Habakkuk

Good morning church. We will be in the book of

Habakkuk. If you are using the Bible that

is underneath your chair, it is on page 737.

If you do not have a Bible at your house, this is our gift to

you. Please take it home.

We're going to start with Habakkuk one one through 5.

Then we'll jump to verse 12 and 13.

Then we'll be in chapter 2 and chapter 3.

Habakkuk one, one through 5, the Oracle that Habakkuk the prophet

saw. O Lord, how long shall I cry for

help? And you will not hear, or I cry

to you violence and you will not save.

Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look 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. 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.

Jump to verse 12. Are you not from everlasting?

O Lord my God, my holy one, we shall not die.

O Lord, You have ordained them as a judgement, and you, O rock,

have established them for reproof.

You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look it

wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when

the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

Jump to chapter 2, one through 4.

I will take my stand at the watch post and station myself on

the tower and look out to see what He will say to me and what

I will answer concerning my complaint.

The Lord answered me. Write the vision, make it plain

on tablet so he may run. Who reads it?

For still the vision awaits. It's a point of time.

It hastens to the end. It will not lie.

If you, if it seems slow, wait for it, it will surely come.

It will not delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up.

It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by

his faith. Flip to chapter 3, verse 17.

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit beyond the

vines, 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.

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. Thanks be to God.

What's going on, Port City family and friends, How we

doing? Good.

My name is Tanner. It's a blessing to be with you,

the lead pastor here. And it's just awesome to be with

you today. Y'all at Port City.

We just want to help you, OK? And one of the things that we

all need help with in life, myself included, is everybody

got a plan till they get punched in the mouth.

That's what Mike Tyson said. And he was right.

Suffering is really hard y'all. It's hard.

Life will squeeze us. I like to say that that life

just puts the squeeze on you. Time and pressure just starts to

squeeze us and we just want to help.

One of the books on the back table out there is called

Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering by a dude named

Timothy Keller. Just want to recommend it to

you. All the books out there are

free. Some of y'all need to go buy

this if you have not had a prolonged season of really

wrestling with the hard question suffering brings.

The Bible is not scared of those.

God is not scared of those. We're going to dive into the

concept of lamenting in today's sermon, but zooming out from

lamenting some of the questions that Habakkuk is asking, We

won't deep dive because the the what we need today is the

process more than the answers to the content.

But if you have not wrestled with that stuff, life's going to

hit you at some point, if it hasn't already.

Or maybe you would say this topic is why it's hard for you

to take the Lord serious. So I would just say God can

handle it. Wrestle with those questions.

We would love to walk with you. The book is free.

Check it out, read it, buy it if you want your own.

And I just want to pray for us because this is this is

important y'all. I really want this one for us.

There's a lot going on in our world right now, and I hope you

don't think that God's view of you, if you love him and are

faithful, is just to put on a fake happy face.

I hope that is not your view of what it means to walk with God.

OK. I hope that you know he can

handle the wrestle. All right, so let me pray for us

and we'll dive into this, this awesome book.

Our Father, we're so grateful to gather.

Lord, we don't want to play games today.

God, we look at the cross. It's bloody, it's victorious,

it's awesome, but God, heaven is not here yet.

So in the in between of your first coming, Jesus, and your

second, we need help. God, help us to lament, help us

to understand, help us to wrestle with hard questions.

Got to pray for anybody in here who is in Christ just hanging on

by a thread. Would you just breathe fresh air

into their souls today, God, for maybe the skeptic who this is a

hard topic, would you help them to see that you can handle it?

And I pray that you would. You would intrigue them.

God, I just pray that we would walk out of here encouraged,

exhorted, challenged, strengthened through the power

of your words. So help us, Lord, help us, help

us what we know not right now. Would you teach us what we have

not? Would you give us and who we are

not? Would you make us?

And let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable in your sight? And everybody you agree with

that said Amen. Do you all remember as a kid

packing the bag to run away? Anybody.

Maybe it was one of your siblings.

I had the type parents that when I got in that mode, they'd be

like, oh, you run away, huh? You need a bigger bag in that.

Let me they would go grab the bag out.

What else you need? You need Teddy.

Let me get Teddy. They were the the petty parents

in that moment, which now I look back on and I think it's

hilarious. OK, those moments are so funny

because kind of the whole assumed thing going on is they

don't actually want to run away because if they did, they just

would. And they wouldn't tell you.

They want to pull on your heart strings, don't they?

They are taking your heart and they're trying to.

And the petty parent is signaling I'm good, you know,

like we're good, go ahead. But it's really emotional

process going on right there for that kid.

I've even heard a story of a kid running away and demanding the

parent follow them walk behind me while I run away and then

they yelled at the parent the whole wall.

OK, I think that that image actually has a lot to teach us

about what the Bible calls lamenting.

Somebody say lament to lament with in covenant relationship

with God, with a parental figure who is not leaving gives you the

safety to let them hear what you have to say.

Are you with me? Lament happens in the context

and confines of safety where I can unload my frustrations

because what's happening versus who you say you are are not

lined up and I'm frustrated. Are y'all with me?

Actually think that impulse to say why and to be frustrated is

really healthy and core to the human experience in a broken and

busted world? I think that image of a kid with

their parent knowing they're not running away, but I'm running

away and I'm going to let you hear it, has a lot to teach us

today. Y'all.

I think to not lament would be insane.

Just walk outside. This place is busted, y'all.

Some of what I hope happens today is we feel permission to

be that kid. Are you with me being that kid

is not biblically unfaithful within the confines of what

we're going to talk about what Habakkuk models is actually

quite good. And if you're a skeptic here

today, here's what I would say. I don't offer you easy answers.

Habakkuk's going to get some hard answers.

Habakkuk is not going to get. Oh, it all makes sense to me

now, y'all? If everything made sense to us,

we would be close to being God, right?

Like we would be almost on his level, which we're not.

We were talking this week in Group about there's this funny

old video of like a kind of a bum NBA player that people would

make fun of. He basically goes and plays a

whole college basketball team one-on-one and dominates all of

them. And as he's doing it, this is

his line that he says. He says I'm closer to LeBron

than you are to me. And the point is, y'all aren't

on the level you think you're on, you know, and that's at the

human level. What's hard for us to understand

is we're not close to being God. In terms of what we can see and

understand, are y'all with me? So we don't offer easy answers.

The lament process is beautiful. Are you with me?

We need this process and there are answers.

But today's sermon, this book is mainly about the process.

Are you with me? So my prayer for us that we walk

out of here lamenting the way that Habakkuk models for us, OK?

And to get there, we're going to look at the potential of

lamenting, the obstacles to lamenting, and the power to

lament. If you are ready, let me hear

you say I'm ready. OK, let's start with the

potential of lamenting. Habakkuk is a unique prophet.

If you've been with us in this series, what prophet tends to

mean is that person has a message from God for the people.

OK? The book of Habakkuk is unique

because it's entirely a conversation between the prophet

and God. Are you all with me?

So he's not speaking to the people, He's speaking to God in

the midst of the situation they're all in.

So it's literally a dialogue that we, the reader, get to

watch between God and his person.

OK? So that makes it very unique

amongst the prophets. And basically what he's going to

do is complain. He complaints once, God

responds, he complaints twice, God responds and then he prays.

And that's the book. So it's pretty dope.

Let's start with the first complaint and let's learn how to

complain. Well, Amen.

Somebody. Verses one, one through 4,

chapter 1. The big number is the chapter.

Little numbers are the verses chapter one, verse one, the

Oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.

Oh 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?

And why do you idly look at wrong?

Destruction and violence are before me.

Strife and contention arise, So the law is paralysed.

And justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the

righteous. So justice goes forth perverted.

I've got three ingredients of lamenting well that I want to

give you. Here's the first one.

To lament is to be bothered by reality misalignment.

To lament is to be bothered by reality misalignment.

So what frustrates Habakkuk is that what he sees in Judah, the

capital city, Jerusalem, like where he is amongst God's

people, is chaos. He says the law is paralyzed.

So the image for God's people was always that we know God and

we are living with him. We're we're walking in his law

and it's showing the world how good he is.

But he's saying that flow from God, who is love and justice to

the streets signifying love and justice is being blockaded by

his people, paralyzing the law. Are you with me?

So you all, just to be clear, what makes him lament is that

the people of God are failing to be who they should be.

So church, let me talk to you for just a second before we talk

about lamenting. Like when we get hard phone

calls or the cancer hits or the hard things of life that hit our

individual lives. Biblically, to lament is to weep

that the streets don't yield the justice of God's goodness.

Are y'all with me? So before we're bothered by what

hits our personal lives, the people of God are the ones

tethered to God's heart. What if we were people that what

broke our hearts is what broke God's heart?

But sadly, many times we're numb to the corporate things that

make God look bad. And we are so attuned to our

dreams, our expectations, our hopes.

That's not bad. We're going to talk about that.

But we are supposed to be the one people on earth who what

makes us weep and fast and lament is God's glory, not my

comfort. Are you with me?

The one people on earth who are tethered to what God cares

about, what God is frustrated by.

So Habakkuk is bothered that the law is being paralyzed by his

people. So we should be the first ones

when we see a church scandal or something like that.

We're not throwing rocks, We're not making excuses.

We're just sad. We're sad because it's another

example of how God is going to be viewed a certain way because

we fail to embody who the people of God are supposed to be.

Are you with me? So I think what I'm just

dreaming that we would be that type of church, that what shakes

us is what shakes God. Are you with me?

That's that's our prayer here at Port City.

That being said, when we zoom out, this concept of reality

misalignment applies to a lot of things.

When the call comes that somebody's got the cancer,

that's not the way it should be. Are you with me?

The way it should be? What you know is this is not

right. Something's off here.

You know, deep in your inner being that it was not meant to

be this way. When we hear people dying young,

when we all of these scenarios, when we turn on the news and

chaos is going on, something in your mind, you don't have words

for it. You're like, there's a what it

should be, and then there's a what is, and there's a

frustration at that gap. Are you with me?

So to lament is to be bothered by that gap.

And the reason it bothers you is because the Bible story is true,

which is that God made us in his image and he made all things

good in sin. The curse of sin broke

everything. So our relationship with God,

with each other, with ourselves, and with the earth was

shattered. So the reason we know it's not

what it should be is because deep in our souls what we

suppress is the reality that God made us and God is in charge,

and this is not the way he designed it to be.

This is a broken version. So we get little glimpses of

dope food and beautiful things and all the stuff.

But by and large, life is chaotic to what it should be,

right? That is to lament is to feel

that gap and to be mad about the gap.

I would say again, to not lament would be weird.

To not lament would be to say there's no gap.

Are you with me? So like, if you've ever feel

like there's a gap and you want to react to the gap, you're

reacting to the gap because that gap don't make sense.

And I to that I say Amen. OK, So if you've never lamented,

you're kind of living in a false reality.

Are you with me? The real world is broken and

busted because of sin, and that's why we have this impulse.

Verse 3. Let's look at the next

ingredient. Why do you make me see iniquity?

And why do you look idly at wrong?

Here's the second ingredient of biblical lament.

We're bothered by God's silence, so the gap is one thing, but

God's felt silence. Our experience of the gap not

changing leads us to look at God and say, you're doing nothing.

Why do you sit idly, Idol? You're doing nothing.

That's how Habakkuk is talking to the Lord.

Maybe you can resonate with that.

The the Bible is filled with this phrase in the Psalms.

It goes, how long, O Lord, how long is this gap going to be?

What it is? How long am I going to watch

this go down the way it's going down?

How long are you going to let this go on?

I don't know if you ever felt that impulse of just how long.

And here's what's unique in Habakkuk is he gets an answer.

He gets an actual answer. God answers him.

We're about to read it. Some of y'all might be familiar

with Job. Job's answer, if you've read

through the whole book, isn't like about his situation.

It's basically just I'm God and you're not.

Where were you when I made the Billy goats in the mountains up

and wherever. And he's like, sorry, God, I

didn't know who I was talking to.

That's basically the book of Job.

OK. But in Habakkuk, he gets an

actual answer. Like he's going to tell him.

He's going to respond to his complaint.

We're about to read it. Isn't that crazy?

Let's read it. Verse 5.

I'm going to summarize a lot of it, but verse 5 is what you need

to hear. 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.

For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans.

Let's pause right there. Just the phrase, hey, I'm about

to do something that's never been told.

Be wondered and astounded. It's like, oh great, I got my

answer. You know what his answer is?

I'm bringing the Babylonians, AKA the Chaldeans.

They're going to come beat y'all down soon to deal with all that

injustice you're seeing. What?

What you mean I cried out and you answer, and your answer is,

yeah, I see the injustice too, and my people are not being who

I want them to be. So I'm going to purify them

through the agent that is the wicked Chaldeans, AKA the

Babylonians. Sound great, y'all?

So Habakkuk gets an answer and he don't like it.

Look at verse 12 and 13. He's going to respond to the

answer. Are you not from everlasting?

Oh Lord, my God, my holy one, we shall not die.

Oh Lord, you have ordained them as a judgement, and you a rock

have established them for reproof.

You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look it

wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent?

When the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he

Complaint, answer. Now he's complaining about the

answer. That's your answer.

You who are pure, you who can't be, who can't look at evil.

You won't let this go down. This is your plan.

That's his response to God. And he asked questions like,

which leads us to our third kind of ingredient about lamenting is

we're bothered by God's mysterious solutions.

So we're bothered by the gap, we're bothered by the silence.

And then when we get answers, we're bothered by the mysterious

solutions because that would not be what we would do, right?

One scholar kind of said that Habakkuk's view of God's cure

was worse than the disease. That's your plan.

I don't think you heard me say the disease, right?

Because that cure don't line up with my view of what the cure

should be for that disease. God, I thought you were this.

I thought you were everlasting. I thought.

And notice when you lament, well, you take God's own

character and hold it back up to him.

You see that you take who he is everlasting, He is holy, He is

pure, He is not the source of evil, but he's about to watch

this go down. Are you with me?

So you take God's character and you hold it up to him and tell

him how this is not making sense to you.

Are you with me? You're not venting about what

your God would be like. You're venting about who God has

shown himself to be through the scriptures.

And I think this represents you all that sometimes what we've.

Struggle with is not the questions we have.

We ask the questions and don't want the answers sometimes,

right? We fear the answers because we

don't understand them. It doesn't make sense to us.

Now here's what's unique. I'm not going to walk through

this. God actually answers him again.

OK. And basically what he says is

oh, the Babylonians, you're worried about them.

Don't worry, I'm a handle them and he pronounces 5 woes.

Somebody say whoa, what was a fancy Bible word for watch out

like that ain't good like the Babylonians are going to get

theirs. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa to

the Babylonians. OK, but is that really that

comforting? He's basically saying one day

they going to get theirs, but that still means they're going

to do to y'all what I just said and then one day I'm a handle

them if that's what you're worried about.

And I think if you're Habakkuk, you're thinking, that sounds

great, but can you just do it before they mess with us?

Does that make sense? And then he prays in response to

God. And that's the whole book,

That's the whole conversation. So I don't know who needs to

hear this today, but you're not the first one to have hard

questions for the Lord. OK?

If you've ever had that impulse of why, how long, How does this

work? How can you be good?

All of that stuff, the doubt, the frustration, y'all, Habakkuk

did it before you existed. Isn't that good news that those

things are not antithetical to walking with God?

They were meant to be packaged in that context.

So that's a lot of the content of what lament is.

As I see a gap, I don't like it. You feel silent, I don't like

you, and then you gave me an answer and I don't get it.

So I really don't like you. Are y'all with me?

That's lamenting is holding God's character back up to Him

in the midst of a situation that does not align with who He could

be and make it as in light of who He is.

Are y'all with me? Let's talk about why we don't do

that. That all sounds great.

We don't do it. We don't really lament.

We don't do what Habakkuk is doing.

We've got some complaints. Sometimes we got some things.

I don't think we really sit in it the way that Habakkuk did

here. So let's talk about why we

don't. First reason, we don't lament.

We confuse the concept of God with the person of God.

We confuse God the concept with God the person.

Let me talk to you about that. The assumed ingredient in all of

this for Habakkuk is covenant. Somebody say covenant for

Habakkuk, he knows God. God has initiated a covenant

with his people all the way back to Abraham.

Covenant means an unbreakable relational bond.

God's not going anywhere. Habakkuk's not going anywhere.

OK, They have a relationship. That's why in Habakkuk 2 verse

one, look what he says. I love this.

I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the

tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I

will answer concerning my complaint.

He basically says I'm going to sit here indefinitely until we

have this conversation. The covenant creates the

confines of waiting, of wrestling, of ongoing lamenting.

This is a prolonged process. Are you with me?

But it's in the context of I'm not going anywhere and you're

not going anywhere. I'm frustrated so we can't miss

the the content of lament can't be separated from the container.

Are you with me? It's kind of like the container

is where all the content goes. But if we just take the content

out, we have an unanchored kind of just shooting things out in

the dark to the concept of a God.

But we're not really talking to the reveal God that we're in

relationship with through Jesus. Are you with me?

You need the the content and the container Back to the the kid

illustration. What let's that kid do?

That is the caregiver dynamic, right?

They ain't acting that way with the YMCA after school people are

you with me like I'm running away?

I'm Tony all ordering cheese pizza.

I asked you for sausage and I'm out and then get pack my bag.

That's not what happens. Okay, They save that behavior

for mom and dad, for the primary caregiver, because they know you

ain't going nowhere. Are you with me?

They know they've got you and you've got them and they know

you love them and that's why they're going to pull on them

heartstrings. And there's something about the

impulse of letting rip your frustration that was meant to be

done in a like father kid type relationship.

Are you with me? But if you pull that out of it,

it gets it gets a little weird. What I want for the people in

this room. My goal for your life is for you

to shift from like venting to a concept to lamenting with a

person. Are you with me?

Let. The goal is to shift from feel

like you're venting into a void to like you actually know a God

who is with you in the fire and you're lamenting about what's

frustrating you with that person.

Are you with me like suffering has the ability to push us from

a towards God for God kind of life to like really intimate

with him in the fire. It has that potential.

But to get there, it's got to be more than just the concept of

God. It has to be a person you know,

and if you're wondering what that looks like, stay with us

through the end of the sermon of how to have that relationship.

Second reason we don't lament. Let's look at verses 2 and 3.

And the Lord answered me. Write the vision, make it plain

on tablets so he may run who reads it for still the vision

awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end.

It will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it.

It will surely come. It will not delay.

Second reason we don't lament very well is we confuse slow

with no, we confuse slow with no.

He says if it seems slow, wait for it.

Somebody say wait, yo, we're not very good at that.

We're not very good at waiting. If you pull the relationship out

the relational container that lamenting is meant to be done

in, and covenant, if you pull some of these things out, what

you end up doing is demand that it look a certain way in a

certain time. Does that make sense?

Or you're out with this concept that is God, but within

covenant, it gives you the ability to wait for its

appointed time, and if it seems slow, wait for it.

It will surely come. Yo, we are allergic to slow.

We hate slow. The other day I was at a light

where nobody's around within 10 miles.

You know what I'm talking about. And then I look over at the

little like, we're smart, right? We learned to look over at the

little crosswalk. You're like, how many seconds?

We talked a look. It was 40 seconds.

Like I got to see her for 40 seconds.

Like it was like, wait, wait. And it was like 4039.

I'm like, yo, everything. What did I do?

I did what you would do. I grabbed my phone.

I looked up an article. I don't know, like we live in a

world where waiting is literally like torture to us.

You can get the most obscure product to your door same night.

Now they're not even telling you it'll cost more.

They're like, hey, we're pulling on the carbon strings now.

They're like, I can get it to you by 6:00 PM, but if I get it

there by 8:00 PM, I'll give you a dollar of carbon credit for

your next order. And we're like, well, I want to

be a good person, am I right? I mean, I don't need it at six.

I'll take it at 8. So let me do the carbon option.

I'm I did my good deed for the day.

That's the world you and I live in.

Can you see how lamenting is going to be hard to not have

demands that God do something on your schedule when you live in a

world where your options are 6:00 PM or 8:00 PM?

That's our view of waiting. I waited good.

I gave Amazon some grace. Are y'all with me?

Like, do we see how we're not in a world that does waiting?

Well, we tend to hold God hostage to our timeline and we

have demands. We have a list of demands.

That's not what Habakkuk is doing.

He doesn't have a list of demands.

He has a list of questions for a God that he loves, for a God

that he wants to look good on earth.

His concern is God, you're not looking good through this, are

you? And he keeps asking them those

questions and he's sitting with him in it.

But if you pull that out, so this is This is why y'all, we

have to really wrestle with some of those doubts and questions

and get good theology. Theology is not enough when

suffering hits, but it is sort of a baseline.

Are you with me? Like if you don't have some of

the answers of why do bad things keep happening, We got to

wrestle with that. Do bad things happen to good

people? Some of you are like, I know

this one. Some of you are like, we've got

to wrestle with what did Jesus say life would be like?

Why did he only bring? Why did he not heal everybody?

Why does life continue to look the way it looks?

What will it look like when he returns?

What did God tell us to expect? In the meantime, until we really

wrestle with the story of God, the age that we live in, what

God's purposes are, what it means to follow him faithfully,

what we can expect, some of our expectations of who God is and

what it means to follow him. That if I do right by him, he'll

do right by me. Not what the text says.

Y'all In the Old Testament, like in this case, they're actually

getting punishment for sin. They did in the New Testament.

Habakkuk gets quoted in the book of Hebrews for endurance.

When you're getting mistreated for following Jesus, not even

for something you did wrong. So suffering many times, you

don't know why it's happening. It could be a billion reasons,

but you've got to process through the theology of that and

what the word says. Because if you don't have that,

you won't be anchored at all. When the when the punches come.

Are you with me? So theology isn't enough, but it

is sort of like a baseline. Are you with me?

So I'll just encourage you. Sometimes when the when the

waters are calm is a good time to read up on what life's going

to be like when the waters stir up.

Are you with me? Sometimes we need to get ahead

of these things because when it hits, your theology is just

coming out of you automatically. Are you with me?

And you're saying things about the Lord that feel true.

But the Habakkuk has some really good theology in this.

It doesn't make lamenting easier, but it is sort of a

baseline. Are you with me?

Theology is not the end goal, but you kind of got to have it.

Y'all Track it with me if it makes sense.

Let me hear you say sense, OK? Third reason we struggled a

little bit is our souls are puffed up.

Our souls are puffed up. You're like, what does that

mean? I'll tell you in a second.

Let's read chapter 2, verse 4. Behold, his soul is puffed up.

It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by

his faith. Y'all.

Here's what puffed up means. He's talking about the

Babylonians there. The Babylonians were puffed up.

Think about it, Y'all that nations like this, they dominate

everybody in war. They do whatever they want.

They're about to take over the Israelites.

They're taking over Judah. They're puffed up.

They think they run the show. Their soul is elevated.

It's like you were created human size.

But like the Babylonians, what we can do is we can get puffed

up. We we, we think we're bigger

than we really are. You with me.

The Babylonians had a God complex.

They think they ran the show and God is basically saying just

because I'm using you as an instrument in this process, you

better not be puffed up. Are you with me?

You better not think that you running the show you a chapter

in my story. You are not the author of this

story and we might not be the Babylonians taking over another

nation, but we too struggle with being puffed up and what

suffering can do what pressure can do is tempt you to feel like

you have to have control. We can take on a God like

complex. A lot of our anxiety, a lot of

our the issues when the pressure hits really come back to we're

we're we're puffing up. When we're scared, we puff up.

You know, we're think, think little man syndrome, which I am

very familiar with. Unfortunately, it's the idea

that I'll show you how big I am. I will, I will puff up, think

like jiggly puff like that. Y'all, when suffering hits,

there's something about it that makes us want to take control.

Are you all with me? We want to be in control.

We take on a God like control complex, but what the text says

here is the righteous one shall live by his faith.

There is another way where we don't have to get bigger and the

situation doesn't have to change.

There's something about being anchored to the Lord in it that

is possible for us. And all of those lead up to what

I think is our ultimate issue. We don't limit well, which is we

run to various forms of escapism.

Y'all, if we don't learn to lament what we do is we leave.

Are you with me? We might not leave

geographically, but what pressure does to the soul is it

has the potential to fracture you.

You just become multiple selves. It looks really little like doom

scrolling and just on your phone all the time.

It looks like shopping like crazy.

It looks like I don't know what form this took in your your

family growing up. Our families a lot of times

model for us how we handle pressure, don't they?

And we just don't talk about it. We stuff it, we just eat a lot.

We, you know, whatever those, those, maybe it's, it's

substances, maybe it's just tons of TV.

When the pressure goes up, we stop talking to each other.

But we watch a lot of movies, You know, it could look really

graphic in terms of the way you're escaping.

And now gambling is more accessible than water in our

country. So maybe I don't know what the

secrets look like, but what pressure threatens to do is it

threatens to fracture you. It wants to offer you a way out.

The pressures got to go somewhere.

Are you with me? So if you don't learn to lament,

you're going to leave. Are you with me?

You're going to leave reality. You're going to find a way to

exist to function in the midst of the pressure, and you're

going to find a way to do it. And that's, that's my biggest

concern for, for the modern church right now is we think if

God's not showing up, I can't handle this.

We're not thinking these things consciously, but we look for

another way out. We look for the escape route.

And I'm just telling you there's another way.

What the neuroscience is telling us right now, what we've always

known is what you need more than the situation changing is

somebody to be with you in it. That's just facts.

You crave the Lord and his people in the midst of the fire

You. They say you need witness, which

is really just witness. Y'all heard that one.

The idea is you need somebody to get in it with you and through

lamenting well in community, which is what the people of God

Together is supposed to be, that is possible.

If you have to have the situation change or you're out.

If you've got your list of demands, there's probably some

secrets going on somewhere. And I just want to say we all

struggle with that. We all look for release valves

in little ways all the time. Shout out the coffee.

You know, my, my I just in little ways, my caffeine tends

to go up with the pressure. And that's just one little way

where my body is trying to survive.

OK, so don't hear me shaming you for that.

I'm just saying another way is possible.

If we learn to lament, we don't look to leave as often.

Are you with me? OK, but even as beautiful as the

process of lamenting is, we need a power to help us do it.

We can understand it. We can know that we're tempted

to leave, But what actually is going to make you want to

lament? Let's talk about the power to

lament. Let's talk about the power to

lament. Like many of the minor prophets

we've been reading, the best verses tend to get saved for

last. All of them end with just

amazing verses to end the books, don't they?

Let's go read verses 17 through 19 of chapter 3.

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

vines, 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.

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. Those verses are beautiful

because all of the those you know, we were joking earlier

that the woes lead to the those you out with me.

It's like God answers this question.

If I'm going to use the Babylonians and woe to the

Babylonians and he's like, though you're not going to do

what I want you to do though it's about to go bad for us,

though we're about to get judged through the Babylonians, though

all the olives are gone. All the field is going to be

burnt. All the things are going to go

wrong. Yet I will praise you.

So if you if you are right in your Bible, you're going to want

to circle the those and then big bold the yet yet I will do, do

do, do, do, do yet. Whoa, whoa, whoa, do do yet.

That's the sermon. If somebody asks you what you

learned today, just say whoa though yet whoa though yet that

is life. Y'all well though yet and the

believers in the room can say Amen to that.

But y'all, the reality is these verses are amazing because it's

saying though the situation ain't changing.

He got a guarantee from God. It's about to get worse.

He was so faithful. He was so full of the Lord's

love and the covenant, all the things that God gave him an

answer and said it's about to get worse and I love you.

And the fact that it's about to get worse doesn't mean I'm not

in it. Somebody needs to hear that.

Sometimes we think it getting harder means God is out of it.

In Habakkuk's case, the harder was getting, the more present

God was not, the less so. Our calculus of what we think it

means for God to be for us is off.

And Habakkuk responds by saying, though the situation won't

change yet, I will praise the Lord.

Sometimes you might think maybe if I was godly or God would

change it for me. Habakkuk is God's guy, and he

had a guarantee. It's going to stay hard.

He's saying, though it all falls apart, yet I will praise you.

How do you get that kind of view of God?

How? Let's go back to chapter 2,

verse 4. Behold, his soul is puffed up.

It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by

his faith. Somebody say faith, faith sounds

real Bible Y and fancy y'all the word faith just means trust and

if you have a Bible you're writing in you can just write

trust. It means to trust.

Okay, What God is saying there in Habakkuk 2, four, what

Habakkuk was doing is he is trusting in he is trusting the

God he caught just a glimpse of are you with me?

So he knew just a little bit about God.

And if you go read chapter 3, he references the Exodus story and

what God did for his people in Egypt and the Passover story and

all those things. Habakkuk knew enough about God

to say, though it is going wrong right now, yet I know who you

are, therefore I will praise you.

So he clung in trust or faith to the faithfulness of God.

Check this. Faith is not about you.

It's about God's faithfulness. Faith is responding to the

faithfulness of the object in which you put your faith.

You what? You with me.

We trust God's trustworthiness. That's another way of saying it,

OK? The righteous shall live by his

faith. Doesn't mean you are some

upstanding, awesome person who has faith.

It means that person has caught a glimpse and grabs the glimpse.

Are you with me? They've grabbed a glimpse of the

God that they've seen. They trust God's

trustworthiness. So Habakkuk had seen enough a

few thousand years ago to trust God in the midst of everything

going wrong. And y'all for us here, a few

thousand years later, how much more can we trust the God we've

caught a glimpse of? Some of you may have caught it.

Habakkuk, 24, gets quoted in the book of Romans.

Anybody know where you say it out if you know Romans one?

16116 and 17 For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the

power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew 1st and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of

God is revealed from faith. For faith as it is written, the

righteous shall live by faith. Habakkuk 24.

Here's the idea. The righteousness of God is

revealed. Somebody say righteousness.

Another big Bible word. All righteousness means is the

rightness of God, the uprightness, the perfection of

God. The perfection of God is shown

in the gospel. The gospel is the good news of

what Jesus Christ has done for us.

The idea here is if you most want to know what God is like,

you look at the cross. What God was doing on the cross

through sending the sun full of the Spirit to die in the place

of sinners. Was this idea all the way back

to covenant? Is God longs to be in

relationship with every person in this room, every person on

the planet? The problem is we are sinful, so

God came up with a way for him to be in relationship with a

sinful, broken, busted people, and his process was to enter our

story, enter our mess, live a sinless life, and then at the

end of his life die in the place of sinners.

Jesus is not dying a heroic death to show you the way to God

and show you how much God loves you.

He's dying your death. He literally is taking your

place. That's the gospel is God takes

your place and you get his. Jesus died a sinner's death not

because he was a Sinner, but because you and I are.

And in his resurrection what we get is the gift of his life.

Y'all what the cross is about. It's a covenant ceremony.

It's the way that God was cut off so you could be covenanted

in. You get access to God like a

child and a family. Not through your good deeds, not

through how well you lament, not through how well you trust God,

not through how well you have faith, but through the

faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Y'all, the gospel is the good

news that you're not faithful. Jesus is.

It's the good news that the faithful one died for the

faithless. It's the good news that we just

get to receive as a gift what he did.

That's it. Our faith is in His

faithfulness. That's the gospel.

It's the power of God for salvation.

If you want to know what God is really like, you look at the

cross. It's where He takes sinners like

you and me, and He makes them righteous.

We are not righteous in and of ourselves, but when God looks at

you, he sees somebody who laments perfectly, who trusts

him at all times. Even though you have all the

doubts that I have, are you with me?

That's the gospel. You don't get in off of how well

you lament. You get in off of what Christ

did in your place as a gift is gift righteousness.

And what that does, y'all is it reframes the experience of

suffering. Listen to me, some of us still

just don't understand what covenant means when it comes to

suffering. What that means y'all is as you

are in the fire so to speak, God is not punishing you.

God is not treating you as you in your sins deserve.

He is treating you as his child because Christ took your place.

He is not. Kevin alluded to this in his

prayer. God does not punish his family

for their sins. He's already put your sins on

Christ. So his reasons for whatever

happening are not punitive. They are purposeful and He is

with you in it. But when God looks at you, He

does not see an arbitrage. Some people think God loves me.

I know that God loves me. This is back to the the concept

of God versus person of God. We've just got to grow here.

I know that God loves me. It's deeper than that, yo.

He brought you into covenant with himself by cutting off His

Son and bringing you in. You're getting Jesus treatment.

That's what's crazy about it. It's not just arbitrary.

I know God's supposed to love me and somehow that concept should

get me through this hardship. No covenant gets you through

hardship. Not the concept of love, but the

covenant making, covenant keeping God who died in your

place is longing to live with you in the midst of that in a

broken world. And he has purposes you can't

see. And though that situation may

not change yet, Christ died for you.

You know for a fact that God's purposes for whatever is

happening are love. How crazy is that?

And that's not just like a guess or a whim.

I know that suffering can make you feel like God's playing

favorites. And other people don't have

that. That ain't happening to them,

yo. Whatever is happening is through

the context of covenant, not the concept of love.

Are you with me? We've got to press deeper into

the heart of God. In the midst of it, we can be

sure that He is for us because Christ died for US.

One person this week, I was listening to talk about the

pressure that suffering does. They said it kind of like turns

the lights out and you're in the dark and you're trying to dance

with your partner. You can't see your next step,

but you trust your partner. Are you with me?

That's the experience of suffering.

It's like learning to dance with God in the dark and you're not

putting your faith in your ability to dance.

You're trusting that you have the right partner.

You aren't the right partner. Are you with me?

This isn't about how good you are at lamenting, it's about how

kind God is in the context of covenant.

And he's not going anywhere. And you can let it RIP knowing

that He's got you and he's going to walk you through this thing.

Though your expectations may not be met, Christ died for you.

Though your dreams may not come true, Christ died for you.

Though the church continues to struggle to be who we could be,

Christ died for us. Y'all though, they're going to

be some hard phone calls that come in your life.

Christ died for you though I wish if I were God I would not

do it that way for you. Christ died for you though you

don't get it. Christ died for you though it

feels like you can't hold on much longer.

Christ died for you and he's with you in it.

Let's pray together our Father. Again, we just want to

articulate how much we hate suffering and sin and the

brokenness of this world. And sometimes God, we just want

to say, come, Lord Jesus, get us out of here because we can't

take it. The fire is too hot and we

struggle to hold on. So Almighty God of the covenant,

God, I pray that you would get in the fire with us.

We got friends in this room right now who feel like they're

in it. I pray that you would come, God,

that you just give them a fresh sense of your nearness.

I pray that they would not isolate, they would not leave.

God teach them to lament. God make us a lamenting people

when we see the misalignment of this life.

God help us to learn this art of lamenting well.

God teach us to wait. And I pray for anybody who's not

in Christ. God, I pray that you would show

them your kindness through the cross, that you are chasing them

down in love. And they were made to be in this

relationship, like a kid with their parent who has the safety

to run away knowing you're not leaving.

God, this is what you made us for.

So, Lord, be honored in this time.

God gift us faith. God, thank you for your

faithfulness. We praise you for what you've

done for us. And we ask you to help us now in

this time, a Jesus name, Amen.