Faith Waits

We've been studying what the Bible says about faith for the summer, and for the rest of the series till September, we're going to look at lessons of living by faith in the book of Habakkuk.

Can you say Habakkuk by now?

Yeah, good job.

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For me, rolling out of bed in the morning is the easy part.

Getting up off the floor, whole nother matter.

Living by faith in good times, easy.

Easy part.

Um living by faith when life gets hard.

Well, that's a whole other story.

That's why we're studying the book of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk, in fact, uh in the Habakkuk, God tells us that that's really the key idea for the whole book.

It's a central theme, key verse, Habakkuk 2.4.

Behold, God says, as for the proud one, his soul isn't right within him.

And we'll talk about pride in just a minute today.

He has a lot to say about pride in the book, but behold, the proud one.

And it's basically going to be through the series the opposite of walking by faith.

The proud one.

His soul isn't right within him, but the righteous one will live by his faith.

Pride, faith.

Just remember that.

You're going to hear it through the rest of the time.

Habakkuk is living in an evil time.

If you've been with us, uh, and he's struggling in his faith in Yahweh, wondering why on earth God is allowing evil to have its way in his land.

And last time in Habakkuk chapter one, we learned how to begin to live by faith in evil times by doing three things.

The first three things.

First, don't abandon God when you're upset about what's going on.

You don't understand it, uh, what he's doing or why.

Don't abandon him.

Draw closer to him in prayer.

Pour out your heart to God, your complaint to God, lament your situation to him.

He's listening.

And third, we begin to walk by faith by knowing, believing God is sovereign and holy.

And believing that leads us to come down to trusting him when we don't know what's going on.

We can't see the end.

Habakkuk chapter one, uh, as we've talked about before, begins with Habakkuk's complaint to God, saying things like, look at all the evil in our country.

How long will you let this go on?

Why don't you intervene to stop it?

And God's first answer to Habakkuk is I'm doing something about evil in your land.

I'm going to bring the ruthless evil Babylonians to judge their evil, to discipline them.

God's response obviously confuses Habakkuk even further.

Habakkuk says, Listen, I thought you were the infinite holy God who cannot tolerate evil.

How is it that you're bringing an evil nation to judge us for our evil?

Does it make sense?

Well, God doesn't answer Habakkuk right away with that, uh, which brings us to Habakkuk chapter 2, which will start today in verse 1.

Habakkuk 2 · chapter mention

Habakkuk says, I will stand on my guardpost and station myself on the rampart.

I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me and how I may reply when I'm reproved.

Then the Lord answered me and said, Record the vision, inscribe it on tablets that the one who reads it may run.

For the vision is yet for the appointed time, it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail, though it tarries.

Wait for it, for it will certainly come.

It will not delay.

Okay.

God tells Habakkuk to wait.

Stop being so upset.

Wait.

This is a word we do not like to hear.

We don't like to hear the word wait.

I know you want to know now, but wait.

In this little section, you see right here, and looking at the metaphors and verbs, they tell us a lot about the theme of waiting on the Lord in the Bible.

In fact, what we're talking about today is the next way to wait on the Lord is by waiting, walk by faith in evil times, is to wait on the Lord.

It's a major theme here.

Um, you know, the problem for us is waiting, waiting on the Lord has become kind of a Christian cliche.

Um we go through a rough time or saying, well, we're just waiting on the Lord.

Or we tell somebody, just wait on the Lord.

Uh sounds so spiritual.

Nobody knows what it means.

But here, and in the scripture, there's a rich meaning that the scripture tells us maybe no other place better than right here.

From Habakkuk, we learn uh at least three ways to wait on the Lord in this passage and what it means.

In evil times, we are to wait on the Lord patiently, wait on the Lord prospectively, and wait on the Lord obediently.

Let's begin.

Wait on the Lord patiently.

Abacuck 2, 3.

The vision is yet for the point of time.

It hastens toward the goal, it won't fail.

Though it tarries, wait for it.

It'll certainly come, it will not delay.

God says, I'm gonna give you the answers.

I'm doing the work.

It's gonna linger, wait for it.

You see, the word wait actually means be patient in time.

Be patient in time.

If you're waiting for a taxi and it doesn't come, and you give up, you're no longer waiting.

If you're waiting in a doctor's office, waiting and waiting, the nurse never calls you, and you go home, you're not waiting anymore.

Waiting means be patient, stick it out, don't give up.

So the first thing waiting on the Lord means is when everything is going wrong, it makes no sense, and you're perplexed and confused, instead of giving up, instead of blowing up, you're patient in your circumstances, trusting and waiting on the Lord.

Some people say, Boy, I wish I had patience, as if patience was a germ you contract or don't catch.

But the Bible says patience isn't passive, it comes from a couple of deliberate actions we need to take to be patient.

First, and this is really the core of patience itself.

Patience comes as a direct act of humility, humbling ourselves before God.

Listen to uh what James says in the New Testament.

He talks a lot about trials.

We'll we'll look at a couple passages, but here's what he says uh James 4, 13 to 16.

Listen, listen to me, you who say today or tomorrow, we're gonna go to such and such a city, spend a year there, engage in business, make a profit.

Yet you don't know what your life will be like tomorrow.

You're just a vapor that appears for a while and vanishes away.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.

Listen to verse 16.

But as it is, you boast.

You're so proud.

Uh in your arrogance, all such boasting is evil.

What does that mean?

It means this.

You see, when things go wrong in our life, we get mad, we start worrying or despairing about it.

You know what's happening?

Those feelings we're having are an emotional responses to bel we actually believe in our own omniscience.

We believe things should happen the way we want them to.

When you say, oh, this is awful.

This is awful because X, Y, and Z is happening, and that's gonna be a disaster.

So we start worrying or we get mad.

How do you know?

You don't know what James is saying.

This is what James is saying.

That's arrogance.

You're upset, but you don't know what's going to happen.

It's time to humble yourself.

Admit you don't know.

That's the key to patience.

I don't know.

Lay down the melancholy burden of your assumed omniscience so you can wait on the Lord.

His ways are higher, different.

We don't know.

Be humble because you don't know what will happen.

You're not omniscient.

That's what James is saying.

Especially when you're going through trials.

Surrender your pride.

That's the first main way to wait on the Lord.

What the Lord wills is what will happen.

Regardless of what I think.

The second way patience comes to us is by seeing whatever's happening to us for our own personal growth.

God intending it for our own personal growth.

Emotionally, spiritually, or whatever.

Growing, maturing.

Most of us don't ever do this.

But James tells us to do it.

We don't do it that way.

We don't see the hard stuff in our life as something God intends for our good.

We see it as something avoid, run away, I'm mad.

Why would God do this to me?

When bad things happen to us, we don't say, wow, what an opportunity to become the kind of person I always wanted to be, my loved ones want me to be, and God wants me to be.

We don't say that.

And yet that's exactly what's happening.

We don't think that way, but meeting trials with patient endurance does change us for the better.

If we meet it with patient endurance, it makes us more mature emotionally and spiritually.

Because, you know why?

Because we have to exercise our faith by waiting on God.

We have to.

If we're going to be patiently enduring it.

Listen to what James says.

James 1, 2 to 4.

Consider it all joy, my brother.

Consider the positive aspects of what's happening in your life through these trials.

Knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance.

And you know what?

Let endurance have its perfect result or maturing result.

So that you may be mature or perfect, complete, lacking in nothing.

Wow! What a fantastic deal! These trials are making me a better person.

Yeah.

Pressure turns a lump of coal into a diamond.

I mean, my wife and I have experienced this.

When troubles hit you, it's either going to drive you to having a better prayer life than you've ever had before, or a worse prayer life than you had before.

I can tell you this: anybody who has a great prayer life, who really knows how to connect with God, which is worth more than diamonds, didn't get there by happenstance, but through pressure, trials, tribulations, on knees, humbling themselves before the God of the universe and his sovereign will.

James goes on to mention the patience of the great sufferer Job in the Old Testament.

Let me read it, James 5, 10, and 11.

As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, waiting through time.

Take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

We count those blessed who endured.

You've heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.

And then I just want to read you a key verse in the book of Job itself of Job's patience in suffering.

Here's what Job says in the middle of the most difficult time in his life.

He doesn't understand what God's doing.

He's absolutely confounded.

And yet, here's what he says.

He says, Behold, I go forward, but he's not there.

And backward, I can't perceive him.

When he acts on the left, I can't behold him.

He turns right, I can't see him.

But he knows the way that I take.

And when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

Oh yeah.

This verse says that God knows what he's doing with me, which is another way of saying, I don't.

But when he's done, there's going to be some really good things that's happened in my life.

Job's patience will grow him into someone he never would be otherwise.

He will come forth as gold.

That was his confidence.

When troubles happen, wait patiently by seeing the potential for your own growth.

So the first, um, waiting on the Lord, we wait patiently.

Second, we're going to learn from Habakkuk to wait prospectively.

Um, look at the image Habakkuk uses in chapter 2, verse 1.

This is an image, and he means it to have a spiritual connection.

He's using it as a kind of metaphor.

He says, in the midst of his conversation with prayer to God, in the midst of his confusion and the being surrounded by evil and hard things, he says this I will stand on my guardposts and station myself on the rampart.

And I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me and how I may reply when I am reproved.

This is just a great image of waiting on the Lord.

It's absolutely, you can't get any better than this.

Habakkuk is waiting for God on a rampart.

A rampart was a tower.

Why did cities have towers?

So you could see what was coming.

In the city, there were, if you're in the city, there's all sorts of things you can't see.

The higher the tower, the more you can see.

In order to be ready for what's coming.

You can see the weather, you can see enemies coming, you can see foreign embassies coming.

If there was an enemy at your city gate, you could also see help was coming from afar, giving you assurance it's gonna be okay.

The rampart, the tower, very important part of a city.

And Habakkuk says, I'm going to the rampart.

I'm going to the rampart.

What does it mean spiritually when Habakkuk says, I'm going to wait on the Lord by going up into the tower?

What it means is not just focusing on your present problem in the city.

It means I'm going to look past the problem with a much larger perspective.

That's what the Bible tells you.

The Apostle Paul, for an example, had a lot of suffering in his life.

I don't know how familiar you are, but we're moving through it in the book of Acts when we get back to it.

The Apostle Paul, a lot went wrong for him.

He was persecuted and beaten several times and left for dead.

He had physical problems with his eyes that drove him crazy.

He prayed about it, was not healed.

He was jailed several times.

He was shipwrecked.

He was discouraged.

He even says he's discouraged at one point and worn out.

But here's an example of the Apostle Paul going in, going up into his rampart, into his tower when facing all this stuff.

Here's what he says in Romans 8 18 his rampart.

Paul says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared.

With the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Oh, he sees it.

He sees what's coming.

That puts everything back here in perspective.

See.

His sufferings looked really big until he was in the tower.

The biblical tower.

He could see what was ahead, comparing the sufferings to what things were on the way prospectively.

And then his sufferings looked a lot smaller comparatively.

This is very practical for us.

Paul is suffering and sick.

But he gets in the tower and realizes, you know what, the only sickness that can really kill me, Jesus took that away.

And I'm going to live forever in a glorified body and his kingdom.

Or Paul's in debt.

He's in want.

But he says, you know what?

The only debt that can really enslave me forever is sin.

And you know what?

Christ took that away.

He paid for it all on the cross.

What is Paul doing?

He's meditating on the glory that is coming to him in Jesus.

That's his rampart, his biblical rampart.

He's in the tower, meditating on that truth until it penetrates deep in his heart, allowing him to handle the suffering down in the city.

I see what's coming.

And it's going to be okay.

To wait prospectively means go up in that tower.

When you're in a hard time, want to wait on the Lord, go up in the tower and wait.

Look out to see the good news coming your way.

The reinforcement, the victory.

We do that by looking at our future in Jesus.

You know, tucked away in a little verse in the New Testament Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, Jesus is giving his disciples a parable.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

I'm not going to go through the whole parable.

The parable is about a master who goes away to a wedding feast, leaving his servants, his disciples behind.

That's the point of the parable.

Jesus told his disciples in that parable, wait for me.

Want you to wait for me.

Luke 12, 36, be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast, so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes back and knocks.

In the parable, some of his servants are obedient and faithful while they're waiting.

Other servants are disobedient.

The cat's away.

And don't think he's really coming back.

In giving this parable, it was Jesus' way of saying to his disciples, wait for me.

Then Jesus ends the parable by saying something amazing.

Here's what he says, Luke 12, 37.

Blessed are those slaves whom the master will find on the alert when he comes.

Truly I say to you that he will gird himself to serve and have them recline at table and will come up and wait on them.

When Jesus says, Truly, I say to you, he's swearing a solemn vow.

He's saying something amazing.

Jesus saying, at the end of time, he's going to have all his people sit down at a feast, and he is going to wait on them.

Those who wait faithfully for him, he will one day wait on them.

Jesus is saying he's not only going to focus all his, he's saying he's going to focus all his cosmic power on inflicting all the joy, honor, glory, fulfillment, and happiness he can possibly give you when that day comes.

Get up in the rampart.

Take a look at what's coming.

That's how you wait on the Lord.

Wait on the Lord patiently, wait on the Lord prospectively, and finally, thirdly, wait on the Lord obediently, even from that parable.

Waiting on the Lord is not a passive thing.

We have to humble ourselves.

We have to get in the tower.

But we also need to wait obediently.

If you look at the image Habakkuk gives us there, we see Habakkuk's obedience when he not only went into the tower, but what he's doing in the tower, he's working as a sentry.

He said, I'll keep watch.

I'll stand on my guard post, station myself on the rampart, and I will keep watch to see what he'll speak to me.

Now, those of you who are in the military probably know this.

If you're a sentry on duty, it doesn't matter if you feel bad or have other things you'd like to do, or you're bored.

Doesn't matter.

You may not leave your post.

You can't, or the whole city could be lost.

You can't say, I've been here day after day, I don't see any enemies, I'm gonna knock off early today.

You can't do that as a sentry, and neither is Habakkuk gonna do that.

He's not leaving his post.

You can't leave.

You must be faithful to your assignment, to your commander.

This is Habakkuk's way of telling us, even though he's struggling with God and his faith, he's not gonna leave God or his post.

He's gonna continue to pray.

See what this means is very simple.

You may be really tired of praying and praying and praying and praying, and you're not seeing any answers.

Are you on your guard post?

You may feel, where's God?

He's absent, he's not doing anything to help me.

You may be confused.

What on earth is going on?

Why is this happening?

You might be disappointed, you might be discouraged, but you can't leave your post.

That's what it means to wait on the Lord obediently.

You can't, you can't stop praying, you can't stop doing what you know you should be doing for the Lord.

Why?

Even in English, the word waiting doesn't mean waiting around.

Doesn't mean that.

Even in our own language.

Why do you think we call people waiters and waitresses?

They're not waiting around, they're running around.

To wait, listen to me, to wait means to serve.

Waiting on the Lord means you serve the Lord.

You stay at that post, you do what you're supposed to be doing.

You do what you know you should be doing, even though you don't feel like it, you see.

Like a century.

Let me encourage you, when you don't feel like praying, pray anyway.

Somebody told me that years ago, when I was struggling through very difficult times, and I was exhausted, tired, not seeing God do anything.

And he said to me, When you don't feel like praying, pray anyway.

Pray right through that feeling.

And I did.

Boy, am I glad I did.

I didn't leave my post.

And I watched God work.

When you don't feel like coming to church, come anyway.

When you don't feel like giving to the Lord, give anyway.

You can use that little thing for anything spiritually related in your life.

When you don't feel like it, you do it anyway.

That's what a century century's gonna stand us post.

Wait obediently.

In this brief interlude, really, it's there's a lot in here.

Uh Habakkuk helps us to understand how to live by faith when going through trials, evil times.

We wait patiently.

We wait patiently.

We wait prospectively.

We need to get in our biblical tower and look what's coming ahead in Jesus.

This isn't all there is.

We wait prospectively, meditating on the truths of scripture.

We wait prospectively, knowing that no trouble is an opportunity to grow.

What God wants to do in us.

And waiting prospectively means believing Jesus will return to make things right.

But third Habakkuk says, starts waiting obediently.

He's standing watching the tower, focusing on what's coming, and he's not going to leave his post, even though he doesn't feel like it, even though he's got better things to do, even though he's born out of his mind, he's gonna stay on the rampart and wait, doing the things he knows he's ought to do.

It's important for us to take these thoughts with us, um, to wait on the Lord in difficult times.

It's important in doing that to know the Lord like Habakkuk.

We must know he loves us.

We must know he's gracious and merciful to forgive us and give us the free gift of eternal life.

We are in a definite more advantage than Habakkuk because we're on the other side of Jesus in the cross and resurrection.

We got a lot more perspective than he had.

Jesus came to give us abundant life.

He came to free us from the tyranny of our bondage to sin and evil.

He came to give us salvation by taking the judgment for our sin on himself.

This is why he came.

John 17, 1 to 3, Jesus spoke these things, lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son, so that the Son may glorify you.

Even as you gave him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you've given him, he may give eternal life.

This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you sent.

I invite you to believe in Jesus and receive the gift of eternal life this morning, if you have never done that.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you that even though life is hard at times, you are faithful and have promised us that our suffering is not in vain, but will accomplish your good purpose in us, for us, and through us.

We ask you today help us to wait patiently in time, prospectively in your word, and obediently serving the Lord Jesus while we wait.

I pray all this today in Jesus' name.

Amen.