Untitled Sermon (7)

Chase Harrison

11/18/2024

Habakkuk 3:16-19 - But What About The Tunnel?

Intro

What’s up everybody. I hope yall are all doing well today.

If any of you recall the last time I got up here to preach, we wrestled with… “How Long, Oh Lord…” from Luke 18.

Looking at the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge, we asked, “how are we able to wait on the Lord to deliver us from the injustice that we see throughout our lives?”

Hopefully we all remember prayer and talking with God as being the answer!

So, in the spirit of continuing that theme of wrestling with difficult questions…let’s go ahead and shift our Bibles over to Habakkuk 3…and we’ll be in verses 16-19 this evening.

I think I just like to get up here and wrestle with existential questions lol.

Today…we’ll be wrestling with the reality of fear and anxiety in our lives. What do we do when something has gripped our hearts so tightly that our stomach’s turn in knots…maybe we actively tremble and shake in worry…how do we deal with this?

Rather than asking another inductive question like last time, I wanted to try something different and provide the answer now, and prove it along the way.

So you want to know what to do with true fear in your life? Here is my proposition for you…

When Christians encounter fear or anxiety in life, we must choose to rest in God for strength that lasts.

Let me say it again…when you are filled from your toes to the top of your head in fear, choose to rest in God to find your peace again.

Our brother Habakkuk begins this book upset about the evil that is present in Judah…He says, “How long do I have to call for help from you God and you not listen to me!! Why do you force me to look at injustice!!”

The Law doesn’t seem to be working toward its perceived intent (making people live righteously) and he is tired of the wicked prospering and oppressing the righteous.

But God knows, and He tells Habakkuk that He is doing something about it.

He’s bringing the Chaldeans.

Habakkuk is like…THE CHALDEANS???????!!!!!!! Why would you use someone even worse than WE ARE???!!

And God shows Habakkuk that He alone is king over the world and that He will defeat every wicked thing in the end. The Chaldeans (or Babylonians as they’re also called) will receive their judgment.

God tells Habakkuk this truth through a series of woes and judgments that He proclaims toward the Babylonians.

It is honestly an awe or fear-inducing answer to Habakkuk’s question of why them? Why the Chaldeans?

After this conversation with God, Habakkuk records a prayer to God where he begs Him to remember mercy in the midst of His wrath on the people of Judah. He reminds God that YHWH is the One who comes out to save His people from evil, and that He conquers the wicked.

This is where we pick up. After a very emotional, very personal, and very deep encounter with the God of judgment, these next few verses are where we find the reality of fear, and the relief of God.

So Let’s read together. Starting in verse 16…

READ

I heard, and I trembled within;

my lips quivered at the sound.

Rottenness entered my bones;

I trembled where I stood.

Now I must quietly wait for the day of distress

to come against the people invading us.

Though the fig tree does not bud

and there is no fruit on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no food,

though the flocks disappear from the pen

and there are no herds in the stalls,

yet I will celebrate in the Lord;

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!

The Lord my Lord is my strength;

he makes my feet like those of a deer

and enables me to walk on mountain heights!

Point 1: We Will Experience Fear — 16-17

Fear

As we look at the beginning of our text and consider the fact that we will interact with fear in our lives…we’ve got to ask the question: What is Habakkuk so afraid of?

He’s trembling…his lips are quivering…rottenness has entered into his bones he feels like he’s decaying…and he’s shaking where he stands…

What is he this afraid of?

After wrestling with this question for a few days…I think Habakkuk is reacting to two different things simultaneously, and it is causing his body to experience these very physical and visceral responses.

The first thing that he is experiencing is awe when looking at the Cosmic Judge of all things. We see this when he says, “I heard…” in verse 16, which I think is a callback to verse 2 in chapter 3…where he says, “I have heard the report about you, Lord I stand in awe of your deeds.”

Earlier in chapter 3 the prophet humbly and meekly shares how plague goes before God and how pestilence follows behind him. How He shakes the earth when He stands in judgment, and how the nations fear Him while the ancient mountains bow before Him.

He has had an encounter with the One who will crush the leader of the house of the wicked…using language that is reminiscent of when God drowned Pharaoh and his soldiers during the Exodus.

He is in awe of God.

The second thing I argue that he is experiencing is a reaction to the news that Judah will be conquered by the Chaldeans. This is seen in the way he redirects our attention to the impending doom headed their way at the end of verse 16… “Now I must quietly wait for the day of distress to come against the people invading us…”

Resignation

He is coming to grips with the fact that judgment is coming…and it is coming in the form of a very wicked nation making war against his people.

I also think you can draw this conclusion from what he shares next…his expectations for what life is going to be like under the new regime.

Expectation

What does he expect for the coming years?

Terrible times…famine, scarcity, stealing, etc. It is not going to be good…and in his own poetic way he is expressing this fact…

One quote that I read from Kenneth Turner in his commentary on our text I thought conveyed his fear in a powerful way…He says, “The old lesson was, ‘Man does not live by bread alone’ (Deut 8:3); the new challenge is whether man can live without bread at all.” Kenneth Turner, 249

Hard times are ahead, and he’s afraid of it. He fears what God has told him lies ahead for him in his life.

With that…I want to turn it to you. What is your interaction with fear and anxiety? What is your expectation with deliverance from that?

Do you feel the pressure of life after seminary yet?

Do you feel the pressure of finding a job in vocational ministry the moment you walk out of here yet?

Do you worry about the longevity of your ministry?

Do you feel anxiety over whether or not you are actually called to ministry, or if your wife or family can handle it?

While others might fear different things, these are true and real things that we as pastoral students feel and wrestle with.

Let me get the hard news out of the way first as we talk about our expectations of deliverance from these situations by talking about how the story of Judah ended in Habakkuk’s life…

After 3 different sieges starting in 605 BC and ending in 586 BC, the Temple of God and nation of Judah were destroyed at the hands of the Chaldeans. What he was shown became reality.

Let’s turn that inward again…maybe we won’t engage in vocational ministry. Maybe your family or mine can’t handle this and we will need to step away. Maybe our ministry will burn brightly, but be short-lived because God has ordained it that way.

These are all possible realities for any of us as students pursuing pastoral ministry.

If this were to be the case for you, is God still worthy of praise?

Fear is real in life. Anxiety is real in life. There are things that sometimes loom over our heads so haunting and large that we feel like they can’t be overcome. We ask questions like…am I a failure if I can’t do this when I graduate?

These things can keep us up at night for sure…and we can trust that Habakkuk’s fear did a number on him as well. And that’s why his next move is one that provides so much sweet air after feeling like we’re drowning.

Let’s turn our eyes to verses 18-19 now and just allow this to wash over us…this true relief that is found in God.

Point 2: True Relief Is Found In God — 18-19

Choice

Let’s read the two verses again…yet I will celebrate in the Lord; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation! The Lord my Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like those of a deer and enables me to walk on mountain heights!

Don’t miss this part here, this is so so important.

Habakkuk chooses to rejoice in the Lord regardless of his circumstances…He actually looks contrary to those circumstances to the One Who is above them and is sovereign over them.

He is looking externally to provide relief for his inner perspective about his expected immediate circumstances.

To draw this out for you…and maybe this is too specific an illustration for this audience…but this is the most lighthearted one I could think of after such a heavy first point lol.

Who here…has played fortnite? Come on, be honest. Raise your hands actually so I know to cut this if I need to lol.

Well in this game, you have the ability to play in a group of 4 against other groups of usually 3 or 4, and the objective is to fight your way to be the last group standing.

So you’re picking up various weapons and bonuses and things inside buildings or in fields or houses or lakes or really anywhere in this very cartoonish looking world full of vibrant colors and insane middle schoolers fighting against you that always seem to be yelling at you over their mics…you find these things all to aid you in your cause of outlasting everyone else.

Now in this game when your health has been dropped all the way to zero, you have been “downed” is the term, and you have to crawl around the terrain and find help before you get completely eliminated from the game.

You’ve got to find a teammate to revive you before the enemy finds you, and usually this entails calling for help in your own microphone…and now it’s you yelling into it that you’ve been knocked down and that someone needs to come save you.

Hopefully you’ve got a friend nearby, maybe an external source for revitalization and strength.

I hope you see how this connects… in a similar manner of looking for a revive when your down in fortnite, Habakkuk, in an obviously much more serious and dramatic fashion, is looking to God for strength in the “tunnel” of life.

His response is one that chooses worship, and I argue that this text is telling us that it is in our best interest to choose to worship the God of our salvation and this is where we will find rest.

Worship is the appropriate reaction to fear and anxiety for the Christian. Worship redirects us to where we draw our endurance.

Source or Well

Our source of strength is our God.

Habakkuk says…“The Lord is my strength…He makes my feet like the deer’s…and [He] makes it so that I can walk on mountain heights…”

God is the One who makes it possible to walk on difficult terrain like mountain heights with fleet feet…God is the One who makes it possible to go through difficult times…

The prophet is choosing to live out something that God told him in chapter 2 verse 4… ‘the righteous one will live by his faith.’ His choice of faith in God reminds him of where his help comes from.

We can make this same choice when we are faced with fear of the future in our lives.

If we have been redeemed by Jesus then we too can say that we will rejoice in the God of our salvation. We can set our minds on things above and look to Christ our God to experience joy in our trials.

Even while we are in a “tunnel” in life, we have seen the light at the end of it.

If you are in a battle with this today and need a reminder, go read Revelation 20-22 and intake this truth that you are a saint that will reign with Christ at the end of time as part of his bride.

Remember that we have been adopted as children into the family of God, and He has delivered us from the great villains of life, Death, Hell, and Satan himself. He is the God of our salvation, and not only that, He has become our strong tower and our defense.

He has become our Father that we can look to in times of distress and trust that He works everything for His glory and our good. He will never leave us nor forsake us, He has saved us and will save us all the way through the end.

This is why Paul, as he faces the anxiety of impending death, says in 2 Timothy 4:6-8…

"For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but to all those who have loved his appearing."

Even as we struggle with expectation and fear, let’s seek first the kingdom of God so that we can experience joy in our trials.

Let’s live by faith like Habakkuk is doing here because we have been saved from our sins and we are now temples of the Holy Spirit that sanctifies us. Our God is our source of life.

Conclusion

Habakkuk is a book of honest and tough questions…ones that you have probably asked yourself.

Questions like: What’s up with bad things happening? — Why do hate crimes happen? Why does abortion still exist?

Or like: Why does evil seem to persist and prosper? — Why does Joel Osteen keep getting richer? Why am I an employee under a boss that hates God?

These are similar things to what Habakkuk is wrestling with…and God doesn’t give him a direct answer…

Instead…God says, “I am in My holy temple…you need to trust that and live by the faith that characterizes the righteous.”

This reality brought awe and fear to Habakkuk, just like we experience in our lives. He can’t manipulate God into delivering what we want out of life, just like we can’t.

So what do we do with fear then?

We train our minds by begging the Holy Spirit to teach us to choose God when we fear something…for the sake of mental renewal and spiritual transformation in our lives when we are confronted with things that would pull us away from our trust in Him…

When Christians encounter fear or anxiety in life, we must choose to rest in God for strength that lasts.

God is our source, so ask Him for strength and He’ll make you walk on mountain heights.

Thank you.