An Invitation to Listen
Download MP3Well, good evening, everybody. Good evening. Nice. It's good to see you all. We have been in a summer preaching series on great prayers of the bible.
Jeffrey Heine:If you're new to Redeemer, if this is your first time here, we we usually preach through whole books of the bible at a time. In fact, this past spring, we started a study in, the book of acts. And over the summer, we're taking a brief break from that. We're gonna start back into that in August. But this summer, we've been studying great prayers of the Bible, and tonight, we find ourselves in Habakkuk.
Jeffrey Heine:So I'll give you 10, 15 minutes to find Habakkuk in your Bibles. But we are going to be jumping around a good bit. There are 3 chapters we're going to be jumping around a good bit. So if you have analog digital Bibles, if you want to make your way to Habakkuk, digital definitely have the upper hand this week. But as you're making your way to Habakkuk, I wanna ask you a couple of questions.
Jeffrey Heine:And I really want you to consider them as you flip through. Have you ever felt guilty that your prayers are more complaining than they are praise? Have you ever felt angry at God and wondered why he wasn't stopping a particular injustice or suffering in the world or in your own life? Have you ever felt like your prayers were pointless, and that you were just talking to yourself? If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, the book of the prophet Habakkuk serves, if nothing else, to let you know that you are not alone.
Jeffrey Heine:The book of Habakkuk is distinct from other books of the bible, and distinct from the other prophets. A prophet is a person who is called by God to speak on God's behalf. Sometimes it has to do with receiving visions about what is to come. But the primary role of the prophet is to speak what God wants to say to a particular people. Usually, it's the people of God.
Jeffrey Heine:And what's unique about the book of Habakkuk is that there isn't really a people that's being addressed here. The book is a private dialogue between Habakkuk and God. It might be helpful for us to think about the book of Habakkuk as someone's private prayer journal, with all their innermost thoughts written out in ink. And we know that it's a dangerous thing to put out into the world what you are really thinking and what you are really feeling, but Habakkuk does just that. His raw, unfiltered thoughts and feelings about God, about the world, they're laid bare before God in prayer, and we are given permission.
Jeffrey Heine:We are given an invitation to listen in. This book is made up of 3 prayers, 2 prayers of lament, and then it culminates in a prayer of praise. It goes like this. 1st, Habakkuk offers a prayer of lament, a complaint to God, and then God responds to him in his grace. Habakkuk then offers a second complaining prayer of lament, and God responds a second time and gives Habakkuk a vision of what is to come.
Jeffrey Heine:And then Habakkuk turns and offers a closing prayer of praise. And we will be anchoring most of our time together, in Habakkuk's 3rd prayer, the prayer of praise. And so let's read that together as we begin our study of God's word tonight. Habakkuk chapter 3, we're gonna start with verse 2. Habakkuk 3 verse 2.
Jeffrey Heine:Oh, lord. I have heard the report of you. And your work, oh, Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known.
Jeffrey Heine:In wrath, remember mercy. God came from Taman and the holy one from Mount Paran. His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. His brightness was like the light. Rays flashed from his hand, and there, he veiled his power.
Jeffrey Heine:Before him went pestilence, and plague followed at his heels. He stood, measured the earth. He looked and shook the nations. And the eternal mountains were scattered. The everlasting hills sank low.
Jeffrey Heine:His were the everlasting ways. I saw the tents of Cushon in affliction, and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. Was your wrath against the rivers, oh lord? Was your anger against the rivers or your indignation against the sea when you rode on your horses, on your chariot of salvation? You stripped the sheath from your bow, calling for many arrows.
Jeffrey Heine:You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and writhed. The raging waters swept on. The deep gave forth its voice. It lifted its hands on high.
Jeffrey Heine:The sun and moon stood still in their place, at the light of your arrows as they sped, at the flash of your glittering spear. You marched through the earth in fury. You threshed the nations in anger. You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck.
Jeffrey Heine:You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors, who came like a whirlwind to scatter me, rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret. You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of many waters. I hear, and my body trembles. My lips quiver at the sound. Rawness enters into my bones.
Jeffrey Heine:My legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us. Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit beyond 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 take joy in the God of my salvation.
Jeffrey Heine:God, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like the deers. He makes me tread on my high places. The word of the Lord. Let's pray.
Jeffrey Heine:Almighty God, we praise you tonight for your greatness and your graciousness, And we thank you that you know us, each and every one of us here in this room, better than we know ourselves. And yet, in your grace, you have set your love on us. And we know this because of Jesus. We know this because Jesus, our risen Lord, and we thank you. We thank you for your word, especially your prophet, Habakkuk.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord, speak to the very depths of our souls tonight. Yes. Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening. We pray these things in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:Hearing a sermon on prayer can be like going to the dentist when they ask you if you have been flossing. Most of us end up feeling quite guilty about not doing it enough, and you walk back to your car feeling that guilt and shame, and you make a resolute determination to try harder. But there's a problem with guilt. It doesn't last. We either get over it or get used to it.
Jeffrey Heine:And while I do desire that each one of us will walk out to our cars tonight with a renewed sense of the significance of prayer and a renewed desire to pray, my hope is not that you will try harder. I believe the way that we get to a better life of prayer is by better understanding this invitation to pray and finding a better motivation to pray than just guilt. And we will better understand this invitation, we will find that better motivation when we begin to see that prayer is not an action, but a reaction. A few generations after King David, the kingdom of Israel split in 2 kingdoms, a northern and a southern kingdom. They had their own armies and their own leaders.
Jeffrey Heine:They had their own enemies and their own threats from these superpowers. Habakkuk lived in the time before the Babylonians came in and destroyed Judah, that southern kingdom where Jerusalem was. In Habakkuk's time, many of the leaders of God's people were brutal and unrighteous. They were leading the people to live cruelly, wickedly, and without regard to God. They oppressed the poor.
Jeffrey Heine:They neglected God's commands and rules of justice, his commands for human dignity, and they even ignored worshiping God himself. And in this book of Habakkuk, we find that Habakkuk is angry at these leaders. He's angry at these leaders who are mistreating people and leading people to mistreat others, and he's angry, that God would let this happen and not intervene, not put a stop to the violence and the suffering. There are so many things that we can do with anger. We can suppress it, pretend like everything is fine.
Jeffrey Heine:We can indulge it and grow more self justified in our anger. We can proliferate it. We can try to make as many other people as possible as angry as we are. Habakkuk chooses a different path. He chooses to acknowledge it, to acknowledge his anger, and to address it, not only to himself, but to God.
Jeffrey Heine:If you will flip back to chapter 1, Habakkuk chapter 1, Habakkuk goes to God in his anger. Chapter 1 verse 2, Habakkuk says this, Oh, lord. How long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you violence, and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?
Jeffrey Heine:Destruction and violence are before me. Strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted. Habakkuk confronts God, and he's honest with with what he is thinking and what he's feeling.
Jeffrey Heine:He complains to the Lord. You aren't listening to me. You aren't saving us. Why are you looking at all of this violence and destruction and oppression and just sitting idle? Justice is being perverted.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't see you doing anything about it. Have you ever felt like that before? Have you ever felt like God wasn't paying attention to the pain happening in your life or the lives of the people around you? Have you ever wondered if God cares about your situation? Wondered why he seems to be so disinclined to do anything about it.
Jeffrey Heine:Habakkuk did. He felt that way. And instead of running away from God, he goes directly to God. He says what he is thinking and what he is feeling, even if he is wrong. And in many ways, he is.
Jeffrey Heine:But that doesn't stop him from being honest with God. Habakkuk's raw honesty reminds us that prayer, first and foremost, is a conversation with God. The late German pastor and theologian, Helmut Thilica, this will be on the exam. Helmut Thilica once said, prayer is a conversation with God. Since we cannot assume a preexistence congruence between the human will and the divine, there is often conflict between them and complaint about this conflict, end quote.
Jeffrey Heine:What's old Helmut saying here? He is saying that we cannot assume we cannot assume in our prayers that our will and God's will line up perfectly. And because of that, because we can't we can't assume that they are the same thing, we know that there will be conflict. And that conflict will lead to complaint, and that is to be expected. Honest complaints to God should be expected.
Jeffrey Heine:They are not exceptions. Tilakha goes on to say, quote, there can be no conversation with God unless there is a readiness to surrender one's own will and yield to God, end quote. So if we're going to have this conversation with God, a real honest conversation, then we must be ready to address the conflict, even complain to God. And we must be ready to surrender. God calls us to pray.
Jeffrey Heine:He calls us into this conversation, talking. He calls us to seek his face. Psalm 27, Jeremiah 33. And he promises to be open to our cries and to turn his attention to us in his grace, Psalm 4, Psalm 50. Remember, prayer is not action, it is reaction.
Jeffrey Heine:The first words of prayer out of your mouth is a reaction to God's invitation to conversation and his promised attention to you. And this readiness to surrender is not rooted in oppression. It is rooted in love. It is a surrender rooted in the belief that god is the one who will do better things for me than I myself can either desire, think or imagine. But that does not mean that I will get what I want.
Jeffrey Heine:My readiness to surrender means I want to want what God wants, trusting that his will is good even if that means things get worse for me. So hear this. You're allowed to pray like Habakkuk. You are expected to pray like Habakkuk. Some of you are holding back honest lament because you think that you aren't allowed to get angry like that.
Jeffrey Heine:Or you're holding back honest lament because you think that because you're a Christian, you're just supposed to be happy or at least pretending to be happy. There are lots of things in life where we can fake it until we make it, but we cannot do that with our emotions. You cannot fake your way into real, lasting joy. You can fake happy, but you can't fake joy. If God truly wants you to be in honest conversation with him, then he has to be ready to receive you at your worst, and he is.
Jeffrey Heine:He he has to be ready to to hear the raw feet of your soul, no matter how angry or how wrong you may be. And he is ready. And you have to be ready to surrender to the one who made you and loves you and is redeeming you. Habakkuk puts forward this honest complaint. And because of God's grace, God responds to Habakkuk.
Jeffrey Heine:Look with me. Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 5. God responds, look among the nations and see. Wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.
Jeffrey Heine:For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome. Their injustice and dignity go forth from themselves. Verse 9. They all come for violence, all their faces forward.
Jeffrey Heine:They gather captives like sand. At kings, they scoff, and at rulers, they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it, and then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men whose own might is their God. God says to Habakkuk, I am doing something. I'm doing more than you would believe if I told you.
Jeffrey Heine:Because Habakkuk is looking around himself. He sees this little kingdom of Judah. But God says that he is working and moving in every kingdom, in every empire, all over the earth. In fact, God says, I'm raising up that pagan nation, the Chaldeans, the Babylonians. I'm raising them up to come and bring judgment on Judah.
Jeffrey Heine:So follow me here. God says, I'm going to deal with the cruel wickedness in Judah, the southern kingdom, and I'm gonna bring judgment with the ruthless armies of Babylon. This army is brutal. They laugh at kings and rulers. They laugh at the protective walls around the city.
Jeffrey Heine:They laugh at those things because they will make a pile of dirt out of them and brush it aside. And God says these are guilty men, and the god of these guilty men, their god is their own strength. Habakkuk gets even angrier at the thought that God would use these Babylonians to carry out this divine judgment. This is not the kind of action that he wanted from God. Habakkuk wanted justice and judgment on Judah, but God says he's going to bring great darkness of judgment to Judah.
Jeffrey Heine:A little over 200 years ago, in the year 18/16, it's sometimes referred to as the year without summer. And that's because the year previous, 18/15, there was a massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia. The volcano, Mount Tambora, killing 100 of thousands of people and sending unparalleled amounts of ash, volcanic ash, into the atmosphere. And the ash and debris cause what's called a volcanic winter. And for the next year, parts of the world experienced darkness, great darkness, where noontime looked like late evening.
Jeffrey Heine:Temperatures shifted so greatly that in New York, in the month of June, it snowed 6 inches. Crops failed. Disease spread among the livestock and among the people. Food shortages and the disease caused deaths and even more panic. Things got so bad, and keep in mind, the technology was so minimal.
Jeffrey Heine:No radar to know where these things were heading, no communication to even know that it was a volcano. They just saw the sky go black for weeks weeks weeks. There were scientists who said that the sun was burning out and that it was the end of the world. There were people who believed that. And thought that this must be the end.
Jeffrey Heine:These people would even harm themselves or their own families, or they would not even go to work, or they wouldn't plow the field because they thought the end was near. It was terrible. They had no idea how long this darkness would be here. God told Habakkuk that there was a great darkness coming, the darkness of violence, captivity, exile to Babylon, the suffering and oppression that Habakkuk was lamenting would get worse. The darkness of violence and destruction in Judah would get worse.
Jeffrey Heine:The oppression and faithlessness would get worse. There was a darkness spreading, and it would cover over the people of God in Judah. And Habakkuk wondered if this darkness would be forever. Habakkuk is angry, and he's confused, and he goes to God with a second prayer of complaint. Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 12.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, are you not from everlasting, Oh Lord, my God, my holy one, we shall not die. Oh Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, oh rock, have established them for reproof. You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? Because God is using the evil Babylonians as an instrument of judgment, Habakkuk questions God's fidelity to holiness. He says, you can't even look at evil, and you're using these evil people to destroy the righteous.
Jeffrey Heine:And he offers up this illustration. He says, the people are like fish, and these evil men are like fishermen with a big net. And they scoop us all up, and they're just gonna kill us nation after nation. They're gonna go around with the Babylonian Empire and just scoop up people. Is this gonna happen forever?
Jeffrey Heine:He says, mercilessly killing nations forever. Will this darkness be forever? And he finishes his prayer of complaint with a pretty bold statement. It's kinda like, have you have you ever gotten an email, and at the end of the email, someone says something to the effect of, thank you so much for your speedy response? Like, I haven't done that yet.
Jeffrey Heine:But they're just anticipating it and thanking you ahead of time. Well, he kind of does that. He says, I'm going to take my stand on the watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what you will say to me. In a sense, he's saying, I'll be right here waiting. And God in his grace, because he does not have to remember, But God, in his grace, responds to Habakkuk and gives the prophet a vision and tells him to write down what he sees.
Jeffrey Heine:Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 2. And the Lord answered me, write the vision. Make it plain on tablets so he may run who reads it. For still, the vision awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end.
Jeffrey Heine:It will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay. Behold, his soul, Babylon, is puffed up.
Jeffrey Heine:It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. God is telling Habakkuk that this vision will come, and in that vision, yes, Judah will be judged. And the Babylonians will destroy the city, will take them captive. But in time, the Babylonians will be judged, and the people of God will be liberated. Babylon is puffed up, but the righteous people of God, they will live by faith.
Jeffrey Heine:They will live in exile, in captivity, under oppression. They will live in the midst of all of these things, trusting and hoping in God. They will live by faith. And that response from the Lord, giving this vision that the darkness would not be forever and Babylon will one day fall. That's what leads Habakkuk to this great prayer of praise.
Jeffrey Heine:God has told Habakkuk that that he will indeed bring that judgment to Judah through the Babylonians and that the people will suffer greatly. But God promised to bring them out of the darkness. The people of God will not be punished forever, and the evil Babylonians will not be exempt from punishment. It is by God's grace that Habakkuk receives this vision, and then he turns in response to the Lord with this prayer of praise. Habakkuk 3 verse 2, oh lord, I have heard the report of you, and your work, oh lord, do I fear.
Jeffrey Heine:In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath. Remember mercy. You've probably seen before in the Psalms this call that continually goes out to tell the next generation of the glorious works and deeds of the Lord.
Jeffrey Heine:Tell them what God has done. And that has happened for Habakkuk. He has heard these stories where God has come and vindicated his people. He's heard these stories where God's people were oppressed, and God came in and did something about it. And so Habakkuk is saying, those things, you vindicating your people, you fighting for your people, revive that work.
Jeffrey Heine:Do that work again. In our day, in the midst of these years, do it again. Rescue your people. Vindicate your people against her enemies. Resuscitate your great works of justice.
Jeffrey Heine:Habakkuk pleads that that as God carries out his justice and wrath, that he would remember mercy to his covenant people. And then Habakkuk describes this vision of what the Lord showed him, what is to come. And the way that he does that is by pulling all these different places from scripture, all these stories where God vindicated his people. And in that vision, he sees the Lord on the move to save. Verse 3.
Jeffrey Heine:God came from Taman and the holy one from Mount Paran. His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. Verse 12. You marched through the earth in fury. You threshed the nations in anger.
Jeffrey Heine:You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You see, in these visions, Habakkuk sees God rending the heavens and coming down to rescue His people. The earth trembles before him. No army, no warrior will withstand this judgment. God went out for the salvation of his people.
Jeffrey Heine:Habakkuk sees and believes that justice, liberation from oppression and suffering is truly coming. The picture here is very similar to what we see from the prophet Isaiah, also prophesying in this context of the Babylonian exile, Isaiah calls out to the Lord saying, oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. And in God's sovereignty, we, the church today, at this point in salvation history, we know the name of this savior, the one whom the prophet saw, ripping the heavens apart and coming down to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to recover sight for the blind, to set at liberty those who were oppressed. And in the apostle John's gospel, Jesus is recorded saying, all that the father has given me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.
Jeffrey Heine:And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. The prophet Habakkuk sees this day of the Lord when Christ would come down, rending heaven and rescuing his people, redeeming them. Habakkuk sees a vision of this liberation, and he goes on. After he has seen all of these things, in verse 16, he says, I hear, and my body trembles.
Jeffrey Heine:My lips quiver at the sound. Rottenness enters my bones. My legs tremble beneath me. There he is both seeing God's vindication. He's hearing these armies of the Babylonians coming to take over Judah, and he says, yet, I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us.
Jeffrey Heine:Habakkuk saw the vision of the Lord bringing justice and judgment against those who will soon overthrow Judah. Habakkuk asks for God to remember mercy, and he says, I will wait for the Lord to act. Habakkuk, in chapter 1 was waiting for an answer, and now he waits with a promise. Habakkuk resolves to trust and rejoice in the Lord. And he says, though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit beyond the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food.
Jeffrey Heine: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 take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like the deers.
Jeffrey Heine:He makes me tread on my high places. Habakkuk is describing a very desolate scene, and yet he is resolved to live in the place of joy in the Lord. There is darkness in the land, and Habakkuk is rejoicing in the Lord. Consider how far Habakkuk has come in his prayers. He's gone from complaining in chapter 1, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear, to now declaring, I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Jeffrey Heine:How? How did he come so far? He didn't come that far by reading a good book, though I love good books. He didn't come that far because of a wise friend, though I love wise friends. He was transformed through time with God, time in conversation, both listening and speaking.
Jeffrey Heine:Habakkuk was changed by God to want what God wanted. Habakkuk came to God honestly and ready to surrender to him. And God in his grace met him where he was, angry and wrong. Why? Because he loved him.
Jeffrey Heine:In the summertime, or the lack thereof, of 18/16, the year there wasn't a summer, the poet Lord Byron wrote a poem fittingly entitled Darkness. And he wrote it at a time you might recall this from, English class in high school. But he wrote it actually, there was a retreat of a holiday vacation with some literary giants in Geneva, and it was in this time, this summer of this summertime in 18/16, they were all in this mansion, and because they couldn't go outside and have fun, they had 4 days where they had a writing competition. And that's when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. And it's when another author, he wrote the vampires, which was kind of the precursor to Dracula, and Byron wrote darkness.
Jeffrey Heine:You can see a thread of gloom here. Right? Those, those genres didn't really exist beforehand. And Byron wrote this poem, and it concludes with these words. The world was void, the populous and the powerful, a lump.
Jeffrey Heine:Seasonless, herbalist, treeless, manless, lifeless. A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes, and oceans all stood still, and nothing stirred within their silent depths. Ships, sailorless, lay rotting at the sea, and their mouths fell down piecemeal. As they dropped, they slept on the abyss without a surge.
Jeffrey Heine:The waves were dead. The tides were in their grave. The moon, their mistress, had expired. The winds were withered in the stagnant air, and the clouds perished. Darkness had no need of aid from them.
Jeffrey Heine:She was the universe. Darkness was the universe. The earth was seasonless, herbalist, treeless, manless, lifeless. The fig tree, blossomless. The vines, fruitless.
Jeffrey Heine:The produce of the olive failed. The fields, foodless. Byron looked out and saw only darkness. Habakkuk looked into the expanse of the darkness of sin and judgment and saw a crack of light in the distance. Yes.
Jeffrey Heine:Habakkuk saw the darkness. Evil was winning the day. The wicked were oppressing the righteous, and it would get worse. The lord showed him the suffering to come, but he also showed him that one day, the skies would begin to clear. But how?
Jeffrey Heine:When Jesus himself would rend the heavens, when he would tear through the darkness and come down in the light of his justice and mercy. He would make a way to liberate the captives. It is that ultimate hope, that hope of vindication, not only for Judah, but for everyone in Christ, the hope of salvation for God's people. That was a sustaining hope, one that would uphold Habakkuk when the sky grew dark and when there was no longer fruit on the vines and the fields yielded no food. In those dark times, Habakkuk could hold fast to the light of the Lord and persist in joy.
Jeffrey Heine:So what will motivate any one of us to pray? Will it be guilt, pride, or will it be the beauty of the divine who invites us, that bids us to come and to find his gracious attention and love? The invitation to this conversation with God lies before us new every day. And may we, who say that we believe in Christ the Lord, respond to this invitation for a conversation with God, and may we find in him hope, joy, and strength. Let's go to him now in prayer.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord, you know that our hearts are prone to wonder. And as we wander, we are prone to fear and to doubt. Where by your grace, you have invited us into this conversation of prayer, the anchor that keeps us tethered to your truth, the school where our hearts learn to trust in you, a place for honest thoughts and feelings to be tended to by your love. And it's that space to listen to you who made us, you who are redeeming us. Lord, help us to look anew at what prayer even is.
Jeffrey Heine:And may we respond with all that we are to all that you have promised. We pray these things in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
