very godly and very orthodox, powerful, black preacher says, you think sometimes somebody dug a hole and pushed you in it? Wasn't somebody who dug a hole and pushed you in it? Is God who put that hole there in your path? Ain't nobody who slips up on God and does something that he doesn't want to do catches them by surprise? God who orders your days? It is God who puts these things in our paths. It's perplexing, it's mysterious, it's confusing, and sometimes it goes on for a long time. And that's what Habakkuk is wrestling with right now. And so we're asking the question in the midst of his perplexity, in the midst of his confusion, in the midst of feeling a sense of being over well and even, a sense of being defeated, a sense of being cast down, a sense of being discouraged, deeply discouraged. How does Habakkuk respond? Just to refresh your memory, just to remind you, the first thing Habakkuk does is remember, remember, remember. He recalls things which are true. He takes himself by the hand and speaks to himself and reminds himself of those things. Verse 12 of the first chapter, are you not from everlasting? Oh Lord, my God, my Holy One, we shall not die. We shall not die. You see, he's reminding himself. It's a rhetorical question. He goes back to first principles. He goes back to first things. Remember, remember, remember. What are the things of which you need to remind yourself every day of your lives? Every day. I've alluded to one already. I've been alluded to it. I've said it. I've spoken it explicitly. This is a fallen and broken world. It's one thing to be disappointed when you encounter that brokenness. It's another thing entirely to be surprised by it. All of us feel the disappointment of it. Many of us are feeling the disappointment of it right now. But we shouldn't ever be surprised by it. However it shows up, it's a broken world. It's a fallen world. The ravages are everywhere. They're with us physically, they're with us emotionally. They're with us psychologically. They're with us relationally. The ravages are everywhere. We shouldn't be surprised. In second, we're pilgrims. Habakkuk was a pilgrim. Abraham before him was a pilgrim on our way to the celestial city. Not only should we not be surprised when the fallenness catches up with us, we should also not be surprised when we are not satisfied. When we find ourselves longing for something greater, we remain for that something greater. It is not wrong. It is not unspiritual to desire it. But if we become surprised that we're not satisfied here, it only says we're not reading our Bibles with our eyes open. It's a fallen broken world. And there are moments of great joy, but there is never a time of perfect and complete satisfaction in the midst of all of this brokenness. We have another place. Remember, remember, remember. And then third, God is in control. That's what Habakkuk means when he says, you are from ever lasting, O Lord, my God. Nothing slips up on God. God is in control. God orders it all.
And then remember, this fourth thing, a thing we alluded to talked quite a bit about the last time. God's purpose is bigger than this particular moment. He is in control of all of history, and we are at a particular moment, a particular juncture, a particular nexus, a crossroads, and history will go from beyond this point into the future. And this particular moment flows into perhaps centuries of time, which are a mystery to us, the most enigmatic, confusing and perplexing moment in all of history was the cross of Christ, for those who were there at the feet of Jesus when he died. But that moment, that moment, let go, a river which has flowed down through the centuries. The purpose of God is bigger than our particular moment. And so Habakkuk reminds us that we need to remember, remember, remember, but but also Habakkuk is not a fatalist. Habakkuk is not a determinist,
Habakkuk doesn't sing the old popular song, K-serah-serah, whatever will be will be.
Habakkuk does not see himself a marionette on the end of strings. A puppet simply to be manipulated and moved around. Habakkuk's second response, after he remembers and reminds himself, his second response is to get himself up, figuratively speaking, to get himself up into a place which overlooks the whole plane and from which he can see the expected movement of God in response to him.
The thrust of that is that Habakkuk wants to be expected, wants to anticipate. And so he uses this figure of a watchman who gets up into the watchtower. And when a watchman gets up into the watchtower, he does it because he is expecting an enemy to be moving. He is expecting for there to be some activity out there on the plane. And the opportunity to go to Israel about 20 years ago, 22 years ago, I don't believe him really old enough to say that I had the opportunity to do something that long ago. But it's the case, I was in college and I went to Israel, was there for a month and got to travel all over the Holy Land. And one of the memorable moments for me was being inside a crusader fortress, a 13th century, 14th century fortress that overlooked the Jordan Valley.
When you were up in that fortress, you looked down this craggy cliff side to the valley below and you could see movement in every direction. That's why they put that fortress there because it's a place from which to watch. That's what Habakkuk has in mind. That you get yourself up in the midst of your perplexity, you get yourself up into that prominent place from which to look out over the terrain. And the thing about that fortress is that it is up on top of this craggy cliff. Anytime you walk up into a watch tower in this day, you don't have the advantage of elevators. You're required to walk the steps of that watch tower. You're required to scale the craggy cliff and get yourself up into that fortress. And folks, that is a labor. That requires effort. It requires energy. It requires determination. It requires perseverance. I can't tell you how convicted I am by this passage. I can't tell you how naked and exposed I feel by the word of God, which is held up before me like a mirror and shows me to be a half-hearted, flabby, non-persevering, Christian person. If you want to ask me about it, we can go out for a lunch and I'll sort of let you into the inside of what's going on. But when I contemplate this figure, that Habakkuk in his moment of extremity in the midst of his perplexity still steals himself and energizes himself to climb up into that tower, expecting that the moment will come when God will hear him and will respond. I'm ashamed of myself because I want so quickly to bail out, to run.
One of the things, one of the things that was so intriguing to me about being a new Albany Mississippi. And I think we've all experienced what I've just described, the sense of quitting, the sense of giving up. One of the things that was so interesting about being a new Albany Mississippi, quite frankly, is seeing history through a different set of glasses. They see things a bit differently, a new Albany Mississippi. And I got to visit a Civil War battlefield where a major battle was fought, the Battle of Shiloh Church, where 100,000, 40,000 Confederates and 60,000 Yankees engaged one another. And where there were over 20,000 casualties, dead wounded and missing an action. And at one particular point in this two-day battle, the Union Army had entrenched itself at the edge of a wood and had set up its artillery behind its infantry and from that wooded area, continued to pummel the Confederate forces across an expanse of about 300 yards. That little spot, where the Union forces were, was called the Hornets Nest because as bullets came and as canister shot left, it sounded like a constant buzzing, this high-pitched feverish buzzing of Hornets. The Confederates had to break the lines of the Union forces if they were to have any chance of moving them back to the Tennessee River and back across the river in order to defend Mississippi and a key rail line that ran across the state of Mississippi. And so 12 times, officers of the Confederacy led infantry across that open expanse. And I stood in the midst of that field and thought about wave after wave, after wave after wave after wave after wave of infantrymen rushing headlong into canister shot and rifle shot knowing that two-thirds of each wave would meet with death. And I tell you I came away from that experience saying to myself, young man, you know nothing about courage. I said the butler last night warfare in those days was not an anonymous thing. You were staring people in the face as you fired your gun. 12 assaults on the enemy lines. The bodies I wouldn't say were so thick that you could walk that 300 yard expanse and not touch the ground. It is that kind of determination, it is that kind of perseverance. It is that kind of stealing oneself for the battle in the midst of your perplexities that you see reflected in Hebekic. Getting himself up into the watch tower expectantly and anticipating that he will see the movement of God who is not his enemy but his friend and that sooner or later he will have his answer. God tells him in verse 3 that the vision will come, the answer will be there in the end, it will speak, it will not lie though it carries weight for it, though it carries weight for it. You see what the word of God is to Hebekic and us as well. But in the midst of the perplexity we remember, remember, remember on the one hand, but we climb up into the watch tower, into the fortress, expectantly, persevering, expectantly believing that God will one day, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, folks maybe not next year, that God will come and God will answer and respond to the pleas of His people.
And so there is remembering and there is persevering and then there is a third thing as well
and I would suggest to you that this is probably the most difficult thing of all. Look at what Hebekic says at the end of that first verse. I will watch to see what He will say to me and what I will answer when I am corrected, when I am corrected, folks if there is one thing which is a recurring theme in the scriptures, a recurring characteristic of those who are earnest in their affection for God, in their persevering, in pleading with God, it is humility, it is humility.
When Isaiah beheld God in all of his glory, when he was given a vision of the holiness of God, he did not respond by saying, woe unto you Israel, for you are an unclean people with unclean lips, the most godly man of his day, one of the great statesmen in all of Old Testament history, cried out, woe is me, woe is me, where I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips. Read Daniel chapter 9 when Daniel reads in chapter 9 that the days for told by Jeremiah were coming to fulfillment and that the promised return of the exiles was imminent, he prayed a prayer of confession, acknowledging the sins of the fathers, the sins of his people and his own sin and if there is anybody in the scriptures who stands out as having integrity and righteousness, it is Daniel, but he says we have sinned, forgive us and restore and have back ache in his perplexity, wrestling with the mystery of the purpose of God, persevering in his pleading with God, taking his watch, getting up on the rampart to see when God acts, a backer, another man of righteousness, a prophet is open to correction from the Lord. How do we think about ourselves in the midst of our perplexities? Folks, the Christian life is a life of repentance, you don't repent once, but we live repentance. We live acknowledging our brokenness and the distortions and our perceptions of things and the confused manner in which we respond to them and our first motion must be that of Habakkuk that we humble ourselves under God's mighty hand and be willing to hear his correction and his repute and repent and cling then again to the cross which is sufficient. Please remember that being open to correction, being open to rebuke, humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God that in due time he might exalt us that is not the same thing as being threatened with expulsion, that is not the same thing as running the risk of being kicked out of the family. The cross is sufficient for you, the correction comes for the same reason the cross is given the love of God for his people and his desire that they know life and so our response is we wrestle with our perplexities and our uncertainties and our confusions and our doubts and uncertainties and I would say to you particularly in these days and times at St. Paul's Presbyterian Church must include an openness, a humility to hear the correction of God. Brothers and sisters, it is not our plans, it is not our goals which are the Christian life but it is this, this is the Christian life and it will not change, it will not be anything other than this throughout the course of our living and being together as the people of God until we see Christ and are perfected and wrestle no more.
This is the Christian life, let us pray together. Almighty God our Heavenly Father for three years and more. In one way or another in these services of worship we have prayed that you would revive your people and that you would begin it here and over the course of the last three years and more each of us in different ways has experienced the kind of perplexity and uncertainty which you have shown us in the life of Habakkuk. I pray you, O God, that you would give us grace to learn from him.
Give us grace to stir ourselves up to remember, remember, remember those things which are unalterably and inviolably true, most especially that you love us, most especially that you will not stop working in us until we see you in all of your glory. That pray that you would give us your grace to stir us up and we might run with endurance this race which you've set before us that we might persevere in it and that expectantly and I pray that you would give us the grace of humility that we might hear from you correction or correction is needed. O God you know our hearts and our prayers and we ask you that we would have the privilege of seeing soon your mighty work and glorious answers to those things for which we are pleading with you and we pray this for all of the evangelical church in this country and pray that you would range to and fro and raise her up and to born her with righteousness and glorify your name in her midst and we pray for your church worldwide
that in these chaotic days your bride, your people worldwide might stand for and radiate to the world around a compassionate glory of her Savior the Lord Jesus we are unworthy for you even to listen to us much less answer us we ask you in the name of Jesus to hear and to answer and that quickly for the sake of his name and glory and we make our prayer on the basis of the finished work of Christ upon it and across. Amen