Living By Faith

I had an e-mail this week. Someone who visits our Church web-site in another part of the world was writing about the "persecution" of someone "not so far away." I quote:

"[he] was badly beaten and threatened with execution but his belief in the Lord Jesus held firm and he told his interrogators that he had everything he needed. When they asked how that could be he told them he was loved by God and that God loved them too ... Another man who is under threat of being done away with is in a place of safety for now.

And in another part of the world, East Africa, we know there are other sorts of problems. Kenyan Christians are trying to deal with hunger as the harvests have failed for two years in a row. And this Harvest-tide we, at Jesmond, have been trying to support them. Then there is the continuing oppression of Christians in the Southern Sudan by the Northern Muslim government, and oppression in Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, India and other parts of the world. And there are more subtle problems for Christians in the United Kingdom. There is a Christian Aids agency. They operate what is called a "non-judgmental" approach. But on Friday I read in their literature that "as a Christian organization they themselves experience prejudice." And today doctors, school teachers, people in the media and people in business can also experience prejudice for being Christian - not everywhere but significantly. And it can be distressing. And the problems don't only come through you taking a firm stand and suffering because of direct opposition.

If you live, as we all do, in a culture of decadence, you yourself may suffer the present judgments of God on theculture even though you may not be responsible at all for its evils. In Hitler's Germany there were many fine German Christians who suffered for Hitler's and the Nazi's sins. And a lesser example - today there are Christian families whose children face problems because of the sad state of many of our schools - a sad state, in part, because education authorities, university departments of education, governors, head teachers and teachers have not only ignored God but rejected him; and so the schools degenerate and children of believers suffer along with the rest of the children. That can be particularly hard and something as Christians we need to fight against - the de-Christianizing of our schools. Now, it was something like that in Habakkuk's day.

For any who are new, let me say that we have been studying the book of Habakkuk during August and September in the mornings at Jesmond Parish Church. Habakkuk is an Old Testament prophet about 600 years before Christ and who, like us, lived at a time when people had turned their backs on God. And when Habakkuk cries out to God in despair, he is told in chapter 1 that God is going to judge the evil all around him by the ruthless Babylonians. They are going to invade and destroy this culture of evil. But that caused Habakkuk another problem: "How can God tolerate using the evil and ruthless Babylonians?"

So in chapter 2 he is told that God is able to use the Babylonians to bring his judgment on the wicked people of Judah. But that doesn't make what the Babylonians do right. That is because from their point of view they are simply power seeking, greedy tyrants. They were acting for the wrong reasons. God, Habakkuk is told, would then judge them. However, present judgment is not the end. It is a means to establishing God's glorious kingdom when one day he will bring in a genuine new age, chapter 2 verse 14:

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

But in the meantime God is concerned for his loyal people who have to live through these times of stress. His plan is very simple. We have it in chapter 2 verse 4:

"the righteous will live by faith."

That is God's plan – that you should live trusting in God who is good and loving as well as holy. And you are to trust in him, however, dark the situation. It is, of course, from that verse that the apostle Paul develops his vital teaching on "justification by faith". He does so in the light of God's fuller revelation of his goodness, love and holiness seen in Jesus Christ. Paul teaches that you get right with God not because of anything you do by way of good deeds or religious observance - at the end of the day they are all flawed. No! You are justified and right with God only because of what Christ has done for you on the Cross where he bore your sins. And that proves just how good and loving and holy God is. Then your response is simply to be one of grateful faith and trust in Christ. In a mysterious but real way that unites you with Christ. You then receive his Spirit and start to live a new life. The Bible says you are "born again". But even though Habakkuk did not understand all that, he still challenges us about our own standing with God.

I wonder if there is anyone here this morning who has never put their trust in Christ in a personal and real way. You are just religious. Well, many of the people in Habakkuk's day were "just religious" and God was to judge them. So why not think about Habakkuk's challenge? Can you say that you are a true believer in Christ? Are you living by faith? And if you are not, why not turn to Christ by faith? That is God's way and so the sensible way. Well, all that is introduction to give a context both from Habakkuk's day and from our own day for this final section, Habakkuk 3.3-19. And I want us to have two headings as we look at this section. First, LIVING BY FAITH - NOT EASY and secondly, LIVING BY FAITH - THE SECRET.


First, LIVING BY FAITH - NOT EASY

In chapter 3 it is clear Habakkuk has accepted that God will judge his people through the ruthless Babylonians and then he will judge the Babylonians themselves.

If you find God's sovereign action in the Old Testament difficult to understand, don't think that you are the first person! Old Testament believers like Habakkuk also had these problems. But Habakkuk seems to have come to the point where he realized that God's ways and thoughts are higher than his ways and thoughts. And God knows best. So in chapter 3 he calls a halt to his philosophical and theological problems. He simply prays; and it is a remarkable prayer in the light of the fact that the world around him was collapsing and there would soon be devastation. I expect that there are a number of people here this morning who can identify with Habakkuk. Your world, in some way, is collapsing – it might be at home or at work. Well, learn from Habakkuk. He teaches that living by faith is not easy.

Habakkuk may have accepted the fact of God's judgments. But he is only human after all; so when he accepts that God is going to let the Babylonians destroy his country, he doesn't say, "Praise the Lord!" No! He says, verse 16:

I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.

This is all so important. People say to me sometimes, "Things must be right. I feel at peace." Why on earth should something be God's will because you have a warm feeling in your stomach? Habakkuk was doing the right thing - trusting in God - but he didn't feel "at peace" at all.

The first time I realized the problem with this claim to 'feel at peace' was when a friend of our family – a mature man with a reputation as a Christian – decided to leave his wife of many years and live with his secretary. And he said that he and his lover felt at peace. It was a total delusion. It was saying "peace, peace" where there is no peace - certainly not the peace of God Paul wrote about in Philippians 4. This was black and white adultery that deserved the judgment of God. You see, living the life of faith and obedience can go hand in hand with feeling the very opposite to feeling "at peace". And normal Christians are like Habakkuk. Great men of faith have often the emotion of fear at the same time as they have faith. Yes, perfect love casts out fear, the Bible says. But it doesn't follow that believers never experience fear. Paul, a great man of faith, tells us in 2 Corinthians 7 verse 5:

When we came into Macedonia ... we were harassed at every turn – conflicts on the outside, [listen] fears within.

And when he went to Corinth it was, he tells us, "in weakness and fear, and with much trembling." But Paul was not, at that point, failing to live by faith. It was precisely because he was "living by faith" and evangelizing that he was "in weakness and fear, and with much trembling." It is not easy living by faith. So let's move on to my second heading,


LIVING BY FAITH – THE SECRET

How is the believing Christian to deal with these conflicts? What do you do when, so to speak, the Babylonians are arriving and about to destroy the equivalent of your city? What do you do when the forces of evil are destroying things you cherish - when, for example, our schools, medical services, universities, courts, yes, even our institutional churches are in various ways malfunctioning or corrupted because there are fewer and fewer Christian standards and values and you are caught up in these things and you do have sleepless nights; you do worry; you are fearful? Some people say, "Just accept it. Grin and bear it." Others say, "Just forget it." Yet others say. "Pull yourself together. Don't be a wimp." These are the only things non-believers can say and none of them is particularly helpful. So what does Habakkuk say? Look at verse 17:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls [though everything is as bad as it possibly can be], yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

He seems to be saying, "Rejoice in the Lord" - as Paul was saying in our New Testament reading - and rejoice even when all is collapsing around you. You say, "How can Habakkuk say that? How can he himself at one and the same time say, 'my heart pounded … and my legs trembled' and 'yet I will rejoice in the Lord?' What does this mean?" Well, first it means that biblical "rejoicing" can't be automatically equated with an emotional high. This is not forced "heartiness". Habakkuk was anything but "hearty" at this time. Secondly, it means that biblical "rejoicing" is not a matter of the "will". It is not saying, "I'm going somehow to get my positive emotions flowing and I'm going to repress my negative ones." If you are frightened, no amount of simple "will-power" will help you. No! "Rejoicing in the Lord" means neither of these two things. Rather, as you look at this passage you see that the way Habakkuk was able to "rejoice in the Lord" even when all was collapsing around him was to use the "mind" not the "will". And he got his "mind" to focus on four things.

First, he focused on what God had done in history. Verses 3-15 give you a collage of events or allusions to events from Old Testament history. There is the time of the Exodus wanderings when the Israelites left Egypt. You've got that in verses 3-6. Verse 3, for example, says:

God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.

Teman and Paran are thought to define the extent of the desert wanderings. Verse 4 has allusions to the plagues and pestilence in Egypt and later in the desert wanderings. Verse 5 has allusions to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, when there was an earthquake. Verse 7 probably refers to the conquest – and how the Midianites, for example, were defeated under Gideon.

Now the details of these verses don't need to worry us. You can read them again later and look up commentaries. You will find the scholars are not all agreed on the details. This is poetic writing. But people in Habakkuk's day would have understood he was talking about what God had actually done in real history - how, as a matter of fact, he had rescued his people from Egypt; how he had helped them defeat the opposition when they came into the promised land; and how he had judged evil in the past.

Secondly, Habakkuk focused on God's creative power and that he is the almighty creator; and his glory and praise is over and above and throughout the heavens and earth, verse 3 (second part):

His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the earth.

So he controls the sun and moon and can even override their natural movements, verse 11:

Sun and moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows.

Thirdly, Habakkuk focused on God's saving power as well as his creative power. God's actions in relation to nature were not for mere demonstration – like a Uri Geller bending giant spoons. That is why God's power is not always seen when we want it. It is sometimes "hidden" (verse 4). No! God's supernatural actions are moral and for salvation. They are working out his plan for history. So in verse 8 Habakkuk asks:

Were you angry with the rivers, O Lord? Was your wrath against the streams? Did you rage against the sea when you rode with your horses and your victorious chariots?

This is probably a poetic allusion to when God made a way through the Red Sea as the Israelites were escaping from Pharaoh and the Egyptians. But that was a rhetorical question. See how Habakkuk answers it in verse 12. He says that God was "threshing the nations" in judgment. And then in verse 13 he says:

You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one.

God purposes in all that he was doing were for judgment but then for deliverance. And amazingly associated with this deliverance is an "anointed" one – that was fulfilled first through Cyrus, who defeated the Babylonians, and then, as we know, through Christ.

Fourthly, Habakkuk focused on God's promises for the present and the future. He knew that God had saved in the past. He had delivered his people on many occasions. He also knew that he is not a God to change - verse 6 (last sentence):

"His ways are eternal".

But he now knows, from what God has said in chapter 2 that the judgment on Judah by the Babylonians would not be God's last word. The Babylonians would one day be judged. So he trusts that promise - verse 16 (second half):

I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.

So - first, Habakkuk focused on biblical history, which is not myth but fact and was encouraged. Secondly, he focused on God's creative power. Thirdly, he focused on that power not being used for mere display but for God's saving purposes. And, fourthly, he focused on God's word - his word of promise. That is still the way to live by faith and to be able to "rejoice in the Lord."

I must conclude.

Today you and I can look back to many more facts of saving history to increase our faith. We know, for example, that the Babylonians were destroyed, exactly as God had said, by the Persians under Cyrus. Today you and I have a greater understanding of God's creative power through the wonders of the universe of space and the sub-microscopic universe that modern science reveals. Today you and I have the full revelation of God's saving power in the birth, life, teaching, death, resurrection, ascension and coming again of Jesus Christ. And today you and I have God's final word that centres on Christ and you can read it in the Bible. Life may be hard. But as you focus on these things and trust God, it is amazing how you do get courage and strength. That was Habakkuk's experience. Look at verse 19:

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.

It is true - that is the testimony of many people in this building - the Holy Spirit of God does give you strength in tough situations when humanly you thought you couldn't cope. So you do "rejoice in the Lord" and you are "joyful in God your Saviour."