[The below text has been machine translated and may contain errors. Please listen to audio for original and integral translation]
I’m just going to jump in. I have my tablet, my Bible on tablet. I really like having the Bible on an electronic device, because I can… There’s this site or an app that you can get called YouVersion, and you can read in all, like, 80 different translations.
So when you’re looking at something, and, you know, we all have our basic book… What’s the word mother for? Translation that we like to, that we enjoy. Like, I’m kind of known for the amplified, I like words. It helps me to understand better when I get a variety of words that something could mean to give me a bigger picture.
But I’m also really enjoying the passion, and I’m enjoying the message, and I’m enjoying the Good News translation, which is not a paraphrase, but an actual translation. And when I read at the different ones, I’ll go back and forth, and sometimes I’ll look at the Jewish. It’s like I have access to all of this in one little device.
So if any of you have never used a device like that, you know, if you download, it’s free. It’s a free app. But I really do like it.
It gives you opportunity to understand some things that perhaps you wouldn’t. Now I’m going to talk about the book of Habakkuk. Now that’s not a book that a lot of people talk about.
It’s just three chapters. But there’s a portion in Habakkuk that I really have liked for years, and God has used it in my life many times to challenge me. But I also found a verse that I quote all the time, and I didn’t even realize it was in Habakkuk.
I don’t know if you’ve ever done that. You start reading and go, oh, I didn’t know that was there. It’s kind of fun.
So before I start, I just want to open in prayer. Father, thank you so much for being here today, for being with us everywhere we go. Father, thank you that when I leave this crowd here, you’re still with me, and you’re still with them.
And when we gather, you’re still here. We can’t escape you. It doesn’t matter where we go.
David said, if I go to the heights, if I go to the depths of the sea, no matter where I go, I will always find you. It’s a wonderful, wonderful promise that you never leave us, you never forsake us. And so, Lord, as we look at your word, I just ask that you would help me to communicate what you’ve put on my heart, and that it would be a source of hope and encouragement to all who hear.
Thank you for your love. Thank you for a spirit of revelation. Holy Spirit, we welcome you here today.
We ask that you would come, open up our understanding, and give us ears to hear what the Spirit of God is saying. Give us eyes that see so we can fully grasp it. And give us a heart that is tender and ready to receive anything you have for us today.
We love you. Amen. I quote that verse a lot.
I love praying for eyes that see and ears that hear. But God gave me a revelation of it actually through a friend and a prayer time we FaceTime, or what is it called? We FaceTime every evening. There’s a small group of us, and we pray, and we have communion, and we’ve been reading scriptures and praying for our generations because, you know, I want to leave a legacy.
We all do. And the legacy isn’t just monetary. We want our generations to know God, to love the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, to understand how important they are to the Father.
And so anyways, we’re praying for them. And as we’re reading, she read the portion because she was reading through Acts. And so she read a portion, and in the portion, it was one that we know really well.
And it’s where it was the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell, and they all started speaking in tongues. And then the people said they were drunk, and they heard. Another said, how is this? I’m hearing my own language in this tongue.
And you don’t know my language. You’re just a dumb fisherman. That’s my paraphrase, but it’s basically what they were saying.
And I never thought about it until she was praying. And she said, Lord, you are amazing how you can have somebody say something and everybody hear something different. And I thought, oh, that is what it says.
That’s pretty awesome. That means when you speak to somebody, especially like this where there’s a crowd, what I’m saying, I’m praying that God will let you hear what he has for you in what I’m sharing. And that makes it so personal.
We have a personal God who loves us personally. It’s just amazing to me how he cares about everyone so much. His love is amazing.
Okay, so, talking about Habakkuk. Now, I’m just going to paraphrase. I wrote down, I’m going to have to stick to this because I’m just doing portions because I just want you to get an idea of the background of where I’m coming to, which is at the very end, so it makes sense.
In Habakkuk 1, 1 through 4, and I’m going to be reading in the Good News translation right now, it says, Oh, Lord, how long must I call for help before you listen, before you save us from violence? Why do you make me see such trouble? How can you stand to look on such wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are all around me, and there is fighting and quarreling everywhere. The law is weak and useless, and justice is never done. Evil people get the better of the righteous, and so justice is perverted.
Now, I don’t know how many of you watch the news, get the paper, get on Facebook, YouTube. It’s like crazy. And when I started reading this in this new translation that I had never read it in before, I’m like, Oh, this is where we are today, Daddy.
This is amazing. Oh, my goodness. Justice is perverted.
Everything is flipped. What we know is bad and evil, they’re saying it’s good and right. What they’re saying is good and right, we’re saying this is evil, this is wrong, this is ungodly.
Everything is flipped around. So, in verse 5, this is the Lord’s reply. Then the Lord said to his people, keep watching the nations around you, and you will be astonished at what you see.
I’m going to do something that you will not believe when you hear about it. I’m bringing the Babylonians to power, those fierce, restless people. They are marching out across the world to conquer the lands.
They spread fear and terror, and in their pride they are a law to themselves. Now, that’s not where I thought this was going to go when I first started reading this. I’m like, oh, yes, pay attention, I’m going to do something you’ve never seen before.
Oh, this is exciting. And then I kept reading, well, that didn’t sound so good. Like, wow.
You know, you’d think the Lord would have spoken a little differently to him about this. You know, it’s like, that’s a big buildup for a big letdown. But what God was saying to him was, what you’re seeing is only the beginning, and it’s going to get a lot worse.
So, in this conversation between Habakkuk and God, if you go to verse 12, it says, Lord, from the very beginning, you are God, you are my God, holy and eternal. Lord, my God and protector. You’ve chosen the Babylonians and made them strong so they can punish us.
But how can you stand these treacherous evil men? Your eyes are too holy to look at evil. And you can’t even stand the sight of people who are doing wrong. So why are you silent while they destroy people who are more righteous than they are? If you ever have complained to God about anything, let me tell you, you’re in very good company.
You can go all the way back to the garden. Because even when man sinned, who actually the woman sinned and then gave it to the man, and he sinned because he was there with her and didn’t stop her, by the way, and then, of course, you’ve got the snake who started the whole madness in the first place, and now they’re standing before the counsel of God. And God says, Adam, this woman you gave me, Eve, all the snake you made.
This is what we do. God, no matter when it comes to justice, we know that we should be on the better end. Because it’s not really our fault.
Which is why we can’t be justified because we’re looking at ourselves to make ourselves better. And if that was the case, we wouldn’t need Jesus. And wow, what a waste of his suffering if we didn’t need a savior.
So here is Habakkuk being a man, not man like man, woman, man, but man like mankind, representing mankind, doing what we tend to do when we see something awful. Well, God, I know you so well. And I know you can’t put up with this.
And I know you don’t like that. And what I don’t get is in the midst of all this is here you are, and you are going to use somebody so awful, so awful. We don’t deserve so awful.
I have a note that I put on that. When Pastor Steve was speaking last week, he referred to the sons of thunder. And he made comment that they’re known for being the ones who had an argument over who was going to be able to sit at the right hand and the left hand of Jesus in heaven.
Why? Because they were so righteous. I mean, they were rubbing elbows with the king. And they’re the same people that when people rejected them, they wanted to send down fire from heaven.
Why? Because they were more righteous. There is a mindset, maybe you all have just been redeemed from it all, but I still deal with it. I have to deal with this.
God will say to me, why are you judging that comment somebody made? Why are you looking at that action someone just did? I’m like, I was. Well, I did. And I have to repent.
God, I want to see what you see. I don’t want to see it through my eyes. I want to see it through your eyes.
That’s where redemption comes. That’s where humility comes, when I can see what is really happening. And then the judgments.
Have you ever done this? If you have kids, I’m sure you’ve done it at least once. If not, well, then you all know I have more than once. The child does something, and you go, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and you find out the child didn’t really do what you thought the child did for the reason you thought the child did it.
They thought they were doing something good, and you just saw it as, why did you do that? Because you didn’t understand the full picture. God always sees the full picture. We often don’t.
But we are getting there because God is renewing our mind daily if we’re in the word. Okay. So, I’m going to flip now to Chapter 2. And in Chapter 2, you’re going to hear the Lord’s answer back to Habakkuk.
And this is 2 through 4. The Lord gave me this answer. Write down clearly on tablets what I’m going to reveal to you so it can be read at a glance. Put it in writing because it is not yet time for it to come true.
But the time is coming quickly, and what I will show you will come true. It may seem slow in coming, but wait for it. It will certainly take place, and it will not be delayed.
And this is the message. Those who are evil will not survive, but those who are righteous will live because they are faithful to God. I thought, wow, that is so awesome, God.
Because if you look at, in the book of Jeremiah, repeatedly, in the book of Isaiah, repeatedly, there are warnings that God gave his people. Warnings. This is going to happen if you do not turn from your ways.
What you are doing is wrong, it’s evil. I can’t bear to even look at it. For decades, God sent prophets to his people, warning them, stop serving other gods.
Now, when they were serving other gods, it wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to sing this song to Baal, oh, I’m going to bring my food or my offerings, and I’m going to give them to Malak. No. They were taking their babies and sacrificing them.
They were looking for the answers to their problems through the evil gods of the day. They weren’t supposed to be doing this. They came into Israel back in Joshua’s day.
God gave them the promised land, and they were supposed to wipe out everybody there because they were evil and wicked, and they were never to follow other gods. Only God. He is the only true God.
Every other god requires something awful. And he sent his prophets, and he sent his prophets, and he sent his prophets, but the people didn’t listen. The people chose to serve these other gods.
Why? Well, one, it’s convenient. You don’t have to listen to them and obey them because they don’t talk. You just give what the priests say that you have to give, and then you’ll have rain so you can have a harvest.
You’ll have prosperity. You’ll have… And all the things that the world would offer is what these gods, these little G, not real, these wannabes, offer. That there’s no hope.
There’s no real relationship. You can’t have a relationship with a rock. And God was offended.
He cleaned out the people because their wickedness was so bad, and he waited because he is a good god. If you go all the way back to Genesis, where Abraham was walking through Canaan, and God said, You see this land? I’m going to give it to your descendants. But not for a long time, like 400 years.
Why? Because the wickedness hadn’t come to the degree that the judgment would be equal and deserved. God is slow to anger, and he is great in loving kindness, which is why for decades and decades and decades, he sent his prophets saying, Listen, the Lord says stop what you are doing. It is wrong.
It is evil. And if you do not, I will have to bring judgment. Why? Because the Lord corrects those he loves.
He disciplines those he loves, and he always lets us reap what we sow. So, off my tangent, back to the word. But those who are righteous will live because they are faithful.
God never sees us as a crowd. He sees every heart individually, and he knows where we’re at, and he values those who are faithful, and he protects us. According to his word, he is faithful.
So now I’m going to jump to chapter 3. Now remember, God had just revealed to Habakkuk what was about to happen. So he saw. It was revealed to him what was about to take place, and it shook him to the core.
It would be like going home and on TV, all of a sudden there’s this, what do you call it, emergency broadcasting announcement, and it says, this is what has just happened, even though its future would have Habakkuk saw, but it would be like seeing on your TV screen that we are being invaded by Russia and China and Canada and Mexico. All of our enemies have gotten together, and they are coming full force from every border, and there is no place to go because now they have decided they’re taking us over. And we see them coming in with their guns and their bombs, and we see the devastation it causes.
We see the hurt and the heartache and the violence and all the people who are subject to this and people who are trying to fight back, but they’re outnumbered, and our food is cut off, and our water is cut off, and things are awful. It would shake you to the core that is what Habakkuk saw. It shook him to the core, not because it was happening that moment, but because God said this is what’s coming.
It’s not yet, but it’s coming quickly, and surely it will come because the people of God refused to listen, to allow him to show them what they needed to change, and the majority had chosen wickedness over godliness. So now, 3, 1, and 2. This is the prayer, which is actually, if you look at the translation, it says it was a song. It was meant to be sung, and yes, you’re welcome.
I’m not going to sing it. It says, O Lord, I have heard of what you have done, and I am filled with awe. Now do it again in our times, the great deeds you used to do.
Be merciful even when you are angry. Be merciful even when you are angry. When I read this, I thought of that song we sing, you know, Do It Again.
God has done such magnificent things in the earth from the beginning of time, the wonders, the miracles, the miraculous. I mean, think about it. He took some dirt, and then he breathed life into it, and he called it man.
That’s pretty powerful. Not to mention, let there be light, and the darkness is gone. There is no thing God cannot do.
He is worthy of all of our praise, and he should only ever be our first love. So, I’m going to continue on. I’m going to jump to verse 8. The parts that I’m skipping, basically, is just him talking about how amazing God is.
And he’s questioning the Lord with questions like, Was it the rivers that made you angry, Lord? I thought, Did he seriously just ask that? Is it the rivers that made you angry? Was it the sea that made you furious? You rode upon the clouds. The storm cloud was your chariot as you brought victory to your people. You got ready to use your bow, ready to shoot your arrows.
The lightning split open the earth. The mountains saw you. They trembled.
Water poured down from the skies. It talks about God’s mighty deliverance that is coming. There is no thing.
I think it’s in Revelation. It says that people will run and try to hide at that great and terrible day of the Lord, but they can’t. They’ll cry out, Let the rocks fall on me, crush me, get me out of this torment.
There is such a reality of who our God is that it should, when we read certain things especially, remind us of who our God is. Proverbs 1 says that the beginning, the beginning of wisdom comes when we fear the Lord. That means before you fear the Lord, you have no wisdom.
Before you recognize this God who created all things, your wisdom is foolish. According to James, it’s foolish, earthly, and demonic. But the wisdom of God, it comes with the fear of the Lord.
And when a people loses the fear of the Lord, then they walk in the world’s wisdom. It’s earthly and it’s demonic. And that is what God is shaking His people again.
You hear of these things that have been happening in these churches, and the first thing I think is, Oh God, all those people, when they find out what their leaders have been doing, how it must strip them inside, how it must shake their confidence in who you are, how it must break their hearts to see these people they have admired and cared for, and it does, but it isn’t the all in all because they had nothing to do with their salvation. Their salvation came through Jesus Christ. Man is going to sin, but when there is no fear of the Lord to keep us from going places we shouldn’t go and doing things we shouldn’t do, then we become foolish.
Sometimes I will read about something and I’ll think, or I’ll hear something and I’ll think, How can these people be so stupid? I mean like, stupid? It’s okay to destroy a person’s vehicle just because they don’t like somebody who created it? It has nothing to do with that person that just spent their hard-earned money to buy it. It has nothing to do with the people that have jobs in the companies. I mean like, it’s so dumb.
But that’s because their wisdom is earthly and demonic. It kills, it steals, and it destroys. Where Jesus brings life in abundance.
So, I am coming around towards the end here. I’m going to read 16 to the end. But when I read this, starting at verse 17, I’m going to plug in some other words.
Kind of like the Amplify does. Blessed, fortunate, to be envied are those who are pure in heart. You know, you plug in these extra words because that’s a word it could mean.
I looked up in the Strong’s Concordance and there were some words that jumped out at me. So I’m going to make, this is the paraphrase of Marie. Based on the word and Strong’s Concordance.
But I liked, when I was reading, I’m like, Lord, this is like, it makes it so visual. I’m a visual person and I can picture what I read if it’s worded well. I’m hoping this will help you to see what Habakkuk was declaring.
He said, I hear all this and I tremble. My lips quiver with fear. My body goes limp and my feet stumble beneath me.
I will quietly wait for the time to come when God will punish those who have attacked us. Because God had given his promise in some of those verses I skipped, that the day of his revenge, he is the one who brings vengeance. That’s what I’m looking for.
It’s his vengeance against the army. Now, do not ask me why God does this. I don’t know.
It’s a mystery. Maybe someday I’ll get it. But this is what we have.
We have a people who refuse to fear God. And so they go off and they disobey God. And they follow after other gods.
And they do awful, horrendous things that are wicked beyond wicked. And in the midst of it, God warns them. Don’t do it.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it. I’m going to have to bring judgment.
I’m going to have to bring judgment. You are going to be judged. Stop doing it.
And then he raises up a Babylonian army to do the punishment that he had promised his children. And then he punishes the people he raised up to punish his people. I don’t get it.
I’m not going to tell you I get it. If you get it, you can tell me sometime when it’s you and I and you can explain this to me. All I know is that God said clearly in Isaiah 55, my ways are not your ways.