Revival in the Middle of a Mess | Habakkuk 3:1–2

Show Notes

Episode 789: 
In this episode, we turn to the book of Habakkuk, specifically chapter 3, which contains two of my favorite verses. We explore the context of Habakkuk's prayer, sung during a time of great turmoil for the nation of Judah, as they faced impending judgment from Babylon. Habakkuk wrestles with the apparent success of a wicked nation being used by God to discipline His people, expressing his confusion and frustration.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Hey, everybody going to the Bible guys. There you go. We're glad that you tuned in, and we have something for everyone. Today, something for everyone. So gather around, yes, gather. Around and girls up. The title for today is Revival in the Middle of a Mess. And who doesn't want revival in the middle of a mess? Yeah? I don't want messes, but hey, we're gonna have them. Let's have a revival. There's a mess everywhere somewhere always. That's true. You know they always say it's five o'clock somewhere. Yes, there's a mess somewhere always. Okay, Well, you know we are always scouring the internet for the most reliable information we are and trying to find the best news, the best special interest and you know that we've articles. We've done this a thousand times, and we just can't find. One right right then, the Babylon b that's right. So today what we have is a new archaeological and historical discovery. It's amazing that we just feel like we needed to bring to the people. So here it is from the Babylon being. If you don't know, the Babylon b is a parody site. It's my favorite parody site. Oh, by the way, Yeah, everything's your favorite. Yeah, everything's my favorite. So here's the title. Scholars now believe that the prodigal son returned home after his father changed the Netflix password. There is so if you remember, well, let's just read the article JUDEA. New historical evidence may indicate that the prodigal son returned home after his father changed the Netflix password on him, according to scholars of the ancient world. Well, most historians have typically agreed that the prodigal son returned home because he ran out of money, newly discovered manuscripts suggests that the prodigal son was actually forced to head home after he realized that he could no longer access his father's Netflix account. Quote. Contrary to all previous interpretations of the parable, it really does seem like the prodigal son was doing all right, eating swine food, at least until he couldn't get into the family Netflix account anymore, said doctor Isaas Joiner, an expert papparologist. Wow, Papyrus pthrus, Yeah, papyrisologists. It was certainly difficult for him to keep going after spending the entirety of his inheritance, but the kid didn't truly begin to despair until he realized that he didn't have to that he'd have to get his own Netflix account. It was at that point that he realized the depths to which he had sunk. According to the new texts, the prodigal son returned home with his head hung in shame at the prospect of confessing that he'd been mooching off his father's Netflix for all the years away from home, only to see his father running to him, bathrobe and microwave, popcorn in hand, popped the finest buttered popcorn, and put the nice blankets on the couch. For my son has return The father reportedly cried out, Wow, for my son who was lost has now returned. Slaughter the fat and calf and turn on squid games. Wow. At publishing time, additional discovered manuscript's revealed that the elder brother got angry at his brother's turn because he'd been paying for the family subscription by himself all this time. There it is, so, that's what it was. Who knew? Yeah, who knew? Well, this is why this is why archaeology is so important new discoveries. Yes, And you know it's so great about this is that it's it's sort of become a thing, right. All the all the streaming services have sort of shut down the the idea that you can use it from other homes. So like, for instance, Disney, I've been sharing a Disney account with my daughter in Florida for good gosh years, years and years, and they just now were like putting a kebash on them. Yeah, and I'd like to do it anymore. Yeah, they know where you're at. Yeah, now they know where you're at. So they said, no, it looks like you're sharing an account with somebody you know that you don't live with, and blah blah blah blah. So they're just not allowing it. And and so that's pretty funny. H there. It is so thank god for archaeologists and researchers to discover the truths and really drive it home and make it more limit past. I like how they took the Prodigal Sun where he says, put a ring on his finger and put a rob put sandals on his feet, put a robe on his back. They're like, no, no, no, get the butter and pop corn, but make make sure you have the sprinkled cheese on it. Yeah, that's right. And put nice warm blankets on the couch. Yeah that's great. Yeah. Do you like a blanket when you're watching a movie? Uh? Most, mostly because my son and wife drive. The temperature of our house. Our house normally is sixty eight degrees and uh, and it's it's pretty cold. Is that too cold for you? No, it isn't. But sometimes, but for a good movie, it'll be like sixty four sometimes, you know. Oh yeah, yeah, and so and so Yeah, I like to put a blanket on usually, so yeah, and I'd rather do that. By the way. Then, and you're you're a pajama's guy anyway, So you're in your pajamas, snuggled up. Yeah, most of the time with your blanket, watching your movie. And you got a big TV too. I do have a big day. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I bought the Jane's like a movie. It's like a movie theater kind of have you. Have you you know, you know I've seen it in person. No, No, you just showed me pictures. Okay, yeah, his TV is so big you had to show me three pictures to get the whole TV. No, no, I it turns out if you buy like an LG or a High Sense or like a Visio, you can buy incredibly giant TV's ye for pretty cheap. And so my wife says, well, what if I think craps out in five years? You know, like like you know, you're spending you know, two thousand bucks or whatever it is on this massive TV. Like what if it dies? But it's so big. I'm like, I don't care. I'm like, if it dies, it dies. But it's like a movie theater. You got your own movie theater. Yes, so then it's pop the popcorn, grab the blanket. Yes, put on your fuzzy slippers and watch a movie. I don't haven't. That's Chris's favorite Friday night. I don't. I don't have fuzzy slippers, but I do have slippers. Yeah, okay, you have slippers. No, I hate slippers. Come on, I hate them. People give them to me every year. Somebody get new slippers, and I hate slippers. I don't know what. Wow. Yeah, yeah, I wear slippers around the house. I wear robes. I know. I think where you talked about you're all about comfort. I think I wear my robe every single day. I don't even have a robe. I wear a robe every single day. Okay, morning, all right, I come downstairs in a robe. So at a hotel, do you use the robe? Strangely enough? No, No, it's I was looking. Who uses that? Why is it there? That's the thing that they don't have an iron in here, but they put they give me a robe. I would say twenty percent of the time. Ten percent of the time. Maybe I'll just be like, hey, I'm gonna put on this robe, okay, and I'll and I'll walk out in the balcony with my cup of coffee or something, you know, with a robe or something. But like, uh, why are you laughing? It's just so funny, Okay anyways, yeah, yeah, Oh, I mean that's awesome. I like I like comfort. Yes, you're right, I do so okay, No, no, no, it's perfect. I apology. There's nothing wrong. I apologize, Jeff, there is nothing. You're just very intriguing to me. You're very interesting. You're a different kind of animal, and I'm just very interested. There's a lot of robe people out there. I'm not dissing it. I'm just intrigued by it. Hey, listen, I was barely housebroke when we got married. I now call I now call all the robe people. I call them right now to join forces with me and to respond on YouTube or email us at info at the Bible Guys dot com and say, hey, man, I wear a robe and let me know i'd love to have because we have what fifteen thousand unique listeners ish a month. Yeah, so I would say, out of the fifteen thousand, I want at least one hundred people to say I'm with you, man, I'm. A robe big robe girl, a robe girl. Okay, yeah, yeah, So I'm not making fun of it like I was saying. So like all of my pets growing up were outdoor pets. We didn't have indoor pets, right, and I was I was barely housebroke when I got married. So all those nice comfort creature comfort things, I just never developed the habit for them. Yeah, I gotcha, that's all. So I'm very intrigued at learning how the other half live. And you want to hear something hilarious. I never once thought about this until literally just now. As kids, we all had robes. So it was my mom and my dad and all five kids, five boys, and I remember like at one point in time having Scooby Doo robes. I remember, you know, the under rugs and all that stuff. Of course, but my mom had a robe and she wore it every single day, and my dad had a rope. Oh my goodness, we are a robe fan. Yeah. Yeah, that's the saying that's how the other half lived. Wow. Man, well we were super poor. Yeah, we just had robes. Richard nuts, we didn't have robes. Wow, that's pretty cool. There you go. I never once connected that. See, there you go, people, This is how we dived deep into the lives of the hosts on this show. Yeah, that's right. And now we're kind of covering some time because we're only reading two verses today. Yeah, there you go. How we're at the normal minutes it goes about eight minutes. Yes, so we are reading and everybody's favorite book of the Bible, right, Habacca. It's fun to say it's my favorite book to say salsa. Yeah, Sasa, I love saying sausage. Habak Hubacca chapter three and these are in the Book of Habak. These are my two favorite verses. No, I'm not joking. Stop, they are my two favorite verses. Habakuk is praying, and it says, I have heard all about you, Lord, I am filled with awe by your amazing works in this time of our deep need, help us again as you did in years gone by, and in your anger, remember your mercy. Miss you missed the opening sentence in verse one. This prayer was sung by the prophet habak Yes, that's there now. Well it's it's a prayer with some Yeah, that's that's that's cool. It's a cool little tid. Like the entire book of Psalms, these were all prayers. Yeah, prayers that were song. Yeah, people used to sing prayers all the time. Well, if our people in churches would realize that when we're worshiping, singing worship songs, we're just singing prayers. Yeah, that's right. Right, So we're reminding God what he's done in our life and we celebrate that, or we're pleading with God for his presence or his his care whatever, Father, bless me. Indeed you're all that in need. There you go. Oh wow, that's a callback. Yeah yeah, expand my horizon what I see? There you go? So this song was This prayer was sung by the prophet habakk and Habakuk was a contemporary. If you're trying to place him in the Bible, Isaiah Daniel were in his his time slots right, And uh, is that is that right? Let me let me find it out. Well, it's a it's a six hundred ish b c. Right, And it's it's right around the time that Jerusalem was where a Babylon was going to invade Judah, and and and and the prediction was to destroy the temple in Jerusalem. And Habacchik was probably a priest. Yeah, and uh indicates certainly that he knew the scripture as well. He was a competent theologian. He definitely had faith God, and so yeah, he basically was a person who wrestled. In fact, the word tobaccack, my little note says Habakik means literally to embrace or to wrestle, and in this book it says he did both. He wrestles with God concerning the problem of how a holy God can use a wicked nation like Babylon to chasen the people of Judah, and then by faith he embraces God and clings to his promises. Habaccik also wrestles with the spiritual decline of the nation and why God wasn't doing something about it. Haebekk wanted to see that people revived, but God wasn't answering his prayers, at least not the way that he expected. Right, So it wasn't Isaiah, It's Jeremiah and Daniel in Ezekiel. It's kind of been that time slot. So Isaiah was not a contemporary there. I just looked that up. So to summarize what you just identified, it would have been one and fifty years. Yeah. So he was frustrated with the fact that he had seen northern Israel be defeated. But Judah, now four kings in a row are living wicked, just like the people in northern Israel were, and yet God wasn't changing them, and they weren't coming to revival and all these things. But then he's frustrated or confused. Why would God let the apparent success of Babylon be the tool, right, And so he comes to the end of the book and he's really kind of acknowledging, Hey, God, I'm not God, you are right, and so you know he's a conclusion by the wayeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, And so he basically comes down to the conclusion that only by faith can we ever have real answers to what we're looking for. Right, And so he responds after God. He brings his concerns directly to God. I love the fact that God's not offended by questions. If you have a bunch of questions, A lot of people feel like, oh, you know, I don't have much faith because I have a lot of questions Habacca. God decided to put Habakkuk's whole letter his whole book in the Bible, celebrating the fact that Habaka had a lot of questions, kind of challenging God, God, why are you doing this this way? I don't understand why you're doing it this way? And instead God just is patient with him. He keeps showing him the way. And then we don't have to be afraid to ask questions of God either. Right. So the problem is not with God in his ways, but it's with our limited understanding of him. And so then finally, what you have happened in chapter three is Habaka settles down. After all of his challenges to God, he settles down. He goes, Okay, I get it the way you used to do, would you do that now? Would would you bring back the revival we used to have? Would you go back and don't forget how you used to treat us and how you used to bless us, and don't don't do whatever it takes to get us back to the point where we are are ready to hear from you again, because I heard all about you, and I'm filled with awe by what you used to do? And God, would you do that in our landing again? Would you bless us again? Would you? And so a big part of building Habakic's faith was looking back at what God did in the past, and then he began to desire that God to do that again in his generation. You know that I actually have felt like seasons that there have been long seasons of my life where I felt like Hubacic in this prayer right here, Like like I remember back in the early two thousands when I just had a you know, sort of a crisis of faith. I guess you could say I was debating whether even to stay in the ministry because I loved the ministry portion of it. I just didn't like the leadership of the churches that I was under at the time. Right my experience underneath leadership just wasn't good at that point, you know, you know, moral failure after moral failure, and I just didn't appreciate that part of it. And I thought to myself, I'm just going to go back into sales. I'm just going to try my best to earn a bunch of money, I guess. And anyway, it was just a big crisis of faith. But there were there were I mean, I would say years where I felt like I was in a one sided relationship with God. In fact, I prayed that out loud in my car dealership. I actually said, God, I'm in a one side relationship. I said, throw me a bone. Like, all I'm trying to do is serve you. Could you at least throw me a bone? And what I was really saying was sort of this, which is, I remember when you used to bless me. I wonder I remember what it like when when it felt like I had favor right And I feel like I know people right now who are are that way. They just feel like they're in that season where they're like, hey, listen, God is good. I have faith. But it seems like there was a point in time where God was, you know, showing up and it's been years and we just pray, we pray, we pray, and it feels like he's, you know, not blessing. But the reality is, I know now God was with me every step of that way. Right. God never left me, God never abandoned me. God never took his favor off of me. You know, I went through a hard time that I wouldn't wish on any of my enemies. Right. But it seems like what he's praying though, is he's saying, like, hey, bless me like he did before. I don't know why you're not blessing me in these moments, But that doesn't make God any less present. It doesn't make God's promises any less reliable. Right, And sometimes we don't understand those seasons of life, but God is with you. So if you're in that season right now, just know this. There will be a time where you'll look back and understand that God was with you every single step of the way, even though it may not feel like it. And that's sort of the indication of a back. Yeah. So he's praying on behalf of the whole nation here, and he's remembering days when the people were following God and honoring God and how good that time was, and God was blessing them, and they were so prosperous, so so great. But now all thephes coming through Habacco during this time is that judgment is coming, right, and he really humbly accepts. As you keep going through chapter three, he accepts the fact that God, God's judgment is coming, and he accepts the fact that, okay, in order to get Judah's attention, God's going to have to discipline them, discipline them. And so while Habakkuk was honoring God, the rest of the people were not, and so Habaka kind of surrenders to this idea. It's going to be rough for a while. So God, remember your mercy even in your judgment. Remember your mercy during this time. And Habakuk is saying, God, if this judgment is what it takes to get us back to where we used to be, I'm good with that. Do it. That's what he's saying. And there's a tremendous amount of surrender for people to say, God, do in my nation whatever you need to do to get us back to where we used to be when we honored you, respect you, and you're able to pull your blessing out on us, and so you know, he talks about the sun and the moon stands still. You marched across the land in anger and trample the nations and your fury where it's pretty rough stuff. And then he says, I trembled inside when I heard this on My lips quivered with fear. My legs gave way beneath me, and I shook him terror. So he knew. And this is you know, verse what sixteen He said, I will wait. He mentions the sun stands still. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty yeah. And then he says, I will wait quietly for the coming day when disaster will strike the people who invade us. Even though the fig trees have no blossoms and there's no grapes on the vines, even though the olive crop fails and the fields lie empty and barren, even though the flocks die in the fields and the cattle barns are empty. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will be joyful in the God of my salvation. The sovereign Lord is my strength, and he makes me as surefooted as a deer, able to tread upon the height. So he's saying, hey, God's going to take care of me even though judgment's coming on the nation, God's going to take care of me and my only hope, my only trust is nam But he's kind of saying, God, if that's what it takes to get us back to the way we used to be in serving, you go ahead, bring the judgment, and then I'm going to trust my hope is in you, and you are going to make me surefooted even when the rest of the world is crumbling around me. You want to talk about faith instead of trying to get revenge, and instead of trying to be angry at everybody who's messing up the nation you love or whatever. Instead just say, God, do whatever it takes to get our attention again, and I'm going to trust that you're going to keep me sure footed even when the rest of the world's crumbling around me. That's where he's at. It's pretty pretty amazing. Yeah, And to talk about a dangerous prayer. Yeah, I was going to say. I was going to say, it's hard to believe that these words could be put to music, some of them, right, you crush the heads of the wick and strip their bones from head to right. I mean, just can you imagine singing this so yeah, yeah, you crush Laura and I lift your name, I E. And you crossed the heads. You cross the heads. And the ladies. It's so funny, man, that's so great. Or maybe it's or maybe it's a build up at harmony. Maybe it's like heads heads heads, you know, something like that. Anyway, the uh yeah, so so back back praise and he sings, and so it is a definite you know, you can imagine this whole entire chapter put the song as a prayer. Is is a significant time in prayer, right, yes, So that's another thing that we can't overlook is the fact that a back spends significant time going through the the you know, the the gamut of of every aspect, right, and so he's he's exploring every single consideration and he's just saying, God, whatever it takes, I just want your blessing. So he starts off with saying, you know, please, it's like he used to and as you pointed out, he goes through all the great miracles that God has done in the past, and he's saying like, hey, whatever it takes, and and and and so it's it's it's wrapped under this umbrella of God, just bless us, and and and then he goes to this but he but he explores all of it and he puts it all to song, and it's significant. And so it's just a it's a it's a perseverance prayer for that reason alone. Right, So that the idea that like, hey, if you're going to pray for God's blessing, or maybe it's a specific thing like help my father come to Christ, or I pray for the people at my work, or maybe perhaps right now you're praying for your nation, right, you know, there there's there's big things that we have to pray for. I would say, you know, be encouraged by habatas perseverance to pray long. Don't be afraid to pray long, don't be afraid to consider different aspects of what it may take to get the you know, the answer, and then just beg God for that result, no matter what the cost. Yeah, I think it's great. That's powerful. Yeah, it certainly is. Well, hey, it looks like that's a good place to end, and that looks like our time. So hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the Bible. Guys,