The burden of Habakkuk

 

COLERAINE INDEPENDENT METHODIST CHURCH

SERMON NOTES SUNDAY 25 AUGUST 2024 – MR KEITH WILSON

Habakkuk 1 verses 1 to 17

I am sure that most of us will be able to quote a familiar verse from the book of Habakkuk.  For instance chapter 3 verse “ “O Lord revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.”  Maybe as far as the book or the man is concerned you know little.  Why did he pray that prayer?  Where did he live?  What did God call him to do?  It is God that has made us.  We are not our own.  We have to be reminded that there is an appointment for you and I with God.  We are not guaranteed tomorrow.  The only guarantee is of judgment.  There is a God who sent his son to save us from our sin.  “I have heard thy speech and was afraid revive thy work.”  Have you ever been afraid of God?  There are many things we could be afraid of but we should be afraid of the terribleness and awesomeness of sin.  God will judge sin.  Habakkuk has found himself in the centre of a sinful nation, a nation that had turned from God.  I love reading these prophets – they are only minor because of the size of the book written.  Here is Habakkuk praying for revival.  It is not so much revival that I want to look at today but there is no doubt that personally we need it, nationally we need in.  We are in desperate need of revival in our nation.  How many of us are prepared to pay the cost for revival?  That cost is a surrendered life.  Salvation at a cost.  Salvation is offered to you and I freely.  I remember asking God for forgiveness of my sins at 12 years of age.  God has never left me.  It had a cost.  It was mercy, grace, forgiveness and redemption at a cost, for Christ paid for my sin.  The cost for revival – we don’t live our lives in sin, we depart from iniquity and live a life for God.  Salvation – the cost for you and me.  There are things in our lives that we have to give up.  To allow God to have his own way in our life.  Habakkuk is like the book of Job.  Habakkuk speaks to God.  Have you ever spoken to God.  Really desperate to hear from God?  That God would come and speak the word?  I want to talk today about the burden Habakkuk had.  Have you that burden?  For loved ones, that God would come and save them?  That God would give us the victory? That he would give us more grace?  Like Job Habakkuk speaks to God and God speaks to him.  All I want to concentrate on is the words “the burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see”.  Habakkuk was burdened because he was discouraged.  This was a prophet who had a a dialogue with God in dark days.  He spoke with God in the dark days in which he was living.  I would be surprised today if there wasn’t one who is not discouraged.  When we are discouraged the enemy has a way of knocking us down further and further.  Habakkuk begins with these words.  He was burdened for the sin of Judah.  Burdened that God would raise up the Chaldeans to chasten his people – verse 6 “For lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.”   I wonder have you ever had a burden that God would send his nation over to a more evil nation>  Are we burdened for the sin of this land?  For our lost family members, friends, neighbours, work colleagues?  Do we really see the full picture?  People have no time to repent.  Habakkuk was living in a land where the people were taking advantage of other people.  There was cheating, lying, stealing.  God was going to come in judgment and deal with the people who had no concern for their own soul, for those around them.  Habakkuk was burdened for the sin of Judah – that God would send the Chaldeans to chasten God’s people.  Habakkuk was very discouraged and that is one of the enemy’s greatest tactics.  Those who care the most are burdened the most.  That burden manifests itself in discouragement.  It is very hard to get out of that discouragement.  Habakkuk found himself in that position. Discouragement has the power to get us off track.  To get our eyes off the Lord.  It has the power to look at the situation we find ourselves in instead of the God who is above the situation.  We see the problem rather than God who is above the problem.  Habakkuk was burdened because God would not intervene, he would not answer him.  People were falling away from God.  There is no-one in our government today who is burdened like this, concerned that the nations have drifted far from God.  It seemed to Habakkuk that God didn’t care because he wasn’t answering.  Have you ever felt like that?  You pray and God is not answering.  God is silent.  David the Psalmist cried “be thou not silent unto me.”  Job asked God questions – in fact question after question.  God remained silent up to chapter 38.  God didn’t respond until then.  God asked Job “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”  Job realised that almighty God is and how limitless he is.  But Habakkuk is asking the question in verses 2 and 3 “how long shall I cry Lord?”  In other words how long shall I pray and you will not listen?  He is burdened about the spoiling, the plundering in the land.  The law is slack, justice is never seen, wickedness is in control.  Your people are living in sin.  How long Lord will this continue?  He saw such sin in his people.  How could God answer?  How could God send revival?  There was no-one doing his will yet Habakkuk comes with the burden.  Where are we today as a country?  God will not remain silent forever.  Psalm 50 verse 3 “Our God shall come and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before him and it shall be very tempestuous round about him.”.  When God speaks you will hear.  My challenge or warning is – if God speaks to you today or this week listen to his voice because he might become silent again.  You will not hear his voice again.  Habakkuk was burdened because of the of the nation.  He couldn’t hear his God.  God will come and he will speak with judgment.  There is an eternity around the corner waiting for those that reject Christ.  God will not keep silent.  God spoke but not in the way Habakkuk wanted.  God was going to speak in judgment.  God would send the Chaldeans and chasten them.  That was not the way Habakkuk wanted but the people of God needed the judgment.  That is the truth of God’s word today.  They are trying to silence God’s word today.  We wonder why these things are happening, why God is silent.  God didn’t keep silent.  When Habakkuk heard God speak he realised God was going to send chastening.  Hebrews 12 verse 6 “For whom the Lord loves he chasteneth.”  Thank God for those mercies – that God holds us when we are going the wrong way, when we take the wrong turn.  God brings us back into the fold.  Thank God that he breaks the silence with a word of judgment.  If only we had this same burden.  Elisha prayed when Elijah was going up to heaven “give me a double portion of thy spirit when you leave.”  If only we had that same double portion, that we were burdened for sin and for the lost.  In Habakkuk’s day the godly king Josiah had died.  He had restored the temple and offerings to God.  He reinstated many of the sacrifices and we can read of him in 2 Kings 23.  “And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul and with all his might according to all the law of Moses, neither after him arose there any like him.”  When he died Judah sank into sin.  The reforms he had made were soon done away with.  People turned their back on God.  God sent the Chaldeans in to judge them.  Habakkuk was now about to witness their captivity.  He would see the mighty hand of God.  When we came to Christ we witnessed the mighty hand of God on our lives.  He lifted us from darkness into his light.  We should be burdened for souls today.  Habakkuk was concerned but he was also discouraged.  When we think of discouragement in the bible we remember Elijah under the juniper tree.  He had seen the mighty hand of God at Mount Carmel.  God destroyed the prophets of Baal yet around the corner he became discouraged because of Jezebel.  It is easy to get our eyes off the Lord.  When we do we can be led down a path of discouragement.  David was discouraged many times as he fled from Saul.  Think of the many people who suffer in these days.  They become discouraged.  C H Spurgeon suffered discouragement.  He saw his church burned and many lives taken.  We need to have victory over it and not allow it to conquer us.  That goes for many other vices too – alcohol, drugs, pornography.  We need to focus on God.  Others things like doubt, fear, lack of assurance can creep into our lives.  How can we overcome these things?  Look at Habakkuk.  He was a prophet.  We have thought also of David who was a king.  No-one is exempt.  Either a prophet, priest or king or a layman or laywoman.  Anyone can be discouraged.  There are lessons to be learned from Habakkuk.  What did he learn?  That God’s words are not his words.  Discouragement has overwhelmed me in times past.  It is very hard to speak to someone when they are discouraged, to come alongside someone who is thinking negative thoughts.  How do you go to an alcoholic and say there is hope?  Habakkuk learned to encourage himself in his God.  God’s ways are not our ways.  God is working in the midst of silence.  He was doing his work in the way he chose.  If we can understand and learn this vital lesson – the God is doing his work in his way, that he will not change his mind, God has a plan.  Habakkuk learned to trust God no matter the situation.  He was in these dark days but he learned to delight himself in the Lord.  Chapter 2 verses 1 to 4 shows us that Habakkuk was no longer asking questions.  He took himself into a tower, sat down and waited on God to speak to him.  God will speak in his time.  The answer is coming.  We are not to live by feelings, how we feel about our success or experience but to live by faith.  We should live surrendered to God.  Habakkuk goes to God and he waits.  He is no longer demanding God to answer him.  This discouraged prophet begins to praise his God and delights in him.  Habakkuk 3 verses 16 to 19.  When he couldn’t see God at work, God lifted him out of his discouragement and Habakkuk lifts his eyes solely upon God.