Good morning, everyone. What a beautiful spring day it is today. It’s been very nice out the last couple of weeks. Finally no snow. All right, so my name is Zeke, and I’m a member here at Red Village. And I’m on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
So I work with college students at UW Madison. Some of them are over there. Shout out to you guys. And I help those students to seek to reach the campus with the gospel by equipping students for a life of sharing the gospel, studying scripture, and pursuing God, both during their time in college and afterwards.
I’m very excited to bring you guys God’s word this morning and continue where we left off in Habakkuk, which was back in November. So it was a while back, so I’m going to give us a bit of a recap as we begin in our sermon. So like I said, I’m going to be continuing in the Minor Prophet Book of Habakkuk, which is found towards the back of the Old Testament. It’s about 2 thirds of the way into your Bible.
This book was written somewhere around 615 to 600 BC after the fall of the Assyrian Empire and during the rise of the Babylonians, but before the beginning of the Babylonian exile of Judah. So here’s a bit of a rundown of where we are at in the history of Israel. I made a little handy graphic there so you can follow along on screen. So we just finished First Samuel as a church a while back, which ends with the reign of the end of King Saul and the start of David.
Fast forward, King David has a son, Solomon, who becomes king and builds the temple. But after a huge mess of stuff, Israel splits into two kingdoms, referred to as Israel, the northern kingdom, and Judah, the southern kingdom. Israel immediately made some idols and was really bad basically all the time. After about 200 years of this, we see in Isaiah the prophesied and fulfilled judgment on Israel as the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom. After the kingdom split, Judah followed God some of the time, but still was often consumed by idol worship and other evils. Habakkuk is written in Judah around 300 years after the kingdom split, which is about 100 years after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel.
This is around the same time as the prophets of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. And all of this is leading up to when the Babylonian Empire lays siege to Judah. So we haven’t gotten there yet, but we’ll be talking about that quite a bit.
So I’ll be preaching through Habakkuk in four different sermons spaced out over the next year or so. This is the second of those four. The book starts out for its form with a one-verse intro, followed by two complaints that Habakkuk makes to God and God’s answers to those complaints.
In God’s second answer, he goes into a section of five warnings to people and nations about how to live and what punishment will be for injustice. Then the book ends, chapter 3, with a beautiful psalm that Habakkuk wrote, praising God and reiterating the lessons he has learned and the hope that he has found from his conversation with God. So last time, we looked at the first complaint of Habakkuk. That’s like verses 1 through 11. Habakkuk was seeing all the wickedness going on in Judah and asking God why God was not bringing forth justice. God responded to Habakkuk by telling him to look among the nations and see, to wonder, and be astounded at what God was doing.
God told Habakkuk he was going to raise up an even more wicked nation, the nation of Babylon, to violently bring the deserved justice to Judah. This week, we’ll be looking at chapter 1, verse 12, through chapter 2, verse 5. So the second complaint of Habakkuk and God’s answer to that complaint.
Please open with me to Habakkuk 1:12 through 2:5. Keep your Bibles open to follow along with me as I lead us through the text.
12 Are you not from everlasting,
O Lord my God, my Holy One?
We shall not die.
O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment,
and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.
13 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?
14 You make mankind like the fish of the sea,
like crawling things that have no ruler.
15 He[a] brings all of them up with a hook;
he drags them out with his net;
he gathers them in his dragnet;
so he rejoices and is glad.
16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and makes offerings to his dragnet;
for by them he lives in luxury,
and his food is rich.
17 Is he then to keep on emptying his net
and mercilessly killing nations forever?
2 I will take my stand at my watchpost
and station myself on the tower,
and look out to see what he will say to me,
and what I will answer concerning my complaint.
2 And the Lord answered me:
“Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so he may run who reads it.
3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay.
4 “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,
but the righteous shall live by his faith.[a]
5 “Moreover, wine is a traitor,
an arrogant man who is never at rest.
His greed is as wide as Sheol;
like death he has never enough.
He gathers for himself all nations
and collects as his own all peoples.”
Hab. 1:12 – 2:5, ESV
Let me pray.
Dear God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that we have the space here to gather and look into this story of old. Pray that you will give us wisdom to see the truths that you have in this passage. Pray that you would help us to just connect with the emotions that Habakkuk is feeling so that we can grow in the way that we seek you through suffering. I pray that you will help me to have words to speak, to communicate well, and that the truth of this passage would be made known. Jesus, we pray all these things in your name. Amen.
So, as we work through this text, I hope that we can see the ways that Habakkuk rightly sought God in his trouble and how he lives by faith, even through his suffering. There are a lot of ways that we can learn to better seek God in our suffering and to live by faith. In his last complaint, Habakkuk was distraught as he looked at how justice was being perverted and the righteous were being surrounded by the wicked.
God’s response to this was to bring punishment to the wicked through raising up the evil nation of Babylon to destroy Judah. So, I want to enter into imagining the emotions that Habakkuk is feeling right now. Last time, we worked through a handful of reasons why God’s response is good and is right, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard for Habakkuk to process and see the good in God’s answer. I picture the prophet to be filled with anxiety and fear as his deep concern for the righteous is magnified.
He sought the Lord to bring him his petition for the justice to come forth so he and the other righteous few in Judah could be saved. This has instead brought about a knowledge of an impending doom and destruction brought about because of the wicked in Judah. Habakkuk has lived his life studying the scriptures and seeing God’s promises to save his chosen people and deliver the righteous. He has read the Proverbs about the blessings God would bestow on the righteous, but in his life, he and the other righteous few are experiencing only pain and suffering in the wicked nation.
For him, this good news of the punishment of the wicked feels a lot like bad news. Keep these feelings in mind as we begin his second complaint. Please follow along with me as we work through the text. So his second complaint begins in verse 12. He once again calls upon the name of the Lord, this time affirming the true and good qualities he knows of God. God is from everlasting and his wisdom far above and beyond that of Habakkuk.
God is holy and set apart and perfectly good. Habakkuk states these truths while still filled with doubt and fear. Even as he is doubting how this could be something good, Habakkuk holds onto the promises of the Old Testament that God will fulfill through his chosen people. We shall not die. Even in the impending doom, Habakkuk knows God will not abandon his promise to send a Messiah through the line of David and Judah, and that therefore, not all Judah will be destroyed. We shall not die.
God will fulfill the promise he made to David, which is recorded in 1 Chronicles 17. When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for me and I will establish his throne forever.
I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him as I took it from him who was before you, but I shall confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne will be established forever. The prophet recognizes God’s ordination of the Babylonians as judgment on Judah, and even in his doubt of the plan, he recognizes that it is God’s plan to bring justice and correction to the wicked nation of Judah. He calls God, O Rock, which calls upon Moses’ song in Deuteronomy 32, which parallels the situation so well.
The rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. They have dealt corruptly with him. They are no longer his children because they are blemished. They are a crooked and twisted generation. It is in verse 13 that we see Habakkuk bring up the point of his complaint.
Even as he affirms all the truth he knows of God, he is also lamenting and has turmoil with what God is doing. He knows God is pure and holy, but how can a good God look at the evil of Babylon and allow it to flourish? How can a good and loving God allow such evil to exist? God himself describes the wicked nation as a bitter and hasty nation whose might is their God. They’re not only full of even more wickedness and evil than Judah, but they also have the power to destroy other nations. And as Habakkuk found out, God is raising them up to do exactly that.
How can a good God do such a thing? As Habakkuk sees it, maybe this makes sense as a punishment for the wicked, but what about me? What about me and the other righteous few? Why should we also be swallowed up by this evil nation of guilty men? Isn’t it pain enough for us to suffer under the injustice we already receive from the wicked men in Judah who surround us? Why do you continue to remain silent as the righteous are wrongfully punished?
Verse 14 brings Habakkuk’s biggest accusation of God. In his distraught and tumult, he accuses God of making mankind like fish or bugs with no direction, meaning, or value. He feels as though God has abandoned his chosen image bearers into chaos and destruction. In verse 15 and 16, the prophet returns his focus to the wicked nation of Babylon, describing them as a fisherman, bringing up the people of Judah as fish in a net, dragging the Hebrews from their home with hooks and nets, and rejoicing as they gaze at the writhing and suffering of the people of Judah. Then, in response to what we know is a victory over Judah provided to Babylon by God, Babylon, in their idolatry, turns within to worship themselves in their own might. They sacrifice to their net, making offerings to their dragnet, for it is by these, by the dominating of nations, that the nation lives in wealth.
They benefit from the destruction of those they conquer by not just destroying them in battle and ripping them from their homes, but they also strip the peoples of their belongings for their own gain. They idolize and worship their own might as they covet and steal the belongings of others to make themselves great. And as they strip away the humanity of Judah, they recline in their wealth and luxury, eating the richest of foods. I want to read for you a few verses out of Lamentations. Lamentations records much of what took place once Babylon attacked Judah and lay siege to Jerusalem. These are incredibly sad verses that I feel like show the huge contrast to the last two lines of verse 16.
He lives in luxury, and his food is rich. The tongue of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst. The children beg for food, but no one gives to them. Those who once feasted on delicacies perish in the streets. Those who were brought up in purple embrace ash heaps, for the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands were wrung for her. Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk.
Their bodies were more ruddy than coral. The beauty of their form was like sapphire. Now, their face is blacker than soot. They are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled to their bones. It has become as dry as wood.
Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger, who wasted away, pierced by lack of the fruits of the field. The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children. They became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people. This is the oracle, the doom that Habakkuk the prophet saw, that the wicked nation of Babylon would bring war to them, bringing the people of Judah to this level of death and desperation where mothers are eating their own children and the hungry beg for death from the sword because it sounds sweeter than their starvation. Then, they drag the survivors from their home into their dragnet. All will they, the Babylonians, live with an abundance of food in luxury with no respect for the one true God.
In verse 17, Habakkuk then asks if Babylon is to continue to wipe out nation after nation, cleansing the earth of all other free people to all come under the rain. The comparison to emptying of a net feels so belittling to the destruction they are causing. To reduce the destruction of a society to the act of dumping a catch of fish feels so dehumanizing. As I was writing this, I couldn’t help but think of our study in Revelation and the way Babylon is the name given to the place that is the exact opposite of heaven. I feel like that in itself shows the depth of evil that Habakkuk and Judah are awaiting. As Habakkuk says all these things to God, I picture how broken he must be.
Even as I wrote this section of the sermon, there were multiple times when I had tears streaming down my face as I tried to process through the hopelessness and desperation that Habakkuk was feeling. I hope I was able to share some of that emotion because of how much it magnifies the next words that Habakkuk speaks. In chapter two, verse one, the prophet in his tumult stands at his watchtower. We might first assume his concern is in watching for the enemy for its approach, but no. Habakkuk is not focused on the doom that is to come, but instead on God and God’s answer. I picture Habakkuk broken down, weary from being one of the few righteous left in Judah, weary from hearing of the impending doom, weary from his lament of the rising of a wicked nation that will bring destruction, and weary from making his complaint known to God and outpouring all his lament to the one true God.
I picture him broken and beat down, but holding fast to his watchtower, barely able to stand as he ties himself to his post so that he doesn’t crumple to the ground. Despite all he is feeling, he seeks God first for his answer. He doesn’t turn from God even as he doubts the goodness of God. No, he looks to see what God will say to him.
The last line of that verse, and what I will answer concerning my complaint might be better phrased and how I will be restored when I am corrected. Habakkuk knows he has made some rather bold assumptions, accusations of God, and that much of what he told God he was feeling isn’t accurate to God’s character. God has not abandoned Israel, even though it may feel like he has. Habakkuk is awaiting God’s correction so that he might once again have peace to trust in the work that God is doing in this day. And God, being the good God that he is, once again answers Habakkuk, beginning in chapter two, verse two. God tells him to write down the vision, to record the impending doom that God has revealed to Habakkuk, and make it known throughout the land that the heralds may read his words and run to tell all of Judah of the destruction that is to come.
In verse three, God reiterates what he said in chapter one, verse five, with even more urgency. I am doing a work in your day. This vision is going to come to pass. And that Habakkuk and the people of Judah should wait for it, for it will not delay.
In the first part of verse four, in verse five, then, God shows he is well aware of the wickedness of the enemy that the prophet is so concerned with. He knows that the nation is proud and not upright. He knows that they are full of greed and that Babylon is seeking the lives of many nations all across the earth.
God sees that they have a lust to destroy that is never satiated like death itself. In my next sermon, we will continue into God’s response where he goes into what are referred to as the five woes, five statements from God where he points out the transgressions of Babylon and the punishment due for those evils. This is one of the ways God answers Habakkuk’s complaint, by pointing out the justice that is coming to Babylon because of their evils.
We will focus more on that in my next sermon. The main answer from God we will focus on this week is a short line from verse four that is an incredibly important verse. But the righteous shall live by faith. God doesn’t reprimand Habakkuk for his complaint.
Instead, he helps Habakkuk to refocus on himself as if to say, I know you are one of just a few who are righteous that remain. Take heart, have faith, and know that I have a plan in this work that I am doing among the nations. Have faith that I see you and my plan is good even though it’s really hard to see how. Live by faith under my plan and trust that it is a good and right plan that will bring about something far better. God is bringing justice to all of Israel for their wickedness and preparing a righteous remnant to return. So, so far in the book, we have seen Habakkuk cry out for justice to come to the wicked in Judah.
And God responded by telling him to wonder and be astounded at the work that he is doing among the nations, that God is raising up a nation to destroy Judah and serve justice. This brought Habakkuk to cry out in desperation as he awaited the doom coming and questioned God and questioned how God’s plan could possibly be good when it raised up a nation so bad. God once again responded, calling Habakkuk to live by faith and trust that God is working all things for good.
So, what can we take away from this? I want to lay out three ways that we can seek God in trouble. The first way that we can seek God in trouble is by bringing our laments to God. A lament is a passionate expression of grief or sorrow like what we saw from Habakkuk today. We often talk about how as Christians, we should be filled with joy or that we should be content in every and any situation. But we often forget that our God is not a distant and cold God, but our father and friend also.
We forget that even when Jesus suffered, he cried out to God, proclaiming his deep emotion. We forget that God created us to be emotional beings and we are made in his image. So, we must learn to use that emotion rightly so that we can bring glory to God when we bring him our laments. The Psalms are a great place to look at bringing a lament to God. All throughout them, we see the psalmist crying out to God and bringing their grief, suffering, and sorrow to God. As I was thinking of the purpose of us bringing our laments to God, it reminded me a scene from The Horse and His Boy, which is one of the books of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.
Lewis. This is towards the end of that book. After Shasta, one of the main characters goes through a lot of struggles to get towards his goal of reaching Narnia. Shasta tells Aslan that he is one of the unluckiest people in the world, and so Aslan, the allegorical Jesus of the story, we can argue about that later, tells Shasta to tell him his sorrows. So, Shasta told how he had never known his real father or mother, and had been brought up sternly by the fishermen, and then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives and all of the dangers of Tashban, about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert, and he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Erebus, and also how very long it was since they had anything to eat. I do not call you unfortunate, said the large voice.
Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions, said Shasta. There was only one lion, said the voice. What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you that there were at least two lions the first night, and there was only one, but he was swift afoot. How do you know? I was the lion.
So, Shasta shared his troubles with Aslan and opened up to all he was feeling, and the product of it was a loving redirection to see the purpose and growth that came from all the hardship that he experienced, and to see all of how Aslan’s hand was at work on each situation. Often, it is through us sharing our laments that we can begin to understand all of what we have gone through and why we are being allowed to go through it. We get to begin to understand the work that God is doing and how it is much more grand than our comfort.
Now, to help us to actually practice this, here are three helpful components of bringing our laments to God so that we can seek God in our trouble through lamentations. So, this is the first point of three, and there’ll be three subpoints. If you’re confused, just look at the screen.
Sorry. So, when we suffer, we can often try and do it alone, or we seek pity from others, but the first thing that Habakkuk and many of the psalmists begin their lamentation with is crying out to God and seeking his help in their suffering. It is good for us to lament because it invites God into our sufferings and brings our troubles to him so that we can rely on him. Martin Luther loved the psalms, especially those of lament. He once said, when they speak of fear and hope, they use such words that no painter could so depict for your fear or hope, and no Cicero or other orator has so portrayed them. And they speak these words to God and with God.
This, I repeat, is the best thing of all. It gives the word double earnestness and life. I think this emphasizes so well that the most important part of lamenting is speaking the words to God, to begin by calling on the name of the Lord. Habakkuk does this in both of his complaints, and I think it is the best way we can begin to bring our laments to God. The second component of bringing your lament to God is to bear your heart to him. When we converse with God in this way, it is out of a deep need for God to bring us comfort and restore us.
The psalmist would cry out when they had enemies chasing them and feared for their lives, or when they faced persecution or injustice. For us, we may not all face death or persecution for our faith, but we likely will find ourselves in situations where we are suffering and need God. Pastor Aaron has often spoke on the dark night of the soul. When we find ourselves in these situations, we should cry out to God and show him the depths of our suffering. We don’t need to fear to be vulnerable with our Lord, for he will deal tenderly with our struggling spirit. So, when you lament, bring your whole emotion to God.
One of the most important parts of every lament is the end. Habakkuk ends by stationing himself at his watchtower to wait for the answer of the Lord, trusting in him. David ended one of his psalms by asking for deliverance.
David ended one of his psalms of asking for deliverance by proclaiming the truth that from the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people. When we lament, when we doubt, we must not lose faith.
We must continue to trust in the Lord and lean on the promises we know of God from the Bible. We must not give into our doubt, but we must trust in the Lord to deliver us. So, the first way that we can seek God in our trouble is by bringing our laments to the Lord, by calling on his name, bearing our emotion to him, and ending our lament with a proclamation of trust and hope in him.
The second way we can seek God in our troubles is by standing at our watchpost, stationing ourselves on the tower, and looking out to see what God will say to us. When we struggle, it is often our first response to put our head down and try and dig our feet in, or to drop everything to try and make it through on our own, but this isn’t what we should do. When we struggle, we should go to God with our suffering and watch for him to work. Oftentimes, when we feel like we have been abandoned by God or that God isn’t working, this isn’t true. It is just that we have our head down and we aren’t seeing the work he is doing. This idea reminded me so much of our application for much of our study in Revelation, that we should look and watch for the return of Jesus and the work he is doing with excitement, eagerly awaiting it.
This can be our hope for us in our trouble as we await what we know will come and long for the restoration of all things on the day of Christ. Now, we get to what is probably the most important way that we can seek God in our struggles, by living by faith. God’s answer to Habakkuk was simply this, to trust that God had a plan and that the work he is doing would bring about good. And this is really good for us to know that we should live by faith, that in our struggle, we should have faith in God.
But what does this mean? How are we to live by faith? The first way that comes to mind on how we should live by faith is to live a righteous life, even when we don’t experience the rewards now. Proverbs and a handful of other places throughout scripture describe a life of blessing being the outflowing of a life of pursuing God. When we live in an honorable way, we do often see beautiful fruit in all areas of our life, but this isn’t always the case. The world we live in is broken, in the world we live in is broken, and the sin and wickedness of others and ourselves can cause the righteous to suffer at the hands of the wicked for the gain of the wicked.
This isn’t just and isn’t the way God designed the world to be, but the almost greater evil is how it can tempt us to give into wickedness because pursuing righteousness doesn’t seem to be paying off. I think of this situation with academics, with a job, when everyone else is cheating or getting better grades, or everyone else is slacking off at work, or maybe everyone else is not quite accurately recording their hours, but no one is getting caught. It can be very tempting to join in. Or maybe it’s the other end of things. You’ve been tithing, supporting your church or your mission somewhere, but you realize you could get a bigger apartment or renovate your kitchen or save a down payment of your house, or maybe just be a little bit more comfortable if you cut back and stopped. After all, it doesn’t feel like you’re being rewarded for trying to live by faith with your finances.
So really, what’s the point? It doesn’t really feel like you’re being rewarded to trying to work as if you’re doing it for the Lord, so why not start slacking off? It doesn’t feel like things are going your way by trying to date or stay single or stay married in a way that honors God, so why not just give in?
These can all be really tempting places to stop living by faith in all these areas and more as it gets harder and harder. But we should know that we don’t live righteously in these areas for earthly rewards, no. We live righteously in these areas to serve our Father in heaven, and the rewards will come in their due time. The second way we can live by faith is to have faith in Jesus’s call for us as we seek to live out his greatest call for all of our lives as Christians.
Jesus desires us to be faithful witnesses. We can live by faith in this way by taking evangelistic risks. As Christians, we often like to wait for really open doors before we start to say anything about our faith. But church, I want to challenge you to live by faith in your mission, to reach the lost by taking risks. Strike up a conversation with your coworker and share something about your faith. Or, Christian, ask your neighbor what they think about faith or what their spiritual background is.
If you see someone struggling, offer to pray for them. Invite a friend to your Bible study or to church. Just see what they say.
Invite someone over for dinner. Practice hospitality. Build a relationship and love them well as you seek to take bold steps and live by faith in your witness. Church, I challenge you to live by faith in this area and to begin even today. After the service, decide on an evangelistic risk you want to take this week. And in the words of Aaron, it doesn’t have to be a grand slam.
Just faithfully and prayerfully seek a base hit. The third and most important place we can live by faith is by placing our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Paul quotes this verse from Habakkuk in his letter to the Romans. He writes, for I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For it is the gospel of righteous, for in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. Just as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
We are all deserving of punishment unless we are perfectly righteous, something none of us can claim. But it is through faith that we can take on the righteousness of Christ, the one who did live perfectly righteous so that we can be saved. For our hope is built on nothing less than on Jesus Christ who is our righteousness. If you’re here today and have not put your faith in Jesus, you are still relying on the righteousness that comes from yourself, which is worthless. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. I implore you today to seek Christ and put your faith in him, that you may share in the resurrection from the dead and have true life. If you aren’t ready to do this yet, one simple step that you can take today is to ask someone here why they have faith in Jesus and what Jesus has done for them.
I’m sure they would love to share with you. Church, I hope that together we can learn to live righteous lives by faith, seeking to live and love like Jesus did and looking to the promises of God and depending on him in our sufferings and struggles. I know looking at the suffering of Habakkuk and the faithfulness God called him to challenged me to grow in relying on God in my troubles. And I hope that we as a church can grow in doing exactly that, especially as it pertains to growing in our witness as a church. Let me pray to close. Dear God, we thank you for your faithfulness to us.
We thank you that you give us a righteousness that is not our own so that we may find true life. We thank you for your love that you’ve given to us and your faithfulness to us, even as we doubt, even as we lament the sufferings and the struggles that we go through. Lord, I pray that you will help us to live by faith as we seek to live righteous lives in a broken world, as we seek to be faithful witnesses and help others to come to know you, Jesus. Pray that you will help us to grow in each and every one of these areas.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Good morning, everyone. What a beautiful spring day it is today. It’s been very nice out the last couple of weeks. Finally no snow. All right, so my name is Zeke, and I’m a member here at Red Village. And I’m on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
So I work with college students at UW Madison. Some of them are over there. Shout out to you guys. And I help those students to seek to reach the campus with the gospel by equipping students for a life of sharing the gospel, studying scripture, and pursuing God, both during their time in college and afterwards.
I’m very excited to bring you guys God’s word this morning and continue where we left off in Habakkuk, which was back in November. So it was a while back, so I’m going to give us a bit of a recap as we begin in our sermon. So like I said, I’m going to be continuing in the Minor Prophet Book of Habakkuk, which is found towards the back of the Old Testament. It’s about 2 thirds of the way into your Bible.
This book was written somewhere around 615 to 600 BC after the fall of the Assyrian Empire and during the rise of the Babylonians, but before the beginning of the Babylonian exile of Judah. So here’s a bit of a rundown of where we are at in the history of Israel. I made a little handy graphic there so you can follow along on screen. So we just finished First Samuel as a church a while back, which ends with the reign of the end of King Saul and the start of David.
Fast forward, King David has a son, Solomon, who becomes king and builds the temple. But after a huge mess of stuff, Israel splits into two kingdoms, referred to as Israel, the northern kingdom, and Judah, the southern kingdom. Israel immediately made some idols and was really bad basically all the time. After about 200 years of this, we see in Isaiah the prophesied and fulfilled judgment on Israel as the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom. After the kingdom split, Judah followed God some of the time, but still was often consumed by idol worship and other evils. Habakkuk is written in Judah around 300 years after the kingdom split, which is about 100 years after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel.
This is around the same time as the prophets of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. And all of this is leading up to when the Babylonian Empire lays siege to Judah. So we haven’t gotten there yet, but we’ll be talking about that quite a bit.
So I’ll be preaching through Habakkuk in four different sermons spaced out over the next year or so. This is the second of those four. The book starts out for its form with a one-verse intro, followed by two complaints that Habakkuk makes to God and God’s answers to those complaints.
In God’s second answer, he goes into a section of five warnings to people and nations about how to live and what punishment will be for injustice. Then the book ends, chapter 3, with a beautiful psalm that Habakkuk wrote, praising God and reiterating the lessons he has learned and the hope that he has found from his conversation with God. So last time, we looked at the first complaint of Habakkuk. That’s like verses 1 through 11. Habakkuk was seeing all the wickedness going on in Judah and asking God why God was not bringing forth justice. God responded to Habakkuk by telling him to look among the nations and see, to wonder, and be astounded at what God was doing.
God told Habakkuk he was going to raise up an even more wicked nation, the nation of Babylon, to violently bring the deserved justice to Judah. This week, we’ll be looking at chapter 1, verse 12, through chapter 2, verse 5. So the second complaint of Habakkuk and God’s answer to that complaint.
Please open with me to Habakkuk 1, 12 through 2, 5. Keep your Bibles open to follow along with me as I lead us through the text. Are you not from everlasting?
O Lord, my God, my Holy One, we shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as judgment. And you, O 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? You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook.
He drags them out with his net. He gathers them in his dragnet. And he rejoices and is glad. Therefore, he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet. For by them he lives in luxury and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?
I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself in the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me, write the vision. Make it plain on the tablet so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end. It will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay.
Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him. But the righteous shall live by his faith. Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol. Like death, he is never enough.
He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples. Let me pray. Dear God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that we have the space here to gather and look into this story of old. Pray that you will give us wisdom to see the truths that you have in this passage. Pray that you would help us to just connect with the emotions that Habakkuk is feeling so that we can grow in the way that we seek you through suffering.
Pray that you will help me to have words to speak, to communicate well, and that the truth of this passage would be made known. Jesus, we pray all these things in your name. Amen. So, as we work through this text, I hope that we can see the ways that Habakkuk rightly sought God in his trouble and how he lives by faith, even through his suffering. There are a lot of ways that we can learn to better seek God in our suffering and to live by faith. In his last complaint, Habakkuk was distraught as he looked at how justice was being perverted and the righteous were being surrounded by the wicked.
God’s response to this was to bring punishment to the wicked through raising up the evil nation of Babylon to destroy Judah. So, I want to enter into imagining the emotions that Habakkuk is feeling right now. Last time, we worked through a handful of reasons why God’s response is good and is right, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard for Habakkuk to process and see the good in God’s answer. I picture the prophet to be filled with anxiety and fear as his deep concern for the righteous is magnified.
He sought the Lord to bring him his petition for the justice to come forth so he and the other righteous few in Judah could be saved. This has instead brought about a knowledge of an impending doom and destruction brought about because of the wicked in Judah. Habakkuk has lived his life studying the scriptures and seeing God’s promises to save his chosen people and deliver the righteous. He has read the Proverbs about the blessings God would bestow on the righteous, but in his life, he and the other righteous few are experiencing only pain and suffering in the wicked nation.
For him, this good news of the punishment of the wicked feels a lot like bad news. Keep these feelings in mind as we begin his second complaint. Please follow along with me as we work through the text. So his second complaint begins in verse 12. He once again calls upon the name of the Lord, this time affirming the true and good qualities he knows of God. God is from everlasting and his wisdom far above and beyond that of Habakkuk.
God is holy and set apart and perfectly good. Habakkuk states these truths while still filled with doubt and fear. Even as he is doubting how this could be something good, Habakkuk holds onto the promises of the Old Testament that God will fulfill through his chosen people. We shall not die. Even in the impending doom, Habakkuk knows God will not abandon his promise to send a Messiah through the line of David and Judah, and that therefore, not all Judah will be destroyed. We shall not die.
God will fulfill the promise he made to David, which is recorded in 1 Chronicles 17. When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for me and I will establish his throne forever.
I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him as I took it from him who was before you, but I shall confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne will be established forever. The prophet recognizes God’s ordination of the Babylonians as judgment on Judah, and even in his doubt of the plan, he recognizes that it is God’s plan to bring justice and correction to the wicked nation of Judah. He calls God, O Rock, which calls upon Moses’ song in Deuteronomy 32, which parallels the situation so well.
The rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. They have dealt corruptly with him. They are no longer his children because they are blemished. They are a crooked and twisted generation. It is in verse 13 that we see Habakkuk bring up the point of his complaint.
Even as he affirms all the truth he knows of God, he is also lamenting and has turmoil with what God is doing. He knows God is pure and holy, but how can a good God look at the evil of Babylon and allow it to flourish? How can a good and loving God allow such evil to exist? God himself describes the wicked nation as a bitter and hasty nation whose might is their God. They’re not only full of even more wickedness and evil than Judah, but they also have the power to destroy other nations. And as Habakkuk found out, God is raising them up to do exactly that.
How can a good God do such a thing? As Habakkuk sees it, maybe this makes sense as a punishment for the wicked, but what about me? What about me and the other righteous few? Why should we also be swallowed up by this evil nation of guilty men? Isn’t it pain enough for us to suffer under the injustice we already receive from the wicked men in Judah who surround us? Why do you continue to remain silent as the righteous are wrongfully punished?
Verse 14 brings Habakkuk’s biggest accusation of God. In his distraught and tumult, he accuses God of making mankind like fish or bugs with no direction, meaning, or value. He feels as though God has abandoned his chosen image bearers into chaos and destruction. In verse 15 and 16, the prophet returns his focus to the wicked nation of Babylon, describing them as a fisherman, bringing up the people of Judah as fish in a net, dragging the Hebrews from their home with hooks and nets, and rejoicing as they gaze at the writhing and suffering of the people of Judah. Then, in response to what we know is a victory over Judah provided to Babylon by God, Babylon, in their idolatry, turns within to worship themselves in their own might. They sacrifice to their net, making offerings to their dragnet, for it is by these, by the dominating of nations, that the nation lives in wealth.
They benefit from the destruction of those they conquer by not just destroying them in battle and ripping them from their homes, but they also strip the peoples of their belongings for their own gain. They idolize and worship their own might as they covet and steal the belongings of others to make themselves great. And as they strip away the humanity of Judah, they recline in their wealth and luxury, eating the richest of foods. I want to read for you a few verses out of Lamentations. Lamentations records much of what took place once Babylon attacked Judah and lay siege to Jerusalem. These are incredibly sad verses that I feel like show the huge contrast to the last two lines of verse 16.
He lives in luxury, and his food is rich. The tongue of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst. The children beg for food, but no one gives to them. Those who once feasted on delicacies perish in the streets. Those who were brought up in purple embrace ash heaps, for the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands were wrung for her. Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk.
Their bodies were more ruddy than coral. The beauty of their form was like sapphire. Now, their face is blacker than soot. They are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled to their bones. It has become as dry as wood.
Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger, who wasted away, pierced by lack of the fruits of the field. The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children. They became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people. This is the oracle, the doom that Habakkuk the prophet saw, that the wicked nation of Babylon would bring war to them, bringing the people of Judah to this level of death and desperation where mothers are eating their own children and the hungry beg for death from the sword because it sounds sweeter than their starvation. Then, they drag the survivors from their home into their dragnet. All will they, the Babylonians, live with an abundance of food in luxury with no respect for the one true God.
In verse 17, Habakkuk then asks if Babylon is to continue to wipe out nation after nation, cleansing the earth of all other free people to all come under the rain. The comparison to emptying of a net feels so belittling to the destruction they are causing. To reduce the destruction of a society to the act of dumping a catch of fish feels so dehumanizing. As I was writing this, I couldn’t help but think of our study in Revelation and the way Babylon is the name given to the place that is the exact opposite of heaven. I feel like that in itself shows the depth of evil that Habakkuk and Judah are awaiting. As Habakkuk says all these things to God, I picture how broken he must be.
Even as I wrote this section of the sermon, there were multiple times when I had tears streaming down my face as I tried to process through the hopelessness and desperation that Habakkuk was feeling. I hope I was able to share some of that emotion because of how much it magnifies the next words that Habakkuk speaks. In chapter two, verse one, the prophet in his tumult stands at his watchtower. We might first assume his concern is in watching for the enemy for its approach, but no. Habakkuk is not focused on the doom that is to come, but instead on God and God’s answer. I picture Habakkuk broken down, weary from being one of the few righteous left in Judah, weary from hearing of the impending doom, weary from his lament of the rising of a wicked nation that will bring destruction, and weary from making his complaint known to God and outpouring all his lament to the one true God.
I picture him broken and beat down, but holding fast to his watchtower, barely able to stand as he ties himself to his post so that he doesn’t crumple to the ground. Despite all he is feeling, he seeks God first for his answer. He doesn’t turn from God even as he doubts the goodness of God. No, he looks to see what God will say to him.
The last line of that verse, and what I will answer concerning my complaint might be better phrased and how I will be restored when I am corrected. Habakkuk knows he has made some rather bold assumptions, accusations of God, and that much of what he told God he was feeling isn’t accurate to God’s character. God has not abandoned Israel, even though it may feel like he has. Habakkuk is awaiting God’s correction so that he might once again have peace to trust in the work that God is doing in this day. And God, being the good God that he is, once again answers Habakkuk, beginning in chapter two, verse two. God tells him to write down the vision, to record the impending doom that God has revealed to Habakkuk, and make it known throughout the land that the heralds may read his words and run to tell all of Judah of the destruction that is to come.
In verse three, God reiterates what he said in chapter one, verse five, with even more urgency. I am doing a work in your day. This vision is going to come to pass. And that Habakkuk and the people of Judah should wait for it, for it will not delay.
In the first part of verse four, in verse five, then, God shows he is well aware of the wickedness of the enemy that the prophet is so concerned with. He knows that the nation is proud and not upright. He knows that they are full of greed and that Babylon is seeking the lives of many nations all across the earth.
God sees that they have a lust to destroy that is never satiated like death itself. In my next sermon, we will continue into God’s response where he goes into what are referred to as the five woes, five statements from God where he points out the transgressions of Babylon and the punishment due for those evils. This is one of the ways God answers Habakkuk’s complaint, by pointing out the justice that is coming to Babylon because of their evils.
We will focus more on that in my next sermon. The main answer from God we will focus on this week is a short line from verse four that is an incredibly important verse. But the righteous shall live by faith. God doesn’t reprimand Habakkuk for his complaint.
Instead, he helps Habakkuk to refocus on himself as if to say, I know you are one of just a few who are righteous that remain. Take heart, have faith, and know that I have a plan in this work that I am doing among the nations. Have faith that I see you and my plan is good even though it’s really hard to see how. Live by faith under my plan and trust that it is a good and right plan that will bring about something far better. God is bringing justice to all of Israel for their wickedness and preparing a righteous remnant to return. So, so far in the book, we have seen Habakkuk cry out for justice to come to the wicked in Judah.
And God responded by telling him to wonder and be astounded at the work that he is doing among the nations, that God is raising up a nation to destroy Judah and serve justice. This brought Habakkuk to cry out in desperation as he awaited the doom coming and questioned God and questioned how God’s plan could possibly be good when it raised up a nation so bad. God once again responded, calling Habakkuk to live by faith and trust that God is working all things for good.
So, what can we take away from this? I want to lay out three ways that we can seek God in trouble. The first way that we can seek God in trouble is by bringing our laments to God. A lament is a passionate expression of grief or sorrow like what we saw from Habakkuk today. We often talk about how as Christians, we should be filled with joy or that we should be content in every and any situation. But we often forget that our God is not a distant and cold God, but our father and friend also.
We forget that even when Jesus suffered, he cried out to God, proclaiming his deep emotion. We forget that God created us to be emotional beings and we are made in his image. So, we must learn to use that emotion rightly so that we can bring glory to God when we bring him our laments. The Psalms are a great place to look at bringing a lament to God. All throughout them, we see the psalmist crying out to God and bringing their grief, suffering, and sorrow to God. As I was thinking of the purpose of us bringing our laments to God, it reminded me a scene from The Horse and His Boy, which is one of the books of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.
Lewis. This is towards the end of that book. After Shasta, one of the main characters goes through a lot of struggles to get towards his goal of reaching Narnia. Shasta tells Aslan that he is one of the unluckiest people in the world, and so Aslan, the allegorical Jesus of the story, we can argue about that later, tells Shasta to tell him his sorrows. So, Shasta told how he had never known his real father or mother, and had been brought up sternly by the fishermen, and then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives and all of the dangers of Tashban, about his night among the tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert, and he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Erebus, and also how very long it was since they had anything to eat. I do not call you unfortunate, said the large voice.
Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions, said Shasta. There was only one lion, said the voice. What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you that there were at least two lions the first night, and there was only one, but he was swift afoot. How do you know? I was the lion.
So, Shasta shared his troubles with Aslan and opened up to all he was feeling, and the product of it was a loving redirection to see the purpose and growth that came from all the hardship that he experienced, and to see all of how Aslan’s hand was at work on each situation. Often, it is through us sharing our laments that we can begin to understand all of what we have gone through and why we are being allowed to go through it. We get to begin to understand the work that God is doing and how it is much more grand than our comfort.
Now, to help us to actually practice this, here are three helpful components of bringing our laments to God so that we can seek God in our trouble through lamentations. So, this is the first point of three, and there’ll be three subpoints. If you’re confused, just look at the screen.
Sorry. So, when we suffer, we can often try and do it alone, or we seek pity from others, but the first thing that Habakkuk and many of the psalmists begin their lamentation with is crying out to God and seeking his help in their suffering. It is good for us to lament because it invites God into our sufferings and brings our troubles to him so that we can rely on him. Martin Luther loved the psalms, especially those of lament. He once said, when they speak of fear and hope, they use such words that no painter could so depict for your fear or hope, and no Cicero or other orator has so portrayed them. And they speak these words to God and with God.
This, I repeat, is the best thing of all. It gives the word double earnestness and life. I think this emphasizes so well that the most important part of lamenting is speaking the words to God, to begin by calling on the name of the Lord. Habakkuk does this in both of his complaints, and I think it is the best way we can begin to bring our laments to God. The second component of bringing your lament to God is to bear your heart to him. When we converse with God in this way, it is out of a deep need for God to bring us comfort and restore us.
The psalmist would cry out when they had enemies chasing them and feared for their lives, or when they faced persecution or injustice. For us, we may not all face death or persecution for our faith, but we likely will find ourselves in situations where we are suffering and need God. Pastor Aaron has often spoke on the dark night of the soul. When we find ourselves in these situations, we should cry out to God and show him the depths of our suffering. We don’t need to fear to be vulnerable with our Lord, for he will deal tenderly with our struggling spirit. So, when you lament, bring your whole emotion to God.
One of the most important parts of every lament is the end. Habakkuk ends by stationing himself at his watchtower to wait for the answer of the Lord, trusting in him. David ended one of his psalms by asking for deliverance.
David ended one of his psalms of asking for deliverance by proclaiming the truth that from the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people. When we lament, when we doubt, we must not lose faith.
We must continue to trust in the Lord and lean on the promises we know of God from the Bible. We must not give into our doubt, but we must trust in the Lord to deliver us. So, the first way that we can seek God in our trouble is by bringing our laments to the Lord, by calling on his name, bearing our emotion to him, and ending our lament with a proclamation of trust and hope in him.
The second way we can seek God in our troubles is by standing at our watchpost, stationing ourselves on the tower, and looking out to see what God will say to us. When we struggle, it is often our first response to put our head down and try and dig our feet in, or to drop everything to try and make it through on our own, but this isn’t what we should do. When we struggle, we should go to God with our suffering and watch for him to work. Oftentimes, when we feel like we have been abandoned by God or that God isn’t working, this isn’t true. It is just that we have our head down and we aren’t seeing the work he is doing. This idea reminded me so much of our application for much of our study in Revelation, that we should look and watch for the return of Jesus and the work he is doing with excitement, eagerly awaiting it.
This can be our hope for us in our trouble as we await what we know will come and long for the restoration of all things on the day of Christ. Now, we get to what is probably the most important way that we can seek God in our struggles, by living by faith. God’s answer to Habakkuk was simply this, to trust that God had a plan and that the work he is doing would bring about good. And this is really good for us to know that we should live by faith, that in our struggle, we should have faith in God.
But what does this mean? How are we to live by faith? The first way that comes to mind on how we should live by faith is to live a righteous life, even when we don’t experience the rewards now. Proverbs and a handful of other places throughout scripture describe a life of blessing being the outflowing of a life of pursuing God. When we live in an honorable way, we do often see beautiful fruit in all areas of our life, but this isn’t always the case. The world we live in is broken, in the world we live in is broken, and the sin and wickedness of others and ourselves can cause the righteous to suffer at the hands of the wicked for the gain of the wicked.
This isn’t just and isn’t the way God designed the world to be, but the almost greater evil is how it can tempt us to give into wickedness because pursuing righteousness doesn’t seem to be paying off. I think of this situation with academics, with a job, when everyone else is cheating or getting better grades, or everyone else is slacking off at work, or maybe everyone else is not quite accurately recording their hours, but no one is getting caught. It can be very tempting to join in. Or maybe it’s the other end of things. You’ve been tithing, supporting your church or your mission somewhere, but you realize you could get a bigger apartment or renovate your kitchen or save a down payment of your house, or maybe just be a little bit more comfortable if you cut back and stopped. After all, it doesn’t feel like you’re being rewarded for trying to live by faith with your finances.
So really, what’s the point? It doesn’t really feel like you’re being rewarded to trying to work as if you’re doing it for the Lord, so why not start slacking off? It doesn’t feel like things are going your way by trying to date or stay single or stay married in a way that honors God, so why not just give in?
These can all be really tempting places to stop living by faith in all these areas and more as it gets harder and harder. But we should know that we don’t live righteously in these areas for earthly rewards, no. We live righteously in these areas to serve our Father in heaven, and the rewards will come in their due time. The second way we can live by faith is to have faith in Jesus’s call for us as we seek to live out his greatest call for all of our lives as Christians.
Jesus desires us to be faithful witnesses. We can live by faith in this way by taking evangelistic risks. As Christians, we often like to wait for really open doors before we start to say anything about our faith. But church, I want to challenge you to live by faith in your mission, to reach the lost by taking risks. Strike up a conversation with your coworker and share something about your faith. Or, Christian, ask your neighbor what they think about faith or what their spiritual background is.
If you see someone struggling, offer to pray for them. Invite a friend to your Bible study or to church. Just see what they say.
Invite someone over for dinner. Practice hospitality. Build a relationship and love them well as you seek to take bold steps and live by faith in your witness. Church, I challenge you to live by faith in this area and to begin even today. After the service, decide on an evangelistic risk you want to take this week. And in the words of Aaron, it doesn’t have to be a grand slam.
Just faithfully and prayerfully seek a base hit. The third and most important place we can live by faith is by placing our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Paul quotes this verse from Habakkuk in his letter to the Romans. He writes, for I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For it is the gospel of righteous, for in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. Just as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
We are all deserving of punishment unless we are perfectly righteous, something none of us can claim. But it is through faith that we can take on the righteousness of Christ, the one who did live perfectly righteous so that we can be saved. For our hope is built on nothing less than on Jesus Christ who is our righteousness. If you’re here today and have not put your faith in Jesus, you are still relying on the righteousness that comes from yourself, which is worthless. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. I implore you today to seek Christ and put your faith in him, that you may share in the resurrection from the dead and have true life. If you aren’t ready to do this yet, one simple step that you can take today is to ask someone here why they have faith in Jesus and what Jesus has done for them.
I’m sure they would love to share with you. Church, I hope that together we can learn to live righteous lives by faith, seeking to live and love like Jesus did and looking to the promises of God and depending on him in our sufferings and struggles. I know looking at the suffering of Habakkuk and the faithfulness God called him to challenged me to grow in relying on God in my troubles. And I hope that we as a church can grow in doing exactly that, especially as it pertains to growing in our witness as a church. Let me pray to close.
Dear God, we thank you for your faithfulness to us. We thank you that you give us a righteousness that is not our own so that we may find true life. We thank you for your love that you’ve given to us and your faithfulness to us, even as we doubt, even as we lament the sufferings and the struggles that we go through. Lord, I pray that you will help us to live by faith as we seek to live righteous lives in a broken world, as we seek to be faithful witnesses and help others to come to know you, Jesus. Pray that you will help us to grow in each and every one of these areas. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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