Fear to Faith

Introduction

This morning we are going to start a short series from the book of Habakkuk on how we can turn all the fear that we have experienced in this past year into faith. To one degree or another, we have all experienced some level of fear whether it’s fear for our health, violence in our society, uncertainty over the future, or even natural disasters. The list seems to go on and on, in terms of events and changes in our world that have produced a great deal of not only anxiety but maybe even trauma. Mira and I were talking about how our perception of time has changed during this pandemic and how everything feels so drawn out and psychologically that is a sign of unhealed trauma. Even though there has been a significant passage of time, nearly 2 years, all the emotions that we experienced still seems raw and maybe still unprocessed. It’s crazy to me that when all of this began, we just sent Jeremiah off to college and Carissa was still in middle school. But now our son is a junior ready to graduate soon and our daughter is a sophomore in high school.

So much precious time has gone by and I don’t know how you have been thinking through these things but I don’t want to waste any more time living out of fear. As the apostle Paul put so well, “… the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” And as we begin this series, I want us to think about this question: “What action or decision have you made by faith in the Son of God?” Not a decision that was based on self-preservation or to protect yourself and your family or even a self-willed reaction to the issues of our day but something that you can honestly say to yourself, “That was a step that I took because of my faith in a Savior who loved me and gave His life for me.”

If you are having a hard time coming up with a concrete example of how you lived out your faith in these past two years then you’re probably not alone and I pray that this series of messages will stir you to start living by faith once again. With that let’s turn to Habakkuk 1 and we’ll look at the introduction to this book.

Habakkuk 1:1–11 ESV

The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted. “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves; their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle swift to devour. They all come for violence, all their faces forward. They gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their god!”

Body:

As an introduction to this series, there are three themes from the book that we need to be aware of and come to terms with:

The Judgment of God

The Sovereignty of God

The Salvation of God

The prophet Habakkuk ministered during a very turbulent and historically important period of time. I don’t want to make light of the pandemic but having enemy armies surrounding your nation with little chance of winning that war seems like a far more serious problem than what we are currently dealing with. Having said that, the global problems created by this pandemic are just starting to surface. There are food shortages, famines, political instability, economic devastation in so many developing countries, to name just a few of the issues that we are facing as a world. There can easily be a dominoe effect from this point that can lead to some major global conflicts in the next 10-20 years.

And though it may not be politially correct or even accepted by most Christian circles, it feels like the world is in a period of God’s judgment or at least at the very beginnings of it. And this brings us to the major point of this message and that is simply, “A correct understanding of God’s judgment brings us to a place of faith.” I know that it is counter intuitive to think in this way but I want you to hear me out because from a Biblical standpoint, those who had the greatest level of faith had a clear revelation of God’s judgement. They didn’t ignore it, they didn’t create wrong theological categories, and they were not swayed even by public sentiment that often turned violent against them.

We know that Jesus talked at great lengths about the judgement of God. Just a cursory reading of the Gospels will tell you that Jesus saw himself fulfilling the role of prophet during his time on earth. Theogians talk about the fact that Jesus came to fulfill three imporant offices in his ministry. He came as prophet, priest, and king. Mainly in our contemporary churches, we gravitate towards Christ as our High Priest. He offered his life as a sacrifice for us and grants to us the forgiveness of sin and intercedes on our behalf before God. Those are things we love about Jesus but what we don’t like is the fact that He is the Prophet of prophets, the one whose judgment is binding and everlasting. This is what he says about himself in the gospel of John.

John 5:26–27 ESV

For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.

Understandably most people don’t want to think of Jesus in this way becasue it doesnt fit the neat theological box that they have created for Him to stay in. We like to think of Jesus, in the way that He is depicted in this picture: harmless, docile, and never angry. When God breaks out of that box and begins to wreak havoc on our world, we often don’t know what to think or to do in those times and more than you may realize, this fear of the unknown paralyzes us. In some ways, we don’t want Jesus to come down from the cross becasue that means we have to also accept HIm as our Prophet and as our King.

What Jesus and the prophets before him realized is that the proper understanding of God’s judgment allows us to respond in faith. Those who ignore the judgement of God do so because of pride in their own hearts and they assume that God is obligated to act in the way they want Him to or powerless to change the course of history. The prophecies of Zephaniah were written during the same period of world history and he chronicles the attitude of many of God’s people in the face of rising global conflict.

Zephaniah 1:12 ESV

At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill.’

This represents a very deistic view of world events. God winds up the clock of world history and then he just takes his hands off and allows it to run its course. In others words, God seems ambivalent to what is happening and so why should I then turn to God. And this is what Habbakuk is clearly wrestling with.

Faith begins with asking the right questions but more important than the right questions is hearing the right answer from God. I’m sure many of us have asked the same line of questions. How long do I need to cry out in prayer but it doesn’t seem, like God, you are listening? How long do we need to endure the violence and sin of our world while it seems like God, you are idly standing by? And perhaps you haven’t asked these questions in such direct and pointed ways towards God but many of us have has at least these same thoughts. Without an answer from God, we tend to fall into this very deistic view of God and we wrongly assume that He doesn’t care to act or He is powerless to act. Any way you dissect this attitude towards God, it amounts to a loss of faith. This is probably one of the main reasons why people have become increasingly stagnant in their faith because God seems absent. Complacency, lethargy, ambivalance towards God are all signs that your faith is moving in the wrong direct, it’s diminishing.

As weeks have turned into months and month are now turning to years, God seems distant because we are not sure of how God is present in everything that is happening. And as long as you take a deistic or naturalistic view of the world, your fear cannot be transformed to faith. If all of this is happening by chance, coincidence, or this is just the circle of life, then there is no way to truly overcome our fears. You can’t really prepare nor respond to world events that you view as being completely arbitrary. As they say in the non-believing world, “S… happens!” But I wonder if some Christians have begun to think this way because in modern evangelical circles, we don’t have a category for God’s judgment and yet the only way to truly understand what is happening in the world today requires us to understand how God’s judgment works.

This brings us to our second point which is God’s judgment is a part of His sovereign plan.

People are naturally afraid of things that seem to be arbitrary and outside of their control. And as we learned in elementary biology, people can’t remain in a state of fear, it is usually turned into something else, the fight or flight response. During this pandemic, responses like anger and frustration are ways that we have tried to fight our fears. While responses like ambivalence and self-isolation are ways that we take flight away from our fears. But neither response helps change our fear into a true life of faith. But as believers, we have the assurance from the Scriptures that nothing is outside the sovereign will of God and He has a divine purpose for allowing certain events to come about, in the way that He has ordained these events to happen.

If we do not think that God is completely in control of every event that has happened over the past couple of years and that even the ugliest things that we saw were a part of God’s sovereign plan, then it’s nearly impossible to respond in faith. The answer that God gives to all the questions that Habakkuk asks is absolutely astounding if you really sit and consider it. Habakkuk is asking, “God, where are you? Where is your justice? Why aren’t you delivering us from the wicked Chaldeans?”

And God responds by telling Habakkuk, “Look at the enemy armies that are surrounding you, that is where I am, that is what I am doing, and they are my chosen instruments of justice and judgment!” Most of us assume that God can only be present and active in one particular way and so we are not ready when He answers our prayers in unusual and unexpected ways. Could this pandemic be an answer to the prayers of the saints who have been pleading for revival and a cleansing of the church? Would God do such a thing? Clearly from what we see here in the life of Habakkuk, the answer is a definitive yes. There are times when God permits and even ordains great pain and suffering in the world to fulfill His ultimate purpose, which is to bring people to salvation and redeem a people for Himself.

Isaiah 45:7–8 ESV

I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things. “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit; let the earth cause them both to sprout; I the Lord have created it.

These verses in Isaiah gives us the singular reason why God creates both times of well-being and great calamity, so that the fruit of salvation and righteousness may begin to sprout. I believe the doors of salvation are going to be thrown wide open and countless people will come to faith as a response to these difficult times. It may be right here in this neighborhood or it could be in other nations but will you join God in this work? I also sense in my heart that God will increase the righteousness of those who call on His name. Certainly, it won’t be everyone, it may not even be the majority, but there will be significant numbers of beleivers who will take their relationship with God far more seriously and begin to live out of faith. I pray that you will be among those who will earnestly desire to live by faith and not by sight. What we see with our eyes evokes fear and anxiety, but it we have faith in God, it evokes courage and boldness. My question to you is, “How will you now live?” If this pandemic has not changed and caused you to take your faith more seriously, what will?

What does it mean to live by faith. There are some important verses from later in the book of Hababakkuk that will help give you a framework for the rest of the messages in this series:

Habakkuk 2:3–4 ESV

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.

In the context of the situation that Habakkuk was faced with, faith in God was the only way to remain truly alive. His life both here on earth and in the life to come was completely dependent on this faith. The end of Habakkuk gives possibly, in my eyes, the most beautiful description of what it means to live by faith.

Habakkuk 3:17–18 ESV

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.