God Speaks | Lesson Three

Show Notes

Donna Gaines teaches from Habakkuk chapter 3 about faith that holds tight through trials by focusing on God's presence, faithfulness, and sovereign power. She emphasizes surrender, trust, and praise as the prophet moves from questioning to worship while encouraging believers to find spiritual confidence amid difficulties.

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As they were singing that gorgeous song, it made me think about right after Steve was diagnosed with cancer, and I was reading a little book, A Testament of Devotion, which I shared with you guys. Somebody had given it to me several years before, and it had been in the basket where I keep devotional things in journals, and I just had never gotten around to reading it. And that morning, I picked it up and devoured that little book. But in the margin, as they were singing that song, I remembered that I wrote in the margin, I can walk into the dark with a smile because I'm not holding on, I'm being held. So whatever you're walking through this morning, it may feel dark, but just as Habakkuk found, as he experienced the manifest presence of God and literally saw his power, he broke out into praise. It's all that any of us can do. So we're going to be looking at Habakkuk chapter three, the end of his short little book, and the title of this week's study was Faith That Holds Tight, and we are going to cling to him, but aren't we grateful he is clinging to us? And as we move into chapter three, we see that Habakkuk has gone from questioning, complaining, which he did in chapter one, to listening and really contemplating what God was revealing to him, and in chapter three, he breaks out into worship. I want you to remember also that God can handle your questions. He very rarely answers our why questions. I'm not telling you not to ask. He may, at some point, reveal it to you, but most of the time, he does not. What he reveals to us in the midst of whatever it is we're asking why about is his presence and his faithfulness. I feel like sometimes we're like our toddlers were when they would go, why can't I have candy for breakfast? Why can't I chase my ball out into the road? They don't understand those things. They don't have the capacity to understand. That's the way we are with God. There are so many things we would not understand the why, even if he told us. We don't have the capacity to grasp the knowledge. Even as a teenager, why can't I go to that party? Why can't I drive with five people in the car with me? Why can't I go to that R-rated movie? Why can't I date him or her? And if you guys have been here in length of time at all, you know Steve's story of breaking up with the boy for Lindsay. He was not walking with the Lord. In fact, when Steve first saw the boy, he looked at me and said, that's trouble. He was just way too smooth. You know, have you ever been around somebody that's kind of a schmoozer? And so we just kind of watched him. They didn't date very long. And Steve invited him to lunch, and during the lunch said, I'm breaking up with you for Lindsay, which Lindsay was actually unaware of at the moment and was not happy about. But he said, you're not walking with the Lord, and the only gains you're gonna spend time with is me. I'm happy to spend time with you, and I'm happy to disciple you. That young man did later get saved. He is a pastor, married, has, yeah, I know. Isn't that great? Well, when Grant was in high school, a senior girl, you know how they tell each other, and so word got to him through probably two or three people that this girl liked him, and she was very popular. And so he was telling me about it, and I thought, I'm gonna check her out. You know, we didn't have Facebook and all that stuff then, so I had to ask. I had to go around and ask people. Well, the girl did not have a good reputation. She was a little fast, and he was just a sophomore. And so I came home, and I said, remember the girl that you mentioned to me? And he said, yeah. And I said, over my dead body. He did not understand, just like Lindsay did not understand. I knew more than he knew. Steve knew more than he knew. He was a man. He knew that boy. He could read him. They didn't understand, just like so often, we don't understand the why behind how God allows things to happen, why sometimes he doesn't give us the reasons, but expects us to trust. And we have said before that faith is not gritting your teeth. It's not hanging on. It's literally, it's surrender. It is surrender and trust. And that is what we're seeing our prophet come to. He is coming to a time of surrender and trust. So why did Steve want to protect Lindsay, and why was I protecting Grant? Because we knew things they didn't understand, just like God does. Listen to what Matthew 7-11 records of what Jesus said. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him? God gives us only good gifts, even though sometimes they don't feel good to us. Or what about what Isaiah said? Are we the clay going to say to the potter, don't shape me like this? That's too much pressure. Isaiah said, what sorrow awaits those who argue with their creator? Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, stop, you're doing it wrong? Does the pot exclaim, how clumsy can you be? And in Isaiah 64, and yet, O Lord, you are our father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We all are formed by your hand. God spoke to Habakkuk. And in fact, this is not a prophecy for the people of Israel, but a record of the conversation between God and his prophet. And he closes his book with a psalm of praise to God. We know this by the way the chapter begins with the word shigionoth, which most people say they don't really know the meaning of it, except they do know it's a musical term. And as Dana explained, three times, we see the word selah, pause, reflect, think about this. That's a musical notation. And then of course, he ends it by saying what? To the chief musician with my stringed instruments. It's obviously a prayer put to music. It is a psalm. So we see our prophet is actually praising his way out of his anguish, allowing praise to lift him above his circumstances. In fact, I listened to a message this past week by Alistair Begg on Habakkuk chapter three, and he entitled it, Singing in the Pain. I thought it was a pretty cute turn of a phrase. Let's open to Habakkuk chapter three and look at the first couple of verses. Begins by saying a prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, according to shigionoth. Lord, I have heard the report about you and I fear. Oh Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. Now God had been revealing to him what was going to happen, that he was allowing the Babylonians to come to power and that they would come and punish, bring judgment upon his people. And he was having a hard time with that. Now he's beginning to accept it, but he's saying, oh God, show your power like you did in the past when you delivered us from Egypt. God, in the midst of your wrath, please remember mercy. He called on God in his present day to work as he had in the past. In a sense, Habakkuk meant for God to work a new redemption from the tyranny of Babylon as he had delivered Israel from the old tyranny of Egypt. In the midst of the years is the time between pronouncement of judgment and its final accomplishment. One of the commentators said, in the midst of the punishment heaped on the opponents of God and his law, whether his own people or their enemies, Habakkuk calls on God to remember and exhibit the merciful side of his character as well. So then we move into the next portion of scripture and Habakkuk experiences what is called a theophany. God actually presented himself in all of his glory and grandeur and splendor to the prophet. He sees the Lord in all of his power. And somebody, a small group, reached out yesterday asking about verses five and six and saying, okay, is he talking about like right now when the mountains split? Well, we know that when Christ comes back to the earth his foot is gonna touch down the Mount of Olives and Zechariah tells us the mountain's gonna split in half. So because we have God, who's not bound by time, coming into time when God speaks, quite often through prophets, you see that he's speaking to them about something present, something that's going on with them, quite often he refers to the past and his faithfulness, but then he'll start talking about the millennial reign as though it's all one thing because he's not bound by time, only we are. So this is what you're gonna see as we move into this theophany. God comes from Timon and the Holy One from Mount Paran. That is the area of Mount Sinai. So he's saying, here God revealed himself. Do you remember what it looked like on the top of Mount Sinai? Remember, it was like fire on top of the mountain and lightning and peals of thunder are coming off of the mountain and the people are scared to death. They don't wanna go near the mountain. That is what Habakkuk is seeing right now. His splendor covers the heavens and the earth is full of his praise. His radiance is like the sunlight. He has rays flashing from his hand and there is the hiding of his power. Before him goes pestilence and plague comes after. Remember the plagues that came against the Egyptians, the 10 plagues? He stood and surveyed the earth. He looked and startled the nations. What did they say? We heard about your God and our hearts melted within us. That's what Rahab told the two spies. Yes, the perpetual mountains were shattered. The ancient hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Cushon under distress. The tent curtains of the land of Midian were trembling. These are Bedouin peoples. Did the Lord rage against the rivers or was your anger against the rivers or was your wrath against the sea that you rode on your horses, on your chariots of salvation? We know God's chariots are chariots of fire. Your bow was made bare, the rods of chastity.

tisement were sworn, say la. Pause and think about that. You cleaved the earth with rivers, the mountains saw you and quaked, the downpour of waters swept by, the deep ordered forth its burst, it lifted high its hands. We know that God parted the Red Sea, parted the Jordan, sun and moon stood in their place under the time of Joshua when he was fighting that battle and God allowed the sun to stay in place until the battle was complete. They went away at the light of your arrows, at the radiance of your gleaming spear, in indignation you marched through the earth, in anger you trampled the nation, you went forth for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. The word anointed is singular and the commentaries basically said it could mean God's people, singular, the king, singular, or the anointed one who was yet to come, Christ. You struck the head of the house of the evil to lay him open from thigh to neck, you pierced with his own spears the head of his throngs, their own weapons would destroy them, they would destroy themselves. They stormed in to scatter us, their exaltation was like those who devour the oppressed in secret, you trampled on the sea with your horses on the surge of many waters. Wow, that must have been quite an experience for the prophet. The holy one, the word that he uses for him is parallel to God and came into prominence as a title for God in the book of Isaiah who used the term 30 times as his favorite title for deity. He thought of the holy one as perfect moral purity. According to E. Jacob, the term holy one of Israel means above all else that Yahweh keeps close to Israel that he could not abandon them without denying himself. God had committed to them in a covenant relationship as we know when he called Abraham in Genesis chapter 15 and God would be faithful. These verses reveal the glory of the Lord in all of his radiant splendor as he led the Israelites out of Egypt. So why did Habakkuk see the vision of the Lord's majesty? It foreshadowed the redemption of God's people. The purpose of the theophany is to provide assurance that God would crush the head of the wicked and deliver his people. As we learned in our study this week, the God who revealed the coming judgment is also the God who rules over it. So regardless of what's going on in our world, God is always sovereignly in control. So how do you, how do I respond to trials and tribulations? Yesterday I went to get a new iPad because my other iPad had a weird line in it and I've had it for a while and I wanted one that I could use an Apple Pen with because I don't know about you guys but I have three or four journals going pretty much at all time. I have one I do sermon notes in. The problem is I can't usually find the one I was writing in before so I just grab another one and write something down. Like in my quiet time when I'm pondering something or I'm studying for this and I come across a quote, I write it down and then I go, which journal did I write that in? So I decided I would get an iPad that I could actually use an Apple Pen with and I'm telling myself this as I'm telling you guys. I'm going to put them all in here so that I'm not running around wasting time looking for the journal that I wrote it down in because I'm currently studying this. We're writing for the spring. I'm working on a Bible study with my daughters and so I'm studying different things and I have put them in different places. So the purpose of this, all of that to say, I was in the Apple store yesterday and a precious young Chinese American woman helped me with the purchase of my iPad and so she was explaining things to me and as we're waiting for things to download and update and all that stuff, we start talking and she asked me, why are you getting your iPad? What are you going to use it for? And so I told her, I'm a Bible teacher and she said, really? I used to go to church. I said, oh, is that right? Well, tell me about it. She had actually grown up in the United States. Her parents had come from China to give them a place where they could freely worship the Lord because it can be very dangerous in China. She grew up with brothers and a couple of years ago, one of her brothers passed away unexpectedly and the anguish that she saw, especially her mother, go through and yet clinging to her faith made her angry. She was angry at the Lord and so I was able to share with her about my recent journey through the valley of the shadow of death and we sat there and just bonded and then I shared with her about Emmy Patterson Wood, which some of you heard if you were here last semester who shared her story about her husband's death and the plane crash of some of the men from Harvest Church and then how she has since remarried and was expecting a baby with her new husband last year and that baby died just about a week in her womb before birth and yet she is able to victoriously cling to the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living and she is in my current discipleship group that's doing an extra semester this semester and they are each taking turns tracing a theme from Genesis to Revelation and Emmy chose the theme God's presence in suffering and she went through the characters in scripture and showed not only God's presence but his promises to his people and his faithfulness and they send the notes to everybody through email and I said, she's going to send those notes to us, would you like me to share them with you? She said, oh yes, I would and so she writes her email address down and hands it to me and I said, I will send them to you and then I started asking her, do you know where Bellevue is? Yes, I've seen it, but it's so big. I said, oh, it gets smaller the more often you come and if you get involved in a small group, you won't even, you'll just get to know your people and I told her about Bible study and I said, I would love for you to come and if you're ever interested, I will meet you, you can sit with me, I can introduce you to the college students because she's young, she's doing a gap year between high school and college and I said, you would love the Bible study. I started telling her about the view and I left there thinking, Lord, you sovereignly appointed me to be with this young woman. Guys, the Apple Store, I don't know, I have not been there in a long time, it was slammed. There were so many people in there and for me to have gotten this young woman and for us to be able to have that precious time of sharing together and for it to open up like that was just a gift from the Lord. These people are all around us. God sets up divine appointments for us and we will be open and aware and in tune with his Holy Spirit and I'm so grateful because everybody has a story and you can connect your story with their story because all of us know what it's like to live in a broken world. All of us will at some point suffer discouragement, loss, pain, all of us will. So what is Habakkuk's response? How does he respond to all that he knows is coming in judgment upon his people and yet this glorious theophany that he's just encountered, what does he say? Well, he responds like most people do when they have, like John, when he sees the resurrected Christ. You know, they either faint, fall out, can't breathe. Like Daniel, he has to touch them and give them strength because all of their strength leaves their body. He says, I heard, in verse 16, and my inward parts trembled. At the sound, my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones and in my place I tremble. He's overwhelmed by all he's just experienced because I must wait quietly for the day of distress for the people to arise who will invade us. He understands this is going to happen. God has spoken. But here's his declaration of praise. Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olives should fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls. Guys, that's total devastation. Yet I will exult in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He has made my feet like hind's feet and makes me walk on my high places for the choir director on my stringed instruments, which is another reason we know that this was a prayer put to song. He closes this out by saying he has made my feet like hind's feet. The hind, a female deer, was noted for its sure-footedness in high places. Drawing on an image from Psalm 1834, Habakkuk acknowledged the protection of God in every experience of life. Sure-footed, untiring, bounding with energy, the Lord's people may expect to ascend the heights of victory despite their many severe setbacks. The heights of the earth, the places of conquest and domain shall be the ultimate possession of God's people. Well, reading that verse made me think back, have any of you read the book Hind's Feet in High Places by Hannah Hernard? Okay, quite a few of you, I see some hands. I had not read it in years. It's probably been 20 years since I've read it. It was written in 1955 and I immediately had to go back and get it. Of course, I could not find my copy like my journals and so I downloaded it on Kindle and read it in a couple of days. It is an allegory and I'm telling you what, if you are dealing with difficulty right now, if you're struggling with fear and you want God to make your feet like Hind's Feet in High Places, you need to download this book or order it. It is an allegory of a young woman whose name is Much Afraid. She lives in a village in the Valley of Humiliation. She is a shepherdess for the chief shepherd. She's lame and she has a twisted mouth and lives among her relatives, the Fearings, great relatives, right, who want her to marry.

her cousin Cravenfear. The shepherd offers to take her to the high places where perfect love casts out fear. And he plants a seed of love in her heart, which pricks like a thorn, but he promises her new hinds feet and a new name. So she chooses to follow the chief shepherd who gives her two veiled companions. Not the companions I'm sure she would have chosen, but they are suffering and sorrow. The path to the high place leads her up steep mountains, through a desert, up the precipice of injury and along the shores of loneliness. And each time the path becomes more difficult, she chooses to continue. And each time she chooses, she builds an altar and dedicates herself to the Lord. And there she receives a stone. She's tempted relentlessly along the way to turn back by her relatives. Now listen to their names. Pride, bitterness, resentment, self-pity and Cravenfear. Now it's along the shores of the sea of loneliness that she hears the cries, which sound mournful of the seagulls. Now listen to this quote from the book. Even their wild mournful cries and the moanings of the water stirred in her a sorrow, which was strangely beautiful. She had the feeling that somehow in the very far off places, perhaps even in far off ages, there would be a meaning found to all sorrow. And listen to this. And an answer to fair and wonderful to be as yet understood. An answer to fair and wonderful to be as yet understood. Sweet friend, that is true for us as well. Your sorrow, your suffering does and will have an answer. But right now, it's far too fair, far too precious, far beyond our capacity to grasp the truth of it. Right now we see as in a mirror dimly, but one day we will see fully and we will see him face to face. And at that moment, all will be made clear and what joy awaits us. So at the end of her journey, she's filled with love and her name is changed to Grace and Glory. Her companions are revealed to actually be joy and peace. And her stones become jewels. She's then commissioned to go back to the valley to serve, carrying the shepherd's love to others. And that's exactly what happens to us. When we meet him in the high places, when we fully surrender to him, when we choose surrender and trust, he grants us great joy in the midst of whatever difficulty we're facing and we experience his manifest presence. And then we know that we're not holding on. We literally are being held. Her story is our story on this broken planet because we too will encounter injury, fear, discouragement, and loss. But because the chief shepherd is with us, we can endure and triumph. James said, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, that stick-to-it-iveness that we all need. Let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete. We will not reach sinless perfection. This is talking about maturity in Christ. You will be fully mature. You will be complete. You will be more like Jesus, lacking in nothing. That is the purpose of trials and tribulations. And that is what they do for us. They help us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, which is why we can consider it all joy when we encounter them, knowing that God does work all things together for our good. That is a promise so we can trust him. Just as you discipline your children, and maybe when they're toddlers, you spank them or you put them in timeout, and they're so upset with you and so angry with you because they don't want to be disciplined, but what do we know? It's the discipline that trains them to learn how to obey because they have to obey parents to one day be able to know and obey God. We have to teach them a respect for authority because our God is a God of authority, a God of order, a God of systems. We know that from creation before the fall. So we train our children through discipline, which is discipling them, and God does that in our lives as well. I just wonder if this morning we can't just open our palms to the Lord. All of us have a story. All of us are in the middle of a story. Some of you may be on the mountaintop this morning. Praise God for mountaintop moments. But some of you may be in the midst of the valley, and you're struggling, and you've been asking the why questions much like Habakkuk. Maybe there's something you've been praying about for years and the Lord hasn't seemed to answer yet. Remember, he's not bound by time. He is always moving and working. So I'm just asking you if you'd be willing to hold your hands open this morning, and we're going to put a couple of the verses from Habakkuk's proclamation of praise up on the screen, and I want us to read them together. In fact, why don't we just stand up? I think that would be better. Stand up. This is a serious moment. What we're going to be doing is literally declaring this portion of Scripture over ourselves, over each other. We are claiming it is what we're doing, and it's from the Amplified Version, so it gives a little bit extra understanding of what Habakkuk was saying so that we can shift from the circumstance, shift our eyes back to Jesus, and as we fix our eyes on Jesus, we know that we will be able to not only endure, but come out on the other side much more like Christ. Okay, let's stand before him. Open hands. God, we're not clinging to anything, but you, we are surrendering and trusting. I want us to read this declaration of this Scripture passage from Habakkuk 3, 18 and 19 together. Yet I will choose to rejoice in the Lord. I will choose to shout in exultation in the victorious God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, my source of courage, my invincible army. He has made my feet steady and sure like hinds feet, and makes me walk forward with spiritual confidence on my high places of challenge and responsibility. Father, we stand before you this morning as your daughters, and we humbly proclaim the truth and the power of your word over our lives. And Father, we're choosing, just like Habakkuk did, we are choosing to exult in you. We are choosing, Father, to trust you. We know that you alone are our strength. You alone are our source of courage. You alone surround us with your invincible army, and you have made our feet steady, because we are founded upon the rock of Jesus Christ. So Father, we choose from this day forward to walk forward with spiritual confidence, not confidence in ourselves, not confidence that things are gonna turn out a certain way, but spiritual confidence on the high places of challenge and responsibility that you are leading us into. And God, we desire to live in such a way that we bring glory and honor to your name, that we don't miss divine appointments, that we're constantly pointing people to Jesus, and that we find in you our very great delight, because you are our prize, you are our treasure, and you, Abba Father, are our waymaker. We give you praise, in Jesus' name, amen.