hou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in ange

Bible Wonders of Habakkuk.

Well, how fun. The Lord gave me four days to ponder this particular verse, and so ponder it I did. And it was good that he gave me that much time, because I really didn't get a feel for it here until the last couple of days, and then he really opened my eyes to it on Easter morning. And the way he did it, he said, the way that he did that was through the sunrise service that we went to that didn't turn out to be a sunrise service at Fort Caswell Beach, North Carolina, because it was about gale force winds and rain and all sorts of stuff.

So we had it inside. But it was interesting to me how God had something for me Easter morning for my sunrise. Habakkuk, and it reads, thou didst march through the land in indignation.

Thou did thresh the heathen in anger. And so the whole time I've been trying to figure out for the last four days how this was the Lomet verse, which Lomet is loving and learning in so many different ways. The way the pastor illustrated his sermon yesterday, which was on John 3.16, and it started out, of course, for God so loved the world. And he started out with this story, which illustrates this verse so beautifully, because again, the idea of this verse is it is the Lomet verse, and it has to do with loving, but it sounds a lot more like my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, right? He's trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

I mean, that's exactly what it sounds like here. But as the pastor started out this story on for God so loved the world, he described a lady by the name of Miss Kemp, who lived in Detroit. And Miss Kemp was filling up her car with gas, and she had left her keys in the ignition. And when she went to pay for the gas, she wasn't paying particular attention to the driver's door. And a man slipped in behind the wheel and started the car and off he began to go while she quickly reacted and grabbed hold of the steering wheel. And grabbed hold of her door at what point in time he drug her for nearly a quarter of a mile. And she, in the meantime, was beating him as violently as she possibly could, scratching him, trying to do anything that she possibly could to get him to stop the car. Eventually, she must have pulled the steering wheel to an extent, because it crashed into a building at what point in time, she finds the car jack, you know, the thing that used to prop the steering wheel closed when you were trying to lock your car, she find it under the seat, and then proceeded to beat him senseless. And she was actually giving him concussions, two broken legs, all sorts of things. And the people passing by saw this violence, and they called 911, not because they thought her car had been stolen, but because this lady was doing such damage to this poor man, he was screaming have mercy on him, you know. And so all that seems like, wow, this lady became so enraged over this idea that her car was being stolen. Well, there's a piece of the story that he left out, which tells the whole tale in so many different ways.

He left out that her four year old daughter was strapped in the backseat asleep in a car seat, right, in a seat belt during this whole incident. And so what we have here is clearly the mama bear, right? I mean, and I hope you've had a chance in your life to see mama bear in action. Clearly, my mother was that way in so many different ways, and my wife is that way.

And I can just imagine a bear cub, but again, they all have God's heart. And so it's interesting to me, this word indignation, I've never studied that word so much in my life as I have over the last four days. But that word indignation is filled with passion.

And it has to do with somebody messing with your kids, okay? It is that mama bear thing. And fascinatingly, even though it is a masculine noun, it starts out with a feminine energy.

That is the letter Zion, which is again, the feminine energy that we see in the letter Het, that is also a letter on its own. And it's beautiful that this is this mama bear energy, it just simply is. And so when you ignite this mama bear in somebody, you're gonna reap the consequences of the thing. And I thought that there's no beautiful illustration of God so loved the world, right?

You know, inside of every mother is this unbelievable ability to take care of her children. And so when we see this whole idea of mine eyes, we've seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, or as we hear this trampling out and due to God's indignation, right? He is marching and then due to his anger, he will be threshing.

And again, you can't help but note that this sounds awful lot like, you know, my eyes have seen the glory. Well, I heard that the Reverend George Tyler preached a eulogy following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and quoted Lincoln's, and he quoted Lincoln's second inaugural address, where he talked about how, you know, essentially, due to, you know, 250 years of slavery, you know, rape, and murder, and kidnapping, and violence, right, that there would be a reckoning for this. And the 620,000 poor souls that lost their life in the Civil War was clearly what he was making a reference to, that there is a lot of wrath that is pinned up as God sees all these people being, you know, humiliated, murdered, all these things that went on for all these years. And there would be a price to pay, and there is a reckoning for all these different things that just is part of what happens as God continually becomes, right, indignant to what has gone on.

But there are, inside of that, if you think about it, this beautiful idea of, you know, someone that loves you so dearly that they will protect you, they will stop at nothing to make sure there will be anger, there will be threshing, there will be marching. I mean, all these things are going to happen, and they clearly have happened throughout history. I mean, they happen, as we talked about here in the first chapters of Habakkuk, how the Babylonians would march through the breadth of the land. And clearly, you know, it happened in the Civil War, as we're seeing here. It happened through Germany, as the Jews had been put through these horrible, horrible tribulations of the death camps.

And then, obviously, in came the United States and Russia, and they marched through the land, and there was a horrible reckoning that had to be paid as a result of all that had gone on. And all that goes on today, there will be, because, you know, this is what happens. But the fascinating thing that you can't help but put this all together with Easter for a minute, that God put all that wrath, all that indignation on his son, right? I mean, that's the Easter message, is that I had all that coming, I had all the threshing, I had all the ignorance. In other words, I've done all those things to my brothers and sisters that would cause that kind of wrath, that kind of indignation, where that is the wages of my sin, is all these kind of things. But God put all that indignation, he put all that wrath, that whole mother bear thing, on his own son, that I would be able to have a relationship with him. And if that is an enamored verse, I mean, you see the love that's involved in what happened here? That it's absolutely spectacular and sets up the mem verse, oh, by the way, you know, next time is the mem verse, which has to do with the Messiah, and we're going to get to that next. But just something to ponder as we come off Easter, it's like, oh, my goodness, God so loved the world that he did all this marching and he did all this trampling out the vintage of the grapes of wrath. Jesus would have to drink that cup on my behalf and on yours. And, of course, come the end of time, we'll all see it in real time as, you know, clearly this is not the end of the story. Well, again, I hope you enjoy thinking about how God so loved the world today, and thank you for listening.