Worship: The Antidote for an Anxious World

Habakkuk, a prophet in the days of Judah, after the northern tribes have been uh infiltrated and taken away, some of them by the Assyrians, which is psychological terror, using um many graphic things such as Isis does to strike terror into people.

And then you have Habakkuk coming onto the scene after that, and he has something to say to the Lord.

He says this.

Lord, how long shall I cry for help?

And you will not hear?

Or cry to you, violence, and you will not save.

Why do you make me see iniquity?

He's not just saying, Why is this here?

Why are you making me see this?

Why are you making me see violence, destruction, iniquity?

Why are you purposefully making me see the world crumble around me?

The law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth, for the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.

This is Habakkuk's cry.

He's looking around, he knows that he is one of God's people, he is being raised up as a prophet, and this is what he says to the Lord.

Where are you?

Everything is crumbling around me.

Us.

Where are you, God?

So this is his lament, his complaint.

So the Lord picks this up and responds to Habakkuk.

Look among the nations, the Lord says, and see, wonder, and be astounded.

For I'm doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.

Now listen up, this is what I'm gonna do.

For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, that bitter and hasty nation who march through the breath of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.

And I'm going to use them to judge you, Israel.

What?

I'm calling out for you to save us, and you say that you're gonna bring the bully of bullies in and judge us, people who are more unrighteous than us, you're going to bring them into Israel, into Judah, and you're going to use an ancient ISIS to judge us?

What are you doing?

So this is it.

This is what it's gonna be like.

Just more and more violence.

This is what you're doing, Lord.

This is Habakkuk's repent.

This is his second lament.

Are you not from everlasting, Lord, my God, my holy one?

You who are of pure eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong.

Why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

Mankind is like fish, and Babylon, they keep on emptying their nets and mercilessly killing nations forever and ever.

This is what's going on in Habakkuk's day.

The Lord is bringing the Babylonians to judge Judah in their time of need.

This is really confusing.

This is really confusing.

Because isn't God the one who's supposed to come and save?

Isn't he supposed to be the one who comes and rescues us?

Why is he bringing about another wave of suffering and injustice, it seems?

So the Lord replies again to Habakkuk.

I really like this.

This is really intimate, a relationship that Habakkuk has here with the Lord.

Write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.

For still the vision awaits the appointed time, it hastens to the end, it will not lie.

If it seems slow, wait for it.

This is what he's going to do.

Okay?

Because you have plundered the nations, he's talking to Babylon here, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you.

Okay, he's telling Habakkuk here, okay, yes, I'm gonna use the Babylonians, but just wait.

Their day is due as well.

I will bring destruction upon them.

Don't worry, I got them under control.

For the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.

How can how does Habakkuk respond to this?

And this is the grounds for the entire book of Habakkuk.

It's this truth right here.

But the Lord is in his holy temple.

Let all the earth keep silence before him.

So as we look on a global scale, a national scale, and in our own personal lives, when it seems like life continues to crumble and disintegrate around us, it's really, really easy to forget this.

Friday happens, Supreme Court ruling.

Oh my goodness, what is happening to our nation?

A very fair question.

And we can get anxious, and we can get on the defensive, and we can get angry, okay?

And there's some good anger.

Anger is a good response, okay, to when our hearts to what we most love gets threatened, okay?

Alright?

So the question is, what do we love the most?

Because the question is here, but this is what we forget.

But the Lord is in his holy temple.

Let all the earth keep silent before him.

The Lord will save his bride.

And you all are his bride.

Your faith is in King Jesus.

He has not forgotten you, and he is on his throne, and when life seems to shimmy, crumble, he's there.

He is on his temple watching.

So a response that Habakkuk has is a prayer.

This is his prayer to the Lord when he realizes, okay, I guess you're Lord, you can bring the Babylonians in.

This is his prayer, a faith prayer.

The main text that Paul picks up in Habakkuk in when he writes to the Romans is the righteous man shall live by faith.

This is the context out of which those verses come.

Okay, so this is faith, good church word.

What does that mean?

Okay, it's receiving what God promises.

It's an assurance, it's a confidence in who God is and what he will do.

And this is Habakkuk's prayer when he starts to catch a little glimpse of what God is going to do.

His splendor covered the heavens.

He's looking back to when the Israelites were led out of Egypt.

And the earth was full of his praise, his brightness was like the light, rays flashed from his hands, and there was and there he veiled his power.

You marched through the earth in fury, you threshed the nations in anger, you went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed, you crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck.

He looked back.

Yes, God, you are a God of salvation.

You have saved us.

Folks, he has saved us.

Maybe in the present situation, he seems distant, but he is on his throne and he has saved us.

The words of this book, with which are living and active, and the power of his spirit can come and they can give us confidence in the midst of a very anxious world.

But he also looks ahead.

I hear and my body trembles, my lips quiver at the sound, rottenness enters my bone, my legs tremble beneath thee, yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us.

Not only does Habakkuk look back, but he looks forward to what God promises to do.

I am going to save you, I will come, and I will rescue my people.

And these are two aspects of how Habakkuk is filled with faith, with confidence to be able to stare at a crumbling world with impending judgment coming upon, and that he can wait.

It's not in activity, but he can wait, wait upon the Lord.

So, what are a few things that we can pull out of this context, a specific word to the people of Israel, which God now has given to us to be able to understand Him, to be able to place our faith in Him, and to be empowered for righteous living.

It's this first one.

Habakkuk, he laments over the effects of the fall.

He sees it.

He doesn't just say, Oh, God is good, okay, he'll take care of this, and he just moves on.

No, there is loss that he is experiencing in his life.

And all of us, we cannot escape the effects of the fall of loss and grief in our life.

And there might be varying degrees of loss that you come, but there really is something about a grief cycle.

And if you don't go through it, it's gonna bite you bad in the future.

It's loss, it's being true to what you're going through.

You're experiencing the sadness, the disappointment, whatever, the contempt, the bitterness, the anger.

It's not just, oh man, I'm a Christian, I can't feel these things.

This past year I've felt more of these things uh than I ever have in my life.

And the temptation is to go, oh, just God is good, and then just get going and fill myself with more activity, or fill myself with my life with spiritual disciplines so that I can feel good, or fill my stomach with Turkish food.

But what does the Lord tell Habakkuk?

He says, wait, wait in the pain.

Stay there.

See where your heart goes and take notice of that, and then you see of how you have just been dealing with a fall all throughout your life.

Stay in the pain and trust me.

I am there, I am on my throne, and I am with you in the spirit of my son.

He's really real with the life and the crumbling world around him.

And he grows through this time of waiting.

He doesn't busy himself with just something to self-medicate himself, he waits.

It doesn't mean he's inactive, but he has a period of just waiting on the Lord.

Because he can't do anything about this.

The Babylonians are coming.

How is he going to wipe out the Babylonians?

One man, he can't.

He has to wait.

He has to wait.

So the global things, the national things that or the personal things in our lives that keep coming, how do we respond to this?

We wait.

Why?

The grounds, because he is in his holy temple.

Let all the earth keep silent before him.

Be still and know that I am God.

And the lastly, a lot of syllables appropriated by decisiveness.

In other words, how this waiting, how the encouragement, how the perseverance comes to him, is because he makes a choice right then and there.

And this is the choice that he makes.

I'll read it.

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines.

This is Habakkuk saying this.

Okay?

If there should be no harvest, if the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls.

In other words, if there's no paycheck, if the sugar beets dry up, or they mold, or if the wheat uh gets dried up, okay, or the livestock all get hit by lightning, okay?

You're saying if your entire way of life, your the way that the Lord provides for you monetarily, if that is wiped out, and you have no prospect for food, there it is.

Look right in the middle.

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

God the Lord is my strength.

He makes my feet like the deers, he makes me tread on my high places.

Now he's not just trying to make himself feel better here.

He's not, uh he's being real with where he's been at, but he says, But even though these things would happen, I want to be the person who will rejoice in the Lord, because my joy and my love is not based on the circumstances around me, but that it's on something bigger, someone bigger, something deeper, a deeper meaning in life.

God, the Lord is my strength.

He makes my feet like the deers, he makes me tread on my high places.

I'm gonna have uh my son Joshua come up and share a song uh that the Lord has laid on his heart.

And as we move into this, um just ask that you just meditatively just listen to these words as you think about if there's anxiousness in your heart in anything, um on a global scale, national scale, a personal level, and of what he is uh just bringing to your heart.

Just listen to these words and let the Lord minister to you and uh and may He deeply deeply touch you for his glory.

In the cold of morn, when the air is cold, I feel you are confused, you cast out all my scorn, you have all my kiss, I give them all to you for ever you are here.

Let me see like you, let me see like you, God give me your eyes, help my love to be true, and I can feel it in my bones, Jesus.

Pull me close, bend me and rid me off my idols, see the lightning in your hands, the thunder as it rose, and I can feel you taking hold of my soul in the quiet of night when the light is dim, shine in my eyes, make me more like him.

You have all my fears, all my hopes and prayers, keep your joy in me.

Let me see like you, let me see like you, God give me help my love to be true, I can feel it in my bones.

Jesus pull me close, and me and me of my idols, see the lightning in your hands, thunder as it rose, and I can feel you taking hold of my soul, make me new make me surrender, make me surrender make me surrender I can feel it in my bones, Jesus for me clothes, and me and me does see the lightning in your hands, the thunder, and I can feel you taking off the body.