Faith that Transcends our Circumstances:

Finding Hope When Life Seems Hopeless

Habakkuk 3:1-19
Sunday Sermon at Pleasant Valley EMC
Sunday, February 6.2011

INTRODUCTION

Slide 1

Our circumstances do not have to change before we can.

Slide 2

The Story of Annie Johnston Flint.

Annie was born in was born on Christmas Eve, in the year 1866, in the little town of
Vineland, New Jersey. Annie’s remembrance of her mother was virtually nothing as she
died 3 years after Annie’s birth. But before her mother died, she gave birth to a sister who
became Annie’s life-long friend. Alone with his children, her father decided to board the
children at a friend’s place, but the situation never was a happy one. They were
unwelcome and unwanted. With the future looking dark for his children, the father placed
them with a loving, Christian family who adopted them as their own. Shortly afterwards,
Annie’s dad died of an incurable disease.
Annie and her sister had found a good home. She developed an interest in poetry was
able to pursue that love.
In spite of a challenging childhood, Annie had a cheerful and optimistic disposition. But
Annie was not without her flaws, a quick temper, acute sensitivity and a lack of patience.
She did not like to wait for a thing.
After high school, the lure of earning money attracted Annie, but she felt the need to
remain at home and look after her adopted mother whose health was failing. Annie
started to teach at the same school she attended as a girl, but after 3 years her health
deteriorated to the point she found it difficult to walk. Many physicians were contacted,
but none could help.
The death of both adopted parents shortly after this left both children homeless yet again.
A kind Aunt Susan (not really a relative, but a lady they called an aunt) came to the
rescue and helped them. But things turned for the worse. Picture if you can the
hopelessness of Annie's position when she finally received the verdict of the doctors that
she would be a helpless invalid. Her own parents had been taken from her in childhood,
and her foster parents both passed away. Her one sister was very frail and struggling to
meet her own situation bravely.

But Annie still had the love of poetry. With a pen pushed through bent fingers and held
by swollen joints she wrote first without any thought that it might be an avenue of
ministry, or that it would bring her returns that might help in her support. Her verses
provided a solace for her in the long hours of suffering. Then she began making hand-
lettered cards and gift books, and decorated some of her own verses. Eventually she had
to dictate her thoughts to friends as she lost her writing capabilities.

The last years of her life brought her no ease from her affliction, no lessening of pain and
suffering. Yet, we think that those closing years she really exemplified more than ever
some of the sweetness of her earlier verses.

No one but God and she knew what suffering she endured as the disease became worse
with the passing of the years, and new complications developed. But through it all her
faith in the goodness and mercy of God never wavered. There were many times, no
doubt, when her soul would be burdened with the mystery of it all and the why and
wherefore of the thing that she was called to endure. In that respect she was most human
like the rest of us, but the marvelous thing is that her faith never faltered. On September
8th, 1932 Annie Johnson Flint left her body and was given a new eternal body of glory.
Annie wrote the song we just sang

Our situation, our trials, our circumstances do not have to change before we can.

Slide 3

I want to talk about…

Faith that Transcends our Circumstances:

Finding Hope When Life Seems Hopeless

A Review of Habakkuk

The whole book of Habakkuk deals with the age of philosophical conundrum of theodicy:
God and the problem of evil. How can we comprehend God as remaining holy when evil
is running seemingly unchecked in the world.

It starts in Hab. 1:2-4. God’s own people the Israelites are deep in sin, and Habakkuk is
not amused with that. How long will evil rule in wicked Israel before God will act?

The surprise is that God will act, but dramatically different fashion than Habakkuk
thought. God is going to send an even more wicked nation to discipline Israel. This is an
atrocity Habakkuk cannot fathom, but this answer brings an end to his complaining and
he falls silent before God.

Then God speaks and sends him a vision. The foundational message is this: The
Righteous will live by his faith. The wicked will perish which is confirmed in the woes
that follow.
One thing remains constant in the book: the theatre has not changed. The Chaldeans are
coming, and Israel will suffer extreme discipline for their sins. God is using the
Chaldeans for this purpose. But the circumstances from 1:1 to 3:19 remain the same.
Discipline is on its way!! And the spanking is gonna hurt much!

But, there is a fantastic metamorphosis, a tremendous change, a magnificent

transformation that happens in the life of the prophet IN SPITE OF NOTHING HAVING
CHANGED IN THE SITUATION, IN THE THEATRE OF HIS LIFE’S EXPERIENCE.
That is very important to remember; it is very important not to forget that. The change in
Habakkuk started already in chapter 1, but it culminates in maturity in chapter 3.

Habakkuk begins this encounter with God with a radically different prayer than when we
first met him in chapter 1. This is…..

Slide 4

1. Habakkuk’s Plea for Mercy (3:2)

Compare 1:2-4 with this prayer here. In 1:2-4 we see what?- an agitated prophet shaking
his head, clenched fists, boisterous mouth and flapping lips with spittle flying from its
orifice, red face man of unrest!

What do you visual here?- a broken man, soft in speech, bowed head, bent knee,
submitted heart, quiet reverence, guarded speech, humble spirit worshipping YAHWEH!

Slide 5

LORD, I have heard the report about Thee and I fear = reverence!
Our Father Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name
O LORD, revive Thy work in the midst of the years =submission!
Thy kingdom come
In the midst of the years make it know =humility!
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
In wrath remember mercy! =petition!
Give us this day our daily bread

None of this is present in 1:2-4. No more how longs and whys, and yet the Chaldeans are
coming! Nothing has changed except the prophet!

Slide 6

Our circumstances do not need to change before we can!

Friends, often a backward glance at the terrain we have conquered through the power of
the Holy Spirit infuses us with the strength, courage and hope that we can conquer the
present challenges. Nehemiah 9 is a great account that beautifully illustrates this
principle. It resulted in a tremendous revival after they returned from exile!
And Habakkuk does just that. God has been faithful in the past. God has never forsaken
Israel. Yes, He has severely had to discipline them in the past, but never has He
abandoned them. Habakkuk asks that in His wrath, God will be tempered with His mercy.
That is the wonderful comfort about God’s discipline. We never feel only His wrath.
Never! When God pours out His wrath, it is not just His wrath that came to work that
day. NO, love, mercy, compassion, kindness, justice, righteousness, grace, holiness- all
His attributes come along. ALL of God’s character, all of His attributes work in a
beautiful symphony of divine harmony that sounds even better than the harmony of Alvin
and the Chipmunks. It is always best to fall into the hands of the Living God.

Habakkuk knows it, and so did David. Remember when King David numbered the people
in 2 Samuel 24? It was a sin that resulted in God presenting David with 3 options of
punishment for his sin. How does David reply?

Slide 7

Let us now fall into the hand of the LORD for His mercies are great,
but do not let me fall into the hand of man. So the LORD sent a
pestilence upon Israel...and 70,000 men...died. When the angel
stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD
relented from the calamity, and said...”It is enough.”

2 Samuel 24:14-16

Slide 8

If we could just place a bookmark at verse 16, we will see again a pattern developing into
its conclusion. The pattern is somewhat similar to the laments of Habakkuk. But here
Habakkuk prays, and then, as some OT scholars explain it, God answers in a theophany.
A theophany is simply God revealing Himself to man in a visual manner. God reveals
Himself, but it seems that Habakkuk is recording it. After this theophany, Habakkuk’s
prayer changes rather drastically, but let’s save that for later.

For now the issue at hand is...

2. The LORD’s Theophany (3:2-15)

Before we begin with this section of Habakkuk, I want to point out something. There are
3 observations I think are rather intriguing:

a) There is one relatively short section of questioning and complaining about what
God is revealing will happen to the Israelites: the Chaldeans are coming! And by the way,
nothing has changed! The Babylonians are still coming! Oh we can’t get away from that-
they are coming! We must always keep that in the back of our minds when we read
Habakkuk. That is the context of the book- Israel you treacherous people, judgment is
coming and it’s coming at the hands of a people whose wickedness makes your treachery
look like that of a benign novice! That’s point one, and the weight of this declaration of
God blows out all 18 tires of Habakkuk’s big rig that transports his faith.

How many hugs does it take to blot out one cold shoulder?

b) Almost two thirds of the book relates to restoration- to the building up of the
broken faith of Habakkuk. There are two messages, or visions, or manifestations of God
that are not only significant in length, but indispensable in importance in this process of
the restoration of Habakkuk. The first one is the series of woes against the nations.
If you have your Bibles open at Habakkuk 2, take a quick glance at verse 6-19.
Where is the focus? What is the realm of the vision? What is its environment? Where
does it happen? On earth, right? It’s all earth based. Who lives on earth? Humanity! Ya,
that’s right! I would call this an anthropocentric view of God’s judgment on the nations.
Another of saying this is a view of God’s dealing with the evil nation of Babylon from
man’s perspective

c) The first vision was from an anthropocentric, or man’s point of reference, but
the second revelation in 3:3-15 is clearly from a theocentric, or God’s point of view. In
this passage we are transported to somewhere other than earth. We are given a
perspective that is closer to the Good Year Blimp at a sporting event.

I can never figure out why they have to have aerial coverage at a hockey game, or a
basketball game when the game is played indoors and the aerial coverage gives us a
gloomy picture of a dirty downtown shot of a building inside which people are working
up a lather of a sweat. I can see the point of aerial coverage at a race track, but at an
indoor sporting event? Ok, maybe I don’t get what you get.

But do you understand the relevance of these 3 points I just presented? Please
understand that Habakkuk has been spiritually crippled, mentally exhausted,
psychologically beaten, theologically injured- it has hit him like a loaded Mack truck.
And God is sending in the reinforcements! God is doing His utmost to give Habakkuk
comfort, and He does it in part by these two visions. He is saying, Habakkuk, this is how
My intervention for you looks like from an earthly view, but come up here Habakkuk,
and I will show you how it looks from up here. He is giving Habakkuk the TOTAL
PICTURE of how His intervention for Israel will look like!

But now back-up for a moment and remember this: these visions of reassurance,
restoration and revival are preceded by this all important statement in 2:4- BUT THE
RIGHTEOUS WILL LIVE BY HIS FAITH!

Dear friends who are enduring a trial we never asked for, and one we don’t know if we
can hang on much longer, God can give us a thousand visions and theophanies and
revelations, but they will all have one thing in common: THEY WILL REQUIRE
FAITH!
God gave Habakkuk two visions!

God has given us the Bible!

Which would you rather have? Two visions or One BOOK!?

This book, this is the key tool we have to obtain faith and grow in the faith. Are we
reading it? Are we studying it? Do we cherish it? Do we have a Bible in our cars? In our
trucks? In our boats? In our pockets? In our hearts? Read the Word, study the Word. Shut
off the TV and grab a Bible. Turn off the music, stop vacuuming, start reading! Each
morning, I set aside a block of time, and I study the Word. It’s the truly a precious time! I
love the Word! I love studying it! O friends, treat it like a crime scene, pretend you are
CSI Rosenort: look at the surrounding area (the context), analyze the evidence, take it to
the lab (do word studies, sentence structure studies, word order, word usage, paragraph
breaks), formulate theories, test your theories, go back to the crime scene and look for
more evidence (re-read the text, and re-read it again), consult your crime unit officers for
opinions (consult commentaries, other versions, other translations), treat your reading as
a crime scene! Oh that takes time alright. That why we have to shut off the TV! Oh the
show will be long over by the time you’re study is done. But I know you will come away
blessed by the Word.

Do you think we can do that? Oh, my dear friend, you will find such treasures and you
will grow and grow in your faith. Be bold! Take hold! Get sold! Leave the old. Study the
WORD!

The vision starts off rather brilliant, glorious and majestic, and just like that, it suddenly
turns into distress, destruction and trembling. Again, punctuated in the middle of all this
chaos is the statement about God- HIS WAYS ARE EVERLASTING, as opposed to the
destructibility of mountains asnd the collapse of ancient hills. The vision begins with 2
geographical locations and concludes with 2 geographical places.

God is coming! Where He is coming from is a region of tremendous historical

significance for Habakkuk. God is approaching from the desert to the south- from Teman,
a district of Edom, and from Mount Paran, which lies between Edom and Mount Sinai, on
the route followed by the Israelites as they journeyed from Egypt to Canaan. Whatever
one may think of that wilderness journey, nobody can miss the beauty of God’s
faithfulness amidst the litter of Israel’s waywardness. That can have only one effect on
Habakkuk- HOPE! There is hope! The God Who led Israel faithfully through the desert
wilderness is coming to our aid! Rejoice! God is coming. Chaldeans, watch out, God is
coming!

Look at the magnificence of this vision! “His splendor covers the heavens” which speaks
of God’s awesome TRANSCENDENCE! He is out of this world!! “And the earth is full
of His praise” speaks of His IMMANANCE! God is in our very midst!
This whole opening scene reminds me exactly of the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar
of fire by night. “His radiance is like the sunlight; He has rays flashing from His hand
(the pillar of fire) and there is the hiding of His power (as the cloud settled over the
Tabernacle as Moses entered in).

And then comes the dark side in 3:5-7

I want to draw your attention back to the description of the mighty Chaldeans in 1:5-11.
Compare this wretched army of violence with the Almighty God of Israel.

Here, let me help you! Let’s treat this as the crime scene, and you are coming to
investigate. Here’s is what you could do:

Take a pencil and circle the scope of impact this feeble army of ruthless villains really is
limited to. Here is what you could circle in the NASB version: earth, dwelling places,
captives, kings, rulers, fortress. What do all these have in common? They touch the
ground. They are limited to this earth! What does that imply? Temporary-ness!! And
don’t forget that they will be held guilty!

Folks, whatever our foe on this earth- debt, wayward children, leaky roof the roofer
won’t repair, scratchy marriages, insidious boss, chronic arthritis, chronic raccoons,
persecution, trials, sorrows, pain, evil- its all gonna disappear eventually. It all touches
the earth, and it’s about to vanish! When is the last time you heard of the Chaldeans?
They are no more! Gone. So is the Roman Kingdom! Alexander the Great is now
Alexander the Late. Dead! Gone. Nero. A zero. All gone. Earthly temporary-ness!

Now go to 3:2-25. Remember, you’re a CSI agent Mac Taylor! Back to the crime scene.
Take that same pencil and circle the words that describe God’s domain- the heavens, the
earth, mountains, nations, ancient hills. God is a cosmological God of the Universe,
AND at the same time the God of the Earth. God is not some wacky Deist’s idea of a far
removed god who wound up the cosmological clock, tossed it to the earth, and then went
on an eternal vacation. No way! He is deeply interested in earth, and He is not so far
removed that He is not present on earth.

Now take a highlighter and run it over the last line in 3:6-HIS WAYS ARE
EVERLASTING!
Now do the same with the last two lines of 1:11- THEY WILL BE HELD GUILTY
THEY WHOSE STRENGTH IS THEIR GOD!

Whose ways are eternal? Why are we afraid of those who will be held guilty?

What are we to do with 3:7? What is the significance of the tents of Cushan under
distress and the tent curtains of Midian trembling? Well, very simply, God is moving
across the land and the nations are trembling. So, how is that different than when the
Chaldeans are coming across the land? Did they not also make the nations tremble?
That’s my question exactly! What I am about to say I say cautiously. Please, I don’t know
if this is of the Spirit or my own intuition. I take the blame for it. By the way, no version,
not even any commentary I came across supports my view, except one translation called
the Septuagint. This is what it reads:

Slide 9

Because of the troubles, I looked upon the tents of the Ethiopians:

the tabernacles also of the land of Midiam shall be dismayed.

Habakkuk 3:7 (Septuagint)

Scholars love to compare how things were with other nations, and therefore they often
assume things are that way with neighboring nations. So, I will try the same trick. Where
was God when Israel journeyed around in the wilderness? In the Tabernacle, right? Sure!
And what was the Tabernacle built of? Curtains! And behind which curtains did God
dwell? Behind the curtains of the Holy of Holies! Do you think it’s possible that perhaps
the gods of Ethiopia or Cushan, and Midiam, or Midian, also dwelt in tents made of
curtains?

My hunch is that the ones under distress and the ones who are trembling are not only the
people of those lands, but also their gods!

Slide 10

What happened in 1 Samuel 5:1-4?

1
Now the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod.
2
Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it to the house of Dagon and
set it by Dagon.
3
When the Ashdodites arose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on
his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD So they took Dagon and
set him in his place again.
4
But when they arose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his
face to the ground before the ark of the LORD. And the head of Dagon
and both the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold; only the
trunk of Dagon was left to him.
1 Samuel 5:1-4 (NASB)

Here is the issue with the Ancient Near Eastern people’s view of gods. The state of the
nation was a direct reflection on the state of their gods. A nation that prospered had a
prosperous, powerful, envied god. When the nation was in exile, their god was said to be
in exile as well. God was construed as a totally impotent God. This is clearly expressed
by Rabshakeh’s defiant speech in 2 Kings 18
Slide 11

“But do not listen to Hezekiah, when he misleads you, saying, ‘The LORD will
deliver us.’ Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the
hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where
are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria from
my hand? Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their land from my
hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”
2 Kings 18:32-35

The thing is that Habakkuk knows better. He dealt with this lie in 2:18-19. Please refrain
from laughter, but laugh if you must. In fact, bellow it out. Is this not pure, unadulterated
silly stupidity? Listen to absurdity:

Slide 12

Woe to him who says to a piece of wood, “Awake!”

To dumb stone, “Arise!”
Is that your teacher?
Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver,
And there is no breath at all inside it.
Habakkuk 2:19

These are the gods of the nations! These are the gods of the Chaldeans? All their gods
and their images of worship start off as felled trees, just like this picture illustrates! And
these are the gods we are fighting against. Compared to YAHWEH, that’s what our
enemy looks like- wood and stones.

The God of Israel is not impotent. All the credit Rabshakeh gives to himself and to his
god is nothing but God using that nation to punish His people, but woe to Assyrian for
God will come and turn their violence into their defeat. God moves the nations with
greater ease than Bobby Fischer moves the pawns on a chess board.

The pattern of 3:3-7 is basically repeated in 3:8-15 so I will not expound on that text. You
can do it! Do it home! Ya, it’s my homework assignment for you! Treat the text as a
crime scene! Then let’s talk about what you found!

Slide 13

I heard and my inward parts trembled

At the sound 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.
Habakkuk 3:16
Noting has changed! The Chaldeans are coming! But Someone has spoken. Habakkuk,
yes, the Chaldeans are coming, but so am I! YAHWEH has heard Habakkuk’s cries.
YAHWEH has noticed! God is not indifferent. God is coming, and Habakkuk, the nations
are trembling! What Habakkuk so earnestly prayed for- the assurance that the vindication
of the righteous was on its way- he has obtained. And now Habakkuk is content to quietly
wait for the day of distress, for the people to arise who will invade us.

Slide 14

Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,

and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign LORD is my strength!
He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
able to tread upon the heights.
Habakkuk 3:17-19 (NLT)

Our circumstances do not have to change for us to change.

War is havoc on people and the ecology. When Dudley and I were on the Foodgrains
Bank tour of Africa in 1993, we learned that famine is largely created by war- in certain
situations. The farmer cannot plant a crop when tanks, soldiers and bullets are criss-
crossing his field. You may have a 60’ air seeder pulled by a 550 hp tractor, but if a hard
of tanks comes across your field on a daily basis, your crop ain’t happening. Verse 17 is a
good description of the effects on war. Production is halted. Nothing can grow either
because of enemy occupation, artillery fall-out, or marauding bandits taking what little is
left to be taken. Verse 17 is a picture of utter, total devastation! There is nothing left!
Yes, it is true that this produce is the sustenance for life. But had you ever considered
another function of these products? Read Deuteronomy 26! How will you bring a
sacrifice, or an thank offering, or any offering of worship if all the produce is gone?

Are we beginning to see how this all effects all domains of the Israelite life and faith? It’s
catastrophic!

Our circumstances do not have to change for us to change.

What is Habakkuk’s response? Remember, the situation in 3:17 is as dark and perfectly
despairing as in Chapter 1. Nothing has changed! But someone has! Habakkuk has
changed. And you would never recognize the Habakkuk of 3:18 if all you knew was the
Habakkuk of 1:2-4. Habakkuk has changed radically! But his circumstances have not!
Our circumstances do not have to change for us to change!

Could we bury that lie that says I cannot change until the situation changes? It’s a lie, and
it cripples the spiritual growth of to many Christians. It has a title, and I hate it with a
hatred of vehement anger: it’s called victim!

I cannot be happy until my neighbor moves away.

I cannot have joy until this cancer is cured.
I cannot have peace until my son forgives me.
I cannot rejoice until this pain leaves me.
I cannot exult in God until I get a bumper crop.
I cannot believe in God until He gets me out of this horrid debt.
I cannot …. until…….

What is our mantra?

Whatever it is, it is a lie! Bury it! We’re done with that lie! Annie Johnston Flint buried
it. Habakkuk buried it. Now you and I, let’s bury it!

Conclusion

What has impacted your life in this brief study of Habakkuk?

Did you get what I was trying to get you to get?
Have you understood the message of Habakkuk?

Here is what I have tried to emphasize:

1. The encounter with evil, be it arthritis, bereavement, illness, relationships, debt,

whatever, whatever brings us down hard, this encounter is a process. Give it time, but
give it to the LORD!

2. The sooner we can come to the point of quiet reflection and patient waiting for the
LORD and listening to His voice, the sooner we can start growing through the
experience.

3. Faith, it takes faith. God has revealed Himself, God will reveal Himself. We need faith.
The righteous man will live by his faith.

4. God will vindicate His people. I don’t know when, but He will. Ultimately, this will
occur when He returns to earth, or when we enter Heaven.

5. Our situation does not have to change for us to change. We can rejoice in Christ, we
can exult the name of God, we can praise and worship our God even when everything in
our life is stripped away from us- and that day is coming anyhow. We can still rejoice!
Have you ever seen a calf or cow being let out to pasture in the spring after a long winter
confined in a stinky barn? It’s hilarious! That’s Habakkuk! He is released from having his
circumstances control his life. Nothing changed, except the prophet.

Our circumstances do not have to change for us to change.