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America the Time Is Now: Habakkuk's Message

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America the Time Is Now

Habakkuk's Message

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America the Time Is Now: Habakkuk's Message

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God is on the move among the nations. He is not absent or unengaged. Could He be taking the measure of today's world. Are we about to see a scattering, a reshuffling of the nations as God moves this age close to the time when He will fulfill all things in Christ?

Transcript

[Darris McNeely] There once was a man who had a sick child, and he took him, and he held him dearly in his arms, and he held the child up to God and asked God to heal him. The child had not always been sick. He had actually been born very healthy. But one day, he had developed a fever. He developed pain. The child was taken to the doctors. The child was given health care. And the child got through the sickness. Life went on for that child. And then, after a period of time, the child got sick again. Returning to the doctors and to healthcare professionals, the child was treated, but the illness didn’t go away. There was something deeply wrong. All efforts were attempted. All manners of treatment were taken for the child. But, in time, it became very apparent: the child was going to die unless there was intervention, unless there was a turnaround, unless there was a healing from God. And so, the parent took that child and held him up to God and said, “God, please heal my child. He is sick from head to toe.”

Now, I tell you this story not because it, necessarily, is a true story. It is a stylized story. But it’s not a story necessarily about the child as much it is about the attitude of the parent, and the parent who sees the condition of his child and take it up to God, and lays him there and says, “God, please, do something.” It’s an attitude of a parent who sees his sick child. It’s an attitude of a particular prophet of God, that we find in the Bible in the book of Habakkuk, that, I think, offers us a very good way to help us understand many things that are taking place in today’s world as we look around at the nations, as we look around at the United States of America and other nations in the Western world, and what is taking place in the turmoil of the world today.

In the book of Habakkuk – one of the Minor Prophets – we have a story of a determined prophet of God, who looks at his people – his nation – it’s the nation of Judah – and he sees that they are sick, and he sees that they are in need of healing, he sees that their condition is terminal and, unless God intervenes and helps out, all other treatments – all other methods – have failed and the child will die. And so he takes the child to God. He takes his people – Judah – to God – and their condition – and he asks God to heal them.

The book of Habakkuk, which is found in the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament, is a very interesting prophecy. It is only three chapters. We look in on a story, here, of a prophet that we, really, know nothing about – other than his name. The name Habakkuk means to embrace. We don’t know any more about the prophet, other than what we’re told by that name – like other prophets that we may know, like Amos – that he was a shepherd – a sheep herder; Isaiah was involved very much in the life of Judah; and other prophets, we get a bit of information about them – but Habakkuk, all we know is, really, what we’re told by the meaning of his name.

Habakkuk, however, does something that is quite different from the other prophets. Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, Hosea, other prophets of God were called to take a message from God to the people and to show them their sins – to warn them. Habakkuk, however, takes a different approach. Habakkuk takes the sick people, Judah, and, instead of going to them in the streets, he sees their moral, spiritual condition and he takes it to God. As I was telling you about the story of the father who lifts his child up to God, Habakkuk lifts the nation up to God, and says, “God, their sick.”

If you open the book of Habakkuk – chapter 1 – we’ll see how this plays out here, as we look at this message here very carefully. It opens – in chapter 1 of Habakkuk – and it says in verse 1:
Habakkuk 1:1 – The burden which the prophet Habakkuk saw. “O LORD, how long shall I cry and You will not hear? Even cry out to you of violence and You will not save.” He looked at the streets of Judah, and the cities, and the villages, and he saw violence. He said: “Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me, and there is strife and contention, Therefore the law is powerless and justice never goes forth, for the wicked surround the righteous. Therefore perverse judgment proceeds.

In these four verses, Habakkuk describes the moral, spiritual condition of Judah in his day. It’s really a mirror, almost, of our own world today, especially in the United States of America. We have violence in our streets. Places like Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, Maryland, in recent months, have seen a great deal of violence, motivated by hatred, by racial prejudice and racial strife. We have seen a land where God’s law is violated is ignored. We have seen a place where justice, it seems, is escaping many parts of the society, many classes of people – inequity and inequality. Habakkuk is not only describing his nation, but prophetically, God is also describing much of our world today.

So, when we look at this, we can see how Habakkuk takes this condition to God. It’s a very interesting story, because, as he takes the condition to God, he’s asking God to heal. He’s asking God to intervene and to correct the problems. It’s God’s response to Habakkuk that is very instructive and, I think, offers us a very important lesson today, as we look at this message of the prophet and his child, Judah, and as we look at our world today and many of the nations and some of the problems that we are facing.

God comes back to Habakkuk and, instead of a calming, soothing answer that promises to deal with and to heal that particular moment, God says something different. He goes on, because in Habakkuk 1, and verse 5, we see God’s response, if you’ll read that here. He says:

V-5 – Look – God says – He says to the prophet – Look among the nations and watch and be utterly astounded, for I will work a work in your days that you would not believe, though it were told you.

God is saying to Habakkuk, “You look around the nations. I’m going to do something – and I am doing something – among the nations that you will not believe. And actually, in Habakkuk’s day, God was. Judah – the nation – the remnant of God’s people, Israel – were in their last days. The nations around Judah were in turmoil. Egypt, the great power to the south, was in long decline. Assyria, the powerful nation that had taken Israel captive to the north had been eclipsed by the great power out of Babylon – the Chaldeans and Nebuchadnezzar that read about in the book of Daniel and other of the prophecies here. Babylon – Chaldea – was now the big kid on the block to the east of Judah and God was doing something among the nations. He was shifting the power structures of Habakkuk’s day.

We see the same thing going on today in our world of the 21st century. We see a great deal of action and shifting of power among our nations today. And, in fact, God goes on to say to Habakkuk in verse 6:

V-6 – For indeed, I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, which marches through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.

God had raised up Babylon and God was going to use Babylon – the Chaldeans – to punish Judah – the remnant of God’s chosen people. This was God’s answer to the prophet. “Look among the nations, Habakkuk. I’ve got this other people over here, and something is going to happen that is going to astound you. You’re not going to believe it. I’m going to use Babylon to punish My own people” – which He did. The prophet, Habakkuk, couldn’t believe this. He couldn’t really grasp exactly that this is what God was going to do. He had gone to God with his own people’s condition, wanting help. And instead, God was saying that the time was up. “Habakkuk, the time has expired on Judah.” And from the Bible and from history, we know that Judah’s time, indeed, had expired and God did deal with them in a righteous form of judgment. And that’s what the prophet had to deal with.

It goes on verse 12, after God shows him what He’s going to do – in Habakkuk 1:12 – Habakkuk comes back to God here in this conversation is going back, and he says:

V-12 – Are you not from everlasting, O LORD my God? We shall not die, O LORD. You’ve appointed them for judgment – meaning the Chaldeans. O Rock, you have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil. He goes on to describe, “God, You’re too righteous. We are Your people. You’ve made promises. You can’t do this. The Babylonians are evil.” And, essentially, he couldn’t believe it, but he had to accept exactly what God was going to do here.

Well, as the story goes on, in chapter 2 and verse 1 – at the end of this particular part of Habakkuk’s reply to God – he makes his case, and then he says:

Habakkuk 2:1 – I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what He will say to me and what I will answer when I am corrected.

He laid out his case and, again, he was asking God, “Will You reconsider? Will you not do what You’re saying You’re going to do? Will You consider we are Your people?” Well, that is not, again, as I said, what God eventually had come to do.

The message of Habakkuk here is a very, very powerful one for us. Like a father, Habakkuk lifts his people up to God, as a father, as I told you in this imaginative story at the beginning, took his sick child and asked God for healing. And Habakkuk is concerned for his people. I think Habakkuk offers you and I a model of how we should approach our world today. For those of us here in the United States, for those of you in Canada listening, or Australia, or other parts of the world, you put in – you slice in – the picture of…and the life that is going on in your nation there and the problems that are moral, cultural, spiritual that you see – many of these – and examine them with God’s word in mind, and put yourself in that position. I think Habakkuk offers us an opportunity to see something about how we should sigh and cry for the sins, for the problems that those sins result and create within our culture today. And, if we can do that, I think we’re taking on something of Habakkuk’s nature and an element of compassion and understanding that we do need in 2015 – at this critical period in the world, as we look around and see that things are not what they used to be, that decisions have been made over a number of years by the nations, by the courts, by the legislative bodies that have truly turned upside down a nation under God – a people founded upon certain principles and teachings of morality and ethics and teachings that flow from this word here – the word of God. Decisions have been made that have turned it around and, as a result, people are suffering. There’s violence in the street. There’s inequity. The law has been turned aside. And what has been the result?

You know, I look at our United States right now and as I give this sermon to you here at this time, we’re just weeks past the decision that was made this past June 2015 by the United States Supreme Court to legalize in all fifty states same-sex marriage, and the uproar that has cause, and the shock wave that has left as we consider what that will mean for our country and our nation and our whole culture going forward. It’s easy to get upset about that – and we should – but that is not the first, nor likely will be the last decision that tinkers with certain basic fundamental aspects of the law of God.

Some will remember – and I hope you will – going back for a number of years into the early 1960s – the United States Supreme Court made rulings that inhibited public prayer or reading of scripture in our public schools. That is something that I well remember and we have lived with for, now, more than fifty years. And the impact that that has had culturally – by taking God out of a part of the public arena – has been incalculable, but it was not the only decision.

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court also made a decision in a case called Roe versus Wade – in effect, legalizing abortion in the United States. And since then, there have been 55 million legal abortions – 55 million legal abortions performed in the United States alone, as a result of that Supreme Court ruling. And it goes on day after day after day. And entire generation – an entire nation – of children have been eliminated and kept from seeing life. And, as I give this sermon here and tape this right now, our television screens and reports have been bombarding our senses with the atrocities and the callous discussions about the trafficking of fetal body parts through Planned Parenthood clinics, as people dicker over the price of a heart, of a limb, of an organ of an aborted, late-term fetus. It’s disgusting.

Well, we do ask, “What has happened to our country? What has happened to our sensitivities?” And that is something we are grappling with. And so, all of these Supreme Court decisions – just in the United States alone – just to focus on those three – have, in effect, removed God in many different ways from our public culture, our sector, and even from our own mind and memory, and our own way of life.

I am well-reminded of what Paul said in the book of Romans, the first chapter – that they did not want to retain and to keep God in their knowledge. He was describing his first century world. Even when God was readily able to be known and to be understood, Paul says that they did not wish to retain God in their knowledge. That is exactly what we are facing today – a culture that has not wanted to keep God in their knowledge.  We have transgressed into the laws of the Kingdom of God. We have removed the boundaries there and human decisions – made by judges, by courts, and by other legislative bodies – have infringed upon the laws of the Kingdom of God – in effect, saying that the laws of man – of this nation, of this kingdom, of this earthly structure – trump the laws of the Kingdom of God in regard to family, sex. The very foundational building blocks of human civilization have been swept aside. And today, in 2015, we wait to see what will be the impact and the effect of such gross sin, and the neglect of God and the removal of God from our culture and our world.

Again, the message of Habakkuk is very, very important to us here. How do we deal with that? And how do we face that? What do we do? Well, look at what God eventually told the prophet – how to handle this. In chapter 2, God replies to the prophet, and He says in verse 2 of chapter 2:

Habakkuk 2:2 – Write the vision. Make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it – we’re reading this today and it is very plain and it’s very easy for us to see and how to apply this in our own world today – for the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it will speak and it will not lie. Could we be at that appointed time today, I wonder? We are at an appointed time. We are at a point in history – as God’s plan and purpose progresses – where I wonder exactly what God’s next move might be in this regard. He says: At the end it will speak and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come. It will not tarry. God’s judgment will come.

V-4 – Behold the proud. His soul is not upright in him. And then, at the end of verse 4, He says, “But the just shall live by his faith.”

You and I must live righteously. We must live by the faith of God. Regardless of what’s happening around us in our land, in our streets, and by the general culture, we must continue to live by the faith of God and let that dictate to us how we respond, and, in the midst of that, in a sense, find a little bit of ability to lift up our own people in our own culture to God, and say, “God, how long? Is there hope? Who yet might be a remnant that You will preserve and yet call out – to be separated from – to live a holy life? Help us, Father. Help our people.” And, certainly, pray for our people – and sigh and cry for the abomination that is here.

This is what God eventually tells Habakkuk and he has to accept that. Well, he does. As you go on into chapter 3 of Habakkuk, he paints, in what is labeled as a prayer of the prophet here in chapter 3, and verse 1…he’s heard what God has said. He says, in verse 2:

Habakkuk 3:2 – God, please, revive Your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy.

My prayers, at times – and I’m asking, perhaps that you should be praying in the same way – God would revive His work to be able to express these very words – the heart of these concepts at this particular time in our land – to the world – wherever God allows these words to be spoken – the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to be taken – to help people to be able to understand that there is a God – that He is working in this world and that He is bringing to pass His plan, and that, no matter what it looks like around us, no matter how many nations might rise and say, in a sense, “Death to America, death to this nation,” and create havoc in the regions of the Middle East, or seek to upturn power structures in Europe or other parts of Asia – and we look around and we see, again, on a geopolitical sphere, a world being turned upside down – to be able to explain to the world exactly what God is doing. That is what we should be involved with and asking God to empower, so that, in His mercy, those who will heed a message and turn to God, and find God, and come to understand who God is and what their particular purpose in life is all about, can be brought into a relationship with God.
Because, ultimately, that’s really what Habakkuk brings to pass here in this very short, very informative, and very encouraging message. He says that God is on his throne – in His temple. Chapter 2, and verse 20, is a very encouraging note. Habakkuk says:

Habakkuk 2:20 – The LORD is in His holy temple.

At the end of chapter 3, verse 19, he comes to a conclusion. He says:

Habakkuk 3:19 – The LORD God is my strength. He will make my feet like deer’s feet and He will make me walk on my high hills.

God is our strength. God is One who will give us the faith to live righteously in the midst of a world turned upside down, and also, in the midst of a world where God Himself is, in a sense, striding through the nations and turning things upside down – perhaps, even pausing at times, to consider and to look around.

There’s a passage here, again in chapter 3 of Habakkuk, that portrays God as a God of judgment, and God moving among the nations – God moving in time – human time – God moving in the history of people – to revive His work and to accomplish His purpose. In chapter 3, and verse 3, it says:

Habakkuk 3:3 – The Holy One – speaking of God – comes from Mount Paran from Teman. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise. His brightness was like the light. He had eyes flashing from His hand and there His power was hidden. God is moving. And yet in verse 6, he says:

V-6 – He stood and measured the earth. He looked and startled the nations, and the everlasting mountains were scattered. The perpetual hills bowed. His ways are everlasting.

Here’s a picture of God striding among the nations, in a sense – across the landscape of today’s world – and, perhaps, pausing to look around, to continue His purpose, to allow things to be shifted according to His purpose and plan, to bring things, at this particular time in this age, to a full conclusion. I, sometimes, wonder if that is, indeed, what God is doing – and that is what we are witnessing.

I wonder, at times, if we are in a period where the time is now for all of us to understand what God is doing in today’s world, and to see that He is a God of history, He is moving among the nations, He is moving among the nations, He is a God of judgment, and He might be paused for a period of time, which, in our reckoning of time, can be several years. We need never think that God – in God’s mercy, in God’s timing – is evidence that there is no God and that He is not involved in the progress of nations and the history of this world – that He is not bringing His purpose to pass. Don’t let yourself fall into that trap. God is doing something and He is bringing to pass His purpose and His plan. And it is time for that to be made very, very clear.

It is time for all of us to focus in on exactly what God’s purpose is with human life and to understand that, as man has been created in the image of God, God is bringing, in our lives, to pass that very purpose of creating character – spiritual character – in our lives. His purpose of bringing many sons to glory is coming to pass. And all of us can understand that deeper and we can share that with more and more people, so that God’s mercy and love can be well-understood in this world.

And it’s also, quite frankly, time for all of us to understand what we must do – as Habakkuk was told by God – to live by faith – to live by our faith – to do what we know to be right in our lives, no matter what’s going on in our cities, in our villages, in our schools, in the popular culture – to not be caught up and drifting with that current, but to be able to swim against the current, and to obey God, and to live by faith – the faith of Jesus Christ within us. When we do that, we’re doing what God said for the prophet to, in a sense, not only do, but to make known to the people. And, in doing so, we can begin to accomplish what the very message of the name of Habakkuk is all about. Habakkuk means to embrace. He embraced his people and he took them to God. We need to, in a sense, embrace our people, and to be able to sigh and cry for the abominations of our time, and to support and be behind an effort – the work of God – to make very plain the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God – the knowledge of God, and of what God is doing, and bringing His purpose and plan to pass, and to support that, and to live righteously, and to embrace God in that way, as we, in essence, try to embrace this world and take it to God, and then to embrace God and to live righteously.

I think, if we can do that, we are well on our way to understanding this message of Habakkuk – a prophet, who, like a father, took his child in its sick condition to God and ask for God to be aware, to be concerned and to do something. For us to understand that at certain times, God’s judgment – always righteous, always perfect, always on time – is a message that we can listen to and hear, and allow it to move us to a righteous faith, as well as an active participation in the work of God to take that knowledge of the salvation, the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to a world while we still have opportunity and we have time. I think that is a very important message from the prophet Habakkuk for all of us to understand at this time.