Faith in the Worst of Times

Thank you, Corey. It's great to be with you and to have September. I'll be

preaching here in September Sunday evenings through the book of Habakkuk.

So if you have your Bible there, please keep it open at Habakkuk chapter 1. It

Habakkuk 1 · chapter mention

was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That line will probably be

familiar to a lot of you. For some of you, you might not know where you've heard

it, but it sounds familiar. For some of you, you'll know, oh yeah, that's

Dickens. Some of you might even know it's the opening line to one of his books.

It's a tale of two cities. Some of you might even know the story, the context,

why this opening line is so perfect and therefore so memorable, why it spreads

out, why it's gone viral as a line. It's the story of a French doctor who lives in

the context of, well, the French Revolution is coming, the reign of terror is

coming. All around there's hunger, there's instability, there's death and

murder. The main character spends 18 years in prison and when you know the

story, you know why this line is so perfect as a way to encapsulate the

whole book. I think if you took that line, it was the best of times, it was

the worst of times and tried to rework it a little bit to fit the book of

Habakkuk, which is this really short little book in the minor prophets, only

three chapters long. Chapters one and two would be the, it was the worst of times

section and chapter three would be the best of times. Now Habakkuk is extremely

short. You know, if you're flicking through a print Bible to try and find it,

if you blink, you'll miss it because it's so short. But, and you could go to

church for years and probably not hear it preached on or preached through. And

there's so much that we don't even know about Habakkuk himself. He's mysterious.

We know that he's a prophet. We know that he's literate. At one point he's told to

write something down on a clay tablet. So there's a tiny hint about his level of

education. But apart from that, we know almost nothing about him. We don't even

know how to say his name. People, you might have heard Habakkuk, Habakkuk. We

don't even know which language his name was in. So the kind of scholars who get

into this kind of thing debate, is it a Hebrew name that means embrace? Is it an

Akkadian name that's the name of a plant? We don't know. Okay, so he's ultra

mysterious. But his book is extremely important. Maybe disproportionately so

when we think of how little we engage with Habakkuk as a book. To stick with

where I started with this line, it was the best of times, it was the worst of

times. Everyone knows that line. It's metaphorical everyone. It's extremely

well known. It's such a well-known line that there's a parody version of it

that stand-up comedians sometimes use to begin their show. And it's a parody

based on a rapper called Buster Rhymes. Probably the first time and also

probably the last time. He's ever been mentioned in a sermon in St. C's. But the

parody is, it was the Buster Rhymes. It was the Worcester Rhymes. Perfect opening

line. And people will laugh at that if they have never heard of Dickens. They

still get that it's a reference to something that they've heard of. That

there's a great line out there somewhere even if they don't know about the

French Revolution or the reign of terror or 18 years in prison. Habakkuk is kind

of like that in a strange kind of way. So stick with me here. Habakkuk has a

perfect line that encapsulates what the whole book is about. A line that has gone

viral throughout the Bible. A line that's quoted three times in the New

Testament. A line that probably if you're a Christian you will know. And it is

this. The just shall live by faith. If you're a Christian do you recognize

that verse? Absolutely. Every hand goes up. If you're not a Christian have you

heard that verse? If you studied the Protestant Reformation at school and

Martin Luther you probably heard the verse, right? It's extremely well known.

Where is it from? The Bible. Where in the Bible? Oh I know. It's in

Romans. Bonus points. It's in Galatians. It's in Hebrews in the New

Testament. Okay. And where are they quoting from? Okay and this is

where if you know the book of Habakkuk you know they're quoting

Habakkuk. Okay what happens in Habakkuk? What's the back story? What's the

context of the line that the just shall live by faith in Habakkuk? What did

Habakkuk live through? What's the story of this book? And then when you get into

that story and you realize the kind of context that he's living in and when you

find out who said this line in the book of Habakkuk. Was it Habakkuk himself?

So we're gonna see as we go through the book it's something that God says to

Habakkuk to describe to him the kind of life that he wants Habakkuk to have in

a particular context where he feels like he's living in the worst of times. Okay

so the more we get into it the more we start to see that Habakkuk is really

important and that actually knowing the book of Habakkuk will change what might

be really familiar words to you, the just shall live by faith. But Habakkuk is

also extremely important because it's it's such a timely book, it's so

particularly acutely relevant to our own day in our own context. It's set in a

place where people didn't say it was the best of times and paradoxically it also

felt like the worst of times. It was set in a place where people just felt like

no it's just the worst of times. So Habakkuk was written in the 7th century

BC. Okay so in the time before Christ and in the world around Habakkuk there are

three huge national political military powers that have all been vying for

position of world domination. So you have the Egyptians led by their Pharaoh, you

have the Assyrians and you also have the Babylonians and the geopolitics

of this in the background to Habakkuk's life is that the Babylonians are

getting extremely powerful, so powerful that their enemies have to unite to try

and stop them from dominating. So the Assyrians and Egyptians team up and the

Babylonians utterly destroy them. Okay so you can read about this in Jeremiah

46. There was a battle, the battle of Kar-Khimish happened in 605 BC and

Jeremiah writes about it when the Assyrians and Egyptians teamed up to

fight the Babylonians and the Babylonians completely destroyed them. If you

want to, if you're in London and you go to the British Museum you can see a clay

tablet there, it's called the Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle and it talks about

this battle as well and the Chronicle tells you that some of the Egyptian

soldiers tried to flee when they saw they were losing and they tried to get

home to Egypt and the Babylonians were such an efficient military machine that

they got there ahead of them and killed every single one of them, they're not a

single Egyptian soldier made at home. Okay so this is a world-changing event

that's there in the background and what it means is that some of the world's

biggest armies have just been wiped out and now there is one big army in the

world and if you want to oppose them and it's literally a question of what yeah

but you and whose army, okay they can now do what they want in the world and

they are the Babylonians and this is and this means that they now have no rivals

they have their plan for world domination and the strategy is well if you

destroy all the military opposition then it's a soft takeover after that

because nobody has any power to oppose you and that is Habakkuk's problem. This

is why it feels like the worst of times for him because he can see that the

Babylonians are coming and humanly speaking there is nothing that can be

done to stop them. They have the right, okay in terms of might is right, they have

the right to come and take the best of what your land produces and if you don't

give them that well they'll take your sons away turn them into eunuchs in the

court of their king, they want you to live by their values, they want you to

speak their language, to worship their gods above all their supreme God Marduk

and they want you to see their city Babylon as the center of the world, as

the pinnacle of everything that you would want. It's the city of Babylon and

this might seem kind of abstract and ancient history to you, okay if you wanted

to come a bit more alive and again if you happen to be in London and you go to

the British Museum and you go to their Mesopotamia section you can see

artifacts of the Babylonian Empire and just how impressive it was. If you go to

Berlin and go to the city museum their Babylonian display will absolutely

blow you away in terms of the might and the grandeur and the resources that they

had. So this is all coming and if you're Habakkuk it's like a tsunami of

oppression is there in the distance and it's getting closer and closer and it

feels like humanly there's just nothing that you can do to stop this. So these

aren't the best and the worst of times, they just feel like the worst of times.

The world he's in was not the world as he wanted it to be and why do I say that

that's timely in 2024 in Edinburgh? Well that is how a lot of people in our

culture and our city see the world as well. So I grew up in the way back in

other ancient history the 1980s and 1990s which were in British culture were

decades of excess. Cheap credit, materialist values, living to consume, a

culture of you know spend and then show that you've spent, a culture of let the

good times roll and don't judge me way more than a culture of feeling sort of

guilty for the consequences of our actions or talking about justice across

society. But that feels like they didn't in the distant past and nowadays the

culture around us is very different. If you ask people to describe this as feel

like the best of times or the worst of times the long list of things that will

roll. Not so much letting the good times roll but the long list will be well the

cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine, the culture war in our newspapers

and our schools, the situation in Israel and Gaza, the struggling education

system, the struggling NHS, the sense of politics being futile and unstable and

everyone hating each other and you could just go on and on. People feel deep

anxiety about all of these things and it's not surprising nowadays when you

meet young adults who don't really see a future of flourishing opening up for

them. It's hard to find housing, it's hard to find jobs, it's hard to imagine

having a family one day and you sometimes meet young people who will say

even if I could what I want to, would I want to bring children into this world.

If you lived in Habakkuk's day, one of the slogans, an export slogan,

aspirational living for the Babylonians and a sort of persuasion attempt to make

you become one of them was, may the enemy not flourish. So if you went to Babylon

itself, the city, there was a big street that you walked down when you came in,

180 meters long, really grand, display of power as you enter the city and the city

was called, may the enemy not flourish. Street is kind of implied.

So that's the message that you hear when you come into the city and that's to

tell you get on site. If you're not, you will not flourish and that's a message

to Habakkuk, people like him. But nowadays I think a lot of people around us feel

like this world that we live in is not a place of flourishing and that's why

Habakkuk is so timely. It's a book that makes us ask, how do you live as a

person of flourishing? Is that even possible if it feels like you live in

the worst of times? Or if people around you see that as the kind of age that you

live in? And what does it look to live by faith in those times? So this week and

then over the next four Sunday nights we're going to go through these these

three chapters and tonight we're starting in chapter one verses one to eleven

where we get introduced to Habakkuk and we have this first interaction with God

in that context. And that on its own is something to notice. It's actually really

important. You shouldn't just gloss it over. When you think of prophets in the

Bible, if that's a thing you think about, you tend to think of someone, probably,

who hears the voice of God to the people and then who comes and who's like a

megaphone for God. What do prophets say? Thus is the Lord, right? But Habakkuk is

different. He's a prophet, really clear in verse one, but rather than talking from

God to the people, Habakkuk is a prophet who talks to God. So in that sense he is

different. He's really unique among the prophets. So tonight we're focusing on

these eleven verses. We're going to do that briefly in three parts. Thinking

about what Habakkuk saw, because verse one tells us that he saw something, and

then we're going to look at what he did, or what he said, and thirdly we'll

look at how God responded to him. So verse one, the oracle that Habakkuk, the

prophet, saw. And sometimes in the Old Testament, when you have oracles, oracles

are messages that a prophet hears, or the oracle will be a kind of supernatural

vision that a prophet sees. Okay, so something somewhere else that a prophet

sees, some revelation of supernatural reality. But the oracle that Habakkuk

sees also is not like that. His oracle is actually a vision, or a different way

of seeing the world around him that everyone else is looking at as well.

It's not a vision of something else, it's actually the world as it really is

around him, which we're going to see as we go through these verses. And there's

something else really important again to notice here, that this is obviously an

English translation, the book of Habakkuk written extremely long time ago in

Hebrew. And in the Old Testament in Hebrew, there's a word that sometimes you

have to translate into English as oracle, something like that a

prophet hears or a prophet sees. But sometimes the same word elsewhere in

the Old Testament is something that you need to translate as burden, as a heavy

load to bear. And in those passages, it's not really talking about someone

who sees something, it's just a burden that a person bears. But sometimes it's

very clearly a vision or something that a prophet sees or hears. And so the word

has these two distinct meanings, you see translated differently in different

parts of the Old Testament. But with Habakkuk, I think those two meanings come

really close together to the point that almost that they overlap or that it's a

double meaning, both a burden and a vision. Did he see a vision? Yes. Did he bear

a burden? Yes. So for example, some of you will have grown up reading the King

James Bible. And if you read Habakkuk in the King James Bible,

begins the burden that the prophet Habakkuk did see. And that's not a wrong

translation, just like it's not a wrong translation in the ESV here, the oracle

that he did see. So when we think about what he saw, his oracle, his vision, his

burden, we have to start off seeing him as someone who is put in a very

particular position by God. He has been convinced of some things by God. He has

been compelled to see the world in a certain way by God. And Habakkuk can't

undo that. He can't unsee what he has seen. He can't unbelieve what he has been

compelled to believe. But none of that, none of the way that God has convinced

him to see the world makes his life easier. In fact, it's a burden. Makes his

life harder. It's an oracle and it's a burden. So what was it that he saw? Well,

he saw violence. How long, oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help? And will you

not hear or cry to your violence and you will not save? Why do you make me see

iniquity? Why do you look idly at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me.

Strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed and justice never goes

forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.

Now, there's violence. I've already said that in the background there's this, there's

been this huge sort of World War in effect in the background and a huge

battle, catastrophic, terrifying. If you wonder what's going to come next for us

in our small town, in our village, that's there. There's iniquity wherever he looks,

his eyes cannot unsee the evil that is there. There's destruction, there's

strife, there's contention. The world around him is falling apart. It's being

destroyed and if you read down through this to what God says in his answer to

Habakkuk, you start to see that it's being destroyed not through neglect. You

know, our houses are falling apart just because we don't look after them and

they've kind of fallen to dust. It's falling apart through being

plundered and pillaged. Our world is being destroyed because somebody is taking

all the bits and anything of any value to them and we can't do anything to stop

them. The Babylonians can come and do what they want. Now, that's the kind of

world that you're in if you're Habakkuk. Think about it like this. So there was,

I read an article in the BBC website this week and it was about shoplifting,

which is now a really endemic problem in a lot of places across the UK. There's

really little that's out there that's a strong deterrent to shoplifters and a

lot of them steal to maintain drug addictions. And if you're a shop owner,

shoplifting is a really big problem. It's a threat to your livelihood. And

what shop owners who feel like this say in the article is, well, at the end of

the day, I just have to raise prices for the people who do pay for what they

leave my shop with. And they're the ones who pay for what's been stolen in

effect. So they get punished and other people steal and I can't do anything

about it to stop them. And also in the article, there are some shoplifters who

are willing to buy stolen things from other shops because they can resell

them at a profit as well. And who aren't really that bothered and who work with

the shoplifters. Now, in that kind of a scenario where the were for petty

crimes, feels like the law is paralyzed. What would you expect to find for the

people who live in that? That's their immediate reality. You would expect to

find what you can see in that article strife and contention. People respond to

lawlessness differently. It sets people against each other in all kinds of ways.

And Habakook, when he looks around himself and sees, okay, the law is

paralyzed and really bad times are coming. Habakook sees that happening. But

for Habakook, it's not just, I'm a shopkeeper and I sell grain and

someone came and lifted a bag of grain and I couldn't do anything to stop it.

And Habakook state, we're talking about the background to something like the

book of Daniel. It's our children who are shoplifted. It's that the

Babylonians will come along and say, okay, these look like your most talented,

healthy, young people with the brightest futures where you're from. They are now

ours. We're taking them to Babylon, new names, new language, new religion, new

education. We are going to turn them into, your future is us and you can't do

anything about it. Okay. And the law is paralyzed. That's what it feels like for

Habakook. And so Habakook has an interconnected world with international

warfare and an empire that's about to take over his home and his people and a

society that's falling apart where God's law is paralyzed, where justice wasn't

done anymore and Habakook doesn't want to go along with it. Okay. And the message

from the Babylonians is, well, here's your solution. Join us. Resistance is

futile. We are the Babylonians and that would have been the easy option by far

for Habakook in the immediate, but he doesn't want to do that. So that's what

he saw. What did he do? Well, he cries out to God, oh Lord, how long shall I cry

to you for help? Okay. So what he saw around him was terrible. It looked

hopeless and bleak, not the best of times and a cheery way alongside the worst of

times. And what you can see in this verse is that Habakook prays about it and he

prays about it a lot. Okay. You don't say, how long will I cry to you if you've

only done that once? Okay. This is repeated. This is his posture towards God,

not a one-off. This is the stuff of his prayers over and over. Now one thing to,

I'm just going to zoom out for a second to give you the big picture of the small

book of three chapters. Okay. Habakook begins like a Sam, okay, song from the

Old Testament and it ends like a Sam as well in chapter three. And in the middle,

there's something else. God speaks. But why does it begin like a Sam? Okay. Well,

think about, for example, Sam 13. How long Lord will you forget me forever? How

long will you hide your face from me? Sam 89. How long Lord will you hide yourself

forever? Okay. So it begins like a Sam and also ends like a Sam in the chapter three

is Habakook Sam. It's a song that's set to music, but for the best of times. But at

this point, we're still in the worst of times and the Sam for the worst of times

is lament. It's a call to God of where are you? Why are you doing nothing? What are

you doing? So he asks God, where are you in all of this? But there's something else

that he does here that's really important, which is that he points out to God,

that God is the reason that he doesn't want the world to be like this, that he

can't just become a Babylonian. Okay. He says, you cause me to see this. You cause

me to see this as the as evil, not as good. You are the reason that I'm that I'm

like a stick out like a sore thumb here. And what are you doing? You're making my

life more complicated. Now that thing to you cause me to see iniquity. Why do you

do this? It might sound like a strange thing to say. Okay. In first glance,

literally, you know, is are his eyes being held open so that he has to look at

these things? Is that what it means? Why do you cause me to see it? But that's not

what it means. I think that this is what he means when he says this. Something

words to these effect. It's because of you. It's because I believe in you. It's

because I believe you because I'm convinced by you, convinced of you that I

cannot be happy with how things are in the world. These aren't your standards.

This is not a reflection of your character. And I want a world that is a

reflection of your character, a world where your standards are a flourishing set.

How we flourish. It's like he's saying, you Lord are the reason to me that this

looks wrong. And if you weren't there, I wouldn't measure things by your standard.

If I didn't follow you, I would have less reason to feel lament about this.

And maybe then I could just see the world like a Babylonian and my life would

feel a lot easier. But I can't do that because you are there. Because I am

convinced of you, compelled by you. And that's why I don't want to assimilate

into Babylonian culture. I don't want to live by their values and worship their

gods. But as long as you sit by and do nothing, it's like you're making me see

the world as it shouldn't be for you. And yet what are you doing? You just leave

me here to stew in it. How long, oh Lord? Now, if you were a Christian in

Edinburgh, 2024, maybe this is a point where you start to think, I can have a

cook feels what I feel. I can relate to him. Maybe there are times where you

thought, what I believe and what the city of Edinburgh at large wants me to

believe and to do to long for, they're not easily reconcilable on many points.

And some other points, you know, in this context, my faith doesn't make being here

difficult. But another point that really does. But I can't unbelieve what I believe.

How long, oh Lord? My life would get a whole lot easier. My career would progress

faster or whatever. My immediate social circle would accept me more easily. If I

could just stop believing, if I weren't a Christian, if I just assimilated, if I

weren't an awkward person for my culture to accommodate. If you feel like that,

Habakkuk is your guy. He's your minor prophet who gives you permission

biblically to say, how long, oh Lord, do you see me, oh Lord? You've given me this

burden. So that's what he does. Lastly, and further briefly, how God responded.

And we're looking here at verses 5 to 11. So this is God's answer to him. Now, God's

answer begins, look among the nations and see. Wonder and be astounded. For I am

doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. So imagine that

you're Habakkuk and God starts to respond with, I am going to do something

that you would not believe if I told you. And I guess maybe for a lot of us, if

you're a Christian, you immediately think, I know what's coming next, it's

going to be really good. This is like in the New Testament, you know, the promise

of heaven that God has prepared something so wonderful for those who love

him that they couldn't even imagine until they get there. But here's the plot

twist. That is not what God says. What God says to Habakkuk is, you're not going to,

you wouldn't believe what I'm going to do even if I told you. I am raising up the

Chaldeans, which is another word for the Babylonians. I'm raising them up, the

people you are terrified of. They're bitter. They're hasty. That means they

bear grudges and they're in a hurry to get revenge. They plunder and they

pillage. They want to spread all over the world. They want to take all of your

homes. Everyone dreads them. Everyone fears them. They don't believe in justice.

They don't believe in dignity. The reason that they, out of all of their

different gods, they say that Marduk is the greatest, this is because Marduk is

the best warrior. His weapons are the best that's slaying his enemies. He's the

least forgiving and the most vengeful and they want to make everyone,

everywhere, into people who think that he is great. They're the ultimate

colonizers, the ultimate empire and they're also, God tells Habakkuk, they're

armed to the teeth and they love violence. They're like the opposite of the

way that God presents himself in the Old Testament. You know, they see all of

these people just as sand to be oppressed, whereas God, if you think of that

image in the Old Testament, wants to bless the whole world through Abraham.

There's a numerous of sand on the shore. So in every way, they're like the opposite

of God and God says, you won't believe what I'm doing. These are the people I'm

sending to you. Okay? Salvation from violence, more violence is coming.

Salvation from injustice, more injustice is coming. And there's a stunning piece

of, there's a stunning verse at the end there. When God finishes off describing

the people who are coming to Habakkuk in verse 11, they are guilty men whose own

might is their God. When God describes them in effect, God says that their

religion, their worship of the God Marduk, it's all a sham. It's not really the

worship of Marduk. Marduk is just a projection of the violence in their own

hearts and the power that they're addicted to where they're taking over the

world. And behold, God says to Habakkuk, I am raising these people up and I'm

sending them to you. And then God's answer stops. And you have to imagine

Habakkuk at this point thinking, what? Because God's response to him basically

is, I will fight injustice with injustice. I will fight violence with violence. And

because it's so counterintuitive to Habakkuk, so hard to understand, that's

why God begins everything by saying, you are not going to believe what I'm about

to tell you. This, the first place will make no sense to you. Now, what we're

going to see over the next few Sunday nights is that this isn't the end of

Habakkuk's interaction with God. As God is revealing the gospel to

Habakkuk, it's the beginning. But what I want to stop with tonight is saying this,

that ultimately the meaning of Habakkuk is found in the life and the death and

the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that makes this book direct and important

to you, actually whether tonight you're a Christian or not. If you're a Christian,

what you will see through the book of Habakkuk is that Jesus is the true and

the better Habakkuk. He was someone, Habakkuk was someone you'll see who could

wrestle faithfully with God, even in surrounded by darkness and the worst of

times. Jesus did that but to perfection, to a degree that Habakkuk never did. In

his worst of times, Habakkuk can cry out, how long, oh Lord, until you do

something about this. But in Jesus' worst of times, the thing that he has to cry

out is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Habakkuk, listen to God, talk

about ending the violence and the injustice of the Babylonians through

more injustice and violence. But Habakkuk is probably standing there thinking,

what? You know, as a gut reaction, we're going to see next week what he goes on to

articulate. But Jesus entered that world of violence and ended violence and

injustice by submitting himself to it, to the violence, to the injustice of a

Roman crucifixion. He destroyed it from the inside. He defeats death by dying

because it's not possible for death to hold him. So if you're a Christian,

Habakkuk, it's like Old Testament backdrop to Jesus that helps us understand

him in really profound ways. But if you're not a Christian, finish by saying this,

that if you're starting to think about Christianity, the Christian Gospel,

and tonight you're wrestling with it through Habakkuk, what Habakkuk will

help you think through is that the Gospel is a message that will necessarily

confound you. Its claims will defy whatever expectations you begin with

about what God should be like, what God should do. And I want to say this to you

did you know that the Bible actually realizes that about you and that it

assumes that about you regardless of where you come from? Okay, let's give you

the Gospel in a couple of sentences. God is perfectly righteous and He judges you

by His perfect moral standards, but you can't meet that through your moral

performance, your religious performance. So before God, you are actually justly

condemned. It's your status before Him. But God is also gracious beyond your

wildest imagination. And in Jesus, 100% because of Jesus perfection, God offers

you unconditional acceptance, gratuitous forgiveness because He loves you and

He's your Father and He wants you to be His child. And that forgiveness then can

become the new motivation you have for how to live a different life. I want you

to imagine two people, neither of them believes this message, but who hear it.

They're both from here, but they've grown up in different generations. One is

someone from my generation in the 80s and 90s, a geriatric millennial like me.

My generation back then, our icon was you know, Noel Gallagher, you know, let the

good times roll, nobody can judge me. Someone from that generation will hear

that Gospel message and have a particular stumbling block. And it is, don't judge

me. I should be accepted, yeah, but I have a really big problem with a God who

would say, I am your Lord and I tell you to be different. Imagine person number

two is Gen Z, is like 12 to 18 years old in a Scottish high school with all of

the values that go along with that generational package. And that person's

icon is not Noel Gallagher, that person's icon is Greta Thunberg, that person is

supremely moralistic. There's all kinds of evil. How can you not live with the

consequences of your action and call other people out for them? That person

has different stumbling blocks and it's not sin being called out or the idea

that there are perfect standards and we should be held to account for them.

Well, that person will find much harder and more counterintuitive will be love

your enemies, forgive gratuitously. Don't accept people because of some of their

good deeds, love people in spite of their bad deeds. So even within two

generations in the same city you could have very different stumbling blocks.

And that's even not even beginning to think about what would it be like if you

heard this and didn't believe it and you grew up in Saudi Arabia or in Cambodia.

People have all kinds of different stumbling block reactions to the

gospel that are not the same and the Bible assumes that about you. If you

want to see this read the book of 1 Corinthians in the New Testament because

it begins with this and that when Paul in that book presents the gospel he begins

by saying that different people have different reactions to it. They find it

problematic in different ways. Jews who ask for a sign think that it's the

gospel as a stumbling block and Greeks who seek wisdom think that it's just

moronic, that it's foolishness. So what I'm trying to make here just to finish off is

that when you find Jesus you will find some of what you were looking for,

absolutely, but what you also discover is that there's a whole lot that you weren't

looking for and you realize that you should have been and there are a lot of

things that you were looking for and they're very so much depending on your

generation and where you come from in the world and where you were just not

looking for the right things at all. And whether you're reading the Bible in the

Old Testament in a minor prophet like Habakkuk where God begins to present the

gospel to him with a you wouldn't you won't believe this even when I tell you

or whether you're reading the New Testament and it's Paul in 1 Corinthians 1

saying pay attention to where you're from and how you hear the gospel. The

gospel begins with this kind of prefix to you that you will not believe this

when you are told and this is how God begins to present the gospel through

Habakkuk. So we're going to pick that up next Sunday night as we go through his

second complaint to God, but we'll finish with that for tonight. Let's pray.

Lord our God, our Father in heaven, we thank you for the light of the gospel,

for the hope that it shines into our world even when it feels like Habakkuk

felt like he was in the worst of times. Lord we thank you that the gospel is

yours, that it is your message, that it is your plan, that your Son has come into

our world in ways that confound all of our expectations and we thank you that

your spirit wrestles with us to convince us, to compel us, to bring us to Christ

from all of our different starting points. So Lord we pray that you would

encourage us, that you would build us up in faith through the time that we have

this month Sunday nights reading through Habakkuk together. We pray this in Jesus

name. Amen.