Serious Faith for Serious Times #2

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Dawn Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Dawn is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Dawn now in The Truth Pulpit. Basically as God answers this dilemma in chapter 2, He tells Habakkuk that after he had finished with the Chaldeans, after they had fulfilled his purpose for a time, after that he was going to judge them for their sin. Says Habakkuk in effect, says, you're right, I know they're wicked, I know they're sinful, trust me, I'm going to judge them eventually, but I'm going to use them for now because it pleases them.

It pleases me to do so. When my purpose is fulfilled, then I will judge them for their sin. Look at verse 8 of chapter 2. He's speaking to the Chaldeans, God is, and He's prophesying their ultimate collapse to them at that point. He says, because you have looted many nations, all the remainder of the peoples will loot you because of human bloodshed and violence done to them.

To the land, to the town and all its inhabitants. In chapter 2, five times He pronounces woe on these Chaldeans who were intrinsically wicked. They weren't conscious that they were serving the living God. They were pursuing their own wicked purposes. And yet God in His matchless sovereignty is able to direct the wickedness of sinners to accomplish His purposes without being tainted by their own sin.

That's what He was doing here. And look at verse 16. That doesn't excuse them from accountability for their sin, though, because they're sinning out of their own desires.

They're ignorant of the purposes of God, pursuing wickedness, and therefore it's right for God to judge them, and that's what He does. Look at the middle of verse 16 of chapter 2, where again continuing to speak to the Chaldeans, God says, the cup in the Lord's right hand will come around to you, and utter disgrace will come upon your glory. Basically what Habakkuk is seeing here is that God unfolds His purposes and the outworking of His sovereignty and world affairs in stages.

And sometimes wicked people prosper on a world stage, on an individual stage. But the message of Habakkuk says their prosperity is always temporary because God will always vindicate His justice. And God would punish them when He was ready. God is always acting according to His character, even if outwardly it doesn't seem like it at the time. God's holiness was going to be vindicated in the way that He dealt with this nation.

He'd grant them prosperity for a short time, but then judgment would come, His law would be vindicated, His principles would be upheld, and they would feel His wrath as well. God's character guarantees the ultimate outcome, beloved. And so if you're suffering tonight, remember His character. He is holy. He is righteous. He is good. He is faithful. He is wise.

And everything that He does is consistent with those perfect attributes of His. Always, beloved, no exceptions, zero, none, no exceptions. The death and sickness and finances and family problems and all of that, all of them fit under the umbrella of God working out all things according to the counsel of His good will in perfect consistency with His wisdom, faithfulness, and goodness to His people, always, always, beloved, always. Lay hold of that and don't let go because He is our heavenly Father, a loving Father always to His children. And so while sometimes He brings trials into your life, beloved, He will bring His good intentions to pass in time eventually, either now or in heaven, you will see the goodness of God to you vindicated without question and without exception, always, always, always. And so you trust God with this attitude in light of His character. You say, in effect, to yourself and as a prayer to God, I may not understand right now, but God is certainly at work.

He always acts according to His faithfulness and His holiness and His goodness and His wisdom. And so I can conclude something even now before anything changes, I can conclude something really important. I can conclude that this comes out well in the end even if it's difficult right now. And beloved, if the ultimate outcome is good, what do we get so worked up about? We have to live by faith in the unseen things that we know to be true and not let what we see cloud our vision of what the Bible says will most certainly come to pass.

That's how you trust God. You remember what God has revealed about His hidden work, about His character in the Bible, and then you evaluate your situation accordingly. And as you remember those two things, remember this final sub-point as we remember God, this final third sub-point as well. Remember God's plan. Remember God's future plan, let me put it that way. Remember God's future plan. There is more to life, beloved, than what you see right now. There is more about the glory of salvation than our experience of it in this life. Truth of the matter is, this is just a tiny little narthex into the glories of eternity. And so the things that happen in this life, as important as they are, and all things have some manner of eternal consequence, when it comes to assessing your trials in life, you always remember God's future plan, His eternal plan, and the glories that are going to be revealed to us.

Put the proper perspective on the trials of this life and make them seem rather inconsequential by comparison. God brings those things to Habakkuk's mind as well. Look at Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 14.

Again, we can only touch on these things. In Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 14, God is speaking and He says, "'The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.'" He says, Habakkuk, there's a time coming when all of the world is going to see and bow down before My glory. He's speaking of that time that is still future to us when Christ returns and establishes Kingdom here on earth. And all nations bow and they stream to Jerusalem and they worship Him. That's still coming. That's a promise from God.

That is certain to occur. All nations, this wicked nation that was going to trouble Judah for a time, they weren't going to have the final say. Christ was. God was going to have the final say. And when that day comes, the earth is going to be so full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord that it's going to be like the waters covering the sea. There's not going to be anything else to see because the glory of God reigning on earth in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ is going to make all things dim by comparison. That's what's in the future, beloved. Our Christ is going to reign and you are going to be there to participate in His Kingdom. And the glory and the majesty of that and having righteousness vindicated is where all of this is going. I can't wait.

This is going to be magnificent. And we're on the right side in Christ. We're going to reign with Him. And I love 1 John 3, 2. If Habakkuk is one of my favorite books in the Bible, 1 John 3, 2 has to be my favorite verse in the Bible, the hope and the glory and the anticipation of this verse just causes my heart to burn every time I think of it. Because in 1 John 3, 2 the apostle says, we know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him just as He is. Future tense, but certain to happen, Christ will appear and if you are a Christian, you will see His face. You will see the face of incarnate God and it will be so magnificently glorious that it will transform you so that you will somehow be like Him and participate in His characteristics. Not becoming God because the creature can never be like the Creator, but somehow the vision of seeing Christ will transform us and make us like Him.

We will see Him just as He is. That's God's future plan, beloved. The glory of this is so magnificent that whenever I speak on it, I don't want to relieve the mental realm of that glory.

I would be happy if it just happened now. I mean, bring it, that's what I want, that's what I'm living for. And beloved, for you as a Christian, not only do you love that anticipation, you love that hope, but beloved, it gives you context for anything that happens in life. All of your trials melt away ultimately into a vision of the glory of Jesus Christ and you belonging there and seeing Him and loving Him and adoring Him and worshiping Him in perfect bliss for all of eternity.

Now I ask you, what was that trial that we were so worked up about? Do you see the way this works, beloved? Do you see the way this transforms your heart? Do you see the way this anchors your heart in living trust?

I'm not standing up here wagging my finger saying, trust God. We're simply reviewing in very quick fashion the glories that God has revealed in His Word, remembering the glories that He has brought us into His family and into His Kingdom, reminding you of the possessions that are yours in Christ. And when those things start to fill your mind, your heart can rest. Say, yes, God has been good to me and God isn't done being good to me, the best is yet to come.

I can tolerate these trials in light of that. So in the midst of your trials, beloved, call to mind, remind yourself. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones often says in his writings, you have to preach to yourself.

This doesn't just happen. You have to preach to yourself. You have to consciously think of these things and remind yourself of them. Look at yourself in the mirror, as it were, and say, you remember what we believe about God, right? You remember about His hidden work, right?

You're staring yourself in the eye in your mirror. You remember that, don't you? You remember His character. You remember His future plan. And you call your heart to respond to those things. That's how you trust God.

You remember Him. It seems so basic when it's laid out so clearly in God's Word. But like you, I forget. And that's why we come to His Word again and again. Beloved, there is so much more to the universe than even your most serious trials.

There's a good God over all of it and you need to remember that. Now, now that you've called those things to your mind, it's time for some application. How do you...you've remembered these things. You say, yes, I believe these things, but now what do I do with that? Well listen, beloved, I'm not here to talk about your behavior or your conduct tonight.

Those things are important, but we're talking about heart attitudes, we're talking about heart issues. What goes on in my heart is a result of these things, the behavior, the conduct, those things will flow out of a righteous, believing heart. But when you remember God in all of these things that we've discussed here, the second thing that you do is you wait on Him. You wait on God. Now when I say wait on God, you might think of something passive that you just sit back and wait for whatever is going to happen, as if you were waiting at a traffic light or something.

That's not the biblical idea of waiting at all. Look at Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 4. Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 4.

We're going to have to go through these final issues fairly quickly. But God is speaking to Habakkuk and He says, "'Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith.'" The righteous will live by his faith. The Apostle Paul picks up this verse in the book of Romans and expounds on the doctrine of justification by faith. Other times in the New Testament it's quoted in speaking about sanctification.

We don't have time to go into all of that tonight. Our point for tonight in the context of this book is for you to see that your responsibility is to live by faith in trying times. There is an active dimension to living out faith in light of your remembrance of God. And the question is, what does that faith look like? How do you live that faith out?

How do you trust God in trying times? Well, Habakkuk teaches us so much and we're going to go through these quickly, four aspects to waiting on God that we see in the book of Habakkuk. First of all, you wait expectantly. You wait expectantly.

Here's what I mean by that, beloved. When I say that you wait expectantly, this means that you must endure your hardship patiently...get this...with confident hope, confident assurance that God will eventually deliver you from your trials. You're so convinced of the character of God, so convinced of His sovereignty, so convinced of His future plan that you in the midst of your trial are confidently expecting Him to deliver you eventually whenever that deliverance may come.

It's only a matter of time. Look at chapter 2 verse 1 of Habakkuk. After stating his questions, his concerns about how God's holiness interacted with the prosperity of the Chaldeans, he says, "'I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart and I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me and how I may reply when I am reproved.'" Habakkuk, in a spiritual sense, took the position of a watchman, looking out to the horizon, looking to God to see what would come next. He knew that he had stated his questions, he expected God to answer, and so he was looking to God for what would come next. And you'll see this exhortation to wait on the Lord in many places in the Psalms. Psalm 27, for example, wait on the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait on the Lord.

Beloved, what I want you to see and what the glory of this is. Remember, we're in some senses, we're assuming trials that you cannot change. We're assuming that you have no power to bring change to your own circumstances. What I want you to see, beloved, is that in those times, biblical waiting is not passive resignation to the inevitable.

You're not collapsing under the weight of your trial and saying, I can't do anything about it anyway, so I'm just going to sit here. No, no, when we say wait expectantly, we're saying that when you trust God, you are looking to Him with an expectancy that He will be true to His Word. In your discouragement, you expect, you are confident, you declare in advance that though you don't know how this will all work out, in the end you say, God will bring resolution to this and He will prove His faithfulness to me in the end. Beloved, that is trust that honors God and honors His Word.

When you can't see the solution, when you don't know how it's going to work out, you have no phone calls to make, no buttons to push, no money that can solve this issue. When you're in that helpless circumstance and you rise up to the occasion and say, I know that my God is going to deliver me and prove His faithfulness to me in the end, you're glorifying your God, the God of your salvation. That's what trust looks like, beloved. It declares as a present indicative that which is yet to occur. God will be faithful to me. I know it and I'm going to live in light of it now, even though I don't know how it all works out. You don't despair, you reject despair.

You don't accept despair simply because you don't understand at the moment. These divine certainties drive your attitude toward all of life. And so you expect Him to be faithful. Now, there's a second aspect of waiting on God that we see in Habakkuk. Taken from what God said at the end of His own discourse in Habakkuk chapter 2, look at that verse, we'll look at it so briefly. After declaring His sovereignty over the nations and His intentions to deal with the Chaldeans further down the line, God says, but the Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him. Second aspect of waiting on God is that you wait reverently. You wait reverently.

You wait in worship. Beloved, see God on His throne, as it were. Remember His matchless sovereignty. Remember the magnificent nature of His Shekinah glory that no man can see and live. Remember the grandeur of creation, the fury of His wrath, the majesty of the cross.

Remember all of those things, beloved, and fall silent before Him. You worship Him now for who He is. You worship Him now for His own intrinsic worth before you know how it's going to work out without condition on whether He works it out according to your desires or not. You see Him in His exalted glory and you give Him the homage and the worship and the praise that He deserves. And part of what that means is, is that in your trials, and I had to deal with this and some of you need to deal with it tonight, there comes a time where you have to put the questions aside. There comes a time where you have to say, I have to stop complaining about this because God reigns and God is majestic and it's time for me to stop the questions and simply fall silent before Him in worship. Sometimes your best friend in your trials will be the hand that you put over your mouth to keep it from speaking foolishly against God under the provocation of adverse circumstances. You worship Him reverently. You fall before Him in silence and adore Him for His intrinsic worth. Let all the earth...you're part of the earth, aren't you?

So am I. Now there's a third aspect of waiting on God. You wait expectantly, you wait reverently. Thirdly, you wait submissively.

You wait submissively. Look at Habakkuk chapter 3. In verse 2, Habakkuk is praying and he's praying in response to all of this revelation that God has given him. God has unfolded world history before his eyes, before it happens, and now Habakkuk is praying in response. And notice the difference, beloved, in the response. Notice...remember how he was praying at the start and he said, "'Lord, how long? Am I going to cry out and you don't do anything?'" Well now listen to him pray, beloved, with nothing changing, nothing has changed.

In fact, it is worse. Look at how he prays here in verse 2. "'Lord, I have heard the report about you and I fear. Oh Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known...here it is...in wrath, remember mercy.'" Habakkuk is praying differently here than he did at the start of the book. He's not asking God to change anything. He's not asking God why anymore. He has simply submitted to...he submitted his attitude and his heart to what God has revealed here. And so he says, "'In wrath, remember mercy.'"

What he's saying is, God, as you bring your wrath as expressed through this conquering nation, I'm not objecting to that, Lord. My only request is that you would remember that you're a merciful God as you do that. Show us drops of mercy in the midst of the judgment, Lord.

If you'll do that, I'll be content. So you pray today, beloved, God, I believe you've orchestrated my circumstances out of your wisdom and love. I don't understand, but I will trust you. I accept this trial, my God, I only ask that you be faithful to me in the midst of it.

If you're faithful to me, all will be well. That's waiting submissively. And, beloved, that kind of expectant, reverent, submissive trust enables you to do this final thing. It enables you to wait joyfully. I'll never forget the day when I understood this sitting at my desk, I understood this and I involuntarily stood up and said, this is it.

This was the answer to all of it. Habakkuk says in verse 16, I heard and my inward parts trembled at the sound my lips quivered, decay enters my bone 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. He knows that judgment is coming and he has to wait while it does. He's now returned his focus to the present. And then he looks at the consequences. He contemplates the consequences, says, though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive 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, Habakkuk is facing the reality of total collapse.

He's not sugar coating anything. This could be bad and it could be very bad for a long time to come and yet look what he says in verse 18, 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 hind's feet and makes me walk on my high places. The theme here, the mood here is one of exuberant joy and singing and joyful shouting. He is rejoicing, get this, because he is satisfied with God.

He wants no more. And what that tells you, there is an enormous beacon of soul liberty here. You can rejoice right now even if your circumstances do not change, even if they get worse. You can rejoice now and going forward because the character of God, God Himself is enough to satisfy your heart. My dad who died in that plane crash, who died without Christ, I usually have people come and say, you know, your dad, maybe he got saved right there before the crash, right before he died.

That's true, but that's irrelevant. The truth is, is that there's no evidence that that happened. And trusting God does not mean that you hope for things that probably aren't true. You rest your trust in Him.

So what about that? I wouldn't have chosen that plane crash, but now I wouldn't trade it for anything because God was blessing me. It was His means to draw me closer to Christ. And beloved, anything that draws you closer to Christ is your friend. What about your trials, beloved?

Will you trust Him? Truth is, you have an even better reason to trust God than Habakkuk did. You have more riches to draw upon than that prophet six hundred years before the time of Christ did because you live on the other side of the cross. You know how God has expressed His love. You know that He sent His Son to be our Savior from sin. You know that God in human flesh laid down His life on your behalf so that you could go to heaven and not to hell. You know that because He lives, you will live. Beloved, you can trust love like that, can't you? But God is faithful and He will bring it to pass.

Just you wait and see. Let's pray. Our Father, we glory in you and we love you and we remember you tonight. We trust you. We trust that you are always at work to accomplish good things on behalf of your children. And beloved, Father, as we pray to you, Father, we trust you and we will wait on you until we come into the full possession of these things which we see now by faith as revealed in your Word. We do trust you, Lord, unconditionally. We worship you unconditionally for your intrinsic worth and your intrinsic glory. And now, Father, as we go on our way, bless us as we seek to live these things out in the midst of a very hostile world.

We look forward to that day when we see Christ face to face. In His name we pray, amen. Thanks for listening, my friend. Before we go, I just want to let you know of a wonderful companion resource to the series that you've been listening to. It's my book titled, Trusting God in Trying Times. Again, that's Trusting God in Trying Times and it's available on our website, thetruthpulpit.com.

Just look for the menu tab titled, Books, and you can scroll down and you'll find my book, Trusting God in Trying Times. Thank you for being with us. Join us next time as we continue teaching God's people God's Word right here on The Truth Pulpit. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.