INTRODUCTION
Have
you ever felt like God has turned his back on you?
Some
of the heroes of the Bible also felt that God had deserted them.
They
handled their distress in various ways.
Jeremiah
cursed the day he was born.
Elijah
prayed that God would take his life.
Job
fervently wished that he had died the day he was born.
Several
of the psalmists expressed their feeling that God had abandoned them.
Jesus
took one of their prayers upon his lips while he hung upon the cross.
He
said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
So
if you’ve ever felt the bottom drop out of your life and wondered whether you
could still trust in God, you are in good company.
The
prophet Habakkuk wrote a little book that fills only three pages in your Bible.
He
begins his prophecy with these words:
“O
Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and thou wilt not hear?
Or
cry to thee “Violence!” and thou wilt not save?
Why
dost thou make me see wrongs and look upon trouble?
Destruction
and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
So
the law is slacked and justice never goes forth.
For
the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.”
(1:2-4)
I.
It was the 7th century B.C.,
a dark time in the Kingdom of Judah.
A.
Everything was going wrong.
The
northern Kingdom of Israel had been taken captive by the Assyrians a couple of
hundred years before.
The
southern Kingdom of Judah had been spared, but had struggled on and was now
facing imminent invasion by the Chaldeans.
Habakkuk
saw the guilt of his nation—the Kingdom of Judah. Judah was an unjust and
wicked nation. Habakkuk saw judgment on the way.
These
vicious invaders were having nothing but success as they rode through the world
on their swift horses shedding blood.
It
would be only a matter of time before they attacked Judah and carried her
people away captive.
B.
Habakkuk was a man of faith. He held God accountable. He cried out to God and
awaited God’s answer. The prophet said:
I
will take my stand to watch,
and
station myself on the tower,
and
look forth to see what he will say to me,
and
what I will answer concerning my complaint.
And
the Lord answered me,
“Write
the vision; make it plain upon tablets,
so
that he may run who reads it…
They
must have used great stones for billboards in those days. So Habakkuk wrote
this on stones in letters big enough that even those who ran by could read it.
And this is what the Lord told Habakkuk to write:
Behold,
he whose soul is not upright in him shall fail,
but
the righteous shall life by his faith.
II.
Those last 7 words—“The righteous will
live by his faith” is one of the most important sayings in the Old
Testament. The words are quoted three times in the New Testament, in Romans,
Galatians, and Hebrews.
A.
So let’s look at these important words.
Their
meaning lies below the surface.
It
could be translated: “The righteous will
live by their faithfulness,” because “faith” and “faithfulness” are the
same word in Greek and Hebrew.
There
are really two meanings imbedded in this verse:
(1)
Those
who are righteous will live by confidence in God’s faithfulness, and
(2)
Those
who are righteous will live because they are faithful to God.
B.
First of all, let me talk about what it means to be righteous.
“Righteousness”
has gotten a bad rap because the word is used so often in the sense of
“self-righteousness.” People say, “Oh, he’s so
righteous,” and they mean that he
thinks he is holier than thou.
The
truly righteous person is one who is good through-and-through.
God
is called righteous because he is fair, and
merciful, and trustworthy, and truthful.
God is righteous because he hates all that is hurtful to the creatures he
loves.
We
humans can be righteous if our lives are penetrated by God’s righteousness.
Then we will be like God—kind, forgiving, gracious, truthful—hating evil,
loving what’s good.
B.
Now let’s look at the second part: faith,
or faithfulness.
For
Habakkuk faithfulness meant continuing to cling to God—through thick and
thin—whether we can understand God’s actions or not.
All
of us doubt sometimes. We gain the victory when we cling to God even when we
can’t understand—even when our hearts cry out: “Why? Why? Why?”
Faithfulness
doesn’t mean that we never question God. Faithfulness means that we never give
up on God.
I’ve
known people who gave up on God.
At
one time in their lives they had lived a life of faith—church, Bible, prayer,
doing good—and then something happened and they gave up on God. With some, they
just drifted away. With others, it was a sudden decision.
A Scottish preacher in the last century lost
his wife suddenly, and after her death he preached an unusually personal
sermon.
He admitted in the message that he did not
understand this life of ours. But still less could he understand how people
facing loss could abandon faith. “Abandon it for what?!” he said. “You people
in the sunshine may believe the faith, but we in the shadow must believe it. We have nothing else.”
The
meaning of life and the possibility of living a good life flow from a
commitment to God—in faith and in faithfulness.
We
may have started out our life of faith by believing something with the top of
our heads, but now it has become a matter deep in our hearts. The reality of
God in our life affects everything we do and think and say—at least, that is
our intention.
III.
The most memorable part of Habakkuk’s book is the last three verses—the end and
climax of the book:
A.
Listen to the prophet’s words:
Though
the fig tree do 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 joy in the God of my salvation.
God,
the Lord, is my strength;
he
makes my feet like hinds’ feet;
he
makes me tread upon my high places. (3:17-19)
B.
Understand what the prophet is saying.
This
was an agrarian society. Everything depended on the crops and animals. If the
crops failed, people would starve.
We
don’t worry about starving here. We know that if the crops fail in Iowa, food
will be shipped in from somewhere else.
Habakkuk
imagines disaster—
“Even though the fig tree doesn’t blossom…”:
Figs were an important crop. If the fig trees didn’t blossom they would
produce no crop that year.
“Even though there’s no fruit be on the
vines…”: The fruit on the vines was, of course, grapes—the main beverage of
that time.
“Even though the produce of the olive
fail…”: The olive tree was the source of oil for cooking. If the olive crop
failed, it meant hard times.
“Even though and the fields yield no
food…”: If the fields of grain
yielded nothing, there would be no bread. People would starve.
“Even though the flock be cut off from the
fold and there be no herd in the stalls…”: The people depended on the sheep
and goats and for fiber for clothing. They depended on their cattle to give
milk and pull their plows. But the sheep, goats, and cattle have perished.
The
prophet is saying that even if the worst happens—no figs, no grapes, no olives,
no wheat or barley, no flocks, no herds—he determines to rise above it and walk
on the mountain tops.
Though
everything should go wrong, he chooses to hold fast to God.
And
not only will he keep trusting, but he will rejoice
in the Lord!
He
will exult in the God of his salvation. He will find his strength in the Lord.
Notice
the ending: “He makes my feet like hinds’
feet; he makes me tread upon my high places.”
Hinds
are female deer.
Deer
are sure-footed. They walk on the rocky tops of mountains. They don’t slip and
fall, and they aren’t afraid. Does are graceful and at home on the heights.
The
prophet affirms that God has given him that kind of strength as he faces the
dangers of life.
Maybe
we could express our determination to be faithful into words like these:
Even
though my bank account would be empty.
Even
though my children forsake me.
Even
though I get a terminal diagnosis.
Even
though my mind begins to slip—
yet
I will rejoice in the Lord.
God
the Lord is my Savior.
The
Lord God is my strength.
He
will keep me safe through all harm.
He
will keep me safe as I walk in dangerous places.
APPLICATION
I
have told you before of the darkest time in my life.
I
felt that my faith was failing me.
I
doubted God. I thought. Maybe it isn’t true. Probably it isn’t true. But I’m
going to live as if it were true.
Charlotte
was in the hospital, near death. The medical bills were piling up. The days
stretched into weeks, and the weeks into months—two months.
I
kept going to church and Sunday school. I kept up our giving to the church. I
kept reading the Bible. I kept praying. I kept teaching my Sunday school class.
Our
friends kept praying for us.
And
finally, faith returned—stronger than before.
A
preacher used this illustration:
Imagine you are on a high cliff and you lose
your footing and begin to fall. Just beside you as you fall is a branch
sticking out of the very edge of the cliff. It is your only hope and it is more
than strong enough to support your weight.
How can it save you? If your mind is filled
with intellectual certainty that the branch can support you, but you don’t
actually reach out and grab it, you are lost.
If your mind is instead filled with doubts
and uncertainty that the branch can hold you, but you reach out and grab it anyway,
you will be saved.
Why? It is not the strength of your faith but
the object of your faith that actually saves you. (Timothy Keller. The Reason for God, p234)
There was once a good woman who was
well-known among her circle for her simple faith and her great calmness in the
midst of many trials. Another woman, hearing of her, said, “I must go and see
that woman and learn the secret of her calm, happy life.”
She went, and accosting the woman, said, “Are
you the woman with the great faith?”
“No,” was the answer, “I am not the woman
with the great faith, but I am the woman with the little faith in the great
God.”
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