Circumstantial Worship

Intro

Over the last month or so we have been watching a scenario play out in scripture that isn’t all that different from scenarios we have seen in our own lives.

In our latest series called “Silence” we have been reading through the book of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk is an interesting book of the Old Testament for a couple of reasons.

It’s very short, only 3 chapters

It’s the only book written by a minor or major prophet where the entirety of the text is a dialogue between the prophet and God. There are no other characters.

This prophet wasn’t preaching to God’s people in the kingdom of Judah, instead this book records his complaints to God regarding what seemed to be God’s silence or absence in the wake of evil and wickedness among the Israelites.

If you have been here you know that we have been looking to this book to help us deal with similar questions.

Questions like:

God why do you allow bad things to happen to good people?

God why do you allow injustice to go unpunished?

God why do you allow evil and wickedness to appear as if it is being rewarded while the faithful seem to be punished?

Questions that at times, all of us have asked if we are being honest.

But thankfully, Habakkuk gives us a reference point for how to deal with those questions. And as we look into the text once last time in our 4th and final message in this series today, I hope to bring everything together for you.

Power in the Text

We are going to be in Habakkuk 3 today and pick up right where we left off last week.

If you remember, last week we read Habakkuk 3:1-16. And it was here that we see Habakkuk have this change in perspective.

Remember, in the beginning of the book we have Habakkuk questioning God and asking him, “why are you letting evil, violence, and injustice go on among your own people? Can you hear me, and if you can, don’t you care?”

And we see God finally respond to Habakkuk’s complaint by telling him that he does see it. It hasn’t gone unnoticed and that he is going to deal with it by using the nation of Babylon to bring judgment on Judah.

As you may recall, Habakkuk doesn’t like this plan. It doesn’t make sense to him. How could God deal with evil and wickedness by using an even more evil and wicked nation to bring judgement?

Habakkuk is concerned that God is going destroy his people, but God assures him that though it may seem like God has abandoned his people and that Babylon is getting away with an even greater depravity, that in the end God will deal with Babylon.

This brings Habakkuk to the realization that he can’t possibly understand why God does what he does.

If God is all powerful and all knowing then he has to trust that God knows something that he doesn’t.

This new perspective prompts Habakkuk in Chapter 3 that we started last week to sing a song of remembrance.

Habakkuk shows us that oftentimes, the only way to deal with crisis when it seems like God is silent or doesn’t care is to remind ourselves of all the things God has done in our past that demonstrates his faithfulness.

As I said last week, past performance is usually a good indicator of future results.

So he sings this song and in the end, comes to the place he can accept that he doesn’t understand, but that he doesn’t have to either.

All he can do is patiently wait for God to do what he has been doing all along and that is to be faithful to his word.

And with that acceptance and new perspective, Habakkuk ends his song with what we are going to read today.

Habakkuk 3:17-19 NIV 17 Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.

Habakkuk 3:17 starts one the most beautiful declarations of true faith and worship in the Bible.

Habakkuk declares that even if the fields and trees don’t produce any fruit and the cattle aren’t productive, he will still rejoice in the Lord.

He has moved from saying, in chapter 1, “God, do you even care what’s happening here?” to saying, in chapter 3, “God, regardless of what I see with my eyes, I will worship you!”

How is he able to do this? Because of what he did in verses 1-16, he remembered.

Habakkuk 3:17–18 moments won’t usually happen in our lives without Habakkuk 3:1–16 moments: moments when we remember the goodness and faithfulness of God in the past.

Moments when we acknowledge that God has a different perspective from ours.

Moments when we make the decision to trust him, even when we don’t like or understand what’s going on.

Learning to worship God in the good times prepares us to worship God in the difficult times.

And this is so important because we live in a results oriented world.

You want me to do something, show how it will benefit me.

You want me to believe something, show me the proof that it is worth believing in.

Big Idea/Why it Matters

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “God is good all the time, and all the time God is good!”

Many times, we hear someone say something like:

“I got the promotion, God is good!”

“The cancer is gone, God is good!”

“My child came back to the Lord, God is good!”

“Our marriage was saved, God is good!”

But how often do we hear something like this?

“I was let go from my job, God is good!”

“We thought treatments were working, but he took a turn for the worse and died, God is good!”

“My child was arrested last night, God is good!”

“My spouse left me for someone else, God is good!”

You don’t hear this because most people won’t believe it. If God is so good then bad things shouldn’t happen right?

If God is so good then my baby shouldn’t have died

If God is so good then I wouldn’t have lost my entire life’s savings when the market crashed

If God is so good then he would have stopped that rape or that murder

If God is so good then he wouldn’t have allowed me to experience that trauma.

And listen, these are tough questions, and we need to accept that these are real questions that people ask.

We can’t pretend like they aren’t or that life is so perfect and that faith is no struggle at all. Just believe and don’t admit you struggle with doubt.

doubt is not the same thing as disbelief.

Skeptics say that if God is really all powerful then he must not be very loving because a loving God would never subject his creation to the things we see happening around us.

Or they they say that if God is really all loving then he must not be very powerful or else he would use that power to do something about the mess we see ourselves in.

No, God can’t be all good and all loving.

The problem is that this thinking is flawed. Because it assumes that a loving God would stop all the evil in the world.

But in order for God to do that he then has to remove our free will because evil is the result of free creatures choosing to do wrong.

And to remove our free will would actually prove God to not be all that loving. Because a loving God is not going to force us to love him back, because if he did, then could we really call that love?

So if our free will is the result of God’s love then God’s goodness cannot be dependent upon our current set of circumstances.

Instead God’s goodness is best demonstrated in Jesus.

God is good, even when we struggle to see it.

Habakkuk couldn’t see the good in his circumstances, but he was able to worship anyway, why?

Because he trusted in who he knew God was, not in what he thought God could do for him.

Worship is not about the moment, its about the lifetime.

Application/Closing

Trust is one of the foundations of true worship. It’s worshipping without knowing how things will end.

It’s trusting that sometimes, what’s in the middle of the road in front of you will only really make sense in the rear-view mirror.

Many times, we seek clarity before we allow ourselves to trust. We say to ourselves, “If I knew how this was going to end, I would have an easier time trusting.”

The more we worship

The more we spend time in the Word of God

The more time we spend in prayer

The more we actively pursue the leadings of the Holy Spirit

The more time we spend in community with other believers

The more intentional we will be in looking for God in all situations. These practices help our trust to increase.

Learning to worship, regardless of circumstances, will deepen your faith and relationship with God.

True worship is centered on God and God alone. True worship should not be impacted by our current set of circumstances.

And if we can learn to worship like this, look at the last verse here...

Habakkuk 3:19 NIV 19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength! He makes me as surefooted as a deer, able to tread upon the heights.

Habakkuk 3:19 shows us the result of verses 17–18. When we rejoice in the Lord regardless of what we are experiencing, he strengthens us and enables us to go to higher places than we can on our own.

Most seasoned Christians have walked through a crisis of belief at some point in their lives: a season when they struggled to see God in the midst of their suffering, when they wondered if God was listening to their prayers.

But in that trial, their faith grew and developed. Maybe it even gave them a platform and an understanding to minister to other people going through difficult seasons.

The writer of Hebrews says we can find comfort knowing that Jesus went through many of the same things we do:

Hebrews 4:15 NIV 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

One of the most profound things about the book of Habakkuk is that the situation didn’t change from chapter 1 to chapter 3.

God wasn’t changing his mind. Judgement was coming for Judah and it would not be pleasant.

In fact it would be a terrible season for God’s people.

What did change was Habakkuk’s response to what was going on.

He moved from a place of frustration to a place of worship.

Habakkuk is a book that encourages us as believers that we can take our frustrations and our questions to God.

Habakkuk encourages us that as we continue to seek him through the difficult seasons, we can actually grow in our trust and faith.

This is the kind of faith that causes us to respond differently to difficulty than those who don’t know Christ.

Are you able to worship God like that this morning? Not because of what he can do for you, but simply because of who he is.