Singing in the Pain (Part 2 of 2)

When life isn't going our way, we can complain or question all we want.

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains that our silence can give way to singing. Our study continues from yesterday in the book of Habakkuk chapter 3. When along with Habakkuk we look on the circumstances of life and it becomes the occasion of questioning and complaint, the Word of God, if you like, is the ladder up which we climb.

The Word of God ultimately is the source into which we look, because it is the Scriptures alone that provide the answer for all of the complaints and all of the reproofs. So Habakkuk is questioning and he's complaining, but then we find him also listening and thinking. And particularly in chapter 2. And one of the interesting things about Habakkuk, although it is not an often-read book, it contains a number of very, very well-known statements.

And so I thought rather than range through the chapter when we listen and we think, let's just notice three things to listen to and to think about. First of all, in verse 4 of chapter 2, Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. Now, what is happening there is that the contrast is being established between those who believe, if you like, that they can handle life and death on their own. The righteous, by way of contrast, have a different guiding principle, instead then of looking to ourselves to navigate our way out of our predicament. The righteous shall live by his faith.

In other words, by believing what God says simply and solely because God said it. You save a humble people, says the psalmist, but the haughty eyes you bring down. Now, if you know your Bible at all, you will know that, interestingly, this verse is picked up again in the New Testament on a number of occasions—in Hebrews and in Galatians and in Romans. And Paul, in speaking of what it means to know God and to be in a relationship with God, reaches back into this statement here in Habakkuk, making it clear that God gives his righteousness as a free gift of grace, that it is not something that we can earn, either by our good living or by our religious and good works. As a cross-reference, you could go to the story that we have of the Pharisee and the publican.

We remember the individual who beat his breast and said, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner, and the Pharisee who said, I thank you that I'm not like these other people. I am fine. I'm okay. I do this. I don't do that.

I do the next thing. Essentially, his soul was puffed up. Remember when Jesus told the story? He said, And it was this man, the man who beat his breast, who went to his home justified.

No. In the midst of all of these troubles and trials, Habakkuk affirms this immense principle—the righteous shall live by his faith. And then in verse 14 of the second chapter, he encourages himself and he encourages the reader by making it clear that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

It's a quite remarkable statement, isn't it, given the predicament, given the rebellion on the part of the people, given the ensuing case for judgment and chaos that is to follow. And in the middle of all of that, he makes this great statement, The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. God will display his glory in executing his judgment. As we sang this morning, he's perfect in his justice and his wisdom. And so, beyond even the initial demonstration of that in the seventh century BC, we are reminded here again of the ultimate triumph of God. If it seems slow, then we should wait for it, he says back in verse 3. When we go forward into the New Testament, Paul again makes this clear. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess.

When the writer John describes the circumstances in the book of Revelation, he speaks in terms of every tribe and every nation and every people and every language. You see how this creates a radical insight that runs straight through all that is going on around. People say, Well, you know, our preoccupation with this and with that, these are the great things. We must listen to science. We must listen to the educators. We must listen to the geniuses. Every morning that I awaken, somebody says, and the experts have said, and of course, we pay attention to the experts.

We're in great need of their insights. But do you as a believer this morning actually understand that whatever those circumstances may be, it is of immense significance that the right standing of a man or a woman before God is by grace through faith in Jesus, that the righteous will live by faith? And do we understand and do we believe and do we long for the fulfillment of this promise that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the sea?

Why else pray for the nation of Paraguay? Why pray for the extension of the gospel? Why ask that our lives in these days may commend the gospel? Well, because God has not only ordained what the end will be, but he has ordained the means whereby the end will be achieved, so that while all of our friends are saying the same things—well, I hope it will stop soon, while I'm sure there's light at the end of the tunnel, and so on—and we join them in these things.

But actually, we're cut from a different cloth. We're saying, Yes, but did you know that the righteous will live by faith? Do you know that one day the earth will be filled with the glory of God? Think about it. Think about that. And think about this, verse 20. The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him.

Think about this. The temple of God, the place of his meeting, the ark of the covenant in the wilderness wanderings, the gathering of the people, the shining of his light, the covering of the cloud, the progress of the people, the establishing of his temple, and so on. And so Habakkuk, in order to get some kind of perspective on what is going on, anchors himself. I have my questions and I have my complaints, he says, but I'm listening to what God says, and I'm thinking about what God says. Now, the air of my friends is the problem for some of us—the absence of thinking. Thinking being transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Words, constant noise, the babble of the pundits, the professors, the politicians. And as you look towards the end of chapter 2, you see the wonderful contrast with the idols that cannot speak and with proud men and women who don't listen. I guess the fact is, if we will not listen to God, then we will have to go to the idols who can speak. What prophet is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? Its maker trusts in his own creation? When he makes speechless idols, woe to him! Who says to a wooden thing, Wake ye to a silent stone arise?

Can this teach? There's no breath in it at all. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him.

We fast-forward again into the New Testament, and on that amazing encounter recorded by Matthew chapter 17, when, on what we refer to as the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus is there. And you remember the voice that sounds out from heaven, This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.

Listen to him. The great question, of course, is when these days of difficulty are upon us, who is trustworthy, who is reliable? To whom shall we listen? Whose dictates and directives are the best to follow?

And so on. That's a call to silence. Let all the earth keep silence before him. Be quiet.

Be still. And know that I am God. You see, here we are at this point in the twenty-first century, and we are suffering from big views of ourselves and small views of God.

The puffed-up picture earlier in the prophecy is too apt a description of too many of us. The submission of heart comes from an awareness of, if you like, who God really is. O worship the King, all glorious above! O gratefully sing his power and his love! You remember that great hymn by Robert Grant? O tell of his might, O sing of his grace! Our shield and defender, the ancient of days!

He's privileged and in splendor, he's girded with praise. And who are we? Well, we're the frail children of dust and feebleness frail. And then, says the hymnwriter, In you do we trust, nor find you to fail. So, from questioning and complaining to learning and thinking or listening and thinking, and finally to praying and singing. You see, it's, first of all, silence that then gives way to the song. It is thinking that gives way to the expression of our emotions, that we understand the place of emotion.

We're not real fans of emotionalism, which somehow or another diverts from the rationale of things. No, there is a reverence here. This prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, to be joined in by the choir—it's not telling us that this is his prayer, as if somehow or another it's his prayer and nobody else's prayer, but it is identifying that this was the prayer of Habakkuk, who is the prophet.

And this prayer, then, would be prayed by the people of God. Fascinatingly, as I was reading this during the week, I discovered that portions of chapter 2 and 3 were found in 1947 amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, making it clear that throughout all of the generations, people have gone back to these things to remind themselves that the righteous live by faith, that the earth will be filled with the glory of God, that we should keep silence before Almighty God. And what you have in chapter 3, then, is a sort of historical panorama.

You perhaps picked up on the elements of the story of the transition out of Egypt and how the Egyptians were covered up and the heads of the warriors were swallowed up. You trampled the sea, verse 15, with your horses and the surging of mighty waters. And so, his understanding of a sovereign God causes him to tremble and his lips to quiver, and rottenness to his bones and his legs to tremble beneath him. And he says, Now what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to wait quietly for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us. Well, actually, the King James Version doesn't translate it in that way. It says, I am waiting for rest on the day of trouble.

I'm waiting for rest on the day of trouble. Now, as we draw this to a close, I want you to notice that the things he prays about are not necessarily the things that might immediately spring to mind for us even today, no matter how committed we conceive of ourselves to be. Notice, I have heard the report, verse 2, of you and your work, O LORD. I fear that. I'm in reverential awe of it.

And then notice what he says. In the midst of the years, revive it. Revive it. Here's the great need, he says, for you to revive your work, your purposes among your people. While all these terrible things are going on, his concern is that the work of God would be revived. Surely, the people of God in these days must, whatever our perspective on the medical concerns and the economic concerns and the social concerns may be, surely part of our prayer must be the prayer of Habakkuk here, Lord, revive your church, revive your work in the midst of these years. While all these things are going on—pestilence and plague following at his heels—the thing that has struck me this week, and perhaps you could identify with this, is that I have been confronted by the question, What is it that is my greatest worry and my fear? Well, surely, I understand and to some degree share the concerns of our culture for the well-being of all the matters that are at hand.

But I find myself saying, How much of the Habakkuk perspective is part of my thinking? Am I actually as concerned as the prophet for the glory of God, for the fulfillment of his purposes, for the reviving of his work? As the world appears to crumble around me, it is obvious that I'm not immune or exempt from the calamity. And some of us are called upon and will be called upon to come to death in unwanted circumstances. And we're called upon, again, to listen and to think and to be reminded of the fact that when Paul addresses similar concerns in Romans chapter 8, he says it is in all these things—in all these things—we are more than conquerors.

Not because we're not involved in them, but because we are in them. Says Calvin, All of our thoughts will err and wander and go astray until we are fully persuaded that God alone is sufficient for us. There's the question.

There's my question. Is God alone sufficient for me? The Christian faith is solidly based on facts, not on ideas. What is recounted here is the dealings of God throughout history. And all of these things are—and God's deliverance of his people—are foreshadowings of his ultimate deliverance in Jesus. Because it is in Jesus and in his cross that in terms of verse 2 he remembers mercy in wrath—that through his life and his death and his resurrection, the believer is safely brought through death to life. And that is why, in the middle of all of these difficulties and uncertainties, we can then begin to say and to sing with Habakkuk, Well, though it all goes wrong. And what he describes here is devastating for an agricultural horticultural economy.

Though the fig tree should blossom, no food on the vines. In other words, if the economy should break, if we should live in the framework of an unproductive, barren landscape, if there should be significant loss of life, if all of that, says Habakkuk, I'm still going to be found singing. Because the righteous shall live by faith. Perhaps, again, as a cross-reference, we go to Hebrews 11.

We don't have time to do it now, but remember, What more shall I say of those who were tortured? And it all goes on, and they were still living by faith when they died. Well, if you remember, there were five categories, and I said that Habakkuk didn't fit any one of them. I think, upon reflection, I would say that Habakkuk was certainly not a deluded optimist, but he was a theological realist.

Theological realist. And it's interesting that he finishes, if you like, in song, as we're about to finish in song in a moment. Horatius Bonner, a Scottish servant of the church in an earlier generation, grew up singing the psalms. He found that the children didn't like many of the tunes. He began to write hymns. He loved children.

Part of his love for children was on account of the fact that his wife lost five children in rapid succession. And in the Sunday school, he not only taught them the Bible, but he taught them to sing. And he taught them of the wonder of God's dealings, even in the midst of sadness. And probably in one of his finest hymns, he wrote as follows. Not what I am, O LORD, but what Thou art. That, that alone can be my soul's true rest. Thy love, not mine, bids fear and doubt depart, And stills the tempest of my tossing breast.

Now, here we go. This is theological realism. Tis what I know of thee, my Lord and God, That fills my soul with peace, my lips with song. Thou art my health, my joy, my staff, my rot, Leaning on thee, in weakness I am strong. In other words, he's declaring with Habakkuk, God is the strength of my life, the Lord is my salvation. Alistair Begg, challenging us to embrace the reality that God alone is enough in our lives.

This is Truth for Life. Alistair will return in just a minute to close with prayer, so please keep listening. Our message today raises a question, Are we fully persuaded that God alone is sufficient for us? Martin Luther once wrote, Your thoughts concerning God are too human. Far too many of us have minimized our view of God. So how can we come to a greater understanding of who he is and what he's like?

Well, our book selection today explores the answers to those questions. The book is called None Else, 31 Meditations on God's Character and Attributes. This is a one month devotional specifically written to focus our thoughts on God so we can grow in our knowledge and our love for him. The Bible tells us that we are to know that the Lord, he is God. This devotional None Else reminds us of the privilege we have to know him.

It introduces us to 26 attributes that reveal his nature and his character. But what's most helpful about the book None Else is it allows us to recognize the greatness of God as we spend time each day reflecting on him. So request your copy of the book None Else today when you give a gift of any amount. Click the image in the mobile app or visit our website truthforlife.org slash donate. If you'd rather mail your donation, along with your request for the book None Else, write to us at Truth for Life, P.O. Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio.

The zip code is 44139. Now, here's Alistair to close today with prayer. O gracious God, help us then to keep silence before you. Forgive our preoccupation with all of the talk and the rambling of the pundits and the professors and the politicians. We live in this real world. We are part and parcel of it.

Of course we are. But our chart and compass is not statistics. It's not the best of human wisdom. It is the wisdom of God. We hear your voice from heaven. This is my beloved Son. Listen to him. Lord, grant that in listening we may find him to be our forgiveness, our righteousness, our hope, our justification, our adoption, our salvation. We pray in his name. Amen. I'm Bob Lapeen. We hope you enjoy your weekend, hope you're able to worship with your local church, and then join us Monday as Alistair takes us to the book of Ecclesiastes, where we'll discover the danger of being too clever for our own good. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.