NOTE: This is an unedited transcript and, therefore, contains imperfections and is not for publication or quotation in whole or in part by anyone without the express written consent of Pastor Conley. The audio tape of this message delivered November 28, 1999, is available and may be purchased from the Church.  Brackets    "[ ]" are used for parenthetical words and phrases spoken. Parentheses "( )" are used for words inserted by transcriber.

THANKFUL IN THE FACE OF TROUBLE

Habakkuk 3:18-19

Dr. J. Drew Conley, Pastor

Kennerly Road Baptist Church, Columbia, South Carolina

Once you define who God is and what He does in His interventions in the history of man, you redefine how you view reality, you redefine how you live your life, and you redefine how you approach both the ups and the downs that life includes. This message is about trusting God as we look at the kind of thanksgiving that will not die. In Habakkuk 3:18, 19, "Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD God is my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments." These verses are those of jubilation and exultation.

If you look back at the beginning of this chapter, you will notice that they are the last words of a prayer of Habakkuk. In verse 1, "A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth." There is no other psalm so named except Psalm 7. In Psalm 7 you find the loud cries of one who has passed through great anguish and pain and is now celebrating deliverance from the trial. In Habakkuk you find here a highly emotional psalm extolling God. We have read the last two verses, now let us read the two preceding verses (16,17): "When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when He cometh up unto the people, He will invade them with His troops. Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat [no food]; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet [verse 18] I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."

As you peruse verses 16 and 17, you find it difficult to see how or why Habakkuk ever penned verses 18 and 19. G. Campbell Morgan commented, "If we were reading this for the very first time, or if we found it in any other literature than this, we would be driven to enquire, Was this man a fanatic? Was he deluded, or did he speak of wisdom of which this world knows nothing, when he crowned the song which described desolation with a song that expresses jubilation?" I would like us to consider how in the world Habakkuk could put these verses back-to-back—how in the world he can be filled with joy and thanksgiving to his God in the midst of a situation described in these verses. I think this will give us the real center of thanksgiving and truly the real secret to life.

In verses 16 and 17, we have portrayed for us devastation. What he is describing is his response—his fear and trembling—at the judgment that God has predicted will fall on his nation. Habakkuk is a book written about a man wrestling with God. He lived about 600 BC. Judah is in great decline. All around is immorality and violence and injustice—contempt for God’s Word: so much so that the king actually cut up a scroll of God’s Word and burned it as he had such disdain for it, did not believe either the promises of God nor the judgment of God. Habakkuk comes to God and asks, "How come you are letting people live this way and you are not doing anything about it." God says, "I am doing something: I’m going to bring judgment on the land and you are going to see it. In fact, it’s about to fall."

If you will recall, the first wave of captives was taken in 605 BC with several other waves after that. Just before they are taken captive, Habakkuk the prophet is complaining about how wicked everybody is and God is saying that He is going to devastate the land for this wickedness—I am doing something, and I am going to use the Chaldeans (people even more wicked than Israel) to bring this judgment. This made Habakkuk’s problems even worse: It is one thing to see a land that is full of evil, it is another to see that you will have to suffer through the judgment that God is going to bring on a nation.

You could well imagine as you look around our own nation and you might say, "God, how come you are letting a man like Bill Clinton stay in office? God, how come there is so much evil in our cities? God, how come there is so much dishonesty? How come our schools are such a wreck? How come our churches are departing from You? Lord, how come you are not doing anything?" What if God were to say, "I am going to do something. I am going to bring a nuclear holocaust to America, and it is going to happen in the next couple of years." How would we respond? "Lord, that wasn’t exactly what we had in mind." And then what if He would explain that He was going to use people who were even more evil than the evil you saw around you to do it? Then you would start to question whether God was being who He was supposed to be. In fact, this is where we find in chapter 2:13, "[God] Thou art of purer eyes than to look upon evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" Habakkuk was saying, "You are too holy to use unrighteous people to punish our unrighteousness because they are worse than we are." And there in chapter 2 we see him waiting on the Lord and starting to pray about it, telling God that he just can’t figure it out.

The first step I want you to see in our approach to times of devastation, in trying to find out how to be thankful in the face of trouble, is to be honest with God about your doubts. It is very interesting in talking with friends and family members and those in need of help who are struggling with what God is doing or not doing, they will make comments like Habakkuk made as to not being able to figure out what is going on as it seems that God is not coming through. When I ask, "Have you told Him that?" Their reaction is, "Tell God that?" You know, He already knows! He already knows that is where your struggle is. Real prayer is not about smoozing God. It is not like a public prayer where you are trying to make sure you have everything theologically correct and that you are saying it eloquently. No, real prayer sometimes is just groans—there are times when the burdens are so great that you don’t have words. In fact, you don’t even know what to pray for: the Spirit helps us pray at times like that. You need to be honest with God about your doubts.

If you don’t have faith in God, if you do not believe that God is righteous, if you don’t believe that God is powerful, if you have no confidence in God, then you will probably never face doubts about God. It is because of what you believe about God when you face certain experiences that seem to contradict what you believe that you have doubts. Why, when John the Baptist was sitting in prison, did he send the question to Jesus Christ and ask, "Are you Him who is coming, or do we look for another?" Was it because John didn’t believe that Jesus was the Christ that he was having doubts? No, at the root of his doubts was that he did believe that Jesus was the Christ. It is just that he couldn’t figure out that if Jesus was the Christ, why was He leaving him there in prison since he was the forerunner of the Christ: "How come He is dealing with me this way if God is who I believe God is?" This is the classic struggle of those who know God.

We have spent time in Psalm 73 where experience assaults faith. When you believe God—when you believe He is who He says He is—you go through situations that cause you doubt: you wonder whether God is indifferent to your need, He doesn’t care, or perhaps He is inactive. But the doubts rise from the faith. What do you do when you doubt? You need to tell God so. The very first step toward being able to exult in your God is to be honest with God as to where you are. Perhaps you are praying for God to do something in your life, and God doesn’t seem to be doing it. Perhaps you are wondering whether you should be wanting that particular change of circumstance or blessing—whether it is out of God’s will. You are afraid God might not want you to have it, and so you are afraid to pray about it. Why don’t you just tell God you are afraid that He might not want you to have it. Why don’t you tell God you are having difficulty bringing yourself to be willing to see whatever His will is as good—be honest about your doubts.

Secondly, Habakkuk was honest with God about his frustrations. To him, it seemed that God was being inconsistent. How could God use a nation more wicked than Israel to punish Israel for being wicked? So, in chapter 2 he waits for God’s answer to his complaint, and in that chapter we find five "woes" that God pronounces on a number of sins: the sin of greed, the sin of covetousness, the sin of murder, the sin of drunkenness, the sin of idolatry. Certainly then God’s judgment against these things was just. Then He gives three assurances to Habakkuk:

[1] In verse 4, God says, "My righteous ones shall live by their faith." So in the context of this judgment and in the context of God not seeming to do what you expected Him to do, or if it seems He is being inconsistent with His character, the principle of your life needs to be one of faith nonetheless. Hold on to what you know to be true about God, even when your eyes and experience seem to contradict it—you hold on to what you know to be true. "The just [My righteous ones] shall live by his [their] faith."

[2] In verse 14, God says, "For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." Essentially God is telling Habakkuk , "My purposes are still on track." We are so quick to judge whether God is doing what will succeed by the status of things now. We are so quick to read half-way through the book and say, "I don’t like the conclusion," or to say, "I want the PhD without the toil," or "I want the car, now [I’m only five, but I want it now]." There was a right time for God’s purposes to be fulfilled, but His purposes are on track even in the midst of devastation, even in the midst of reversals, even at times when what He does causes us to doubt Him. Do you think that God is worried that you are doubting Him. Do you think He worries about that? Does He say, "Oh, if I do that, this person is going to struggle and start doubting me." God’s not worried about that. He can handle your doubts, He can handle your frustrations, He knows how to weave even those difficulties into good for you because His purposes are still on track. By the time you get to your 30s and 40s, you can probably count up several instances where God has proven this to you—times when you thought God had just left the scene; times when He just left you there to struggle and struggle and struggle, and it seemed that He wasn’t going to resolve it; and finally He did, and He was gracious enough to let you see why He had you struggle. That helps us when we face new struggles: we still struggle, but it does help us.

[3] Finally, the third assurance God gives us for these struggles is found in chapter 2, verse 20: "The LORD is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before Him." This tells us that not only are God’s purposes on track—not only will there be a sure future—it tells us that right now God is not threatened by what is happening. Nothing has escaped His jurisdiction. Nothing has broken out of bounds to where He can’t turn it—to where He cannot bless it and use it.

Thirdly, Habakkuk was honest with God about his fears. Look at the kind of alarm: It is such fear that it affects him physically. Have you ever had that kind of fear? I believe most of us have had, at least for an instance, a fear that we describe as "when our heart stops" or "when our stomach goes into our throat." We have a literal physical response because of the fear or trauma we are undergoing—and that is exactly what is described in verse 16: "When I heard [what God was going to do—the kind of devastation, trouble and agony we were going to go through], my belly trembled [the nauseating grip of fear]; my lips quivered at the voice [the chattering of the lips smiting one another before you cry out. I remember once as a child my sister and I were so scared that it seemed to take several minutes before we could even get out a squeak or a cry to get our Dad to come]: rottenness entered into my bones [paralyzed by the power of fear], and I trembled in myself." All these things are coming upon him when he considers the devastation that the Chaldeans would bring to his country: the barren fields, the empty barns, the noblest fruit trees of the land, the fig and the vine, yielding nothing.

There is a difference between human weakness and lack of faith. In fact, the reason Habakkuk feared is precisely because he did believe God. There are times when our feebleness physically and emotionally set us back, and we are tempted not to talk to God about that. But he was honest with God about his fears. "For He [God] knoweth our frames; He remembereth that we are dust" (Psalm 103:14). When you look at the lives of Abraham, David, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, or Paul, they could all say with Paul, "We are troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears" (2 Corinthians 7:5). The first time Paul spoke in Corinth, he states he was with them "in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling" (1 Corinthians 2:3). A writer from the Middle Ages observed that "No man can be wholly the Lord’s unless he is wholly consecrated to the Lord, and no man can know whether he is thus wholly consecrated except by tribulation. That is the test. To rejoice in God’s will when that will imparts nothing but happiness is easy even for the natural man, but no one but the renovated man can rejoice in the divine will when it crosses his path, disappoints his expectations, and overwhelms him with sorrow. Trials, therefore, instead of being shunned should be welcomed as the test (the only true test) of our true state. Beloved souls, there are consolations which pass away, but true and abiding consolation you will not find except in entire abandonment and in that love which loves the cross. He who does not welcome the cross does not welcome God." What Habakkuk feared was what God was about to do. There are times when God takes you through things, and you know it is the will of God for you to go through them, and yet it causes great alarm at just the prospect of having to go through it. Habakkuk was honest with God about his fears.

In verses 18 and 19 we find exultation—it is not merely resignation (not passive like that); it is not psychological detachment; it is not a denial of reality; not escapism; not plucking up courage; not putting up a good front—it is exultation in God. "Yet I will rejoice in the LORD"—literally, "to jump for joy." The second word joy in, "I will joy in the God of my salvation," gives us the picture of someone spinning around as he is so excited: "the exultant joy." How in the world is he having this kind of response next to all these other things he is going through? It is because of his confident trust in the God of his salvation. Notice it is not that he is rejoicing in the circumstance— he is rejoicing in the God who rules the circumstance; the God who can bring His promises to bear, even with difficult circumstances. Someone has said, "God is the inexhaustible source and infinite sphere of joy because He is the God of salvation, the God of rescue."

If life didn’t have its periods like this, I don’t think we would desire rescue. Think about it. The way God brings to bear in our minds this desire for His salvation—His rescue—is through the scourge, through the curse, that sin brings into our universe. If there were no death, if there were no sorrow, if there were no tears, if there were no thorns, who would be interested in salvation? We wouldn’t even be aware that we were lost. Most people have to be brought to a place of devastation before they are ready for salvation. We find, even in our lives after we have come to the Lord, that God brings us to the place of devastation before we can experience exultation. Because until the fields are devastated, until the labor fails, until there is nothing else on which to pin our hopes, we are tempted to put our hopes somewhere else besides God—we are tempted to look for deliverance some other way than God.

You do not need to have a particular job to be happy in the Lord. You do not need to have a particular income. You do not need to have good health. You don’t need to live long. You don’t need any of those things that are so important to us. All you really do need is the God of your salvation. I found myself over the last couple of years wondering if those in Heaven (and, of course, my Dad’s death particularly brought this to my mind) find it highly amusing that we make such a differentiation between those who die young and those who live to a ripe old age. Really, in Heaven, what difference does it make whether you died at 35 or 102? Life is a vapor either way, so once you are in Heaven, who cares how long you were on earth—in fact, probably the shorter the better from that vantage point. Yet you find down here, the consensus of opinion is "if I can just live a little longer," unless the suffering gets too intense. When the suffering gets too intense, what is the believer’s desire? "Lord, I just want to come home." Would he be thinking that way without the devastation and without the suffering? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that way when things are going great. In fact, I can remember as a teen saying, "Lord, please don’t come back until I get married. Lord, please don’t come back until I have my first car. Lord, it would be a shame to go through all of this schooling—all this abuse—and never be able to use it." Now I can say, "Lord, any time is fine." The only reason you care about staying is because of other people who need you to stay, and it is not that you are so spiritual, it is just that you have been devastated a few times—now you can joy in the God of your salvation (rescue).

Look with me at the figurative language Habakkuk uses, "He will make my feet like hind’s [type of deer] feet." This speaks of a fresh and joyous strength. If you have seen a deer take off through the woods or across fields, it is amazing the ground it can cover. You know I like to deer hunt, and usually around here you are hunting from a tree stand and everything on the ground seems to flatten out. It is often amazing to me when I see a deer go through (and for whatever reason I didn’t get it) that when I get down to follow it, the ground that seemed smooth from above as the deer just glided over it has ridges, etc., and it is very difficult maneuvering. Habakkuk says God is going to make his feet like hind’s feet so he will be able to move through this rough territory like a deer moves across the mountains—swift, strong and sure—that’s the salvation of God. His way is on the precipice, on the craggy rocks, the dangerous cliffs, and his feet are as sure as the footing of a deer in the forest or on a rugged mountainside. The difficulties are not a problem if you are connected to God. Habakkuk says, "He will make me to walk upon my high places"—this is figurative language for "victory," the victorious possession and governing of the land, looking out over territory that has been conquered. He is going to make us (to use the words of the Apostle Paul) "more than conquerors" through all these things because He loves us. Habakkuk exults not in the circumstances (in the prospect of years of oppression and captivity)—he is not a masochist—he exults in God.

When we look at the opposition, when we look at our weaknesses, when we look at the wickedness of our nation, when we look at the suffering that is sure to come in like a flood, when we think of the moment we are faced with terminal disease and death, our hearts may fail, our lips may quiver, we may groan, our eyes may fill with tears—but if we look at the whole scheme, if we look at the unfailing marching on of the purposes of our God, at the sure deliverance, the rescue that He promises us, we can jump for joy and spin around in exultation even in the face of trouble because our destiny is connected with His purpose, our names are written in His Lamb’s Book of Life. He has purchased us with His blood. We are possessed—owner occupied—by the Holy Spirit. Our triumph is not found in the change of circumstances, nor in the power within ourselves, but in the reliability of our God. Look at the greatness of His power.

Look at what God has done throughout history. God is a God of activity. The modern theologians would have you believe God is just theoretical; He is just mystical; the people who know God are those who chant and thumb through beads with incense whiffing through the air. No, God is a God of activity. He has done things in real history and will continue to do so. The children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, He caused the sun to stand still, He took control of the elements: actual historical events that show that God really does interact in the lives of human beings. He really does rescue people. He really will rescue me. The Bible is more than a book of wonderful ideas—it is a record of the actual historical acts of God on man’s behalf—and, as such, it is not just a piece of psychology contrived to make me feel happy in the midst of a hard life in a painful world. It is not a sedative—an opiate of the people. It tells me facts and realities that I must not forget in the days of devastation. Christianity is facts—it is the power of God smashing into my life—it is intimate connection with the One who can literally, historically save me from sin and death by the power of God.

We can also exult because of the certainty of His purposes: God will accomplish the salvation of His people. God does care. He cares when I am hurting. The bud may be bitter, but the fruit will be sweet. He often uses the unexpected. He often uses what seems to us inconsistence. We may not understand what is going on and when we do, we may like Habakkuk shake with fear. But who would expect water from a rock in the desert? who would expect quail in the wilderness? who would expect manna from the sky? who would expect shoes never to wear out in 40 years? How would these people ever have experienced these miracles had they not gone through the wilderness wanderings? Is there any question that God can supply every need? When the need is for His people to turn from idolatry back to Him, He is not limited to prophets, priests or princes of Israel—He is not limited to preachers or Sunday school teachers He can raise up a pagan king to bring in the needed judgment, and when it is time to return, he can anoint another pagan monarch who doesn’t even know Him to send His people back again—and that is exactly what He did with Israel. You must not try to measure the power and purposes of God by calculating what is happening in this church or in The Church Universal. You can’t hem God in that way. He wants to use the Christian, He wants to use the Church, but if the right person or congregation is not available, God is not thwarted, and do not think that He is. His will will prevail. He can use a pagan king if He has to or He will use a renegade nation if He has to, but He will fulfill His promises.

G. Campbell Morgan says of Habakkuk’s psalm, "This is the song of a man who has come to the conviction that although all these things should fail, God Himself could not fail. It is the song of a man who, but for a little while before, had imagined that God was inactive and indifferent; and who had discovered in the process of honest communion with God that He was active in spite of the appearances of the hour." How many times we pour out our prayers, perhaps we weep and struggle as we seek to serve God and it seems that nothing happens, and we wonder if God took note, and we wonder if we have wasted our time, or wonder whether we have founded our faith on someone who is faithless to us. God says in Matthew 10:29,30 that the very hairs of your head are numbered, and that not one sparrow falls to the ground without His notice. We read in the Book of Revelation 8:3 that the prayers of the saints have all been keep in golden vials as incense before the throne to be poured out in their time. Not one thing done for God is lost: not one pray uttered, not one struggle engaged, not one tear shed, but that God will use it. God is faithful. We can’t judge the significance of those efforts by this hour, we must consider the whole plan and their place in the purpose of God. They are the way God gets His work done.

One reason we fail to pray is that we say we don’t see anything happening. There are whole churches that devote themselves to secular means of "getting the job done" because they don’t see God doing anything. They say, "If we use the old methods [God’s methods], it doesn’t seem that anything happens, so we will use new methods [the world’s methods]." How do you know nothing is happening? John Wesley was finally converted through the words of a man who had lived 200 years before because he went to a meeting where they were reading the preface to Luther’s Commentary on Romans. Think of it! Something you do now may actually be used of God 200 years from now. In fact, as God’s people pray for God to fulfill His will on earth and for Him to come quickly, those prayers will be answered if there are millennia from the time they are uttered until they are fulfilled because our God is faithful—He is the God of salvation.

What is striking is that Habakkuk appoints this psalm accompanied by stringed instruments to be used in the public worship of God in the latter part of verse 19. It is to be more than a private struggle of a prophet with an unusual name; it is for every believer to understand and to experience because it tells us something about God, and it tells us something about us. Everything God revealed to Habakkuk was literally fulfilled: the Chaldeans were raised up, Israel was taken captive to Babylon, the Chaldeans were punished, the remnant was brought back, the temple was rebuilt, the city was reestablished; Christ the Messiah came, purchased redemption, died, rose again, suffered as we suffer, knew agony, weakness, doubt, trouble, frustration, and abandonment by everyone He loved, and that is why we can today turn to Him to find an ever present help in time of need.

To know God is to trust Him, and to trust Him is to triumph with thanksgiving that is nothing short of exultation. So with the words of the hymn writer, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name [His character]. When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil [Where is that? The holiest place of all: my anchor holds where God is, on His character]. His oath, His covenant, His blood, support me in the whelming flood. When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand." Giving thanks in the face of trouble is no trouble if you know God—the God of our salvation.

Let’s pray: Our Father we do thank you for passages like this. We thank you that you have recorded the intense struggles of your saints for us. As we go through our calamities and our soul struggles and our fearful doubts, we would indeed lose it if we could not find that others have walked this path before and others have found you faithful even in the dark. Oh Lord, help us to be thankful even in the face of trouble, for Lord it is in times of trouble when everything else is stripped away, when the true value of belonging to you shines forth. Lord, we would pray that you would bring no trouble into our lives that would not crowd us closer to you, and would not make us what you want us to be, so that the troubling times may be the reasons that we thank you for in years to come because through them you changed us and showed your glory. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

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