God Speaks | Lesson Two

Show Notes

Jean Stockdale teaches on Habakkuk 2, focusing on God's response to the prophet's struggles about evil and silence. The message emphasizes the need to watch, write, wait, and walk by faith amidst difficult circumstances, warning against greed, corruption, and idolatry, and concluding that the righteous live by faith under God's sovereign control.

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Now let's just go ahead and jump right into Habakkuk. Now last week Donna did a fabulous job walking us through chapter one of Habakkuk. Now I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands, but I'm assuming most of you, if not maybe all, are sort of like me. I should not walk with my bifocals on, let me try to correct that. And you really have never studied out the minor prophets. I've been a Christian for lots of years, nearly 50 of them, and a pretty serious Bible student for about 48 of them. I fell in love with the word of God just after I got converted, and it just has transformed and changed my life, although there's so much left, sweet friends, that needs to be brought into the light of the power of the Holy Spirit and dealt with. But I do love the word of God, I love it. And yet I have never really spent a lot of time with the minor prophets. I've read them, and frankly I find them a bit difficult. I don't know if anybody else does or not, but I was excited when I heard that that's what we were gonna be studying, because I love to dig in and study something I'm not already familiar with, and that's the minor prophets for me. So Donna took us through chapter one last week, and we saw Habakkuk, one of our minor prophets, and he is struggling. He's saying, Lord, the circumstances appear that evil is getting worse and worse and worse, and Lord, you seem silent. Where are you in the midst of all of this? And Lord, it looks like it's going to get even worse because you're gonna send the Babylonians to deal with us, and God, how could you possibly think it's a great plan to use a people even more wicked than ours to come up here against us? And Lord, I don't understand how long, how long, how long, Lord, before I understand, before I see you move, before I hear from you, speak, Lord, speak. And so now in chapter two, and frankly, I think we can all identify with our prophet in chapter one. How many times have we said, how long, Lord? Just tell me how long I have to deal with this, and I will be able to do it, but you know what? If he told us how long, we would not operate in faith. I mean, girls, we would become control freaks and just work that situation out, right? We'd just grind it out. No, this is part of the walk of faith. Okay, so Habakkuk looks at the circumstances, and he cannot reconcile them with what he knows of God, and now in chapter two, you're gonna see that God the Father is going to speak to him, and he's going to help him deal with some of those fears and anxiety, and he is graciously going to respond to him and comfort him and lead him to this conclusion. Life is filled with mysteries, that is truth, but we can trust our holy and just God to act fairly and faithfully. Beloved, when you and I look at our circumstances, and they're so far beyond anything we can deal with, anything we can resolve, anything we can solve, anything we can do, anything about, we can trust God. That is the life of faith. Well, I'm going to peel back chapter two. We're gonna move a bit slowly, then we're gonna hit it real hard and fast, and then we're gonna wrap it up with the conclusion. The first thing I want you to see is what I call the watchman on the wall. Look in chapter two of Habakkuk, verse one. This is what he declares. I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart, and I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me and how I might reply when I am reproved. So in the midst of all of this confusion, with all of these questions, let me just say, Donnie emphasized this last week, and let me go back to it. This point, our God is big enough to take our questions. He wants us to share our heart, and it's not like he doesn't already know them. So bring your questions to him, but beloved, it's wise not to camp out in that place and get stuck there, but rather to say, even if I cannot understand, even if this doesn't turn out the way I would like it to, yet will I praise you. I will trust you because you are trustworthy, you are faithful, and you are good. So he takes the position of the watchman on the wall. Now, most all of the commentaries agree that he didn't really go to a station on the wall. Jerusalem was surrounded for many, many centuries with walls. They added to them, some fell down, some were torn down, and they kept adding to them, and there were sentinels all along the wall that had the job of scanning the horizon to see if the enemy was coming. Years back, Craig and I went into Angola on a mission trip, and Angola had been in a civil war for many, many years. They'd been at a very uneasy peace for about five when we went in, and so when we arrived, they took us to a little, it was a little guest house, and it was surrounded by, it was a compound, and it had a wall that was 14 feet tall. It was a concrete wall. On the top of the wall was razor wire, and they had embedded glass, broken glass all around the top. Not only that, they had two watchmen on the wall. Two men greeted us. They had AK-57s, I think that's the right term. I'm not a gun person, but let's go with me, and strapped across their chest, and the interpreter said, tonight at about two in the morning, you're going to hear them. They'll be standing on the wall, and they're gonna fire off a few rounds because they want everybody in the earshot to know there's a watchman on the wall. Our interpreter said, I hope you'll go to sleep and sleep well tonight because there's a man out there prepared to die for you if that's what he's called to. Oh my goodness, a watchman on the wall, and that's what we see here in this illustration. He said, I will go, I will stand, I will station myself, and I am going to watch. So the first word that Habakkuk God gives us is watch, watch. How does that apply to us? Oh beloved, we are living at a time that is really unprecedented in so many ways, and we need to be watching and waiting and listening and studying God's word so we know truth from error. The enemy is so subtle that if you and I don't know what the word of God says, we are in danger of falling for a lie. So watch is what Habakkuk teaches us out of this passage today. The second thing I want you to see is that God says to him, look in verse two, the Lord answered me and said, record the vision and inscribe it on tablets that the one who reads it may run and we'll stop right there. So the first verse is about watching, the second verse is about writing. God tells Habakkuk, when I give you this vision, I want you to write it down. It is very important because beloved, do you understand we, if he had not done that, we would not have this book. And so the Lord tells him, write it down. Now, most likely he had a clay tablet and it had been baked and he would take a stylus and he would write down the vision and then as it was fired, it would be a permanent copy. And he says, make it so clear, write with such clarity that even someone who's just passing by will be able to read it and understand it, or perhaps there might be a messenger that will run through the community and telling about the vision God had given Habakkuk. So the first thing he says is to watch, the second is to write it down. Now, how does that apply to us? Beloved, I wanna tell you something, what is being lost in our age, especially if you're, you know, X or Z or millennium, I suppose, but people have stopped handwriting because we use text. I use text a lot. It's a way to get a lot of information out to a whole lot of people without getting tied up on the phone. Now, you know why I get tied up on the phone? I have a lot of words. A lot of words. And when I catch somebody's attention and I got them all myself, I'm thinking, I'm gonna use up some of these. But with text, I mean, you can just, you can get a prayer request out, you can get information out. It is an awesome thing. But it has taken over our handwriting as well as email, which hardly anybody but my generation is using, and we do use proper punctuation. I want you to know that. My sons say, that's what gives it away, Mom. And they also said, when you write a text that is this long, most people send that as an email. Well, I don't. When I started out, I didn't know it was gonna be that long. And so, but people are not writing thank you notes.

Not sending sympathy cards, not sending get-well cards, not sending words of encouragement, because we've stopped writing. And I just want to say, I, for one, am about to bring that back. I don't know how I'm going to do it. That's what I'm going to do. Because there is nothing like a handwritten note. I'm so proud of both of my daughter-in-laws. When those little babies were not even two years old, and we would give them a gift, we would get a card with a scribble on it, and still are getting cards and notes and emails from them. Somebody's going to have to teach some people to write cards. So not only that, I came up under Dr. Rogers' ministry, then Brother Steve's, and now Pastor Ben. I'm sorry, at home we call him Big Ben. That's his name to us. So I almost said that. Now I've told you that. Now you won't be able to get that out of your head. And Dr. Rogers would tell the congregation, take notes, write it down. And it has been my habit for years and years and years to write when I am in the sanctuary hearing a message, to write down, or when I'm in a Bible study, or really when I'm in anything. Even when I'm familiar with the material, when my husband is teaching Pioneer Evangelism, and I'm waiting for my turn, and I've heard that really 30, 40, maybe 50, 60 times, I know what he's going to say. I'm still taking notes. There's something about handwriting that your hand is engaged, your arm is engaged. It makes your brain be more engaged. Your eyes are engaged, and it helps you remember stuff. And do you know what Satan hopes we don't do? Remember stuff. So write it down. And now at this age, y'all, I have sticky notes, all kinds of sticky notes, all kinds of places to remember to get my glasses, get my keys, get my medicine, get my Advil, get my sinus medicine, remember to lock the door. All these things, I write them down. So get in the habit. It's such a glorious habit. And listen, if you're filling up journals, what a gift for the next generation to see where you prayed for your children or grandchildren, or in your Bible, marking a verse that meant so much to you, write stuff down. Let me move on. So the third thing is we've got watch, and then we've got write, and now we've got wait. Look in chapter two, verse three. God says, for the vision is yet for the appointed time, it hastens towards the goal, and it will not fail. That is, you could bake on it. Though it tarries, wait, wait for it. And it will certainly come, it will not delay. Do you know that when we ask the Lord for something, he has three responses, yes, no, wait. Do you know that most of us would rather hear no than wait, because we are terrible at waiting. Now we expect little toddlers to be, but girls, we don't like to wait. The microwave came into our lives at a time that we thought this is the most marvelous thing I've ever seen. And all of a sudden, hot chocolate, hot coffee, hot rice, hot soup, everything, in just an instant. And that began to feed into what we already were longing for, and that is instant results. May I tell you, in the spiritual world, we do not get instant results. Oh, that we did. But God often says, wait, because it is in the waiting that we are trained how to respond when we don't get our own way. And you know what happens when you get older? What happens when you get older is you want your comfort. Comfort becomes a big deal. You want your pillow when you travel. You want your fan when you go anywhere. You want your pajamas. You want your sheets. So you start thinking, I'll just stay home. Seems like a lot of trouble. I'll just put on my pajamas and get in my bed. Because we long for comfort. And waiting, it is never comfortable, is it? Never. And so God says, wait. The vision will tarry, but it will certainly come. Beloved, God cannot lie. So when he says it will come, it will come. But he has a timeline that cannot be disrupted or disputed for that matter. And you and I must learn to wait for him without deciding, well, I can fix this myself. What about Sarah? When the baby didn't show up, she said, I have a plan. I have a plan. And I have an idea. Part of why Abraham gave in to her is that he'd been hearing about this for a very long time. Worn down. God says, wait. If you want God's best, it will involve waiting. Then let me move right on. The next one is that we are to walk by faith. Look in verse four. In verse five, the scripture says, behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him. That's a good description. His soul is not right within him. But the righteous will live by his faith. Furthermore, wine betrays the honey man so that he doesn't stay at home. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol and he is like death, never satisfied. So he gathers to himself all nations and collects to himself all peoples. He interrupts and kind of inserts this and tells us just a little bit about the personality of the wicked. And he says he's not right. He's just not right. My husband used to have a landscaping business and he had this really precious couple in Germantown and he had gone over to their house middle of the day to take their plan and the lady of the house came out and was talking to him, walking around in their patio and out came this giant cat. Now my husband is not a cat lover, but I am. And this cat was a Himalayan. You know those with the really long fur and the black faces and the body's kind of tawny and black paws and black tail? Craig said it was just magnificent. He said, oh, my wife would love to see that cat. And she said, I tell you, we love that cat, but she's conflicted and has issues. So when I read this, they're just not right. I thought, well, they're conflicted and have issues. But he is saying the wicked can be identified by their wickedness, but the righteous, they're gonna live by faith. And beloved, faith is getting a word from God and believing it, surrendering to it, determined to live that out. You and I as Christians, daughters of the king, his girls, listen to me. While we're living down here on planet Earth, where it is hot as hot can be, goodness, and we're all looking forward to fall, but we're living down here, but we also are citizens of a supernatural heavenly world that the unbeliever cannot know anything about. We have available to us the power of God. Our father is looking after us, and he's a good father. We have the spirit of the living God that he gifted us, so the spirit of God lives within us, directs us, encourages us, explains to us the word, makes the word come alive to us, and oh my goodness, the Lord Jesus Christ who left us unto death. What in the world are we doing, acting like none of that is true? I wanna tell you something that's on the rise, and we're gonna see more of it, and it is fear-mongering. If you and I are not careful, when we listen to the news, and I do, at least a little bit, kinda like to know what's going on in the world, and not a lot of good stuff in some cases, but there is some good stuff out there, but anyways, if we're not careful, we will become so afraid that we are paralyzed by fear, and instead of walking by faith, we are shrinking back in fear. Who is the author of that? Satan himself, Satan himself. So you and I need to walk by faith. How do you do that well? Oh, you get exposed to the word of God. You become a personal student of the word. You become involved in your church, regularly here to hear the pastor preach the word of God, and Bible study is so important, and life groups are so important, or Sunday school, whatever your church offers, and beloved, you just get your tank full every chance you can, so that when you go out into the real world, and life is hard, and people are.

rude and people are cruel and your kids are having to make decisions that we never dreamed of because of all the technology and they're trying to raise up the next generation with all these tablets and all of this available to them and they're trying to balance that all out and work through all of that and there's so many challenges with it and then there are so many young people that have become prodigals even though they have been raised up in the faith. Why is that? Because Satan is flooding the airways through all the tablets through professors through false ideas presenting them as truth. One of the problems with all of these influences is they know how to build a brand so they know how to present things as if it is truth and it is not and so we need to know the word ourselves we need to help our children know the truth and if you have grandchildren them as well. They need to see us walk in a manner worthy of the high calling of Jesus Christ. Well the next thing is he goes into these woes and there's five of them. In the Bible when you see the word woe it is designed to get your attention. Only a couple of times could I find where Jesus said woe woe and what he meant is everybody stop what you're doing and everybody listen to me write this bit but woe means that God is about to pronounce something. It often was the introduction to eternal judgment or excuse me eventual judgment and it was a warning to repent that was inherent in it or to understand that judgment was coming on those who do not and so he says five woes. Now because you spent so much time in your notebook going through these I'm just going to breeze through them so fast. The first one is the issue of greed and what he's saying is Babylon is greedy taking advantage of everyone feeding their greed but one day that's coming back on them and just because one day it appears they are in power and one day they will be used in the hand of God to bring judgment against Israel and Judah listen to me he is saying one day they're going to get their due. The second woe is about covetousness. He says that they have acquired wealth and they have plundered other nations and they have used it to build big cities and one day however the stones and timbers that they have stolen and used as building material are going to testify against them so he is telling us beware of greed beware of covetousness and then beware of corruption. These people were ruthless they were so violent that I could not even read some of the material I had gotten access to because they were horrible horrible vicious warriors and they operated in corruption they stole everything they could they used the people that they conquered as prisoners of war they turn them into slave labor and what the Lord pronounces is that one day even though Babylon is going to build her cities up and use the conquering people as labor one day it's all going to become fuel for fire not only that he warns them about drunkenness that's the fourth woe beware of drunkenness. Babylon is likened to a man who gives his neighbors strong drink in order to sexually exploit them and so what God is saying is they are going to live a life of riotous living and wound others because of it getting them to indulge in it as well but one day instead of being served a cup of wine the Babylonians are going to be forced to drink a cup of the wrath of God. So each one of these as terrible as they are God is saying to Habakkuk yes Babylon is going to come and be my tool of judgment against the people of Judah who are choosing to walk away from all of the truth they're not God followers anymore they're become like heathens and they're worshiping idols and all of these things and so judgment is coming but one day Babylon is going to be forced to answer for all that she has done she's been greedy she's been covetous she's been corrupt and she has used drunkenness and violence against other people and one day that is coming back on her and then finally there's the woe five and it is about idols and a look in verse 18 he said what profit is an idol when its maker has carved it it's man-made or an image a teacher of falsehood for its man a maker trust in his own hand work and then it fashion he fashions it's a speechless idol whoa to him who says to a piece of wood awake to a mute stone arise and that is your teacher you're gonna trust in an idol I mean it just seems so astonishing and we have been into places around the world as we've traveled internationally that see people worshiping idols from small ones to huge ones and you can drive down the highways of some of these countries and they're selling idols just right there on the street I'm telling you it is so oppressing just to see them that we can hardly stand it and yet in fact what kind of I don't can you buy what kind of God can you buy that doesn't seem right we got to hear the testimony of a young man in Nepal and he was an old man now but the testimony when he was a young man he grew up and his parents his family came from a long line of people that worshiped animals they're called animalists and he said that they had a they'd always had black cows and suddenly they had this black one born with a white face and his family said oh this is a God we're gonna worship him and the family worshiped this cow and some places the children are left to starve while the animals are plump and fat and fed well and that was the case this animal but one day that animal got sick and he said as a young man I was thinking to myself what kind of God gets sick that doesn't seem like a God you want to worship oh your life to trust in and then it died and his family butchered it and ate it and he said I was only about 10 or 11 years old but I was thinking what kind of God dies and then you eat it and that began a pursuit of who God really was which led him to faith in Christ and his family to faith and by the time we met him he had led in his village hundreds upon hundreds of people to faith in Jesus Christ and we were sitting out there listening to his testimony in front of a little clay brick building that was the church and he was the pastor there he was up in his 70s most unusual for the people out in the villages but he had such a striking story that so many could relate to and he told them who Jesus was that God the Father was the only one worthy of praise and saw so many come to faith and so idols beloved there that it's kind of stunning and and staggering that people are worshiping idols however look around you we live in a country that doesn't necessarily although there are some that have bought idols and put them in their gardens and put them in their homes to worship but what kind of idols do we have here in America what about power what about possessions what about hobbies what about celebrities what about athletes now I want to tell you you can enjoy all of these without making them an idol okay God's not opposed to you getting into a position of power in fact he's well pleased when some Christians step into the political ring and are exalted and begin to share laws and rules that are straight out of the scripture but when those things become a little G God to you and they push the one true God off the throne of your heart and life they have become an idol football season just started I've told you before when I had cancer just a few years ago I was spending a lot of time on the couch I didn't feel well a lot and so one of the things I did in that fall was start watching football now my son played football my youngest son never understood anything about the game all I knew is I hope he is not hurt that's all that he the whole game I was just sitting there

I was praying. And so that was it. And so I cheered when everybody on my side cheered. That's how I played. And if we watched football on TV, I chose the team I wanted to win by which uniform I thought was the best. Yeah, yeah, that's the way it was. But then I got cancer and I was really homebound. Now both my boys went to Mississippi State and so we followed Mississippi State and we followed University of Memphis. But all of a sudden, I was watching every football game that was on. I did not even know where these schools were. Wasn't sure some of them even were schools. Never even heard of some of the places they were from. But they were entertaining for three hours and I could take my cancer-rattled brain out of gear and just watch football. So not too terribly long ago, I was sharing something in our life group class about the Southern Baptist Convention. And that's the SBC. But I got that tangled up because football season had just started. And so I called it the S-B-E-C. And I said, oh wait, that's for the Christians that like football. And it turns out a lot of them do. And y'all, you can enjoy football. I mean, enjoy it without making it an idol. You can have possessions without them becoming an idol. You can have pets. You can have children and darling little grandchildren without making them an idol. But the danger is when you allow them to have a place in your heart and life that is reserved for God. Am I making sense? Okay, okay. Yes, yes, yes. So we don't want to be guilty of that. In fact, all of these things that he has mentioned with corruption and greed and all of these things that drunkenness and idolatry, all of these things that Babylon was guilty of, the word for us today is we must guard against those same sins because there's nothing new under the sun. And we must be very careful that we're walking by faith and not by sight. And we have to make sure that we're not looking at circumstances and then building a theology around it. If you try to reconcile every circumstance you're put into with the scripture, you're gonna have a problem because you're gonna come out like a backache and think, God, this is getting really bad. And it looks to me like you're silent, not even sure you're there. And it appears you don't care. And that couldn't be farther from the truth. He is at work. In fact, he's doing some of his deepest work, grooming us more and more into the image of Jesus Christ. Amen. And so while none of us choose suffering, all of us will suffer to some degree. We live in a broken world with broken people. So people are gonna hurt our feelings. People are gonna disappoint us. We're gonna disappoint ourselves. We're gonna step into something and think, I don't better than that. Beloved, walk by faith. Walk by faith. Because God is at work. And the last frame of the message, the vision to Habakkuk is found in verse 20. God is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him. He is comforting his prophet who is quite distressed by saying, I am on the throne. I am totally in control. Totally in control. Back in 2008, when Craig and I and the boys had a family business, the economy started falling apart and our business began to suffer terribly. You know, my husband is an incredible optimist. And so we all believe that God could, if he chose to, just smile at our business and we would prosper even when other small businesses were really suffering. But by 2010, things had gotten very, very serious. And because of that, because of the economy and because people were not spending money to buy landscaping and so forth, we were forced into bankruptcy. And we lost our business, we lost our house, and we lost our land. And that is, whether you know it or not, why I live in Moscow, Tennessee, and a little one-car garage with an attached workshop that we turned into a cottage. And that's why God placed us there. Now, I just wanna tell you, that was a tough season of our lives. And we walked through it by faith, but I'm telling you, on shaky legs of faith. There were days when I just would tell Craig, I gotta take to my bed, I gotta take to my bed, I can't think about this anymore, can't deal with this anymore. There were times I had meltdowns. There were times that were so hard, we could not see our way through. And yet, we kept falling back on what we knew about God, that he was active, he was there, and that he's good. And in time, we were able to turn around this little one-car garage. It had the tiniest little bathroom in it. I've told you before, it had the smallest shower I'd ever seen. You had to decide when you got in which side you were to wash. I'm not kidding. And yet, God brought us through, allowed us, planted us there. Then the next catastrophic event was COVID, 2020. Who doesn't remember that? Wow, our whole world was nuts. Then in 2021, I was diagnosed with cancer. And no one could have been more surprised than me because I thought the bankruptcy was our giant test. And frankly, I thought we were through with them. And so when that happened, it was just, well, we just couldn't believe it. And that took a year of my life in treatment, and then another year trying to work through all of that and deal with all of that. I do want to say that as of two days ago, I am five years cancer-free. Praise God, praise God. God's been very kind, and I'm very, very grateful. But about the time I started getting better, Mr. Stockdale fell and broke his back in five places. That was three years ago. Now, this past July, we were all set, even though he has been in pain for three years with his back, we were all set to head over to Africa where we love to minister and serve. We had quite a bit of work going on in Uganda and Kenya, and we were to spend a month over there teaching the marriage conferences, women's conferences, men's conferences, Pioneer Evangelism Conference. We had all sorts of things set up, and God began to move in our lives, and circumstances began to take a hard turn, and God closed that door. In the meantime, my husband's back pain was getting so severe that he could barely stand it. We'd seen a surgeon several times, and that surgeon said, you know, one day you're gonna wake up and you're gonna say, it's time for me to have surgery. So on July the 1st, Mr. Stockdale had a spinal fusion. They broke three of his vertebrae, pinned them back together, seven of them have screws and rods, and he is now in the recovery phase, which takes about six months. He's about two months and two weeks in, and he has, it's no small amount of pain, and my husband, as optimistic as he is, he gets up every morning and he believes that's the day of his healing. He just is so certain that this is the day God's moving, and I tell you, God's been slow about it. He's suffered an awful lot, and we've had to drop back on what we know to be true. He's a good, good father. So from Habakkuk, chapter two, I pray you will take away this naked, that the righteous will live by faith. Fix your eyes upon him and walk in his way. In Jesus' name, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for a word of testimony and encouragement from Habakkuk. Thank you that God is able to take our concerns and our questions and that he can respond and he assures us he is right there in the midst of it all, that he will make all things right in his time. So Lord, we bless you now and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you.