Habakkuk: In Spite of All Else | Guest Speaker: Brad O'Kelley

Thank you guys very much for being here today.

Good to see everybody.

Good news and bad news.

The good news is that Russ's sabbatical has come to an end.

Okay?

And he is back.

Bad news is that you're stuck with me for today.

And then after that, all will return to normal.

Alright?

So, well, I shouldn't say that.

That's probably a bad analogy right now.

Whatever.

So, anyways.

But also, depending on how you view this, we also had to finish up Habakkuk.

So this could be a blessing or a curse to you.

Some of you are probably still searching for it through your Bibles.

That's perfectly understandable.

It took me about three days to find it, too.

So that's alright, but we're going to finish it up today.

We don't have time to run through the entire third chapter of Habakkuk, so we're going to condense it down.

I'm going to skip to the good part.

I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that I'm going to get into like the real detailed stuff of it.

I'm skipping all the way down to the good part.

We're going all the way down to the end of chapter three in Habakkuk, and we're going to finish this thing up today just because, again, I keep getting slapped around by this little tiny book in the Bible that is just so full of things that pertain to our world today, I think.

And hopefully you've seen that as Brian preached to us, as David Rutland preached to us, all those guys who've come up here and really filled in the gaps for us.

And I hope that you've really taken something away from that and had a good time with it.

So today we're going to start in Habakkuk chapter 3, and we're going to read verses 16 through 19.

Habakkuk 3 · chapter mention

So let me read to you this morning.

The Bible says, I heard, and my inward parts trembled.

At the sound my lips quivered.

Decay enters my bones, 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.

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, yet I will exalt in the Lord.

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

The Lord God is my strength, and He's made my feet like hindsfeet, and makes me walk on high places.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer this morning.

Father, we love you.

We thank you for your word.

We thank you for all of those who are here today.

Father, those that are watching online at home, we just pray that you continue to bless each and every one of us.

Lord, most of all, please today open our minds and our hearts to hear your word and that we just pray that you would speak loud and clear this morning.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

So I got a lot of um text and phone calls from the last time that I preached, which can usually be either a good thing or a bad thing.

Most of them were just really good friends checking to make sure that Mandy was still married to me after I told stories about her cooking last time.

And it's all good.

Everything's good.

But I need to explain to you that the reason I tell stories about my wife, and the reason is because she she's my person, you know?

She's my person.

I love her with all my heart, and she gets me and she understands me, and she fills in the gaps where I fall short.

I can assure you of that.

Because I am a planner, okay?

I like to plan things out.

I like to have a good plan in place, and we march towards that plan to completion.

Okay?

I don't like sitting around and not doing anything.

That's that's not my thing.

But I do like to have a plan in place.

Mandy completes me in the fact that she needs no plan.

Whatsoever.

As a matter of fact, she completes me in the fact that she will do things in spite of my plan.

Does that make sense?

Like, in spite of the plan that I have so eloquently put in place, uh, things happen.

And this usually takes place in some phrases or some phone calls that I get, things like that.

If if I, like for instance, we've been married long enough now to where if I hear the words, we should, dot, dot, dot, uh, I need to be prepared that something is going to happen the next day while I'm at work that is going to uh throw everything for a loop.

Okay?

Give you an example.

Uh one day she tells me, we should get that tree in front of the house cut down.

That's wonderful.

My plan is call a couple tree guys, let's get some quotes, find a good guy to come cut the tree down.

The next day, okay, I get a phone call at work, and the question is, how do you crank this chainsaw?

Do you see how that, in spite of my planning, do you see what's going on here?

This isn't that's not the first time.

I've gotten phone calls before at work.

How do I know if the electricity is still on?

Do you want to know why she asked that question?

Because a wall that she no longer wanted in the house had gotten a hammer through it that morning while I was at work.

This happens.

This is my this is my life.

In spite of my plan.

I mean, there's there's a bunch of I I wrote down an entire list of them.

What I've told you before, uh, one time I was at work, she sold all our furniture out of our house on Facebook while I was at work because she wanted a new couch.

And I said, you know, my plan was, yeah, let's save up a little bit of money.

We'll we'll, you know, we'll save some money.

You and I'll go look for a couch.

We'll we'll buy the couch, we'll bring it home.

What she heard in spite of my plan was, I'm gonna go get the money for the couch now.

We had no other furniture but a couch.

You understand that?

She sold everything to buy the couch.

And it's a wonderful couch.

We love it.

But I mean, it's just some of the stuff is how do I get this drill to work?

You know?

Most people would ask, what are you doing with the drill?

Now I don't even ask because here's the thing.

In spite of me asking the question, in spite of me making the plan, do you know what she's gonna do?

She's gonna do it anyways.

The best one that ever happened, though, was I was at work one time and I got a phone call from Andy.

And I had we we'd not had any conversations, okay?

No conversations about anything.

I was perfectly at peace in my office doing my work because we had not had any conversation about anything taking place.

No, we shoulds, okay?

So I'm perfectly at peace, and I get a phone call, and I pick up the phone, and it's my wife, and I say, Hello?

I got no hello back, no hi, how are you, no, how's your date, nothing.

I pick up the phone, I said hello.

She said, What's your social security number?

That's it.

What's your social security number?

Now, most of you in this room would say, What do you need my social security number for?

Do you know what I said?

Two, five.

I just started getting, I mean, she's gonna get it anyway.

It doesn't matter.

And I came home that night and I pull into the driveway, and there there's a car in a driveway, and I'm like, oh, we have a guest over.

You know, I wonder who's here.

And I go inside and nobody's there.

Except for me.

I said, Whose car is that in the driveway?

She goes, It's ours.

You know what she needed my social security number for?

Financing of the car.

She literally sold and bought a car while I was at my office under my social security.

I thought about filing identity theft charges against her.

All on a phone, and it was in spite of the fact that I could have come up with a great plan to buy a car, but we didn't even know, we don't need a plan.

I'm gonna do this in spite of you, anyways.

But the best part is that I love her for it because sometimes it gets us going and gets us moving in the right direction, you know.

When I want to sit, hang back, and be like, oh, let's plan this a little bit more.

Uh no, no plan needed.

We're going.

And that's why she's my person.

You know what I mean?

That's why she's my person, the one that that every now and then, as mad as I get about, and sometimes I think like, why can't you just follow the plan?

Come on, lady.

But it makes me move, it makes me get going.

And so when I read this last part of Habakkuk here, I wish we had time to run through the entire chapter because the entire chapter of this thing in chapter three is literally like a history lesson almost.

The first part of this is Habakkuk going back through history and listing out not only everything that God's told him thus far, which has not been that great, by the way, okay?

It's it's not been a great conversation between Habakkuk and God.

It's not something that he wanted to revisit, but he's doing it anyways.

And he's going back through the history and he's looking at how God has laid out his plan and how all this stuff is happening.

And he gets down to verse 16, and when he gets into verse 16, all of a sudden we kind of turn this corner a little bit, and some stuff starts happening.

Look at verse 16.

It says, I heard and my inward parts trembled.

At the sound of at the sound, my lips quivered.

Decay enters my bones, 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.

This is a distress call to God.

What Habakkuk's doing right here is he's running back through God's plan and he's realizing this plan stinks.

I don't want anything to do with this plan, but he's saying, I'm literally so fearful and so overwhelmed by the fear of what God is going to do that I can do nothing but tremble in my place.

It says, decay enters his bones.

Think about that.

What's the best way to stop something from moving, especially a human being, is let decay enter your bones to where they no longer work anymore, right?

He's stuck in this place of distress and fear and anxiety over what God is going to do right in front of his very eyes.

And he knows it's coming is the worst part.

It's not like he's guessing at it, he knows it's coming.

And he spends all of verse 16 talking about his distress.

But then we get down into verse 17 and look what it says.

It 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.

Do you see kind of a kind of a grouping going on there?

All of these things are daily sustenance to us, right?

He starts to mention food and uh crops in the field and cattle and all of these things, the things that we need to survive every day, right?

Food and water we can get by.

And and I'm I'm on board with this right now.

I understand the place of pain that he's coming from right now because Mandy has put us on hole 30.

So I'm angry today, okay?

I need you to understand that.

I'm angry because we're on the hole 30.

If you don't know what whole 30 is, it's literally the worst diet ever created in the history of earth.

You basically go outside and pull leaves off of trees and eat them, is what it turned basically turns out to be.

It's all it's the worst.

Makes a man utter the four words he should never have to say.

I'll have the salad.

It's terrible.

And every day I come home and there's some new whole 30 recipe waiting on me.

Isn't that what you want after a lovely 10-hour day at work?

To walk in the door and go, mmm, smells of arugula.

Like, I mean, just awesome, you know.

Every day you just come home and you're just like, I mean, just somebody just kick me.

I'd I'd rather just be kicked at this point than have to do whole 30.

So obviously I'm doing really well.

I don't know if you can, if you've picked up on that, I'm doing really well with it.

It's terrible because you you just have this very little bit, you know, like you just get these, you just get this little bit that's supposed to, you know, keep you going and do all this stuff.

And I'm like, this is, it's, no, it's not working.

And when I read this portion of Habakkuk, he starts listing out all this stuff in verse 17.

Look at what he says.

Though the fig trees should not blossom, there be no fruit on the vines, the yield of the olives should fail, the fields produce no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls.

Do you understand what the message he's trying to convey here?

Is that he literally knows what's coming is physical hunger.

So now not only does he feel far from God and far from God's plan, but now we're going to throw in on top of that the physical things that sustain you every single day being cut off.

So if it wasn't bad enough to have that kind of spiritual longing to be far away from God, now let's make it physical.

Let's cut off your food supply too.

And let's see how that makes you feel.

Do you see how bad things are getting here?

Do you understand that Habakkuk's not saying this going, God, please don't do this?

He's saying this going, I know it's coming.

And I'm in the middle of it right now.

And this is what's happening.

And literally back in verse 16 he says, and all I can do is sit and wait on it to take place.

And you would think, man, if we had to stop right there this morning, if we had to literally just pump the brakes on those two verses right there, this would be the worst sermon you've ever heard.

And you'd leave here today and go, I don't know if I want to go back to church.

But then all of a sudden in verse 18, this switch flips.

Now remember, we've got spiritual separation, we've got physical separation from food and hunger and all of this stuff.

There's literally this element of distress and pain and anxiety and physical hunger.

Think about all of those things coming, just literally closing in on you.

And then look at verse 18.

Yet I will exalt in the Lord.

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

Don't you wish that, maybe you do, I don't know if you do or not.

Don't you wish, though, that that our attitude, that we could just find just a glimpse of that attitude for a moment in everything that goes on?

In everything that happens in our life.

And then he takes it a step further in verse 19.

He says, The Lord is my strength.

He's made my feet like hindsfeet and makes me walk on high places.

He literally goes back and is looking at the thing that brings him salvation.

In verse 18, he says, I will exalt in the Lord, I'll rejoice in the God of my salvation.

Now, the reason that that gets difficult for us, or at least for me, hopefully you too, maybe you can get on board with this, is that we live in a world that likes to set up an alternate salvation.

Does that make sense to you today?

Like, I'll give you an example.

There are plenty of people on earth, and I'm being apolitical about this, okay?

There are plenty of people on earth, you're not making a move until there's a vaccine.

Do you understand that what happens is that we have an entire group of people in this world now that literally are setting up a vaccine to be the salvation.

The vaccine becomes a salvation, right?

For some of us, maybe when our kids physically get to go back to school and be in the classroom, that will be our salvation.

We set that up as salvation.

That's the only thing that's going to save us, is when they go back to school.

We set that up as salvation.

And you can fill in the blank with whatever it is that you want to fill it in with.

I'm sure you have people in your life that they like to fill in that blank for you sometimes.

This should be your salvation.

It should be XYZ.

And the only problem with that is that when we do that, when we set up something to be our salvation, you have to understand that salvation has to come with a savior.

So when we say things like a vaccine or like a school or fill-in-the-blank XYZ, and we set those things up as our salvation, do you realize what we're actually doing?

We're actually saying those things become our savior.

And what Habakkuk is doing right here is he's saying, apart, in spite of all of that, in spite of spiritual separation, physical hunger, pain, anxiety, all of these things, fear that has literally crippled him in his bones to stand in his place in spite of all of those things.

What he's saying is, I refuse to take any of those in that list and set them up as my salvation.

And in verse 18, he hits us with one of the greatest things that could ever be said, and he says, I rejoice in the God of my salvation.

Do you see how good that is today?

Do you know how easy it would be to set up an alternate salvation in his world and go, no, I think I'm going to worship the cows because I would really love a steak today.

I think I'm going to worship the fields because I would really love for a crop to spring forward here so I could get a little something to eat.

I would really love for God to come up with an alternate plan here and I'll help him out with my plan.

I'll set my plan up as the salvation so that I don't have to go through any of this.

And then I can be the Savior.

Do you see how easy that would be for a guy like Habakkuk?

And yet, in all of this distress and fear and pain and anxiety that comes along, his words are, I will exalt.

That word exalt is literally find joy.

I will find joy in the God of my salvation.

I love that that definition is find joy because you realize you can't find something until you go look for it, right?

Like you gotta you gotta find that joy.

That's the hard part.

We want joy to hit us in the face, or at least I do, you know.

I want to come slap me around.

I don't want to have to go looking for it.

Uh the problem is that sometimes in our lives, and especially in this world, we have to go out and we have to find that joy, right?

We have to go seek it out because it's not coming, or it definitely seems like it has missed us somewhere along the road.

And we got to go looking for it.

And I'll just be real honest with you, last uh last week, Friday previous, was just it was it was a just kind of a rough day.

You know, there was a lot of things that happened, a lot of spinning wheels in my world, work, home, uh, kids' lives, all of this stuff, you know, it's just one of those days.

And I don't I don't know if I need to phrase it any better than that.

Just one of those days.

And and I'm I'm driving home from work, and I had the radio was set to, you know, some talk radio thing, and and it's just hit after hit after hit of how terrible everything is.

Does that, I mean, I'm sure you've been there.

How we're all gonna die, everything's terrible, uh, just keep hitting, keep hitting, keep hitting.

And finally, I just I just shove the radio, you know, off.

But I accidentally hit my auxiliary button, which is what my phone plays through on the phone, and I have Amazon music.

I don't know what music player you use.

If you don't have Amazon music, it's awesome.

You need to get it.

She's got a built-in Alexa.

And so, Alexa, who knows me, okay?

Some of you have an Alexa, and you know.

She knows.

Alright?

She knows.

I said, Alexa, play country music.

Full disclosure, I'm a country music fan, okay?

Not the stuff you hear today that they call country music.

I need I need a little bit older school stuff.

I also don't want the 1920s stuff.

Don't come hit me up with your, you know, Hank Williams Sr.

and all that stuff.

Like, I'm I'm past that too.

Sorry, I'm somewhere in the middle, all right?

But I said, Alexa, play country music.

And she pulls this station called 90s Country's Hits.

And Garth Brooks, Friends in Low Places, comes on.

And I crank it up.

And I'm not a windows down guy, I'm an AC guy, okay?

But the windows came down.

And I am going home in my truck, Garth Brooks blaring on the radio, singing at the top of my lungs with the windows down, and people literally staring, pointing, and laughing if I have to stop at any stop signs or red lights or anything like that.

But it's happening, man.

You know what I mean?

It's happening whether you like it or not.

Garth's gonna take control of this thing.

And I'm just I'm letting it fly, man.

And in that moment, you know, in that moment right there, for just a minute, I was I was 16, you know?

I was 16, I had$20 in that pocket.

Oh, and I was headed to go get my lady for a date at the Waffle House.

Just in that moment, that's where I was.

You remember, I mean, you've had that moment, right?

Where your mind just goes back and you're like, yes, sir, this is Friday night, and the Waffle House is calling.

And you know, you know, you feel it in your bones, and there's just that moment of release where you're like, this is it, man.

That was the life right there.

And the song ends, and you pull up in the driveway, and everything goes right back to what it was, but you remember that moment, right?

You just had that one feeling that just put that smile on your face, and you're like, this is it, man.

I remember it.

And that's what it took for me on that day just to shake that mood off just a little bit.

I wish I could give you some spiritual analogy of how I prayed the whole way home and everything was fine.

It was Garth Brooks, man.

Period.

But now I understand where Habakkuk's coming from as he lists all of these terrible things and he sees all of God's plan that he doesn't want anything to do with, and actually, probably, for being honest, hates.

He hates this plan.

Doesn't want anything to do with it, and yet, in this moment, right here, at the very end of this book, you get that flash of greatness, just that second where all of a sudden that tension releases, and he goes, But I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

And the windows are down, and he's letting it fly, man.

And in verse 19, he says, The Lord God is my strength.

He's made my feet like Hind's feet and makes me walk on my high places.

Walking on high places is a great analogy of how he's starting to feel that moment of going up the mountain, and literally it's a painted picture of being closer to God.

And God begins to draw him in to help him understand that no matter what we set up as salvation, apart from salvation from an Almighty God by grace through faith, it will absolutely 100% of the time fail us and leave us crippled in our fear and in our anxiety.

So, brothers and sisters, for you today, find that moment, that sweet salvation moment where Christ saved you, where his work on the cross became real in your life.

Let's go, Lord, in prayer this morning.

Father, we love you.

We thank you for an opportunity to open your word and to hear from you.

And Lord, we just pray today that your word would speak loud and clear, Lord, that it would bring us to that moment of peace.

That moment of understanding, that moment of seeing that no matter what comes, in spite of everything that comes, your salvation is where we find our joy.

We love you and we ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.