Revival in the Middle of a Mess | Habakkuk 3:1–2

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

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you go. We're glad that you tuned in, and we

have something for everyone.

Today, something for everyone. So gather around, yes, gather.

Around and girls up. The title for today is Revival

in the Middle of a Mess. And who doesn't want

revival in the middle of a mess?

Yeah? I don't want messes, but hey, we're gonna have them.

Let's have a revival.

There's a mess everywhere somewhere always.

That's true.

You know they always say it's five o'clock somewhere. Yes,

there's a mess somewhere always.

Okay, Well, you know we are always scouring the internet

for the most reliable information we are and trying to

find the best news, the best special interest and you

know that we've articles.

We've done this a thousand times, and we just can't find.

One right right then, the Babylon b that's right. So

today what we have is a new archaeological and historical discovery.

It's amazing that we just feel like we needed to

bring to the people. So here it is from the

Babylon being. If you don't know, the Babylon b is

a parody site. It's my favorite parody site. Oh, by

the way, Yeah, everything's your favorite. Yeah, everything's my favorite.

So here's the title. Scholars now believe that the prodigal

son returned home after his father changed the Netflix password.

There is so if you remember, well, let's just read

the article JUDEA. New historical evidence may indicate that the

prodigal son returned home after his father changed the Netflix

password on him, according to scholars of the ancient world. Well,

most historians have typically agreed that the prodigal son returned

home because he ran out of money, newly discovered manuscripts

suggests that the prodigal son was actually forced to head

home after he realized that he could no longer access

his father's Netflix account. Quote. Contrary to all previous interpretations

of the parable, it really does seem like the prodigal

son was doing all right, eating swine food, at least

until he couldn't get into the family Netflix account anymore,

said doctor Isaas Joiner, an expert papparologist. Wow, Papyrus pthrus, Yeah, papyrisologists.

It was certainly difficult for him to keep going after

spending the entirety of his inheritance, but the kid didn't

truly begin to despair until he realized that he didn't

have to that he'd have to get his own Netflix account.

It was at that point that he realized the depths

to which he had sunk. According to the new texts,

the prodigal son returned home with his head hung in

shame at the prospect of confessing that he'd been mooching

off his father's Netflix for all the years away from home,

only to see his father running to him, bathrobe and microwave,

popcorn in hand, popped the finest buttered popcorn, and put

the nice blankets on the couch. For my son has

return The father reportedly cried out, Wow, for my son

who was lost has now returned. Slaughter the fat and

calf and turn on squid games.

Wow.

At publishing time, additional discovered manuscript's revealed that the elder

brother got angry at his brother's turn because he'd been

paying for the family subscription by himself all this time.

There it is, so, that's what it was.

Who knew?

Yeah, who knew?

Well, this is why this is why archaeology is so

important new discoveries.

Yes, And you know it's so great about this is

that it's it's sort of become a thing, right. All

the all the streaming services have sort of shut down

the the idea that you can use it from other homes.

So like, for instance, Disney, I've been sharing a Disney

account with my daughter in Florida for good gosh years,

years and years, and they just now were like putting

a kebash on them.

Yeah, and I'd like to do it anymore. Yeah, they

know where you're at.

Yeah, now they know where you're at. So they said, no,

it looks like you're sharing an account with somebody you

know that you don't live with, and blah blah blah blah.

So they're just not allowing it. And and so that's

pretty funny.

H there. It is so thank god for archaeologists and

researchers to discover the truths and really drive it home

and make it more limit past.

I like how they took the Prodigal Sun where he says,

put a ring on his finger and put a rob

put sandals on his feet, put a robe on his back.

They're like, no, no, no, get the butter and pop corn,

but make make sure you have the sprinkled cheese on it.

Yeah, that's right. And put nice warm blankets on the couch.

Yeah that's great.

Yeah. Do you like a blanket when you're watching a movie?

Uh? Most, mostly because my son and wife drive. The

temperature of our house. Our house normally is sixty eight

degrees and uh, and it's it's pretty cold.

Is that too cold for you?

No, it isn't. But sometimes, but for a good movie,

it'll be like sixty four sometimes, you know. Oh yeah, yeah,

and so and so Yeah, I like to put a

blanket on usually, so yeah, and I'd rather do that.

By the way.

Then, and you're you're a pajama's guy anyway, So you're

in your pajamas, snuggled up. Yeah, most of the time

with your blanket, watching your movie. And you got a

big TV too.

I do have a big day. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, I bought the Jane's like a movie.

It's like a movie theater kind of have you.

Have you you know, you know I've seen it in person.

No, No, you just showed me pictures. Okay, yeah, his

TV is so big you had to show me three

pictures to get the whole TV.

No, no, I it turns out if you buy like

an LG or a High Sense or like a Visio,

you can buy incredibly giant TV's ye for pretty cheap.

And so my wife says, well, what if I think

craps out in five years? You know, like like you know,

you're spending you know, two thousand bucks or whatever it

is on this massive TV. Like what if it dies?

But it's so big. I'm like, I don't care. I'm like,

if it dies, it dies.

But it's like a movie theater. You got your own

movie theater. Yes, so then it's pop the popcorn, grab

the blanket. Yes, put on your fuzzy slippers and watch

a movie.

I don't haven't.

That's Chris's favorite Friday night.

I don't. I don't have fuzzy slippers, but I do

have slippers.

Yeah, okay, you have slippers. No, I hate slippers. Come on,

I hate them. People give them to me every year.

Somebody get new slippers, and I hate slippers. I don't

know what.

Wow. Yeah, yeah, I wear slippers around the house. I

wear robes. I know.

I think where you talked about you're all about comfort.

I think I wear my robe every single day.

I don't even have a robe.

I wear a robe every single day. Okay, morning, all right,

I come downstairs in a robe.

So at a hotel, do you use the robe?

Strangely enough?

No, No, it's I was looking. Who uses that? Why

is it there? That's the thing that they don't have

an iron in here, but they put they give me

a robe.

I would say twenty percent of the time. Ten percent

of the time. Maybe I'll just be like, hey, I'm

gonna put on this robe, okay, and I'll and I'll

walk out in the balcony with my cup of coffee

or something, you know, with a robe or something. But like, uh,

why are you laughing?

It's just so funny, Okay anyways, yeah, yeah, Oh, I

mean that's awesome.

I like I like comfort.

Yes, you're right, I do so okay, No, no, no,

it's perfect.

I apology.

There's nothing wrong.

I apologize, Jeff, there is nothing.

You're just very intriguing to me. You're very interesting. You're

a different kind of animal, and I'm just very interested.

There's a lot of robe people out there. I'm not

dissing it. I'm just intrigued by it. Hey, listen, I

was barely housebroke when we got married. I now call

I now call all the robe people. I call them

right now to join forces with me and to respond

on YouTube or email us at info at the Bible

Guys dot com and say, hey, man, I wear a

robe and let me know i'd love to have because

we have what fifteen thousand unique listeners ish a month. Yeah,

so I would say, out of the fifteen thousand, I

want at least one hundred people to say I'm with you, man, I'm.

A robe big robe girl, a robe girl. Okay, yeah, yeah,

So I'm not making fun of it like I was saying.

So like all of my pets growing up were outdoor pets.

We didn't have indoor pets, right, and I was I

was barely housebroke when I got married. So all those

nice comfort creature comfort things, I just never developed the

habit for them.

Yeah, I gotcha, that's all.

So I'm very intrigued at learning how the other half live.

And you want to hear something hilarious. I never once

thought about this until literally just now. As kids, we

all had robes. So it was my mom and my

dad and all five kids, five boys, and I remember

like at one point in time having Scooby Doo robes.

I remember, you know, the under rugs and all that stuff.

Of course, but my mom had a robe and she

wore it every single day, and my dad had a rope.

Oh my goodness, we are a robe fan.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the saying that's how the other half lived.

Wow. Man, well we were super poor. Yeah, we just

had robes.

Richard nuts, we didn't have robes. Wow, that's pretty cool.

There you go.

I never once connected that.

See, there you go, people, This is how we dived

deep into the lives of the hosts on this show.

Yeah, that's right.

And now we're kind of covering some time because we're

only reading two verses today.

Yeah, there you go. How we're at the normal minutes

it goes about eight minutes.

Yes, so we are reading and everybody's favorite book of

the Bible, right, Habacca. It's fun to say it's my

favorite book to say salsa.

Yeah, Sasa, I love saying sausage.

Habak Hubacca chapter three and these are in the Book

of Habak. These are my two favorite verses. No, I'm

not joking. Stop, they are my two favorite verses. Habakuk

is praying, and it says, I have heard all about you, Lord,

I am filled with awe by your amazing works in

this time of our deep need, help us again as

you did in years gone by, and in your anger,

remember your mercy.

Miss you missed the opening sentence in verse one.

This prayer was sung by the prophet habak Yes, that's

there now.

Well it's it's a prayer with some Yeah, that's that's

that's cool. It's a cool little tid.

Like the entire book of Psalms, these were all prayers.

Yeah, prayers that were song. Yeah, people used to sing

prayers all the time.

Well, if our people in churches would realize that when

we're worshiping, singing worship songs, we're just singing prayers.

Yeah, that's right.

Right, So we're reminding God what he's done in our

life and we celebrate that, or we're pleading with God

for his presence or his his care whatever, Father, bless me.

Indeed you're all that in need.

There you go. Oh wow, that's a callback.

Yeah yeah, expand my horizon what I see?

There you go? So this song was This prayer was

sung by the prophet habakk and Habakuk was a contemporary.

If you're trying to place him in the Bible, Isaiah

Daniel were in his his time slots right, And uh,

is that is that right? Let me let me find

it out.

Well, it's a it's a six hundred ish b c. Right,

And it's it's right around the time that Jerusalem was

where a Babylon was going to invade Judah, and and

and and the prediction was to destroy the temple in Jerusalem.

And Habacchik was probably a priest. Yeah, and uh indicates

certainly that he knew the scripture as well. He was

a competent theologian. He definitely had faith God, and so yeah,

he basically was a person who wrestled. In fact, the

word tobaccack, my little note says Habakik means literally to

embrace or to wrestle, and in this book it says

he did both. He wrestles with God concerning the problem

of how a holy God can use a wicked nation

like Babylon to chasen the people of Judah, and then

by faith he embraces God and clings to his promises.

Habaccik also wrestles with the spiritual decline of the nation

and why God wasn't doing something about it. Haebekk wanted

to see that people revived, but God wasn't answering his prayers,

at least not the way that he expected.

Right, So it wasn't Isaiah, It's Jeremiah and Daniel in Ezekiel.

It's kind of been that time slot. So Isaiah was

not a contemporary there. I just looked that up. So

to summarize what you just identified, it would have been

one and fifty years. Yeah. So he was frustrated with

the fact that he had seen northern Israel be defeated.

But Judah, now four kings in a row are living wicked,

just like the people in northern Israel were, and yet

God wasn't changing them, and they weren't coming to revival

and all these things. But then he's frustrated or confused.

Why would God let the apparent success of Babylon be

the tool, right, And so he comes to the end

of the book and he's really kind of acknowledging, Hey, God,

I'm not God, you are right, and so you know

he's a conclusion by the wayeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, And

so he basically comes down to the conclusion that only

by faith can we ever have real answers to what

we're looking for. Right, And so he responds after God.

He brings his concerns directly to God. I love the

fact that God's not offended by questions. If you have

a bunch of questions, A lot of people feel like, oh,

you know, I don't have much faith because I have

a lot of questions Habacca. God decided to put Habakkuk's

whole letter his whole book in the Bible, celebrating the

fact that Habaka had a lot of questions, kind of

challenging God, God, why are you doing this this way?

I don't understand why you're doing it this way? And

instead God just is patient with him. He keeps showing

him the way. And then we don't have to be

afraid to ask questions of God either. Right. So the

problem is not with God in his ways, but it's

with our limited understanding of him. And so then finally,

what you have happened in chapter three is Habaka settles down.

After all of his challenges to God, he settles down.

He goes, Okay, I get it the way you used

to do, would you do that now? Would would you

bring back the revival we used to have? Would you

go back and don't forget how you used to treat

us and how you used to bless us, and don't

don't do whatever it takes to get us back to

the point where we are are ready to hear from

you again, because I heard all about you, and I'm

filled with awe by what you used to do? And God,

would you do that in our landing again? Would you

bless us again? Would you? And so a big part

of building Habakic's faith was looking back at what God

did in the past, and then he began to desire

that God to do that again in his generation.

You know that I actually have felt like seasons that

there have been long seasons of my life where I

felt like Hubacic in this prayer right here, Like like

I remember back in the early two thousands when I

just had a you know, sort of a crisis of faith.

I guess you could say I was debating whether even

to stay in the ministry because I loved the ministry

portion of it. I just didn't like the leadership of

the churches that I was under at the time. Right

my experience underneath leadership just wasn't good at that point,

you know, you know, moral failure after moral failure, and

I just didn't appreciate that part of it. And I

thought to myself, I'm just going to go back into sales.

I'm just going to try my best to earn a

bunch of money, I guess. And anyway, it was just

a big crisis of faith. But there were there were

I mean, I would say years where I felt like

I was in a one sided relationship with God. In fact,

I prayed that out loud in my car dealership. I

actually said, God, I'm in a one side relationship. I said,

throw me a bone. Like, all I'm trying to do

is serve you. Could you at least throw me a bone?

And what I was really saying was sort of this,

which is, I remember when you used to bless me.

I wonder I remember what it like when when it

felt like I had favor right And I feel like

I know people right now who are are that way.

They just feel like they're in that season where they're like, hey, listen,

God is good. I have faith. But it seems like

there was a point in time where God was, you know,

showing up and it's been years and we just pray,

we pray, we pray, and it feels like he's, you know,

not blessing. But the reality is, I know now God

was with me every step of that way. Right. God

never left me, God never abandoned me. God never took

his favor off of me. You know, I went through

a hard time that I wouldn't wish on any of

my enemies. Right. But it seems like what he's praying though,

is he's saying, like, hey, bless me like he did before.

I don't know why you're not blessing me in these moments,

But that doesn't make God any less present. It doesn't

make God's promises any less reliable. Right, And sometimes we

don't understand those seasons of life, but God is with you.

So if you're in that season right now, just know this.

There will be a time where you'll look back and

understand that God was with you every single step of

the way, even though it may not feel like it.

And that's sort of the indication of a back. Yeah.

So he's praying on behalf of the whole nation here,

and he's remembering days when the people were following God

and honoring God and how good that time was, and

God was blessing them, and they were so prosperous, so

so great. But now all thephes coming through Habacco during

this time is that judgment is coming, right, and he

really humbly accepts. As you keep going through chapter three,

he accepts the fact that God, God's judgment is coming,

and he accepts the fact that, okay, in order to

get Judah's attention, God's going to have to discipline them,

discipline them. And so while Habakkuk was honoring God, the

rest of the people were not, and so Habaka kind

of surrenders to this idea. It's going to be rough

for a while. So God, remember your mercy even in

your judgment. Remember your mercy during this time. And Habakuk

is saying, God, if this judgment is what it takes

to get us back to where we used to be,

I'm good with that. Do it. That's what he's saying.

And there's a tremendous amount of surrender for people to say, God,

do in my nation whatever you need to do to

get us back to where we used to be when

we honored you, respect you, and you're able to pull

your blessing out on us, and so you know, he

talks about the sun and the moon stands still. You

marched across the land in anger and trample the nations

and your fury where it's pretty rough stuff. And then

he says, I trembled inside when I heard this on

My lips quivered with fear. My legs gave way beneath me,

and I shook him terror. So he knew. And this

is you know, verse what sixteen He said, I will wait.

He mentions the sun stands still.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty yeah. And then he says, I

will wait quietly for the coming day when disaster will

strike the people who invade us. Even though the fig

trees have no blossoms and there's no grapes on the vines,

even though the olive crop fails and the fields lie

empty and barren, even though the flocks die in the

fields and the cattle barns are empty. Yet I will

rejoice in the Lord, and I will be joyful in

the God of my salvation. The sovereign Lord is my strength,

and he makes me as surefooted as a deer, able

to tread upon the height. So he's saying, hey, God's

going to take care of me even though judgment's coming

on the nation, God's going to take care of me

and my only hope, my only trust is nam But

he's kind of saying, God, if that's what it takes

to get us back to the way we used to

be in serving, you go ahead, bring the judgment, and

then I'm going to trust my hope is in you,

and you are going to make me surefooted even when

the rest of the world is crumbling around me. You

want to talk about faith instead of trying to get revenge,

and instead of trying to be angry at everybody who's

messing up the nation you love or whatever. Instead just say, God,

do whatever it takes to get our attention again, and

I'm going to trust that you're going to keep me

sure footed even when the rest of the world's crumbling

around me. That's where he's at. It's pretty pretty amazing. Yeah,

And to talk about a dangerous prayer.

Yeah, I was going to say. I was going to say,

it's hard to believe that these words could be put

to music, some of them, right, you crush the heads

of the wick and strip their bones from head to right.

I mean, just can you imagine singing this so yeah, yeah,

you crush Laura and I lift your name, I E.

And you crossed the heads.

You cross the heads.

And the ladies. It's so funny, man, that's so great.

Or maybe it's or maybe it's a build up at harmony.

Maybe it's like heads heads heads, you know, something like that. Anyway,

the uh yeah, so so back back praise and he sings,

and so it is a definite you know, you can

imagine this whole entire chapter put the song as a prayer.

Is is a significant time in prayer, right, yes, So

that's another thing that we can't overlook is the fact

that a back spends significant time going through the the

you know, the the gamut of of every aspect, right,

and so he's he's exploring every single consideration and he's

just saying, God, whatever it takes, I just want your blessing.

So he starts off with saying, you know, please, it's

like he used to and as you pointed out, he

goes through all the great miracles that God has done

in the past, and he's saying like, hey, whatever it takes,

and and and and so it's it's it's wrapped under

this umbrella of God, just bless us, and and and

then he goes to this but he but he explores

all of it and he puts it all to song,

and it's significant. And so it's just a it's a

it's a perseverance prayer for that reason alone. Right, So

that the idea that like, hey, if you're going to

pray for God's blessing, or maybe it's a specific thing

like help my father come to Christ, or I pray

for the people at my work, or maybe perhaps right

now you're praying for your nation, right, you know, there

there's there's big things that we have to pray for.

I would say, you know, be encouraged by habatas perseverance

to pray long. Don't be afraid to pray long, don't

be afraid to consider different aspects of what it may

take to get the you know, the answer, and then

just beg God for that result, no matter what the cost. Yeah,

I think it's great.

That's powerful.

Yeah, it certainly is. Well, hey, it looks like that's

a good place to end, and that looks like our time.

So hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the Bible. Guys,