Minor No.8 Habakkuk

And what I've put on this overhead projector is just to supplement the notes so that by visual aid as well as by hearing what I have to say, you might get this particular prophecy and its message clear in your minds. I remember hearing once a very cynical observation about the situation in Northern Ireland. And the comment, listen it's clever, I'll tell you that so that you'll know when to smile when I've finished at the end.

The comment was this. Unless you're totally confused, you can't possibly understand what's going on in Northern Ireland. Unless you're totally confused, you can't possibly understand what's going on in Northern Ireland.

And I must admit, if I were asked to give some sort of synopsis to a Martian as to why there are problems in Northern Ireland, I would have great difficulty. Now it's bad enough when you can't understand a human dilemma that's been brought about as in Northern Ireland, one of the countries that makes up the United Kingdom. It's perhaps even worse when a dilemma comes about as a result of the direct intervention of God, and you can't grasp why God has allowed certain things to happen.

There are times, we must confess, when God's activities nationally and individually, as far as we're concerned, are incomprehensible. I think that I can make that as a bold assertion without any qualification, and I very much doubt whether anyone of mature years afterwards would take me to task for saying this. There are times when it's very difficult to understand God's purposes in our lives individually and indeed in national happenings across our world.

There were times in Scripture when people just couldn't quite grasp what God was about, why he was allowing certain things to happen. And sometimes in Scripture you get the psalmist and you get the righteous in heaven in the book of Revelation asking, Lord, how long? How long are you going to tolerate these things? Why do you allow these seemingly irresolvable problems to be contained for so long without you stepping in and vindicating yourself and demonstrating that you have indeed the whole world in your hand? Is God really in control? It wouldn't have been too easy to convince people on the continent some thirty-odd years ago, as Hitler's armies were marching through Europe, that the Lord really had the whole situation in his hand. One of the most moving books I have amongst my vast collection of books in the vestry here is a composition of final letters written by Christians in Nazi concentration camps awaiting the death penalty.

It's the most moving book. I've tried to read it before now without getting emotionally involved in the letters and I find it totally impossible so to do. Very difficult to understand God's purposes when the Nazis were pushing their way across Europe.

Very difficult if you were a member of the Elim Mission Station in Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe some years ago to move into one area, a secondary school, and see the remains of your colleagues and their bodies strewn over the ground as a result of the barbaric attack of some of the guerrillas or freedom fighters, call them what you will. Not easy to come to terms with this. Not easy to know a man who you love dearly who's moved many, many people into the kingdom by his preaching and to discover him now in such a lame condition that he has to be force-fed and he can't even turn his body over from one side of the bed to another.

These are great difficulties and you and I as intelligent people have to face them. Where is God in all this? Well, it seems to me that it's a problem or problems like these that Habakkuk at least in some degree addresses. His name, as I've indicated, means to embrace or to grasp, to wrestle, and if that really is an accurate rendering of the Hebrew Habakkuk or Habakkuk into the English, then it seems to me that the name contains the seed whereby you can understand the contents of the book because Habakkuk becomes a sort of prophetic patriarch, if you like, someone like Jacob wrestling with the Lord, trying to find out why certain things are allowed to happen in his land.

You'll see here under my first section on our overhead projection, also in our published notes, that Habakkuk's main problems are under two questions. First of all, why does God take so long in answering prayer when you put to him certain things that are breaking your heart? Look at that second verse of the opening chapter. How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen, or cry out to you, but you do not save? Do you ever get frustrated by the delays of God? If so, you've got some people in Bible days who would sympathize.

Martha got very upset, you remember, because Jesus was delayed when Lazarus had died. Thought you could have come straight away, and if you had have done, then we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in now. But you didn't.

You delayed things. And it's a fundamental problem for some of us in the twentieth century why God takes such a long time to respond to our prayers. And secondly, when he does respond, why does he allow his answer to come in that particular form? Why does he allow his answer to come in that particular form? I don't, too often, at least I don't think so, get personal in illustrations that I use, but one of the great battles I had some twenty-odd years ago as a young Christian was why the Lord allowed me to have a breakdown.

I don't think I've ever mentioned this in the tabernacle before, but when I was studying for my final examinations at the University of London, I just stretched myself a little bit too much, and I spent too many hours reading into the night. And on the occasion when I was actually writing about my fourth paper of three hours length, my mind suddenly just went. I don't mean that I went mad, but I just couldn't focus.

My eyes wouldn't focus on the text. I couldn't read the clock at the front of the examination hall. Everything just went to pieces, and to me that might not seem such a great problem to you as I rehearse it, but it certainly was for me twenty-odd years ago.

Three years of my life I'd spent painfully trying to absorb philosophy and psychology and Hebrew and Greek and heaven knows what, and I'm not someone who easily makes pace in study. I find it very difficult indeed. And it got to the point of the final jump, so to speak, before I collected my qualification and suddenly the whole of my life seemed to collapse.

And it took months before I really was able to piece myself together. And I can remember walking the streets of London at night, literally, I'm not exaggerating at all, walking by that place so surprisingly called the Angel in North London. Why they call it the Angel, heaven only knows.

But then heaven should know about where angels reside. Walking the streets of the Angel, saying to the Lord, why? Why has this happened? I seem to be almost insulated from life now. I don't relate to my circumstances.

I can hardly read. I can't cope with anything. Why has this happened? Why have you allowed it? And quite frankly, then, there was no answer.

I've begun to see in the pastoral ministry why it was allowed. But then, I couldn't. And God didn't immediately rush to my aid either.

And my health returned in months rather than in days. And I was able to recoup eventually what I had lost. But for me, it was a very, very great problem indeed.

Now, the problem that Habakkuk has is so immense that he becomes almost unique amongst the prophets in this sense. Most prophets speak to the people on behalf of God. Habakkuk speaks to God on behalf of the righteous people because he's puzzled and others are puzzled with him.

What's the nature of the problem that confronts Habakkuk? Well, why does God tolerate? Verse 3. Why does God tolerate injustice in the world? Why does he allow wrong to be so much in evidence before he steps in and demonstrates, verse 4, that his law is powerful and not paralysed and justice will prevail ultimately, though it hasn't prevailed right up to that moment. Lord, why don't you do something about it? And when God does answer, then the problem becomes even that much more difficult. Now, let's take this slowly in case you'll lose me in the, not in the complexity, but in the twist of Habakkuk's thought here.

You see, he's put the question up to the Lord, why don't you answer? That's basically his problem, God's delay. But then the problem becomes that much more gigantic when God does answer and he gives him the wrong one. What is God's answer? Well, from the 5th right down to the 11th verses of the 1st chapter, you get it.

In summary fashion, it's this. The Lord is going to use the Babylonians to move into Palestine and they will become his means of judging unrighteousness amongst the Hebrew community. Well, you say, that doesn't seem to be difficult at all.

Why shouldn't God use these righteous people to balance the scales of unrighteousness in Palestine? Well, the fact of the matter is that the Babylonians weren't righteous. If anything, they were less righteous than the people whom they were going to be used to punish. Drop down to the 13th verse, will you? And it's plain there, right in the middle of the 13th verse.

Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? So you see the point of Habakkuk's problem. First of all, God wouldn't answer. And then when he did answer, he brought the wrong package deal.

And as a result, Habakkuk, who was confused before, is now in absolute consternation. How can you, Lord, do this? How can you allow this to happen? His burden is in terms of how God can allow the Babylonians to be instruments of righteousness in bringing about judgment to the Jews when the Babylonians themselves are sinful, callous, and ungodly. Let's just stop for a moment and lighten my study by way of illustration.

There's a man by the name of Lockyer, Herbert Lockyer. Some of you have come across him, particularly if you've come from Brethren Circles. He's reputed to be the man who's always got a pencil in his hand because he's always writing, and he's churned out so many volumes, it's just incredible.

And he always writes on all the something of the Bible, all the women of the Bible, all the kings of the Bible, all the prophets of the Bible, and so forth. He's got a series that's as long as your arm, just without heading, substituting a new word for every new book. And do you know one theme that I would challenge Mr. Lockyer, or Dr. Lockyer, to write on, assuming he's still with us today? All the shocks of the Bible.

All the shocks of the Bible. Have you ever thought of the shocks that are in the Old Testament and the New Testament? I mean, look, for example, Lot, his wife. It's quite a shocking business if your wife turns into a pillar of salt, so at least you'll allow me that that was a shock to Lot.

What about Elijah? I've always thought it's rather delightful to discover that when Elijah is hungry by the brook, God sends him food. Well, nothing too remarkable about that. God is always miraculously supplying the needs of his Old Testament saints, but he uses a bird.

Well, nothing marvelous about that. He used a dove, didn't he, to bring back to Noah the idea that there was life on planet Earth and that the waters had subsided. But the bird that he used was a raven, and the raven, according to the Pentateuch, is an unclean bird.

Work that one out. God uses an unclean bird to feed his righteous prophet. One of the shocks of the Old Testament, if you think it through.

What about in the New Testament? That little verse at the end of one of Paul's epistles, there were saints in Caesar's household. You wouldn't expect them to be saints there, would you? You would think that Caesar's household would be the bastion of resistance against Christianity, but no. The Word of God has so penetrated the higher echelons of the Roman Empire that there are saints in Caesar's household.

Well, the shocks of the Bible. Here's a book for Dr. Lockyer, a subject matter for Dr. Lockyer to write on. And of the shocks in the Old Testament, this was one of the greatest on our overhead projector and on our notes, contained within the book of Habakkuk, that God will use unrighteous people to bring about his purposes.

Now we've got a hymn that we sing that says of God's purposes that they will ripen fast. Sometimes hymn writers annoy me because they put in more than Scripture allows. God's purposes don't always ripen fast, do they? They do sometimes, but they don't always.

Sometimes they are dreadfully, dreadfully slow. You might be able to look back on the whole sweep of history and resolve some problems now from the 20th century that existed in Bible times, but it's not always with rapidity that the Lord moves. So one of the things that Habakkuk has got to be confronted with is why God uses the Babylonians and how God can somehow justify that to the prophet as he's confronted with the particular difficulty.

Remember these Babylonians really are godless men. Look at the 11th verse of the first chapter. What's their deity? What church do they worship at? Well, the last part of verse 11 says they're guilty men whose own strength is their God.

They worship their muscle. Not literally. It means to say that they've got confidence in their flesh, their own ability to get themselves out of any problem.

Drop down to the 16th verse and you'll discover that they're materialists. And there's a metaphor, a very rich one, which gives the impression of the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, interchangeable terms, those bowing down to the means whereby they get wealth, in this case fishermen, rejoicing in the goodness of their nets and what they supply in terms of fish and by selling in terms of shekels to buy all that they want. So here's the prophet with his difficulty.

The Babylonians are being used and they're godless people. And so we're confronted with what we shall now call the problem of history. The problem of history.

Does God control time? And is history really his story? I've given on our overhead projector, which I'll describe as some people get the tapes without the overhead projector to help, I've got on my overhead projector here a little swastika, which might look shocking. And the reason why I've got the swastika is because the Babylonians presented as much a problem to righteous Jews yesteryear as the Nazis presented a problem to righteous people in Europe in the 1930s and in the 1940s. When you are confronted with a problem of God using unrighteous people to bring about his purposes, indeed when you're confronted with any unanswerable problem, what's the best thing to do? Well, it seems to me that the best thing is just to stand your ground for a moment.

Or if you can't stand your ground, if you can't go forward, then go upwards and stop and have a look round. Look at the first verse of the second chapter and you'll see what I mean. I will stand at my watch.

I think A.V. there has got I will stand on my watchtower and station myself on the ramparts. I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to his complaint. If you want a bird's-eye view of Blackpool, can you imagine having a holiday in Blackpool? Anyway, if you wanted a bird's-eye view of Blackpool, hope nobody there ever gets this tape, you presumably go up the tower, Blackpool Tower, a sort of Eiffel Tower, and you'll have a look round.

You get your bird's-eye view. Now, this is precisely what Habakkuk is trying to do at this moment, getting a bird's-eye view of God's purposes. He can't go forward.

He doesn't want to go backward into a spirit of disbelief because he knows from his own personal experience that God does exist and is alive in history. So if you can't go forward with an explanation, and you don't want to retreat into doubt and disbelief, then the best thing is to stop and, so to speak, climb on top of your circumstances and wait for a while. Job had to do that.

Jeremiah had to do that. And I dare to suggest there are occasions when we ourselves have had to do that. We couldn't move forward in our faith.

It was all that we could do just to hang on as the man in Psalm 73. But when Habakkuk hangs on, when he climbs his watchtower, he does so in the confidence that ultimately God will resolve the problem. Look at the second part of that first verse.

We're in chapter 2. I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to this complaint. Notice then, Habakkuk is not utterly devoid of faith in God. He may be confused, a confused prophet, but he's not an unbelieving prophet.

He believes that God one day will give him an answer. Martin Luther used to teach us that. If you ever read his writings, tremendous stuff that he churned out centuries ago.

He said that we may not always be able to understand God's total purpose is this side of eternity because there's only a part of God that has been revealed to us. And Luther went on to say that there is a hidden aspect to God which we can't possibly comprehend because we don't have the brain power so to do. And some of the resolutions of the problems that confront us in the now will be resolved in the future, in the eternity which is still in view when we will then see as God sees and understand with the degree of understanding that God now uses in the control of his affairs.

Well, Habakkuk believes that he's going to get some form of answer at least in his lifetime to his particular problem. I'm reminded of the words of our Lord Jesus. What I do, you know not now, but you will know.

I sometimes use that. It's a little out of context if you check it. It's the scene when Peter is refusing to have his feet washed by the Lord Jesus.

He doesn't understand what Jesus is about. The Lord says, what I do, you don't know now, but one day you will know. I sometimes use that word when dealing with folks who suddenly have developed, shall we say, something like multiple sclerosis.

I haven't got an answer to why people have these savage diseases. But I do believe that ultimately there is an answer. There's never a problem that comes our way that we would not ourselves allow us to have if we were God and saw the whole thing.

What I do, you don't know now, but you will know. There will be an answer. And so Habakkuk climbs his watchtower, and there he stays, believing that God will send him a solution to his problem.

In other words, the answer will come. 3 plus 3 equals 6. I'm a great mathematician, but that illustrates the fact that there is an answer to a simple problem of arithmetic as there is an answer to every human dilemma, every philosophical problem that confronts us in our world today. What is the answer? This little chart here, or this little scroll on my overhead projector, again, let me describe it for the purpose of those who don't see the overhead projector but get our notes, has a little ditty which says, This year, next year, sometime, ever.

Do you remember singing that at school? This year, next year, sometime, ever. In fact, you may have been pessimistic and sung sometime, never, but that didn't fit in with the theology, so I shifted it just for the point of my illustration. Well, this year, next year, sometime, most definitely sometime.

Look at verse 3. For the revelation awaits an appointed time. It speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it.

It will certainly come and will not delay. What is God here promising? That time is on his side and that ultimately the end will explain his purposes. We are locked into a very, very slender segment of time.

God isn't locked in at all. He's outside of time. There's no such thing as yesterday or tomorrow with God or even today.

There's only one continued now. And many of the problems we have are because we're like horses, if you don't mind the analogy, going down a road with blinkers on and we can only take in a certain amount of vision. The rest is restricted.

And if the horse could take in the whole of the vision, he would sometimes understand why he's riding in one direction when he thinks, a stupid mutt, why don't I go this way? Well, if he'd gone that way, then he might have been ploughed down by a jaguar car that he couldn't see approaching because he's got blinkers on. Now, similarly, Habakkuk is told the end will explain why God is using the Chaldeans to judge, to be an instrument of justice amongst the Jews. When I had my own personal problem some 20-odd years ago, somebody sent me a little poem which I committed to memory.

It was by Amy Carmichael. I wonder if you've ever come across it. I believe it's entitled The End.

And if memory serves me right, it goes something like this. Will not the end explain? The crossed endeavour, earnest purpose foiled. The strange bewilderment of good work spoilt.

Will not the end explain? Meanwhile he comforteth them that are losing patience, but none can write the words they hear him say for men to read. Only they know, he says, sweet words which comforteth. The end, it will explain.

And that's what Habakkuk is being told. The revelation awaits an appointed time. It speaks of the end.

And what Habakkuk has to bear in mind, and it becomes very plain as you go to the fifth verse, the fourth and the fifth verses, is that there are two types of people in our world today. There are the unfaithful, be they Chaldeans, Babylonians, or unrighteous Jews. And there are the faithful.

There are those who move through life with trust in the living God. And there are those who move through life with trust simply in themselves. And the latter is described in the fourth verse.

See he is puffed up. His desires are not upright, but, a word of contrast, the righteous will live by his faith. There are some people who will move through life in a righteous fashion, and the very faith that they have in the living God will keep them going even when they can't understand all the circumstances that confront them.

But the unrighteous people, well, they have no future. It may seem that all is going well for them. They may have an insatiable appetite for riches.

They may have an insatiable appetite for plunder, or even for the death of others. Described in the fifth verse, they may be as greedy as the grave, but one day they will be brought to book. And on the day when they're brought to book, they will have nothing to answer the charge of them violating the moral as well as the religious law of God.

And you will find tucked into the verse of the second chapter, and I can't go right through them because time's not on my side, five woes which are leveled against the unfaithful people. Look at the sixth verse. Woe to him who piles up stolen goods.

Look at the ninth verse. Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain. Look at the twelfth verse.

Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed, and so on. Five woes are in this chapter, and they are directed against ungodless people, be they ungodless Chaldeans or be they ungodless Jews. What do the godless people, the ungodly people, what do they forget? They forget that God is controlling the whole of history.

History is his story. Look at one of the great verses of the book of Habakkuk, verse 14 of the second chapter. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

The Chaldeans will never have it always their own way. Indeed, as they have put out the Assyrian Empire and they have inherited their mantle, so ultimately they'll be eclipsed by the Medes and the Persians. And the Medes and the Persians, they will fall to the Grecian Empire.

And the Grecian Empire will fall and the Roman Empire will come. And you'll go all the way right down the centuries to the twentieth century when the British Empire shall collapse and the German Reich shall never come about. And the only empire that will ever survive, the only kingdom that will last from time and on into eternity is the kingdom of our God.

And the time will come, says the prophet Habakkuk, when the glory of God and the purposes of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. You wait for that, Habakkuk. It's not happened yet.

And it may not happen immediately, but ultimately, as sure as God is God, he'll work out his purpose. And when you realize that God is on the throne, and both Chaldean and Jew, both communist and capitalist, are ultimately answerable to him, the thinking man will do something that sounds sharp as I describe it, but it's got biblical authority for me to use the expression, he'll shut up. He'll shut up.

Look at the twentieth verse. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him.

Those who live in a godless way, the ungodly of this world, with all their noise, with all their protestations that they can control human destiny, feeling that they themselves are divine, let them be silenced. And if they're not quiet now, they will be one day. Because that day is coming when God will manifest himself in the person of his Son, and every intelligent being shall recognize who Jesus Christ is and what God has achieved.

And on that day there'll be a holy hush. Let all the nations, let all the earth, be silent before him. Habakkuk is beginning to realize that it's not just a question of the Chaldean and the Jew, it's a question of the righteous and the unrighteous.

And it's not just a question of time now, but it's also a question of time in the future. And time is always on the side of God. And in the future, he has all the time that is necessary to manifest his power on planet earth and to put to rights those things that seem to be improper and unjust.

And so Habakkuk, on his watchtower, does a sort of charismatic dance in a moment or so. If he's still on his watchtower, he'll have to be careful, or else he'll fall off if my illustration of his ecstasy is anything near the truth. I brought him down to Mother Earth here.

What has he found on the watchtower? Well, he's found that his knowledge of God's purposes is re-established. And what is more? He has discovered an experience of God. How many times have I been preaching on Sunday morning that theology is not sufficient? Theology must take us through to theophany.

Not only the doctrine, but the practice of the presence of God is what is necessary. And here is Habakkuk doing just this. A prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, set to music.

So he's obviously in a more joyful state now. And in the second verse he tells us, Lord, I've heard something of your fame, and now I stand in awe of your deeds. What has happened? Well, Habakkuk has been considering the past.

He's an intelligent man. Most spiritual people are. Indeed, I will say every spiritual person is intelligent, or else they wouldn't be spiritual.

And he has looked to the past. He's had time, he's gone up his watchtower, and he's started to think. And very often if you'll start to think, you can get yourself out of a great deal of difficulty.

What's he thought about? Well, he thought about those ancient Hebrews. Didn't they have problems? I mean, look at the Egyptians, what they did. It wasn't exactly a tea party in Egypt after Joseph had died and centuries had gone by, and Ramesses II was in control, a pharaoh who knew not Joseph.

But what did God do for the Egyptians? Well, he reduced them to pawns. It was Goliath and David all over again. Only this time it's the Egyptians who are Goliath, or rather it's an anticipation of David and Goliath.

And God can reduce the might of the Egyptians. Did not God manifest himself to the nation of the Hebrews in the wilderness of Sinai, of all places? Look at verse 3. God came from Teman. The Holy One came from Mount Paran.

That's down in the south, the south of the whole Middle Eastern belt there. His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the earth. His splendor was like the sunrise.

Rays flashed from his hand where his power was hidden. You see, he's almost in ecstasy as he's describing the power of God. What did this power of God do yesteryear? Well, look at verse 5. Plagues went before him.

Pharaoh was reduced to a pawn as a result of a display of the power of God. What did God do? Verse 6. He stood and he shook the earth. He looked and he made the nations tremble.

And do you remember how Sinai shook as God gave the law to Moses? And so, he waxes lyrical. And he goes on to describe the greatness of God and the way that his character is and his plans are eternal. The ancient mountains crumbled.

The age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal. Look at verse 7. I saw the tents of Cushan.

The Ethiopians, it's being referred to there, in distress. Those warriors, and yet they're reduced by the power of God. The dwellings of Midian, the enemies of Israel, they're in anguish.

Oh, Lord. He goes on to tell us in the 8th verse. Were you angry with the rivers? When you disturbed nature, when there was storm, when there was earthquake, when your arrows flashed like glints of lightnings in the sky.

Verse 11. When the sun and moon stood still in the heavens. Lord, were you angry? Or were you just displaying your power? Were you not showing us that you have everything in your control? The whole universe is yours.

Not just the earth, but the universe is in the control of God. Lord, you're like this. You have all power.

And verse 13. You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness.

You stripped him from head to foot. And so, he goes on. You see, he's lyrical.

What's happened? Well, he's used his sense. He's on his watchtower. He's got time now.

He's not panicking. He's thinking of the greatness of God. He's looking back.

800 B.C., 1000 B.C., 1200 B.C. Considering the past. And what's he saying? Lord, will you do it again? The second verse. Renew them in our day, in our time.

Make them known. In wrath, remember mercy. Lord, what you did yesteryear, do today.

So, here's Habakkuk contemplating the present. And he says, as he contemplates the present, Lord, I am full of awe. I stand, verse 2, in the heart of verse 2, I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord.

He's having his theophany. He's experiencing God. Now, when this has happened, when you've considered the past, and when you have an experience of God in the present, and your faith is buoyed up, well, even your future, you can cope with.

Now, notice this. It's important. The problem had not been resolved inasmuch as the Babylonians were still around.

Look at verse 16. You can hear the jackboot of the Babylonian army as it starts to march in from the north. I heard, and my heart pounded.

My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. You know, the man of God is not absolved from human fear.

I have not yet come across anyone who was badly treated by the Nazis or anyone in communist countries or down in southern Africa where some awful things have happened. I've never come across someone who confessed that they never had any fear at all. I don't think that the majority of martyrs went to their martyrdom never knowing what it was sometimes to be terrified, not of dying, but the pain of dying.

And here is Habakkuk. He's got the philosophical, the theological problem at least worked out. God will justify his purposes ultimately.

His name shall stand untarnished eternally. But you've still got the Chaldeans and their brutality to face. And Habakkuk's going to do it.

He's going to do it as a man. But he's honest enough to say that he was frightened. And he doesn't like what's going to happen as no one likes to produce some terrible disease in their own body.

You don't volunteer to do that even if you're a Christian. But what Habakkuk is able to say in the 17th verse is this. 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, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will be joyful in God my Saviour. What's he mean? Well, let's put it in modern terms. All the props have gone.

I haven't got a hymn book. I haven't got a Bible. I've got no church community.

I've got no fellowship at all. Here I am utterly isolated. All that I counted dear has been taken from me and my body is wracked with pain and yet I can still go on because I believe that as I am in the presence of God and I have a faith in God that is unqualified, I can cope even though I've got such difficulties to negotiate.

I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Saviour though all my props have taken away. That's why I describe or I put Habakkuk as dancing down here and it's not exaggerated.

It's not something that's locked up in the sort of 6th century B.C. that can't be ours today triumphing over our circumstances. Some of the most sweet, peaceful, serene folk that I have ever met have often not been able to get to church for years, their bodies riddled with arthritis and yet somehow or other they've known the presence of God in such a way that they wouldn't really exchange places with those who are healthy and have got all their props because as we discovered on Monday in different contexts from our young people when they're testifying, when your props are taken away God becomes more real. When your props have been taken away your faith is tested and becomes that much more valid.

And so the 19th verse is Habakkuk's swan song. Here he tells us The Sovereign Lord is my strength He makes my feet like the feet of a deer He enables me to go on the heights and by saying that he means that he can cope. He's still got the difficulty to go through but his faith in God has been refocused and he believes because he's got a trust in the Sovereign Lord whose glory one day will fill the world as the waters cover the sea he believes that he's got a reason to move on.

No longer to question God but to calm himself before the Lord in a holy hush and knowing a holy joy believing that ultimately God's purposes will ripen and his ways shall be authenticated before all men so they will recognize as Abraham teaches us that the God of the whole earth always ultimately deals in absolute justice and fairness. So Habakkuk resolves in degree his problem and he goes on into the future rejoicing and may you and I do just that as we contemplate future days. Amen.