Two Journeys

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on 1 Kings 17:7-16. The main subject of the sermon is Elijah's interaction with the widow of Zarephath.

Now, we've already seen in 1 Kings 17, last time we looked at verses 1-6. We talked about the historical background. It's a terrible time in the life of Israel. Elijah was a prophet to Israel, the northern kingdom. One king after another, had been wicked and idolatrous, and so it was a terrible, terrible time. And suddenly, out of nowhere, this mysterious, powerful figure Elijah appears, and he says, "As the Lord my God lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither rain nor dew, except at my word." And then he leaves. And he goes at the command of God. And God tells him to leave and go eastward, and hide in the Kerith Ravine east of the Jordan, and there he will drink from the brook, and he's ordered ravens to feed him. And so, this unclean bird... He wasn't allowed to eat the ravens. Now, I think that was wise of God, okay, because you can get hungry out in the desert. The ravens are off limits, but the ravens are going to bring food. And this is what happens. He obeyed the word of the Lord, in verse 6. "The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook." Now, this is a fascinating thing. He gets little bits of food. How much food could a raven carry? Think about it. I mean, you had to be patient if you were Elijah. Just little bits of food dropped out of the raven's mouth. And you're looking up to heaven. When is the next bird shipment coming in? It's getting to be... My stomach's growling. And so, it just caused him to grow in his faith and in dependence on God. And so, he is looking, and the ravens did care for him.

Now, beginning at verse 7 and following, "Sometime later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him, ‘Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I've commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.’ So he went to Zarephath, and when he came to the town gate, a widow was there, and she was gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, ‘Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?’ As she was going to get it, he called, ‘And bring me, please, a piece of bread.’ ‘As surely as the Lord your God lives,’ she replied, ‘I don't have any bread, only a handful of flour in a jar, and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son that we may eat it and die.’ Elijah said to her, ‘Don't be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first, make a small cake of bread for me from what you have, and bring it to me. Then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘The jar of flour will not be used up, and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.’’” Verse 15, "She went away and did as Elijah had told her, so there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family, for the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah." Now, this again is part of God's wonderful and strange way of dealing with people. I would not have done it this way. If we had put this whole thing together, we wouldn't have thought of doing it this way. But God, I believe, is working in the life of Elijah as much as he's working through Elijah to his people. What do I mean by that? Well, I think it has to do with two basic things over which we feel we should or do have control, namely, where we will go today and stay, and what we will eat today. And in these two ways, God is humbling Elijah and causing him not to move or to eat except at the word of God.

Now, both of these ideas have their roots in God's dealing with the nation of Israel. Let's look at the first one, and that is in Deuteronomy chapter 8. Turn back with me in Deuteronomy 8. Deuteronomy 8, in verse 1. Now, the context of Deuteronomy was that this was the second giving of the law, after 40 years of wandering in the desert Moses was about to lead the people across the Jordan into the Promised Land. Moses himself would not come with him. He had disobeyed God, and God would not permit him to enter the promised land. He would die on the other side. But right before he went up to the mountain where he died, he gave this, the second giving of the law. And it's rich and it's powerful and it's relational. There's a lot in here about loving God, and the law is woven together in a love relationship with God. But so also, now, is a history. Whereas the first giving of the law, none of this had happened yet, now we've had 40 years of the people of God out in the desert. 40 years of wandering in the desert. And this is what God says in Deuteronomy 8:1 through Moses. "Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised, on oath to your forefathers. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these 40 years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these 40 years. Know, then, in your heart, that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you."

Now, you know the story about the manna. The people were very concerned, and murmured and argued against God, and said in effect, "God, you're a poor quartermaster. You brought this huge army of people out in the desert, and you haven't provided food for us." They spoke faithlessly, didn't they. They didn't understand that the God who created heaven and Earth had made plans for them to eat, and they should have trusted him. And so it was, the next morning there was manna on the ground. The word manna is just the transliteration of the Hebrew word for "what is it?" They went out and they picked it up, and "What is it?" And it had a sweet kind of coriander flavor, and they picked it up, and God gave them strict instructions about how it was to be collected. They were to collect only enough for a day. Only enough for a day. No, not just enough for one person for a day, you could collect as much as you want, but it was to be eaten that day. And so, some would be strong and vigorous and go out and collect a lot, and some were not as strong and they didn't collect enough. But as they shared one with another, he who collected much didn't have too much, and he collected little didn't have too little, and there was enough for everybody. That was the plan, anyway. All right? Of course, the first time they didn't do it right, they never obey, and they collected way too much and stored it up for a midnight snack, or something in the morning. You know how you get hungry. And what happened was the next morning there was maggots all over. It was just disgusting. And God was displeased with the people because they had not obeyed his command. What was he teaching them? He was humbling them and testing them. “You will collect only enough for today. I will give you enough food for today, and that's all. Enough for today.” Of course, there was an exception in the seven-day cycle, wasn't there, because they were not to collect on the Sabbath day. And so, the day before the Sabbath they were to collect twice as much as usual, and they were to store it over. Did they obey? No. They didn't collect enough. And so, the next day they went out with baskets to collect. "How long must I put up with these people?" said Moses. "They don't listen to anything you say." Sooner or later, though, after 40 years, they got it, didn't they? They collected enough, day by day, except that one day they collected twice as much and they had enough to eat the next day, so they did not labor on the Sabbath.

And so, this was a cycle of training, wasn't it? Because eating is basic to life, isn't it? It's just a basic thing. You should be able to go to the fridge and get what you want out of it, right? Well, I think it's a interesting thing that we Americans have. We've got enough and to spare. How long do you think you could go without going to the supermarket and not starve? Think about that. I'm not saying eat in comfort and eat the things you want. I'm not asking how long will your ice cream last. I'm not asking any of that. I'm asking how long do you think you could go and not starve? Probably a long time, longer than you think. You don't need as much food as you think you do, as much as I think I do. All right? But it's there. We store up for the future. And as you store up, you learn to not trust God anymore. But the people of Israel did not have that luxury. They couldn't store anything up. And so they had to humble themselves. And so, the lesson was clear: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” What does that mean? Well, we know it's been reiterated in Jesus' life. Remember, Jesus went out, and for 40 days he ate nothing. The 40 days, I think, corresponds in some way to the 40 years of wandering in the desert. And so, for 40 days, he ate nothing. And at the end of the 40 days he was hungry. You remember that. And the tempter came to him and said, "If you're the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." And he said, he answered, "It is written, ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’" Now, the first time I understood that and read it in Matthew 4:4, I said, "You know what that means? I need to have a quiet time." Have you ever thought that way? "Oh, I need to read the Bible. I need to stay in the Word because man does not live in bread alone." I really don't think that's what it's saying. I think indirectly it's saying that we need to feed on the word of God, but that's not what he's saying. What he's saying is, "I don't eat until God says so." And that what Jesus is saying, in effect. Doesn't that correspond better with the experience in Deuteronomy 8? He's saying, "I'm not going to turn the stones into bread because I'm not going to eat until God says so. Now, if God tells me to turn the stones into bread, I'll do it. And as much as he says that I will turn into bread, I can do it, but he hasn't said so. And so, basically I'm waiting on God." This is Jesus' attitude now, “I'm waiting on God, and when he says so, I'll eat again, and not until. And he hasn't said so in 40 days." Perfect obedience by Jesus Christ. And so, there's a humbling going on here, “I'm not going to eat until God says so. I'm not. I'm not going to eat.” So it also was with movement. They wouldn't even move except at the command of God.

Look at Numbers chapter 9. Numbers chapter 9:15 and following, "On the day the tabernacle, the Tent of the Testimony, was set up, the cloud covered it." Now, you know that cloud, the pillar of cloud, it says, "From evening until morning, the cloud above the tabernacle looked like fire," that was the pillar of fire, “and that's how it continued to be. The cloud covered it, and at night it looked like fire. Whenever the cloud lifted from above the Tent, the Israelites set out. Wherever the cloud settled, the Israelites encamped. At the Lord's command, the Israelites set out, and at his command they encamped. As long as the cloud stayed over the tabernacle, they remained in the camp. When the cloud remained over the tabernacle a long time, the Israelites obeyed the Lord's order and did not set out. Sometimes the cloud was over the tabernacle only a few days. At the Lord's command, they would encamp, and then at his command they would set out. Sometimes the cloud stayed only from evening until morning. And when it lifted in the morning, they set out. Whether by day or by night, whenever the cloud lifted, they set out. Whether the cloud stayed over the tabernacle for two days or a month or a year, the Israelites would remain in camp and not set out. But when it lifted, they would set out. At the Lord's command, they encamped and at the Lord's command they set out. They obeyed the Lord's order in accordance with his command through Moses." Is this not the same lesson as the manna? Just as the lesson of the manna is, “You don't eat until I say so.” Also the lesson of the pillar of cloud and fire is, “You don't move unless I say so.” “At the Lord's command, I eat and don't eat. At the Lord's command, I move and don't move.” Now, the question I ask you is: do you live that way? Do I live that way? Do we eat only at the Lord's command? Do we move only at the Lord's command? It's not natural to us, is it? We want sovereignty over these matters, don't we? We want enough food, and we want freedom to go here and there where we choose.

Well, even Elijah's like that, I think. So, look back at 1 Kings 17. God commands Elijah to go to a certain brook, Kerif, and he goes. He doesn't move from there until God says so. He stays at the brook, Kerif. Do you wonder how he spent his time? Nothing to do there except pray and wait on the Lord, and he prayed and he waited on the Lord. And I'm sure he did some waiting on the ravens, too. Waiting on the Lord and waiting on the ravens. Meanwhile, sometime later, the brook started to dry up. Now, don't you think Elijah knew the significance of the drying brook? He knew. He knew his days there at Kerif were numbered. Soon, the brook would be dried up entirely. You can't live long without water. And so, he's waiting on the Lord. And suddenly the Lord's command comes to him in verse 9, "Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there." Now, why in the world would you go there? Now, this is significant. Jesus refers to this in Luke chapter 4. We're not going to turn there, but in his first preaching in Luke, he's preaching to his own people in Nazareth, and he unrolls the scroll, and he preaches from Isaiah, and he says, "Today, the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." The people are astonished, and they're amazed, and they speak graciously about him, and then he lays a bomb on them. And this is what Jesus does all the time. He says exactly the wrong thing, but it's the right thing because he says it. He offends them deeply. And he says, "I want you to know that a prophet's not held in honor in his own town, so let's just go ahead and get into it today, because you're going to reject me sooner or later. Let's do the rejecting right now. There were many widows in Israel during the time of Elijah, but he wasn't sent to any of them, but to a widow and Zarephath in Sidon. And there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Naaman the Syrian, but not one of them was cleansed, only the foreigner." But what is Jesus saying? He's saying, "My plans go beyond the parochial borders that you have. I've got my eyes on the whole world. I've got my eyes on the Gentiles, too. And you will reject me. They will listen, and so I'm going to them, ultimately." The message is going far and wide, and they were bitterly offended at Jesus, and they wanted to kill him that day. But Jesus uses this experience of Elijah here to talk about God's worldwide saving purpose, and also the fact that his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts.

Now, if you were to trace out Elijah's journey, you would realize he had to travel across a desert, so I think he probably took the last gulp from the brook, if there was a gulp left. I mean, when a brook dries up, there's not much left but mud. And so, can you imagine that trip across the desert to the region of Sidon? It must have been horrendously difficult for Elijah, a real tough trial. And he gets there, and it says, "I've commanded a widow to feed you." The interesting thing is, the widow doesn't know it yet, okay? She's not aware of the command. See, God had already commanded in himself, and it was a done deal, and he commanded Elijah to act accordingly, but the widow didn't know anything about it yet. You see, God's command goes ahead of the actual events. He knows the widow will obey, and it'll work out just fine. But it's a little bit touchy at the beginning. Now, one bit of irony happens right here at the start. Where is he commanded to go? He's commanded to go to Sidon. Now, what's significant about Sidon? Well, look back if you would to previous chapter, chapter 16:31, this is talking about evil King Ahab. Now, Ahab had unusual tastes in women, especially in a queen. He married Jezebel. Look at verse 31, “He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, King of the Sidonians.” Where do you think Sidonians live? Well, they live in Sidon. And so, Elijah gets sent to Jezebel's hometown, basically. Now, don't you think they're looking for Elijah right now? It's been a long time, now, and this guy shows up out of nowhere, proclaims a drought, and then disappears for a long time. And they're looking everywhere. They would never think to look in Sidon, of all places. And so God sends Elijah right to the lioness' lair, hometown of Jezebel. And he's commanded a widow of Zarephath in Sidon to feed him. "I've commanded the widow to supply you with food." In verse 10, “So he went to Zarephath,” the obedience of Elijah. He goes at the Lord's command. Where the Lord says to go, he goes, and, “when he came to that town gate, a widow was there carrying sticks." Now, how did he know that was the widow? Well, it doesn't say. He just sees a woman there, and perhaps something inside his spirit says that's the one, but it doesn't say that. It could be that he's just going to go on trial and error. So, she's out there picking up sticks, and, “He calls to her and he asks, ‘Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?’" Now think of the physical side. He's just traveled across the desert. It may even have been several days since he's had something to drink. And so, he's actually begging for water that he might survive. What's interesting, though, is the drought has gone that far beyond the boundaries of Israel. The drought is including Sidon and other areas. And so, it's not just God's people that are judged here, but also the Gentiles as well.

Now, God is not unjust. The Gentiles were worshiping idols, too, and so God's judgment can come down anytime. He sends rain on the evil and the just, and sun on the righteous and the unrighteous. But he can withdraw those blessings anytime he chooses, and he's chosen to withdraw it from the Gentile regions as well. And so they're under drought, and they're under famine. And so, he asks for life itself. He asks for a cup of water, and she goes to get it. Now that's a real sign, isn't it, to Elijah? She's willing to go get the water. She's willing to listen. But then he pushes it a little bit too far at that point. He says, "Oh, and while you're there, would you mind baking me a cake, something to eat?" Well, this is a little too much for the widow. Look what she says. "‘And surely as the Lord your God lives,’ she replied, ‘I don't have any bread, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil and a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son that we may eat it and die.’" So, it's not looking good. They have enough for one more meal, and all the neighbors are out. She's probably considering herself blessed that she still has that. That's all there is left. And she's going to make it for her and her son, and then she's going to die. She doesn't even have enough fuel for a fire. She's got to go out and find some sticks. She's poverty stricken, and Elijah says to her, “Don't be afraid.” Now, isn't that something? Don't give in to fear, but trust. Only believe. Only trust the word of the Lord. “Go home and do as you have said, but first, make me a cake." God tests us, doesn't he? And so, he tests this widow and says, "Will you trust me? Make me a cake first, and then after that, you eat." And then comes what she needs. Because faith comes by hearing, doesn't it? It comes from hearing the word of the Lord. And so, you want faith, you've got to hear the promise. And he says, here's the promise that you get: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. ‘The jar of flour will not be used up, and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.’” Now, it's interesting how he says it. "The Lord, the God of Israel." This is very similar to the interaction that Jesus had with the Samaritan woman. Salvation is from the Jews, so he's humbling her too. It's not going to be a Sidonian salvation, it's going to be a Jewish salvation. "And I am a Jew," says Elijah. "And as the Lord, the God of Israel, speaks, so it will be." And so salvation comes from the Jews.

And all of us are gentiles. We need to accept that. We are grafted into a Jewish tree, aren't we? We are Jews by faith. We're Abraham's descendants by faith. And so, salvation comes from the Jews. So, he humbles her, but then he gives her a promise. "The jar of flour will not be used up, and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land." Now, God could have done it a different way, but basically he says, "You know that little dribble you have at the bottom of your oil jar? Well, it's going to still be there day after day. And that little last handful of meal, corn meal or whatever flour, it's going to still be there the next day after you've scooped out that last amount."

Now, he could have done it differently. Another time, later on, there's a woman who needs a lot of money, and Elisha says, "Go get lots of jars, and just keep pouring," and the oil just flows. And he says, "Go and take that and sell it, and you'll have enough money to pay your debt, and you'll have enough to live on." And so, God could have done it that way so that there was an abundance of oil, but he chose not to do it that way. Instead, there's just enough every day to live on. Does that sound familiar? Sounds just like the manna, doesn't it? Day after day after day, they had to look to God and trust him and to believe that he would be faithful, and he was faithful. "She went away and did as Elijah had told her." Faith apart from deeds is dead. But she obeys, and she makes the cake. "And there was," in fact, "food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family, for the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping what the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah."

Now, what's the application to us? Well, I think the application is, first of all, don't move and don't eat except at the word of God. Learn to follow the way Jesus did. Learn to have Jesus' attitude. "I'm not going to eat unless God says so. I'm not going to move unless he says so." In this, you have to cultivate a prayer life, don't you, just like Elijah. You have to be willing to listen and to move as he commands.

Secondly, have the faith of the widow. She was willing to trust God for something astonishing, something that had never been heard of before, that the little handful of oil and flour at the bottom would not run out. And how her faith was rewarded by ever-strengthening faith. Imagine the faith of the widow and the faith of Elijah and of the boy after a long period of time of this. Their faith is being bolstered day by day by day, looking to God. What are you trusting God for? Are you facing financial difficulties? Are you facing problems? Are you facing issues? Look to God and trust him, and trust in his promises the way they did.

If you would, look with me at Habakkuk chapter 2, which Warren read for us, a tremendous passage of Scripture. And we're going to see in there a tale of two empires. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us. We were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way." That's how Charles Dickens began his famous novel, "A Tale of Two Cities.

It's a story of Paris and London during the time of the French Revolution. Each of those cities represented something different, something that was going on in history. And so Dickens wrote and represented Paris and London, each of them representing what was going on in their own countries. And yet this concept, a tale of two cities, I think also represents what God has been doing, what has been happening in human history since the very beginning, or really, I would like to adjust it and say, A Tale of Two empires. One for the glory of God and one for the glory and praise of man.

Saint Augustine writing a book called The City of God saw this exact same theme, the city of God and the city of the devil or Man. 410 AD Alaric and the Goths sacked Rome, bringing the Western Roman Empire to an end. Many feared this meant the end of the world, but it was not so. And, Augustine three years later, began writing his great work City of God. The basic concept is that human history can be seen as a battle between these two cities, the city of God and the city of the devil. The city of God is the heavenly Jerusalem, the company of God's people. The city of the devil is man's city on earth, one human empire after another.

They rise, they dominate, they swagger then they stagger they fall and they sink back into the dust. And yet the city of God continues always to advance against the backdrop of this rise and fall of the world. The city of God advances, under the hand of God, and the Scripture teaches here in Habakkuk 2 that the city of man also rises and falls under the hand of God. Augustine wrote it this way, "These things being so, we do not attribute the power of giving kingdoms and empires to any save the true God who gives happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven to the pious alone but gives kingly power on Earth both to the pious and the impious as it may please him whose good pleasure is always just."

What is Augustine saying? He's saying you can't make any sense of the kingdoms of the world. Some kings are good and wise and righteous and they rule well, other kings are insane, megalomaniacs who use their power to dominate and to crush. Kingdoms are given to wicked and sane men, kingdoms given to Jews, who worship God, kingdoms also given to Babylonians who worship their own military prowess. And no one can make heads or tails of it. No one can trace out God's ways, but yet they are perfect anyway.

God in the end, judges wicked men, wicked rulers for how they use their position of authority, and in the end only one Empire will stand, and that is the glorious empire of the kingdom of God. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Now, as we look at human history and see this tale of two empires we see the Empire of human glory rising forth from the earth, snarling like a beast going forth conquering and to conquer, always greedy for more, following the drive and genius initially of a single powerful leader. He organizes his tribe into a military machine, sleek hungry, and powerful. They move out, they take on their own oppressors and they beat them, they dominate them, they pay them back in fold for what they did to them. But they're not satisfied, are they? Because just over the next ridge is a peaceful valley with good fertile farm land. Those people have never done anything to them, but they're hungry, they're greedy, and off they go and they continue to conquer. Why? Because they can.

They're powerful enough, and no one can stop them. And they do it over and over again, until there are no foes left to fight. Then the truly great ones stop and consolidate and they begin to build. They make monuments to their own glory, to the praise of their own name. They build Colosseums and arches, and great walls and fortresses. They build monuments to their greatness. What do they use for material? Well, stolen and plundered materials, of course, things stripped from dead bodies, and taken from live ones and all of it goes into monuments for the praise of their glory. They use slave labor pressed by the whip into great building projects. The great pyramids of Egypt built that way, the Great Wall of China built that same way, Roman bridges and roads and Colosseums built that same way.

They build also fortifications to protect and consolidate their power. Great Walls, like the wall of Babylon and others, watchtowers, Ramparts they build up their military strength so that they can... It says in the words of Habakkuk, set their nest on high to escape the clutches of ruins, so they think. And so, they consolidate their power. And then they enjoy it. They bask in stolen luxury, they recline at feasts on the backs of slave labor. They grow fat, they grow lazy, rich and comfortable, ripe for the plucking themselves, and soon their day comes and it comes on like a tidal wave and nothing can stop it for the next human empire has arisen and it stands on the horizon ready to sweep down into their valley and take what's theirs. Their empire then is gone forever. It's dust in the wind. It's just recorded on the pages of history book. The next empire has its hay day and off it goes.

Taken from the former empire, the gold is melted down and made into new idols, made into new monuments. And so the cycle of history continues. This, my friends, is the history of the world, the rise and fall of the empire of human glory. Represented in one incarnation after the other but it's the same thing again and again. Egypt then Assyria, then Babylon, then Persia, then Greece, then Rome, then the Huns then the Saracens, then the Franks, then the Mongols, then the Turks, then the Spanish, then the French, then the English, then the American. The rise and fall of the world. Some say the Europeans that came and swept North, Central and South America of the Indians were unjust and acted unfairly. It is true but do you understand what the Indians did before they came. The Aztecs built mighty empires with monuments to their own glory on the backs of slave labor until the conquistadors came in and conquered them. It's always been the same. There's no difference.

The Mystery of God’s Purposes

Now, the Scripture teaches plainly that the rise and fall of the world that I've been describing is all done under the sovereign hand of a mighty God who rules all of it through his inscrutable wisdom and for His own purposes. We already saw this in the book of Daniel, Daniel 4:17. It says, "The Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men," Daniel 4:34-35, "His dominion is an eternal dominion. His kingdom endures from generation to generation, all the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth, no one can hold back his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'"

Do you know who said those words? The king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. He recognized the sovereign hand of God, even in his own power. God's way cannot be traced out but his overall purpose is clear. He's building an eternal empire for His own glory.

Look at Habakkuk 2:12-14. The contrast is striking. It says there, "Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime. Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." Do you see the contest going on in those verses? The one, the empire of human glory, the other, the empire of God's glory. And who wins in the end? God does. His empire rises and it stands forever.

Now Habakkuk 2, we have to understand in context, I've been giving you the historical context, big picture, but there's a specific historical context that Habakkuk faced and what was it? Well, it was the end of the history of Jewish autonomy and rule over the promised land, it's the end over Jerusalem. And why? Because God had brought these people, the Jews into the promised land and given them the Mosaic covenant, and they did not keep the covenant, they broke it and despite repeated warnings from prophets, they broke it completely. And so God was ready to judge the people.

Now, before the final judgment came, there were prophets who saw what was happening in Judah, and in Jerusalem. Habakkuk was one of them, and he looked at his own people and he saw injustice. He saw the people using their power, judges, rulers, commissioners, military people, all those in positions of authority, using it to dominate the poor, to strip them, to plunder them, to throw them in jail and take their houses so that they could build their own mini-empires. It's always the same thing. Building a little mini-empire within Judah, within Jerusalem, adding house to house, it says in the book of Isaiah. As the rich get richer on the backs of the poor through injustice. Habakkuk sees it and says, "How long, O Lord. Must I cry to you for help, but you do not listen, cry out to you violence but you do not save." "When are you going to do something about this, God?" Chapter 1 Verse 5.

I have an answer for you, Habakkuk. "Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed. For I'm going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told. I'm raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless, and impetuous people who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own." They're going to come in like a flood, Habakkuk, and they're going to destroy Jerusalem. They're going to deport the remnant and those who are the blessed ones, the faithful ones, the rest are going to die by the sword, famine, and plague. Judgement is coming, Habakkuk.

Habakkuk 1:12, He laments, he grieves, he says, "Oh, God, my Holy One…" "Righteous One, what are you doing?" "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?" How can you allow this to happen, God? You're holy and just and we are sinners. It's true, but the Babylonians are pagans and you're going to use them to evict us from our city, from our home? Wouldn't a revival go better? Wouldn't it be better to refresh us from within God? Could I give you some advice, I don't want to question you, but I don't understand what you're doing. And so, I will stand at my watch and I will station myself on the ramparts and I will wait and see what answer you will give. What are you doing, God. It doesn't make any sense.

Habakkuk 2 is God's answer. I will explain myself. He basically gives him a four-part answer. You have to look across the whole chapter to get this, but the first answer is

The first three are big picture, what is God doing in the world with empires, the moving of one and another, the sweeping one side or the other, and in the end there's this kingdom being built and then the individual answer comes through, believe, trust obey, follow and enter the kingdom of God, that's the answer.

Well, let's look more carefully at this first answer, namely that Babylon will be destroyed in turn. Habakkuk is concerned about God's justice, isn't he? It seems unjust it seems that God's ways don't make any sense. And so Habakkuk is filled with anguish and he prays, and he needs an answer. Now, Babylon is not specifically mentioned in Habakkuk 2, isn't that interesting? And that's why I know that it applies through all ages. It's not just Babylon that he has in mind here, but in the end, Babylon is in view. Look at chapter 3:16.

Chapter 3:16, this is Habakkuk's answer. "I heard, and my heart pounded. My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us." And who's that? That's Babylon. So Habakkuk interprets the answer in Habakkuk 2 to be applied to Babylon, and so it is. He's speaking about Babylon.

Now, he describes the enemy very carefully in verses 4-5, look with me as he describes him. Verse 4, it says, "See he is puffed up, his desires are not upright but the righteous will live by his faith. Indeed wine betrays him, he is arrogant never at rest. Because he is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied, he gathers to himself all the nations, and takes captive all the peoples."

So what do we see first? First, we see arrogance. See, he is puffed up, he's puffed up. You see that in verse 4. It all starts with a lofty self opinion in one individual, one talented individual. I'm not going to deny that, but one individual starts to look inward and find what's there. And says, "Wow, I'm really something, aren't I? I can go places, maybe even to the end of the earth if I'm good enough." And he starts to move out, the future conqueror ultimately really worships himself, doesn't he? He starts with small successes within his own tribe, he's able to consolidate, maybe overcome some local opposition. He's able to maybe work together a consolidation or a coalition of tribes and they start to get powerful and off they go. He's got energy, he's got intelligence, he's got leadership, he's got personal magnetism, he has a unique vision of the times, and of other nations.

And He begins to believe himself to be invincible. You can stick in any of the conquerors names there, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, all of them, they're all the same, one after the other.

After that comes unrighteous desires. Look, it says his desires are not upright. What does that mean? Well, he sets his heart on unrighteous things, ultimately, he wants to be worshipped. He also wants a comfortable lifestyle with luxury and ease. He covets other people's lands and houses and farms and women and gold and silver and everything. He wants it for himself. But more than anything, he sets his heart on individual personal glory. He wants to make a name for himself.

Genesis 11:4, they built a tower to reach up to heaven, Tower of Babel. "Then they said, 'come let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.'" Do you hear that? That's the same motivation. And that was Babylon the spirit of Babylon. Let's make a name for myself.

And then what does it say? It says after the statement we've already looked at the righteous will live by his faith, verse 5, "indeed wine betrays him." what an interesting thing to say. Where does wine come in at this moment? It's an odd thing. Well, I've done a careful study of wine in Habakkuk 2. And I think that wine is in a small way, the fermented result of putting grapes in a certain place, and you drink it and you get drunk. That's the literal interpretation. We're following the literal interpretation. And so in one sense, he's a drunkard. But I don't think that's the ultimate meaning of wine in Habakkuk 2. I think it has to do in terms of the conqueror with an arrogant overbearing self-confidence that goes beyond the boundaries that are reasonable. He is confident that he can do anything. Nothing is too difficult for him. That's the conqueror. What about the conquered? It's the drunkenness of being conquered, the drunkenness of terror and fear and running around like you're insane, the night before the battle because you know you're going to get killed the next day. And there's terror in that, and there's a wine that gets poured out and you drink and it's the wine of destruction. This theme is repeated again and again in the prophetic books.

And so I think that's what's going on here. Initially, it's wine. And I think, actually, literally wine is involved all the time, right? When men fought battles they would get drunk because they lacked the courage to face getting skewered with the sword the next day, and the conquered would also drink the night before the battle because they were terrified themselves. But the conqueror has an over-confidence and wine is ultimately going to betray him.

Talk about drinking and driving, one of the greatest dangers of people who drink and then drive, is that they have an over-inflated confidence of what they can do, they're convinced they can stop in time. They're convinced they can drive twice the speed limit around that curve. And yet they're impaired by their over-confidence, they're impaired by the wine, the alcohol, and they crash and die. And I think that's ultimately what it means here. Wine betrays him. He thinks he can do anything.

1941, Adolf Hitler had an army sitting in France and all over and he couldn't cross the channel to get into England, didn't know what to do with it, so he figured he would go Eastward and invade Russia. Never invade Russia. Russia is huge with limitless resources of manpower and there's always one more mountain ridge and one more and it's like, a funnel that just keeps getting wider and wider. And after a year of fighting, he's on a 1500-mile front. What was he thinking? I can do anything, wine betrays him, he loses the war as a result. And so it is with every conqueror. They always overreach themselves.

Thirdly, restlessness. It says, "He is arrogant and never at rest." The restlessness is Satan-like. Job 1:7, "The Lord said to Satan, 'Where have you come from?' And Satan answered the Lord, 'From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.'" He's not satisfied because only God satisfies. And so he's got to move, he's got to go conquer. Restlessness is caused by discontent. He's not satisfied with what God's given him, and so he rides forth for more. That leads immediately to greed. Look at verse 5, "Because he is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied, he gathers to himself all the nations, and takes captive all the peoples." A fire never says, "I've had enough logs tonight, no more. I'm fine, I'm satisfied." Fire is always going to take one more log. The grave never says, "We've had enough dying this month. I have my quota, no more death, I'm finished for the month, maybe next month we'll get going again, but it's enough." No, the grave is never satisfied. There's always room for one more. And so it is with the conqueror. He always thinks there's room for one more.

Alexander the Great after the Greeks had reached the Punjab region of India, they came to the Hyphasis River and refused to cross it. The army said, "No more." [chuckle] How much is enough for you? They had conquered 27 different regions. He built Alexandrias all over the world, not just the one in Egypt that still bears his name, but everywhere there was an Alexandria. How many more cities do you want to your name? When is it enough? He says, gather the army, I've got to talk to them. So they come out and he starts to persuade them to keep going. This is Alexander the Great, that's what he says, this is from a historian, Arrian, "All Libya to eastward will soon be ours and all Asia too, and to this empire there will be no boundaries, but what God himself has made for the whole world." Boy, he's ambitious. "Gentlemen of Macedon and you, my friends and allies, we must not halt. Stand firm, for well you know that hardship and danger are the price of glory and that sweet is the savor of a life of courage and of deathless fame beyond the grave." What is motivating him there? The glory of his own name. It's never enough. Ultimately, he wept because the army wouldn't go any further. All of that leads to power. He wants to control, it's a disposition to dominate. He wants to control.

And so in verse five, again, "He is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied. He gathers to himself all the nations, and takes captive all the peoples." The culmination is relentless empire building, this is the spirit of Babylon.

Now, what does the Prophet say to this? What is the answer to such a spirit? Well, God gives in Habakkuk 2 a five-fold woe. Now the word woe to a prophet, is a word of impending judgment that has not come yet, the prophet sees it coming and through his mouth, through his words, he is speaking judgment from God. And so five times the word of woe was spoken to the suppressor. Look at verse 5-6, "Because he is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied, he gathers to himself all the nations, and takes captive all the peoples. Will not all of them taunt him with ridicule and scorn saying, Woe to him." Now, here at last, the oppressed, the prayers and hopes of the oppressed start to rise up to heaven and they're crying for deliverance from these oppressors, from the boot of the oppressor. And so up it goes and they start to cry, they have nowhere else to turn to. Just as Habakkuk did it in chapter one. They start to pray.

And the prayer is answered. The conquest comes, the former conqueror is toppled and what happens then is what we call in the Bible a taunt song. They have a celebration, they sing a song.

How many of you have seen the movie Ben-Hur? It's my favorite movie, I love that movie. Just watching it with the kids the other day and the stories of a Jewish, a powerful ruler, a rich man and his friend, Messala is that his name? Yes, Messala, and they were boyhood friends got along great when things were simple but they each grew up. He went over to Rome, Messala did and rose in the Roman Army and became drunk with the glory of Rome, and brought that drunkenness back to his so-called friendship with Judah Ben Hur. And he tried to enlist Ben-Hur's help in betraying his own people. And they start to discuss and they start to yell and argue and in the end, there's no reconciling the two of them. And Messala said to Judah Ben-Hur, "Look to the west, look to Rome, that's where the real glory is, that's where the real power is, it's not that." Pointing up to heaven. "Not that." And Ben-Hur looks at him and says, "I tell you that Rome is an affront to God." I can't say it like Charlton Heston, he said, God better than anyone I've ever... "Rome is an affront to God and on the day Rome falls there will be a cry and a shout of freedom such as not been heard in history."

Well, it's heard again and again, isn't it? When the oppressor is finally toppled, the taunt song goes up, and that's what Habakkuk 2 is. The woes really come from the lips of the conquered again and again, but really from God.

Look at verse 6, "Woe to him who piles up stolen goods, and makes himself wealthy by extortion." Look at verse 9, "Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin." Verse 12, "Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed, and establishes a town by crime." Verse 15, "Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk so that he can gaze on their naked bodies." Verse 19, "Woe to him who says to wood, come to life or to lifeless stone wake up." All of these are immediately directed to ruthless conquering Babylon. But, they're really for anybody who meets the description. Anybody.

Now, why does God's justice come? Well, because wicked corrupt hearts lead to wicked corrupt actions. It's not necessarily corrupt to conquer because Joshua conquered under the direction of God. But if you have wicked motives and your motive is not the glory of God, then you cannot conquer and be held guiltless. And so out of these corrupt motives, pride, unrighteous desires, discontent, covetousness, greed, evil plotting and love of ease, comes wicked actions.

Now, what do I mean by love of ease? Look at verse 9, "Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high to escape the clutches of ruin." What is that? Well, I know that when we conquer you, you're going to be angry at us, and you're going to want to come after us, so we're going to make Babylon so strong that there's nothing you can do. We're going to make the walls 350 feet high, so wide at the top that you can drive a chariot with four horses. We're going to have a river running right through the center of the city, we're going to have farmland within the walls of the city, you'll never be able to starve us. We're going to stock up food enough for three years, are you going to bring food enough for yourself for three years? No sieging army can handle that. And we've got 100 bronze gates and we've got ramparts so high you can't even see them. And you cannot conquer us. That's what they're doing, they're setting their nest on high to escape the clutches of ruin and so they're easy and they're comfortable.

Jeremiah 51:53 says, "Even if Babylon reaches the sky and fortifies her lofty stronghold, I will send destroyers against her, declares the Lord." Ultimately the wicked motive is self-glorification. Isaiah 47:7, "You said, I will continue forever, the eternal queen." That's Babylon's attitude.

Well, what wicked actions? Well look at it. Look at verse 6, "Woe to him who piles up stolen goods, and makes himself wealthy by extortion. How long must this go on?" This is violence, this is extortion, plunder. Look at verse 9, "Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain." Then there's murder and destruction. Verse 8, "You have shed man's blood, you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them." He says it again in verse 17, Cruelty, "The violence you've done to Lebanon will overwhelm you and your destruction of animals will terrify you, for you've shed man's blood, you've destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them."

God is perfectly just and he's not going to tolerate or accept this, and so judgment comes. And it's an interesting kind of judgment. Who is going to do the justice? Who is going to conquer Babylon? Well, their own victims will. Look at verse 7 and 8, "Will not your debtors suddenly arise. Will they not wake up and make you tremble, then you will become their victim. Because you have plundered many nations, the peoples who are left will plunder you." You see conquerors that rule in ease, they get lazy and fat and comfortable and easy. And they're prime picking for those that have built up years of resentment. And so, they rise up and overthrow their tyrants.

Look at verses 15 and following, "Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk so that he can gaze on their naked bodies." I don't think this is talking about some perverted drunken feast. I think what's going on is, this is the language of conquest and you're going around to your neighbors and you're going to pour out the cup of conquest to your neighbors. Now, says God, it is your turn. The cup from the Lord's right hand is coming around to you. Now you drink and you get exposed, you will be stripped, you'll be left for dead. That's what he's saying. The cup from the Lord's right hand is coming around to you and disgrace will cover your glory. The violence you've done to Lebanon will overwhelm you and your destruction of animals will terrify you. Isn't that interesting? The way you handled animals when you invaded, I see it all. Sparrow doesn't fall to the ground apart from the will of God. I watched, I saw, for you have shed man's blood, you've destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.

Well, what happened? Well, the book of Daniel tells us what happened, you remember Daniel Chapter 5, Belshazzar's feast. Belshazzar King of Babylon invited all these nobles to come in and drink from the cups that were taken from the temple of God, blasphemy. And they drank and they celebrated the gods of wood and iron and clay, and stone and that very night, Belshazzar died at the hands of the Medes and the Persians, because they crawled under the wall of Babylon and opened the gate while everyone was drunk. Everyone was sleeping it off and Babylon fell in a single night.

Now, what application do we take from this? Well, if you were Habakkuk there in Jerusalem so long ago and you know that the Babylonians are coming, you feel terror, you feel pain, you wonder what God is doing. And then when God answers, in effect, he's saying Wait for me. Wait joyfully for my powerful word. Habakkuk asked for wisdom, this Habakkuk 2 is God's answer, this is what's coming. Now, how long is that going to take, God? Okay, for the conquerors come in and go through that whole cycle, that's seems like it's going to be a while. I'm an old man. Yeah, it's going to be a while.

Wait patiently for God's word to be fulfilled. God's word will be fulfilled no matter how improbable it seems. Habakkuk took that word and believed it and rejoiced. Look again at Chapter 3:16 and following. He hears, he's afraid, and yet he makes a commitment. He says, "I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us." And then he says this, "Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pens and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God, my Savior." It's easy for a pagan to be happy when things are good. A believing person can rejoice when things are devastatingly difficult. So wait patiently for God's word.

Secondly, be humbled by God's sovereignty. You look at that and say the nations are rising and falling, what can we do about it? The answer is nothing. But God rules over it all, the God that you love, the God that you call your Father is navigating history. That includes what's going on in Afghanistan. That includes what's going on in our country. That includes what's going on in Jerusalem right today, how appropriate is that? That includes all the events of human history. God is absolutely sovereign over all of it. Be humbled by that. Realize the limit to your own power. And God doesn't owe us any explanation for what he's doing.

Thirdly, never doubt God's perfect justice. Some of God's ways seem unjust. It could be that some time this week something will happen to you that will make you question God's justice. I hope not. Don't ever question God's justice. God is always righteous in everything he does. He knows what he's doing. And his justice is perfect and right.

And then ultimately, I want to urge you to flee to the only place of safety. There is one, and that is Jesus Christ. Look again at verse 4, it says there, "The righteous will live by his faith." The righteous will live by his faith. I don't have any idea what's happening in your hearts as you're listening to me. Do you realize what we've described is a picture of judgment from God? The Babylonians came to judge God's people. The Babylonians themselves in turn will be judged. Do you realize that Judgment Day is coming? Are you ready for it? Are you ready to face and stand before a holy judge, who knows everything you've ever said or done? Are you righteous enough for that? There's no safety anywhere except in the blood of Jesus Christ. The cross of Christ alone is a safe refuge in the ebbs and flows of history, regardless of what you're going through. The cross of Jesus Christ alone because Jesus died on the cross, the wrath of God is turned away for all who believe in Him.

The righteous will live by faith. And then having trusted in Christ, you just go through the ebbs and flows of history over which you have so little control and you accept the things that God has given you by faith. And even if the fig tree doesn't bud and there are no grapes on the vine, even if the most terrible things you can imagine happen in your life, yet you can rejoice in God your Savior. In the end God will bring you into His Heavenly Kingdom. Trust in Christ, trust in his blood, have faith in him regardless of what's going on in human history, God is building his empire for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Kings 17:1-6. The main subject of the sermon is God's provision for Elijah by the book Cherith.

Elijah is a stunning figure really to me. One of the most fascinating figures in the Old Testament. There's some people in church history or in the biblical history that you would love to eat dinner with and some that you wouldn't. I think he'd be terrifying to eat dinner with, but I'll tell you, I'd love to ask him questions. This is a man that appears mysteriously, suddenly in biblical history. Really out of nowhere he suddenly appears. He appears with an oath and with a curse. And he disappears just as suddenly in a chariot of fire up to heaven. Now, this is an amazing individual, and I think it's well worth studying and helping to understand the history of Israel at the time, but also how God can use a single faithful individual to do his will.

Now, he appears at probably one of the darkest moments in Israel's history. In order to understand what happens in 1 King 17, you have to go back in time some to understand the history of Israel. So we're really tonight going to be spending a good amount of time in 1 Kings 12-16 setting the stage. This was one of Israel's darkest hours. God's people were in a deplorable condition. God's covenant had been grievously violated. There was gross idolatry and there was wicked leadership. To put it on a historical timeline, it's been 58 years since the kingdom was split north and south after the death of Solomon. The northern kingdom was called Israel, Southern kingdom called Judah.

The northern kingdom of Israel immediately lurched into idolatry. Take a minute and go back to 1 Kings 12 and look at verse 26 and following. Now, the southern kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem went to Solomon's son, Rehoboam. He got two tribes. And 10 tribes went to Jeroboam and the northern kingdom of Israel. Well, Jeroboam had a problem. The law of Moses, the book of Deuteronomy, had set aside a single place among all the tribes that all the nations, I mean all the tribes were to go to worship God. He said, "You will assemble there three times a year. The place that I choose." And the place that had been chosen was Jerusalem and that was in Judah in the southern kingdom. And so Jeroboam thinks he's got a problem. Look what he says in verse 26, “Jeroboam thought to himself, ‘The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam, king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.’ After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, ‘It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ One he set up in Bethel and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin. The people went even as far as Dan to worship the one there.” Verse 31, “Jeroboam built shrines on high places and appointed priests from all sorts of people even though they were not Levites. He instituted a festival on the 15th day of the eighth month like the festival held in Judah and offered sacrifices on the altar. This he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves he had made. And at Bethel he also installed priests at the high places he had made. On the 15th day of the eighth month, a month of his own choosing, he offered sacrifices on the altar he had built at Bethel. So he instituted the festival for the Israelites and went up to the altar to make offerings.” Now, this is a terrible, terrible thing. He has established worship of the true God in a false way. They were worshiping Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God that had brought them out of Egypt. But they were doing it in a self-styled way. Jeroboam made up his own religion. He said, "I choose to worship God in my own way." Now, his reasons were political. We see behind the scenes exactly what he was thinking. He was afraid he was going to lose his kingdom if they went to Jerusalem. So he had a pragmatic wisdom to it. But we see here immediately, idolatry. You see, idolatry is not just worshiping idols, but it's also worshiping the true God in a false way, worshiping the true God in a way of your own making. So Jeroboam immediately led Israel, the northern kingdom, into sin, into corruption, into idolatry.

Now, AW Pink, whose book I'm following quite closely in Elijah and you can get that, I'd rather you wait until the series is over so you can think, "Wow, all the things that pastor discovers." So wait, all right? But after I'm done, you're going to want to pick this book up. Don't listen to my tapes, just read the book after that. But AW Pink had this comment about the northern kingdom of Israel and he said, "Let it be duly and carefully noted that the apostasy began with the corrupting of the priesthood by installing into the divine service men who were never called and equipped by God." Now, that's a devastating thing, isn't it? It's my personal conviction that the theme of the book of Judges is the failure of the Levites properly to instruct the people. Because the Levites did not instruct the people they did not know the commands of God and they went into sin no different than Sodom and Gomorrah, ultimately. And so the lips of a priest must instruct in wisdom and righteousness, must teach the law of God. So we have these self-styled religion and these priests coming out of nowhere. We have a new festival date that no one ever thought of except the king. We have a false religious system right away.

Now, in the 58 years that followed this, seven different kings ruled over Israel. Seven different kings. Now, after Jeroboam came a son Nadab, 1 Kings 15, you can turn over there to verse 25-26, “Nadab son of Jeroboam became king of Israel in the second year of Asa, king of Judah, and he reigned over Israel two years.” Verse 26, “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord walking in the ways of his father and in his sin which he had caused Israel to commit.” Now what is that sin? I think it's this false religious system. It is the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and at Dan. It is the following of this new festival. It is the submitting to these false priests who have been established by Jeroboam. It's the sin of religion done in a false and idolatrous way. So Nadab follows the sin of his father, Jeroboam walking in this idolatry. Well, Nadab was assassinated by Baasha and all of Jeroboam's families wiped out, slaughtered completely by this man Baasha.

Now Baasha was a murderer and a usurper and didn't last long. And so his son Elah comes along next and he's a drunkard and an idolater. He reigned only two years and one of Elah's chariot commander Zimri rose up and assassinated Elah and all of his family, slaughtering them completely. Now, how long did Zimri last as king? Well, seven days. He was king for seven days. You can see the turmoil and the upheaval when you turn away from God away from his law, away from the covenant of Moses. Now, Omri, one of Elah's commanders hunted Zimri down, surrounded the city he was in and burned the city to the ground. This left a northern kingdom of Israel split. There was somewhat of a civil war within a civil war because the people of God had been split into a northern and southern kingdom. It wasn't long before Omri's followers proved stronger than their rival. The rival, Tivni was killed and Omri reigned in Israel for 12 years. That's a relatively stable rule in the northern kingdom. But look at 1 Kings 16:25-26. "Omri did evil," it says, "in the eyes of the Lord and sinned more than all those before him. He walked in all the ways of Jeroboam, son of Nebat and in his sin which he had caused Israel to commit so that they provoked the Lord, the God of Israel to anger by their worthless idols." So we see that they continue in the pattern of idolatry and in false worship. But it's also progressing. It's getting worse. It seems each regime is worse than the last one. Finally, Omri died and his son Ahab succeeds in as king. Now, look at 1 King 16:28-33. And this is the assessment of Ahab. If Omri was the worst up until that point, Ahab was the worst of all, “Omri,” it says, “rested with his fathers and was buried in Samaria and Ahab, his son succeeded him as king. In the 38th year of Asa, king of Judah, Ahab son of Omri became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria over Israel 22 years. Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians and began to serve Baal and worship him. He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel before him.” So that's a repeated phrase. We saw it with Omri, now we see it with Ahab. Sin never stays put, does it? It doesn't stay in one place. It's always moving. It's aggressive. It's like a tumor.

So Ahab comes along and he's the greatest in doing evil of any king Israel had experienced to that point. He continued in the idolatrous system of Jeroboam and it says he considered it a light thing, a trivial thing, nothing to do so. He's moving out. He's looking for religious adventure, I suppose. So he marries Jezebel. Now, Jezebel was a wicked woman and we're going to find out more about her during our study of Elijah. But it was Jezebel that led him into Baal or Baal worship. He began to serve the Baals and worship. Now, we've already seen Baal or Baal worship. That word, by the way, just means lord or master and he's somewhat like a male god and the Asherahs are the female goddesses of fertility. So we've already seen this worship in the book of Judges, but now for the first time after David, it comes back under this king, Ahab.

Now, the thing that we've got to understand is just how terrible all of this is. God had made provision for a king in the book of Deuteronomy. Now, we tend to think of the whole kingship of Saul as an aberration. If only that they had continued to follow God, they wouldn't have asked for king. But God had made a provision in the book of Deuteronomy for a king, but this was what the king was supposed to be: he was supposed to be saturated in the word of God. He was supposed to lead the people in following God's law. You don't have to turn there, but you can make note of it. In Deuteronomy 17:18-20, it says this, "When the king takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law," namely the book of Deuteronomy, "taken from that of the priests who are Levites. It is to be with him and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will,” listen, “reign a long time over the kingdom in Israel.” In other words, he's supposed to get a copy of the law made for himself. This is where the scribes came in. They were the ones that were copying the law. They did not have printing presses. They did not have reproducing equipment like Xerox machines or other things. And so they had to be written out by hand. And so, a copy would be very costly, but the king had to have one. He had to saturate his mind in the word of God. He had to study it all the time.

Now, part of the law of Deuteronomy was that there was to be no intermarriage with the pagan people surrounding them. Deuteronomy 7, it says, "Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods and the Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles, burn their idols in the fire for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession." And so there's a strict law against intermarriage. Why? Because it would lead to it immediately to spiritual consequences. We saw it in the life of Solomon as he loved foreign women and took them into his home. They led him astray. Now understand, consistently in the history of Israel, the people of God so to speak, God's chosen people, the Jews continued to worship Yahweh, the God that had brought them out of Egypt. But they added to the worship of Yahweh, the worship of other gods and goddesses. It was synchronistic. It was never that they abandoned Yahweh per se, but they added to worship of Yahweh, they added the worship of false gods and Solomon instituted that specifically through intermarriage. Again, Pink puts it this way: “The marriage of Ahab to a heathen princess was, as might be fully expected for we cannot trample God's law beneath our feet with impunity, fraught with the most frightful consequences. In a short time, all trace of the pure worship of Jehovah vanished from the land and gross idolatry became rampant. The golden cows were worship at Dan and Bethel. A temple had been erected to Baal in Samaria. The groves of Baal appeared on every side and the priests of Baal took full charge of religious life in Israel.”

Now, that is the situation into which Elijah is about to stand. It's a terrible situation. And to boot right at the very end in 1 King 16:34. It says, "In Ahab's time Heil of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son, Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son, Segub, in accordance with the word of the Lord spoken by Joshua's son of Nun." That is a very serious thing. You remember when Jericho fell, this was the very beginning of the conquest of the land of Canaan, Joshua put a curse over the city of Jericho and basically in effect said, "It must never be rebuilt because whoever attempts to rebuild it will begin the building at the cost of his firstborn son and will end the building at the cost of his youngest son." Well, along comes this man from Bethel and disregards the curse, doesn't think anything of it and the curse falls on him most directly. He loses two sons to the building. But you can see the attitude of casting off respect for the law of God and respect for his commands. It is terrible to consider the degradation of Israel, the turning away from the law of God, the turning away from the covenant into which Elijah stands at this present time. Only a powerful voice could bring the people of God back to a true and pure worship of God.

There needed to be stern medicine, a shocking figure really and that's exactly what Elijah was. "In the midst of this spiritual darkness," said Pink, "and degradation, there appeared on the stage of public action with dramatic suddenness, a solitary but striking witness to and for the living God. The most illustrious Prophet Elijah was raised up in the reign of the most wicked of the kings of Israel. This sudden appearance provides the key to all that follows.” Look at verse 1 of chapter 17. “Now, Elijah,” it says, “the Tishbite from Tishbe in Gilead said to Ahab, ‘As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.’” Now, this is incredible, isn't it? Out of nowhere, this man appears, confronts this wicked and powerful man, King Ahab, and says this to him. Who is this man and what is the right that he has to make such a pronouncement? Well, in order to understand that, you have to understand the office of a prophet.

What was a prophet to God? The law of Moses was a binding covenant into which the people came when they entered the promised land. Basically in effect, God said, "You may keep this land as long as you keep the covenant. If you break the covenant, you will lose the land." So along with the covenant came blessings and cursings. Blessings for obedience and cursing for disobedience. Repeatedly Israel would sink into rebellion against the covenant and God would send the prophets and the prophets would act in effect like covenant lawyers pressing God's lawsuit. In effect, the prophets come and say, "You have broken the covenant. You have broken the commands of God. You've broken the law of Moses. And so as a result, God is going to send this curse on you." Now, a good example of this is the idea of calling heaven and earth as witnesses. In the book of Deuteronomy 4:23 and following, take a minute and look there if you would, turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy 4. Moses calls heaven and earth as witness against his own people. It says there in Deuteronomy 4:23, "Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you. Do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden for the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. After you've had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time, if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and provoking him to anger." Now, this is Deuteronomy 4:26, "I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you're crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed." So there's a sense in which Moses institutes the law. The book of Deuteronomy is a record of the covenant that God made with Israel that day just before they enter the Promised Land and God calls heaven and earth to witness against his people if they break this covenant. He does it repeatedly. He does the same thing in Deuteronomy 30:17 and following. Same book, chapter 30:17 and following. "If your heart,” it says, "turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess." Chapter 30:19, "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and your children may live." You see how it works? Blessings and curses are called down on the people if they break the covenant. Deuteronomy 31:28-29, "Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials so that I can speak these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to testify against them for I know that after my death you are sure to become utterly corrupt and to turn away from the way that I have commanded you." And then finally in the song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32:1, it says, "Listen O heavens and I will speak. Hear O earth the words of my mouth." And so, he's about to sing a song, Moses is, in which he ahead of time gives out all the history of Israel. In prophetic perspective, Moses being a prophet said, "This is what you're going to do. You're going to rebel against me and I'm going to bring foreign armies in to destroy you." That's the morning sermon in Habakkuk. We're learning about that. The Assyrians came for the northern kingdom of Israel and then later the Babylonians came for the southern kingdom. God kept his promise. It's interesting in the song of Moses in 32:2, he says, "Let my words fall and descend like rain and dew." Isn't that interesting? The words of God liken to rain from heaven watering the land and bringing fruit. So suddenly Elijah appears and what does he say? "Elijah the Tishbite from Tishbe and Gilead said to Ahab, ‘As the Lord, the God of Israel lives whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.’”

Now stay in Deuteronomy for a minute. I told you that prophets were covenant lawyers. They're appearing and basically issuing a summons to the people to come to God's bar of justice. And there he's going to summon heaven and earth against them as witnesses. Isaiah chapter 1:2, "Hear O heavens, listen O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I rear children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me." What is he doing? It's court time. It's time for judgment to come on God's people because they've broken the law. So the prophets like Isaiah are God's covenant lawyers. And so Elijah just stands to represent God to his people. And so what does this matter that, “As the Lord, the God of Israel whom- who lives and before whom I stand as he lives, I swear to you, there will be no rain nor dew until I say so.” What is that coming from? What's coming from the command of God? Look at Deuteronomy chapter 11. Deuteronomy 11:11 and following. “But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the Lord your God cares for, the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.” So what is he saying? It's a good land. There's lots of rain there. It's a beautiful place. It's a land flowing with milk and honey. Verse 13, “So if you faithfully obey the commands I'm giving you today to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul then I will send rain on your land in its season both autumn and spring rains so that you may gather your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied.” But now look at verse 16. This is Deuteronomy 11:16. "Be careful or you'll be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the Lord's anger will burn against you and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you." Did you hear what he said? He said if you worship other gods, if you fall into idolatry, if you turn away from me, then I'm going to shut up heaven from you and there will be no rain. Now, what is Elijah doing? He's suddenly coming and he's calling down a curse, the covenant curse on God's people. And why? Because they've broken the covenant. God stated very clearly that it would happen and now the time has come.

Now, when Elijah appears, he appears out of nowhere as we've said. It's a fascinating thing. There's no record of his parents. There's no word of his father or mother. That's relatively unusual. Some prophets were also this way. But I think it's significant. There's no mention of Elijah's parents. Now, Elijah's parents had given him one thing, they gave him a name. The name Elijah means: “My God is Yahweh.” That's what it means. Now, that's going to be significant at Mount Carmel, isn't it? Because what are they going to call when they fall down? “The Lord, he is God.” Well, they're just saying Elijah's name. “You're right Elijah. We've been wrong in worshiping the Baals.” So we have, indirectly, some testimony of the faith of Elijah's parents and that they named him, "My God is Yahweh." But we don't know anything more about them and I think it's very interesting, significant to me. And in this way I think he's very similar to Melchizedek. Now, some of us are studying in the book of Hebrews on Thursday. Now, what's the interesting thing about Melchizedek? He suddenly appears. Go ahead, Herbert. You were going to say it. What were you going to say?

[audience speaks]

Just suddenly: there's Melchizedek. Brings a gift to Abraham and then suddenly he is gone again. Right? Book of Hebrew says, "Without father or mother, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God, he remains a priest forever." Now that’s, I think, within the context of the written account. Some people think he was literally Jesus. We can talk about that another time. But the fact of the matter is at least this much is the case: within the account. Melchizedek suddenly appears, does his ministry as a priest and a king. He's a priest king. And then suddenly disappears. How much is that like Elijah? He suddenly appears. He does the work of a prophet and then disappears up to heaven in a chariot of fire. In this way, I think he kind of foreshadows Christ eternal prophetic ministry just as Melchizedek foreshadows the priest king ministry of Jesus Christ. So much so that in Jesus’ day they were waiting for Elijah to come back, weren't they? We'll talk about that more later. But Elijah never died. And so there's a kind of a timelessness to his prophetic ministry. It's kind of eerie almost. When is Elijah coming back? And they're always waiting for him. He just suddenly appears dramatically and speaks this oath as the Lord whom I serve lives. And then he gives the curse, “There'll be no reign or dew” and then he disappears. It's a stunning thing. I think it's calculated to shock, isn't it? I mean it's just stunning. And Ahab is just stunned with this appearance. And what did Elijah look like? Well, he is wearing a garment of camel's hair. He had a leather belt around his waist just like John the Baptist would look later. He's kind of a rough and ready guy. He's from Gilead, the mountainous region. Imagine one of those old Western mountain men like Jeremiah, somebody. I forget. You know those guys. The guys who were riding around rough and ready. They didn't need much food. They could ride for days, one of those guys, kind of a tough guy suddenly appearing and making this pronouncement.

Now, we don't know very much about Elijah's character. We know in 19:10 he says, "I've been very jealous for the Lord, God of hosts." I think this gives us an incredibly important glimpse into the character of Elijah. He's very jealous or zealous for God. He's zealous for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And that is the key. It fueled his fervent ministry.

Now, something else fueled Elijah's fervent ministry and it was prayer. Take a minute if you would and go over to James. Look at James 5:17. It's a fascinating thing. Elijah was a man of prayer. He was faithful in praying for his people. Now one might think, what's the use? It's been nothing but 58 years of idolatry. One bad king after the next. And it's just getting worse. Ahab is worse than Omri was. You could almost feel the sense of desperation. Jezebel is the queen now. All the prophets of Yahweh have been rounded up and many of them have been killed. Others have been driven into hiding. It seems like there's no one left and at one point Elijah is going to say that, “I'm the only one left.” There's nothing going on. It seems as though God has been extinguished from the northern kingdom, gone entirely. It's almost a sense of hopelessness here if it weren't for faith filled prayer. And so Elijah is zealous for the glory of God. And you know, what the arm of flesh cannot do, the arm of prayer can. The power of God in prayer, faith-filled prayer. Look what it says in James 5:17. It says, "Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again, he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops." Well, this gives us an insight into Elijah prayer life. Elijah was a man of prayer, wasn't he? What did he pray for? What did he pray earnestly for according to James 5:17? He prayed earnestly, that it what? It would not rain. Now, what kind of prayer is that? What kind of harsh, cruel mean guy is that? Do you realize that rain, water, dew, that supports life? And when you're praying for drought, you're praying literally in the end that people are going to die. He's praying earnestly and zealously that the rain would stop. Prayed effectively, didn't he? The rain did stop. It's a fascinating thing. Look what it says here. It says he prayed earnestly that it would not rain. And what was the basis of his prayer? Deuteronomy 11:17. "Now Lord, you said that if they turn away to false gods that you would shut up the heavens. Now, do what you have said." Faith is not a matter of thinking what's best and then going out boldly and doing it, faith is really a passive thing in which you receive the word of God and he has already told you what he intends to do, but you believe it and you trust it and you beg God to do the very thing he said he would do. And that's what he does. He takes Deuteronomy 11:17 and brings it back to God in prayer. And he keeps praying and praying effectually, fervently. He prays that the rain would stop.

How different is that from us? Would we have ever done that? What motivated Elijah? It was a zeal for the glory of God. “God, don't let your name be trampled. These people are sinning against your covenant and it seems like you're doing nothing.” Same thing with Habakkuk. “God move; God do something.” But unlike Habakkuk, he prays directly for judgment to come on his own people and that is that the heavens would stop raining.

Now, according to James 5:17, how long did he pray? Or how long did the drought last? What was it? Look carefully now, three and a half years. Now it kind of makes a difference, doesn't it? Look over at Luke 4. Luke 4. Jesus speaks about the same thing. In Luke 4:25, Jesus says this, "I assure you that there are many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land." Now, why am I making much about the half? Well, because I'm an engineer and I care about precise things, right? Look at chapter 18. 1 Kings 18:1, 1 Kings 18:1. "After a long time,” look what it says, "After a long time in the third year, the word of the Lord came to Elijah. 'Go and present yourself to Ahab and I will send rain on the land.'" Now, what does that say? “Oh, you see, there's errors, there's contradictions in the Bible.” No, there's not. What does it mean? It means there had already been six months of drought by the time that Elijah presented himself to Ahab. It had already been going on for six months. And then suddenly Elijah appears and says, "No, it's not going to end. It's going to go on." How powerful and effective is that? Probably they're already looking for stockpiling water. They're already trying to conserve. They're already starting to feel the effects of a missed harvest. Six months already of judgment has come and it's going to continue. And it's indefinite too. He doesn't say it's going to be three more years. He just says it's not going to happen except at my word. So for six months there's been drought and all of that as a result of this prayer of Elijah. It's prevailing prayer. It's a faith-filled prayer and it's based on God's word.

Now, look at Elijah's God saturated boldness. He appears after I believe six months of drought and presents himself to a wicked man, to a king. He says to King Ahab, "As the Lord, The God of Israel lives, before whom I stand." I like that in the NASV better than “whom I serve,” "before whom I stand, surely there should be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word." Now what is he saying here? Well, realize that there was a rainy season and then there was a non-rainy season in Israel, but during the non-rainy times, there would be dew that would come up from the earth and it would water. Nothing like that, “Water is gone. Rain is gone, dew is gone. It's all gone except at my word.”

Now, where does that boldness come from? Well, I think he says it right in there. Look at the titles he uses about God. First of all, he calls him the Lord. You know, whenever you see in your English text there that capitalizes “L-O-R-D,” that is Yahweh that is God's name. Eli “Jah”, the Yahweh, that is the name of God. So he uses God's covenant name and then he calls him God of Israel. He says, "Israel is mine. You're my treasured possession. You're not Baal's, you're not Ashera's, you're mine." “As the Lord, the God of Israel lives.” And why does he say as he lives? Because Baal doesn't as I shall eminently prove at Mount Carmel. We'll get to that later on. “He doesn't exist. He doesn't live. But my God lives. And as he lives, I will prove to you that he lives by the things that God does through me. There shall be neither rain nor dew at my word.” But I skipped one part. He says, "Before whom I stand." Isn't that powerful? There's a sense in which Elijah has a sense that he's always standing before God. Yes, he's standing before Ahab. And yes, he has literally taken his life into his hands to do this. He could easily have been killed that very day. And it took incredible courage to do this. But he didn't care about Ahab. He looked beyond Ahab. He looked up to God who had called him to do this. It was a special relationship when he says, "Before whom I stand."

I love the quote, John Knox's epitaph. John Knox was a bold man, perhaps one of the boldest ever. I mean, there's a picture, I saw an engraving of him pointing a finger at Queen Mary, Mary Queen of Scots and preaching right at her. I mean, it was just an incredible courage and boldness to John Knox's ministry. And she said, "I fear more of Knox's prayers than of any armies that could be brought against my realm." That was Knox. And his epitaph said this, "Here lies a man who never flattered nor feared any flesh." Think about that. “A man who never flattered nor feared any flesh.” I think that was even more true of Elijah. He's not there to flatter Ahab and he certainly doesn't fear him. He fears God and he fears God alone. So he stands before him. And it reminds me also of Luke 1:19. "Before whom I stand,” means the one I'm ready to serve. “I'm ready to do anything he commands me to do. I'm standing before him to obey him.” Gabriel speaks this way, “The angel answered, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God and I've been sent to speak to you and tell you for this good news.’" So what is the root of Elijah's boldness? It is standing in the presence of God, hearing his word and obeying it regardless of where it carries you, no matter what he calls him to do. I like Proverbs 28:1. It says, "The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion." Now, in his prayer time, he's come to something new, hasn't he? Not only has the drought come as a result of his prayer, but God has given him a special commission. "I will not send rain again until you pray for it." Ain't that incredible? "There will be no rain, except at my word." Now, that's incredible arrogance if God didn't send him to do it. But Elijah's got that kind of power.

Now what happens next? It says, "Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah." Verse 3, "Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Cherith ravine east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there." Verse 5. "So he did what the Lord had told him. He went to the Cherith ravine, east of the Jordan and stayed there. And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook." Now, this is a fascinating thing and we're going to close with it. Why did God command at this point, Elijah, to hide, to disappear? The immediate answer you might think is to protect him because Jezebel would try to kill him. But that doesn't really make any sense, does it? Because at the end of this, God is going to command Elijah to come back and probably it's going to be even hotter for them then. And after Mount Carmel when he kills 450 prophets of Baal, that's going to be even more dangerous because Jezebel swears an oath by her gods that she's going to kill him. God is well able to protect his servant. That is not the point. I believe that he told Elijah to disappear at that moment for two reasons. Number one, to judge his own people. And number two, to humble his prophet.

Let's take the second one first. How would you like to be the man who gets to say when there's rain again? I mean, wouldn't that tempt you to get an over-inflated view of yourself? “I'm the rain man. Okay? And it's not coming unless I say so.” “Is it coming today Elijah? I don't think so. If you're on good behavior, we'll see what happens.” All right? It tends to go right to your head. Anybody is temptable. So you look at Elijah and Elijah very much, you're going to see more we study him, is a man of action. He likes to be where the action is and to do great things for God. How tough was it to go sit by a brook and wait? And for a long time too, “I want you to go over there and sit by a brook for a while and we'll have some prayer time together. I'll command some unclean birds that you're not able to eat, okay? But they'll bring you food and you'll drink from the brook. The brook will be there.” Of course, a brook is a brook. It's not a river. It could dry up at any moment. “So day by day, you're going to be trusting in me for your water and for your food and just sit there for a while.” The humbling of the prophet. And it was humbling. He had to learn to obey him and follow him no matter what God called him to do.

Now, in what sense, however, and this is even greater, I think, was it a judgment on God's people? In closing tonight, I turn to Amos 8. Remember that I said in the song of Moses, "Hear O heavens, listen, O earth." This is what he says. And then he says, "Let my words come to you like rain and my teaching like dew." Right? Well, not only is there going to be a famine of water, there's going to be a famine of the word of God. And this is what it says, Amos 8:11-12, “‘The days are coming,’ declares the sovereign Lord, ‘When I will send famine throughout the land, not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.’" This was a judgment on Israel, wasn't it? God isn't speaking to his people anymore. And they searched for Elijah, didn't they? They looked everywhere for him, but they couldn't find him. It's enigmatic. And you know if you don't value the word of God, he takes it away. Now, the eternal Word is always here, but as far as you're concerned, you don't hear it anymore. It's gone. Your ears are closed up, your heart is hardened. You cannot listen. And so, he's represented by just disappearing for a while and they cannot find him. And so, day after day, after day as the drought continues. They're staggering around looking for some end, some word from God that it's going to end and they can't find it. And so God prepares his people to hear when Elijah finally reappears.

I'd like to ask all of you, if you would, to take your Bibles and turn to Habakkuk Chapter 2. We are continuing to look in our study in Habakkuk, and we come to a most magnificent chapter. A chapter which proclaims that God is the God of all the earth. I'd like to welcome our international guests, we're grateful that you're here. Grateful also for our youth that enjoyed their Disciple Now weekend and are here with us as well. We praise God for you both, and we're grateful that the word of God is sufficient for all.

Almost 500 years ago, a German youth was on his way back home, to see his parents, he was in college and he was caught in the middle of a terrible thunder and lightning storm. Of course, it was Martin Luther. And Luther, being a child of his time was superstitious, he believed there was a demon behind every bush ready to grab him by the hair and drag him to hell, and he was afraid. He lived in fear all the time, as many people in the Middle Ages did because he didn't understand the gospel and he didn't understand God. And he was afraid, he was terrified, and as he lay in the mud looking for a refuge from the lightning he cried out a prayer of deliverance, and in that prayer he promised that he would become a monk.

Well, he got through the lightning storm. And when you make a promise like that you keep it. And so he entered a monastery and there he began a career in which he sought to erase his sin and to somehow absolve the wrath of God against him, because of sin, simply by doing good works, by many prayers, by confession of sin to his priest, by labors and efforts, by fasting, by sleeping on a stone floor in the middle of a German winter, without a blanket. He said, "If anyone could ever have been, have been justified, been accepted righteous before God by monkery, it would have been me." But it couldn't be done because there was never an enough, no matter how much he tried there was always more his conscience continually accused him. Even in his good works, he felt they were tainted by bad and he didn't know what to do. And in the middle of it all, the word of God stood and testified to the way out.

He read in Romans 1:16-17, it says there, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for in the gospel the righteousness from God is revealed, the righteousness that is from faith to faith just as it is written, the 'righteous will live by faith.'" The righteous will live by faith. Now Luther, when he first read that and heard it in his pilgrimage and as he was struggling over his sin, in the sense of the wrath of God, he thought that he zeroed in on the word righteous and he said, the righteous man will receive the gift of faith, and therefore, be saved. So what you had to do is get righteous enough, to receive the gift of faith as the saints of old had and so he tried to work on it, and work on it.

And then eventually he saw that it was not a righteousness from God by which He judges us in Romans 1-16, but rather the gift of God's righteousness that he gives us simply as a gift, the gift of righteousness. The ability to stand before God, blameless, holy and unafraid because of a gift of salvation given through the blood of Jesus Christ and that faith was just simply a passive reception of a gift that God wanted to give and the whole world changed for him as he turned it around, he saw that faith was that by which God made us righteous as a gift.

500 years ago... And he read something that had been written 2000 years before that. Because a terrified prophet looked at his own people, Habakkuk I'm referring to now, and he saw problems with his people. He saw sinful men who were trying to exploit his people, Jewish men, businessmen and others rulers and leaders and judges and it was all the corrupt system to bilk the poor and plunder them, and to make themselves wealthy by extortion and greed. And he was frustrated and he said, "How long Oh Lord, must I call to you for help, but you don't listen and cry out to you 'violence,' but you don't save. Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?" And so, he's grieved as he looks at the situation, and he says, "God, you're silent. Where are you?" And so the silence of God bothered him greatly. Sinners in Judah breaking the covenant, and God seemed to be silent, he seemed to condone it by his silence, or he seemed to be powerless... There seemed to be nothing he could do.

And so, God spoke to Habakkuk. He's not silent, He's patient. That's true, but He's not silent. And He said, "Habakkuk, I'm going to do something about the problem in Jerusalem. I'm going to bring the Babylonians. "I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own. They're a feared and dreaded people. They're a law to themselves and promote their own honor." "They're coming to destroy. They're coming to crush Jerusalem, they're coming to evict you from the Promised Land."

Well, Habakkuk is terrified all the more. Babylonians are coming. How can a holy God use a sinful, idolatrous, wicked people to judge his own chosen people? Oh, we have problems. God, it's true, I admit it, I just prayed about it, but it's not that bad. Why would you bring an idolatrous people in to destroy your own people? That doesn't make sense, "your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?" I don't get it, I don't understand what you're doing God.

"You've made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler." It's the survival of the fittest, a law of the jungle there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason within Jerusalem within the Jews there, the survival of the fittest, whoever's strong, and as a position of power they can use it to exploit, and they were. And then along come the Babylonians and they have a military genius. They have a power to conquer and they conquer. It doesn't seem to be that there's even a God running this. We're like a bunch of fish, the bigger fish eat the little fish. What are you doing? I don't understand and so I'm going to stand at my post. I'm going to stand here and I'm going to wait, Habakkuk 2:1, and I'm going to wait to see what you will say to me and what answer I can give to this.

And so, that's where we left him last week, he's been waiting all week. We want to find out what the answer is, God. What is the answer? How can a holy God, work through sinful ebbs and flows of history to accomplish his purpose? Habakkuk 2 is one of the greatest chapters in the Old Testament to answer that question.

God gives Habakkuk his answer. Big picture, it's this, the Babylonians are going to be judged, too, in their turn. We call it what goes around comes around. They're going to get it too, and then the people that judge them, they're going to get it too, and it's going to keep on going and going. Nation will rise against nation they're going to be building empires and they're going to be crumbling back down into the dust and through it all. I'm going to be building an empire that will last forever. For the Lord Almighty has determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire, the nations exhaust themselves for nothing for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That's what's going on, big picture.

But what about the individual? Just like Abraham said at Sodom and Gomorrah, "Oh God, will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked, are we all going to die? Is there a way that we can survive this? How can we live through it all?" And Habakkuk 2:4 gives the answer, "The righteous will live by faith." And that answer rung throughout all time. It's the way all righteous people have gone to heaven. From righteous Abel until the last saved person at the end of history, the righteous will live by faith. That is his answer. Big picture, I'm ruling over the nations, they rise and fall. I orchestrate it all, for my glory. In the end I'm building a kingdom that will never end, it's a kingdom of glory that's going to reach the ends of the earth and individual people will enter that kingdom, by faith. That's Habakkuk 2. That's the answer that he waited for it.

Faith Starts with the Word

 Well, let's look at it in detail. He begins in verse 2, and I love this, so powerful. "Then the Lord replied." Why is that significant? Well, at the end of the chapter, He's going to talk about nations that worship idols. What's the whole problem with idols? They have mouths, but they cannot speak. They have eyes but they cannot see. They can't do anything they're made of stone and they're covered with gold and silver. There's no breath in them. They can't speak, they can't give guidance, they can't do anything, they're silent. But the Lord is in His holy temple, let all the nation be silent before Him. Because I'm about to speak. You see, when God speaks, we listen. We should. And so the Lord replied, he said I've got something to say. I'm not silent.

And so he gives him a revelation. Now, as we live by faith, the whole thing begins with the word of God, doesn't it? That's where faith starts. It starts with the word of God, it starts with a revelation from God. It doesn't start with us, we don't invent or drum up or scrape together faith. Faith is a response to God's word. God speaks, we believe. And so it's all got to start here. It's all got to start with a revelation and so it does, verses 2-3, "Then the Lord replied, 'Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets, so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it lingers, wait it; it will certainly come and will not delay." Revelation is coming.

Quote, Francis Schaeffer, "God is there and He is not silent." He is there and he speaks. Habakkuk's first problem was God's silence, right? God, you're silent, nothing's going on, you're not responding, you're not doing anything, right? Well, God's silence turned around, God wasn't silent for good. And so the Babylonians are coming and now he needs to interpret history for us. What do you mean by bringing the Babylonians? And so He's going to give us an explanation. He speaks and He says, "Write it down, write down the revelation." What is God's motive in speaking through the prophets? First and foremost, His motive is His own glory. He wants the nations to see Him as a glorious God. He is concerned about His reputation. He's concerned that people will think you've made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures with no ruler. There is a ruler. I rule over my Earth and I want you to know it. And so He speaks for His own glory, so that the nations may know He is in charge. He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He sits enthroned above the circle of the Earth, and the people are like, nothing, they're like grasshoppers before Him. He wants us to know that, for His own glory, He speaks.

But He also speaks for the good of His people. Doesn't He? His people that they may be encouraged and that they may know what to do. So that they will know the path of escape, the way of life. And so He speaks and He commands Habakkuk to write it down. Now, God speaks before the event even takes place this proves God's foreknowledge. First of all, I'm bringing the Babylonians. He spoke before that happened and then I'm going to destroy the Babylonian, 70 years plus later, that happened. God speaks before anything occurs. He speaks before there's light. He speaks and then there's light. The word always comes first. He speaks, Let there be light, and then the existence of reality occurs. And so also this, He speaks and history occurs, That's the way it works. And so, He declares the Babylonians are coming, and they come. The Babylonians will be destroyed and they're destroyed, but He wants you to know that He sees it all ahead of time, and that He rules.

The night before Jesus was crucified, the disciples are about to go through a terrible trial, they're about to see Jesus hanging dead on a cross, And He tells them everything. He tells him about persecution. He tells him all the things they're going to go through and then he says this in John 13, "I'm telling you now, before it happens, so that when it happens, you will believe that I am." I am what? "I am God. I see the end from the beginning." And so, predictive prophecy, the Bible, the word of God, is proof positive that there is a God ruling over heaven and earth because only God could know the end from the beginning, and He declares it and He tells his prophets, write it down on a tablet, scrape it into a tablet, and then make sure it gets copied and copied. So, that people at First Baptist Church, Durham, North Carolina 26 centuries later, can read it.

The eternal Word of God… "Heaven, and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." so write it down, make it plain. So the word for future generations. And He says, "Make it plain, make it clear what I'm going to do." You know the true prophet and the true pastor have the same job. Make the word of God plain. Make it clear so people can understand. God speaks and it happens and make it plain, so that everyone knows what I'm doing. Write it down, the message is eternal and it's there. Now, why does he want it written down? Well, because he's about to tell us in a moment how you're going to survive the Babylonians coming. How will you survive the Babylonians? Far greater question, how will you survive Judgment Day. How will you survive the final day of the Lord, of which this small little day of the Lord is just a dress rehearsal. How are you going to survive Judgment Day?

Well, the righteous will live by faith. Well, where does faith come from? Faith comes from hearing the word and so He's got to give the words so that there can be faith. He's got to speak so that we can believe. The start of personal salvation, it begins with the word of God. And so He says write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets. Well, the revelation awaits an appointed time. It speaks of the end and will not prove false. So He's not... That message isn't for Habakkuk's own generation alone, it speaks of the end of what? The end of the world. It speaks of all of these things. You never knew that Habakkuk 2 contained all this, did you? Habakkuk 2 of all places? Yes, it's in there. It speaks of the end and it will not prove false. Everything's been measured out. There is a time and a place for everything, and it's going to come at the appointed day, not a day soon or a day late, it's going to come at the appointed time.

Faith Transforms the Heart

Secondly, faith transforms the heart. Faith alone justifies. You, want to know how you're going to survive judgment day, how can you as a sinner stand before such a holy God, his eyes are too pure to look on evil, He can't even tolerate he won't look at it. How can sinful people like us survive such a gaze from a holy God? How are we going to survive? How can we be put into a right relationship with God? Well, it's always been the same, by faith alone. Not by fastings and prayers and sleeping on stone floors in the middle of German winters, that's not it. Not by bunches of religious activity, not at all. But by simple faith. You hear a promise from God, you hear the word and you believe and you're justified. Just like Abram who looked at the stars. God called him out said, "Look at the stars Abraham. So shall your offspring be? Abraham heard the promise, he believed in God and it was credited him as righteousness. He's declared not guilty at that moment, he's right. Faith transforms the heart.

But faith does more than that. It gives perspective. Look at verse four, in the NIV it begins with the word see. It could also say behold, look, gaze. Look at what? "See, he is puffed up; his desires are not upright." Look at the wicked man. Now, what we're going to have before us in this text is basically two ways; you can live by faith or you can die by pride. Those are the two choices you have. Live by faith, die by pride those are the two choices that are laid before you today. You can live by faith or you can die by pride. And so we're going to look at the proud man, but we're also going to look at the one who lives by faith, and so look at him. See his desires are not upright. His soul isn't right within him, something's going wrong within this wicked man, his desires are not upright but the righteous will live by his faith.

So faith gives insight we can have true insight into the wicked Jews who are exploiting the poor in Jerusalem. We can see them for what they really are, we can understand who they are. We can also see the marauding Babylonians as they really are, Who are they? They are covetous, greedy people who never have enough. Look what He says, down here in verse 5, "indeed, wine betrays him; he is arrogant and never at rest. Because he is a greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied, he gathers to himself all the nations, and takes captive all the peoples." He's a greedy conqueror. He's arrogant.  And so faith gives us perspective, we see Him properly.

Faith also makes us humble. We begin to recognize there is no one righteous enough to stand before those holy eyes. Habakkuk can't do it. Jeremiah can't do it. Common men and women can't do it. You can't stand before God holy, you have too much sin. We have all broken God's laws. We're sinners, and so we cannot stand before such a holy God, we can't survive. And so faith makes you humble. Hebrews 10:31 says, "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." It is faith that makes you look inward and say, I can't survive, I'm not righteous, I need a savior, I need a savior. And so faith makes you humble. Faith also makes you obedient to the word. In effect it goes like this, "Pay attention because I'm going to give you some instructions that will save your life and if you obey them, you will live and if you do not obey them, you will not live. It's really that simple. Follow Me. Obey me, and you will live." And so, faith immediately connects to obedience. We'll see that more in a moment.

Faith Survives the Test

Faith also survives the test. There's going to be a test. Look back again for a moment at verse 3, "For the revelation awaits an appointed time. It speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it lingers. Wait for it, it will certainly come and will not delay." Spurgeon spoke of this test. These things don't happen right away, do they? They take time. How long have Gentiles been in charge of Jerusalem? From the time of Habakkuk until when? Until today's newspaper, right? You got to be patient. God's timing is not our timing. And if Habakkuk was waiting for Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, he's going to be waiting an awfully long time. And so why this test? Why does God put us through a test of patience? Why doesn't it come right away?

Spurgeon answered this question: "This tarrying of truth becomes a testing of the people. Because that gospel which we are to tell does not bring forth all it's fruit at once to those who hear us. Why then? What then? This is the winnowing fan, this is the sieve. This is the way by which God discerns between the righteous and the wicked. As for the wicked man, he says, I do not see any present good coming out of religion. Look at that poor, miserable, sighing, groaning, poverty-stricken Christian over there. What good has it ever done for him? I do not believe it."

And so he arrogantly judges the word rather than standing under it. But a Christian man, a holy man, a just man, a justified man, talks like this, "Yes. If God has spoken anything, it is true. If God has said that, it will be fulfilled. I will wait. Troubles may multiply, cares may come like a deluge, but I will wait. I am sure that God is true. I will wait and watch for the unfolding of his purposes. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. I will never give up reliance on him." Charles Spurgeon.

And so God sends us a test to see if we will wait on him. In the case of the Jews of Habakkuk's time, the test is when is Babylon finally going to fall? It's going to be 70 years they have to wait. Finally it'll fall, but in the end they have to wait. And so Habakkuk, by faith, has to learn to wait. Look over at Habakkuk 3:16. Habakkuk models this perfectly for us at the end. God is promising all these wonderful things for us, but in the meantime it's looking pretty horrible. What do you think Jerusalem's going to look like when the Babylonians get finished with it? It's going to be a smoldering, burning mess. What is the promised land going to look like? Fruitful? No. Fruitless. Everything gone.

And so Habakkuk says, "Okay." This is his version of, "Though he slay me yet will I trust in him." Habakkuk 3:16. "I heard, and my heart pounded. My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept in my bones and my legs trembled." That's what happens when you get bad news, right? Terrible. "Yet, I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us." Do you see that? I'm going to wait. It's going to come. Babylon's going to get their day. And then he goes on: "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no crops in the field, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights.

So Habakkuk says, the daily newspaper's not going to look very good for the next 70 years. It's going to be tough. Yet I will trust in God. And in the end God is my strength, and he's going to bring me to heaven. And so faith survives the test, but more than that faith survives the judgment. The Babylonians are coming to judge. Habakkuk 1:12. Look again there at 1:12. "Oh Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my holy one, we will not die. Oh Lord, you have appointed them to execute judgment. Oh rock, you have ordained them to punish." Destruction's going to be total in Jerusalem.

2 Chronicles 36 talks about it, "He brought up against them the King of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small. And the treasures of the Lord's temple, and the treasures of the King and his officials. They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem. They burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there." That's what it was going to look like. The world is crumbling. The world is falling down and nothing will be left. So where is your place of refuge? Where are you going to stand when the world falls down all around you?

People are going to be slaughtered without mercy, wholesale. And absolutely no escape will be possible. None. Amos talked about it. "I saw the Lord standing by the altar and he said, Strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. Bring them down on the heads of all the people. Those who are left I will kill with the sword. Not one will get away. None will escape though, they dig down to the depths of the grave, from there my hand will take them. Though they climb up to the heavens, from there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, there I will hunt them down and seize them. Though they hide from me at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them. Though they are driven into exile by their enemies, there will I command the sword to slay them. I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good." There's no escape.

Martin Luther's in the middle of a field, face down in the mud, surrounded by the thunder and lightning, nowhere to hide. That's an individual sinner on the day of judgment. They have nowhere to hide. What is the refuge place? Is there a place where we can hide? Is there a place we can be saved? Yes! His name is Jesus Christ. The righteous will live by faith. There's going to be survival. There is a way to make it through. By faith alone, who will survive? The righteous will live by faith.

Now, this means a lot of things. I've thought a lot about this expression. For the Jews at that time it meant survive the Babylonian invasion. Do you see that? And you think, "Why is that important?" Well I'll tell you why it's important. Do you know that Jesus Christ said to the Samaritan woman, "Salvation is from the Jews"?

Did you realize that? What if all the Jews had been slaughtered that day? None left. No remnant, nobody. Salvation is over, we have no savior, Jesus was never born. And so we've got to have a remnant. "A remnant," it says in Romans 11, "chosen by grace." A remnant of believers. The humble in the land, the poor in the land that were being exploited, they were among those that were left behind. They weren't killed. Jeremiah was allowed to survive. Faithful prophet in the bottom of a miry pit; he survived. Abimelech, who tried to protect him and spoke up for him at risk of his life, he survived. Jeremiah talks about him. Baruch, Jeremiah's secretary, he survived. Habakkuk survived. Ezekiel survived. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, they survived, and those that went with them. A remnant chosen by grace of those who lived by faith. And they kept the Jewish nation alive so that we could be saved, so that we could have a Jewish savior.

Simply by faith, each one of these survived. But there's also going to be some instructions. You see, the word of God comes and gives instructions. It's a remnant chosen by grace, but it's also restricted by disobedience. Because the invitation went out for everybody. It went out for everybody. Jeremiah said, "Open the gates and go out to the King of the Babylonians. Go out and you will live, you will survive. But pride begins to kick in. "No, we can take him." You remember what God did to the Assyrians a little while ago under King Hezekiah? Shut the gates, bar them, store up water, get the weapons ready, buttress the walls and let's fight. That's what pride said. Jeremiah says, "You'll lose. You will lose and you'll be slaughtered and the city will be destroyed." And so he gave them the word, but they didn't obey. And the city was destroyed. So the remnant was chosen by grace, but it was restricted by disobedience. The people did not follow what God said to them to do, and so they died by pride.

And that's the second option set before us today. We can live by faith, by faith in Jesus Christ, trusting in him alone, or we can die by pride.

Look at verse 4. "See he is puffed up." That means he's arrogant. "His soul is lifted up among them. His desires are not upright, but the righteous will live by faith. Indeed, wine betrays him. He is arrogant and never at rest because he is as greedy as the grave, and like death is never satisfied. He gathers to himself all the nations and takes captive all the peoples." See, pride starts with self. You look inward and your soul is lifted up. You start saying, "Hey, I can do better. I can have more. I've got some power, I've got some energy, some ability, and I'm going to start taking over things. I'm going to start moving out," and out it goes. Ultimately you're willing to lift up your soul, even to the point of Heaven itself. The King of Babylon is discussed in Isaiah 14, you said in your heart, "I will ascend to Heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit enthroned on the Mount of Assembly on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High." That's pride, isn't it? And God says, "You ascend up that high, I'm going to bring you down."

Pride also hardens the heart. It says his desires are not upright. Literally not righteous. He's got ambitions. The Babylonian comes to conquer, and therefore he's going to be judged. Pride hardens his heart so he can't listen to the word of God. Pride also builds an empire. Look at verse five again, "Indeed wine betrays him." We're going to talk more about that in the future. I don't think it's just a matter of drinking here. I think the fact is, when you drink too much you have elevated opinions of your own ability, right? Isn't that what they talk about in terms of alcohol-related car accidents? You think you can take that turn at that speed, and so you've got an elevated opinion of what you can do. And in the end the wine betrays you. It turns you in. It crushes you. And so in the same way, this wine of arrogance and of world conquest doubles back on you, and you're going to get conquered by another conqueror.

Pride is never satisfied with what one has. Pride must move out, greedy, and conquer. Does a fire ever say, "That's enough wood. I've burned enough today. I'm satisfied." No, the fire keeps burning. As much wood you want to put on, it'll take it. And so also the greedy, covetous empire builder. He's going to build his empire until he is stopped. Ultimately he's trying to take over the world. He gathers to himself all the nations, and takes captive all the peoples. And in the end, pride provokes judgment. You want to build an empire that way? Peter drew his sword, and he said, "Jesus, I'm ready to build your empire. I'm ready to build your kingdom. Here's my sword. Off we go." He said, "Put your sword away. For all who draw the sword," will what? They'll "die by the sword. What goes around, comes around. That's how empires rise, and that's how they fall. My kingdom's different.

I have a different kind of kingdom. But ruthless conquerors eventually all get conquered ruthlessly. Look at verse seven and eight. "Will not your debtors suddenly arise? Will they not wake up and make you tremble? Then you will become their victim. Because you have plundered many nations, the peoples who are left will plunder you. For you have shed man's blood, you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them." And so this chapter is dotted with the word "woe". Look at verse 6: "woe." Look at verse 6: "woe." Look at verse 12: "woe." Look at verse 15: "woe." Look at verse 19: "woe." The word woe is the word of a prophet for coming judgment. Five times he speaks that word to the Babylonians and to empire builders like them. God destroys and judges pride.

Ultimately there are two kinds of kingdoms being built in this world at any given time. There's the human kingdom, the kingdom for human glory, and then there's God's kingdom, which will last forever. And in verses 12-13, he's covered those. "Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." If you're building your own empire, God says, "I will bring you down. But if you humbly, simply by faith, enter my Kingdom, you will live forever. You will survive."

Now what application can we take for this? I want to center in on the promise, the gospel promise. "The righteous will live by faith." The New Testament quotes this verse three times, and helps us to understand each word in it: Righteous. Who is righteous? No one is good but God alone. And yet there is a righteousness that comes by faith in Jesus Christ alone as a gift. And so the righteous person is righteous simply by faith in Christ, by simply receiving a gift. Jesus Christ lived a sinless, perfect life. He never sinned, never yielded to temptation. He went right to the cross and he died in your place that you might have eternal life. He died with the wrath and the punishment of God coming on him. He took your sin on himself, and he's willing to give you his righteousness so that you will survive Judgment Day. Who is righteous, then? The righteous are those righteous by faith.

Well what is faith? Well Hebrews talks about that. It's quoted in Hebrews 10. Hebrews 10 quotes this verse and says, "Do not throw away your confidence. It will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere, so that when you have done the will of God you will see what he has promised." So what is faith? It is a persevering confidence that God fulfills His promises. That's what it is. And so did Habakkuk have it? Yeah. He said, "I don't care what I see. It doesn't matter if the sheep are filled, or the pens are filled with sheep, or the olive crop is doing great. None of that matters. What matters is God has spoken, and he will fulfill it." Faith is a persevering confidence that God fulfills His promises, and it perseveres no matter what. That's what faith is. Spurgeon talking about faith said, "Why does God elevate this virtue and not love, not mercy, not kindness, not goodness?" Well, he said, "Look at a little suckling babe. A little baby nursing. You got his little feet, little hands, little eyes, his ears. All of that needful and perfect and in its proper place. But he's got that mouth. And through that mouth he receives everything he needs to live. Faith is the mouth of a suckling infant that derives from God, everything for life. That's what it is.

And so through faith, we live. We receive all that we need. Now what is life? "The righteous will live by faith." I'm saying it's three things. It's not in your outline, but I'm just saying.

Number one: It is a right relationship with God. Before we were in a right relationship with God, we were dead in our transgressions and sins. And so we are justified. We're at peace with God through faith. Right relationship with God. We're alive! Now we are alive spiritually. Righteous will come alive spiritually, by faith.

Number two: It is a daily, constant walk with God, through union with Jesus Christ. It's a way of hearing God's commands and obeying and following and being humble and submissive, and walking with him step-by-step... We don't begin with faith and then complete it with works, but it's a step-by-step union with God through Jesus Christ. That's live, number two.

Number one, you're brought into a right relationship with God. Number two, you step-by-step live as a branch on the vine. And his sap is falling through you and it produces good fruit. And then number three, you will live on Judgment Day. The destruction of Babylon is just a small picture. Noah's flood a small picture. Sodom and Gomorrah, a small picture. How will you survive God's holy eyes staring at you on Judgment Day? By faith. The righteous will survive Judgment Day by faith.

If you would take your Bibles and look with me at Habakkuk 1. We're going to look in a continuing way at Habakkuk, and we've seen already read for us, and we've understood the scriptures that God's eyes are holy and pure. And he cannot tolerate evil. Some time ago, June 1985, the cover of National Geographic, there was a haunting picture of an Afghan refugee, a young woman. I don't know if you remember it. But she had striking eyes in particular. I remember her eyes glowed with a color that was unusual for that region, kind of a bluish-greenish and vivid color. But even more in those eyes was a look of terror. Do you remember? As though she had just been rescued from the most terrifying thing that anyone could ever go through. And it wasn't until two years later, when I went and ministered in Pakistan to Afghan refugees and saw that same look on faces, of men and women, boys and girls, and realize that to be a refugee from your own country is one of the most devastating states, you can be in in this world. All of them had seen loved ones killed by the Russians, or by land mines or other travesties of war, tragedies of war, many of them were absolutely destitute of material possessions, many of them anxious for missing loved ones, and they had that look in their eyes. They'd seen things that they wish they hadn't.

And so their eyes were haunted. And so, it was also Habakkuk when he looked at Jerusalem and saw wickedness, among the people of God, that his eyes were haunted with that and he said, to God, "Why do you make me look at this? Why do you make me look at injustice? What is going on with your people, don't you see? But I know you see God because your eyes search through the earth and you see all things." God has eyes too, not physical eyes. But he sees all things. The Scripture says, " "Does he who formed the eye not see?" And he does see. Habakkuk's contemporary Jeremiah lived through the exact same things that Habakkuk went through, saw the exact same sins of Judah and Jerusalem. He said this of God, Jeremiah said or God spoke through Jeremiah, and said, "My eyes are on all their ways, they're not hidden from me nor is their sin concealed from my eyes." God sees all things. He took Ezekiel into the hidden places of the temple and showed him the kind of despicable things, that were going on in his own house. He sees it all. His eyes roam to and fro over the surface of the Earth and into the hidden places of the earth, to see all things. But Ezekiel had a vision of God, wheels within wheels, I don't know if you remember it. And on the wheels there were eyes all around a picture of the omniscience of God, that he sees all things, and yet Habakkuk says here, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil. You cannot tolerate wrong."

So in one sense, he sees it all, in another sense he can't look at it. And so Habakkuk was brought into a quandary here. As he looks at his own city, his own people, it seemed to be that the strong were getting stronger, the rich were getting richer, the powerful are always getting more powerful. The system was rigged financially, the system of justice was rigged. There was no justice. It seemed to be perverted and paralyzed and so he wondered if it is only, to coin a phrase that we learned much later in human history, "survival of the fittest." Is it only the strong survive? Is that what's going on among your people? God, do something.

And so he had a complaint, he saw Judah overrun with wickedness that God didn't seem to care. And so he complained to God in prayer many times; the implication, how long must I call to you, for help he says. So that implies many, many prayers would go up for the purity of his people, Habakkuk praying. We saw last time that God gave him a shocking answer. He said, "Be astonished." Look at Verse five, "Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed, for I'm going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told." I am the shocking God, I'm the God who does things you could never predict.

Now, reading between the lines, we know that as Habakkuk, is stunned by what God said he would do that he was hoping that God would send a revival like he did under Hezekiah, like he did under Josiah, that he would send a renewal of the people, that God would maybe surgically remove some key evil people, perhaps, but then in general, that he would work in Jerusalem and bring righteousness there. But God's ways are not our ways. It says in Isaiah 55, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the Earth. So are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." God is utterly unpredictable. He's a shocking God. Our ways of thinking are earth-bound aren't they? We think like people. Of course, we are people, and all we know is the five cents world around us, we know what we see, we understand these things, but we can't understand spiritual realities. And so it was that Simon Peter, when he heard that Jesus had said that Jesus was going to die on the cross Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, and said, "Never Lord, this shall never happen to you." And Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me." "You don't think like God, you think like men."

It's a way of thinking. We think like people. We have a people's way of seeing things. We constantly think therefore too highly of earthly matters, lands and houses, cities, physical health and prosperity, favorite meals, comfortable beds, pastimes and hobbies. Conversely, we constantly think too lowly of spiritual matters, namely God's name. God's glory, people's eternal souls, Judgment Day, heaven and, hell. We think too little of these things. God delights to think of these things, he rules over it all, and he delights to be sovereign in his universe, and he is unpredictable, and so he didn't do what Habakkuk expected.

He said "I'm not going to bring a revival. No, I'm going to bring the Babylonians and they're going to sweep across the whole earth and they're going to turn it into a waste land, they're coming Habakkuk the Babylonians, that's what I'm doing. And they're not coming by accident and they're not coming despite the fact that I wish they wouldn't. They're coming because I'm bringing them. I am raising them up," that's what he says. "I am bringing them." "I am raising up the Babylonians." Well, that's a shock. God using Gentiles to discipline his own people. Not only that, it's not just discipline, it's destruction, it's deportation, it's complete removal of the people from the Promised Land. Now, he says, "I am raising up the Babylonians," the Hebrew word is Chaldeans. The Chaldeans. "I'm bringing the Chaldeans" that's what he says. Now, it's ironic that that's who's coming because the whole thing started with Abram way, way, way, long time ago who lived in Ur of the Chaldeans and God raised him up out of Ur of the Chaldeans.

He came up across that arc known as the Fertile Crescent, and down into what became known as the Promised Land, and he settled there. Well, God says, "I'm going to bring the Babylonians to chase Abraham out of that promised land. They're coming up along the river, they're coming down, and they're coming your way." Now, the Chaldean's chief city was Babylon. We're going to talk more about that in the future. But Babylon and therefore the Chaldeans came to be called the Babylonians. Now The Chaldeans were originally a group of tribes living in what they called the Sea-Land. And Assyrian kings from Nineveh came down the Fertile Crescent, down to Babylon, and to the Chaldean area and conquered them and put them under their iron boot just like they had that whole region, the Assyrians were powerful. They were like the Nazis of the ancient world. In 734BC, the Chaldeans seized the city of Babylon, back from their Assyrian overlords, the Assyrians responded by invading again, the whole land and subjugating the whole region but by giving power to just that city, Babylon to the Chaldeans. And so there was a king of that city named Merodach-Baladan, he was the king of the Babylonians, king of the city of Babylon, he heard that there was a king in Judah, that was also opposed to Assyria. His name was Hezekiah.

And he sent envoys when he heard that Hezekiah had recovered miraculously from an illness and those envoys came over to Jerusalem and Hezekiah welcomed them gladly. We talked about this last time. Hezekiah took the envoys in from the city of Babylon, as friends, as allies with the mutual enemy, the Assyrians. And he took them on a tour of all of his storehouses. He showed them his gold, his silver, his costly stones, his spices, he showed them his armaments, all of his power, he showed them everything as though they were complete allies. Isaiah comes running. This is about a 100 years before this time, before Habakkuk. Isaiah comes and says, "'What did those men say, and where did they come from?' 'From a distant land,' Hezekiah replied. 'They came to me from Babylon.'  The prophet asked, 'What did they see in your palace?' 'They saw everything in my palace,' Hezekiah said. 'There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them.' Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, 'Hear the word of the LORD Almighty: "The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left." says the LORD. "And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon."' 'The word of the LORD you have spoken is good,' Hezekiah replied. For he thought, 'There will be peace and security in my lifetime.'"

100 years ahead of time, the invasion of the Babylonians, predicted very clearly by the prophet Isaiah. Now, The Mighty Assyrians under Sennacherib conquered that region and for about 80 more years after the time of Isaiah ruled with an iron fist, but their rule began to crumble. By 627 BC, the Chaldeans had a leader named Nabopolassar and Nabopolassar was a genius, he was an organizer, one of the greatest leaders of the ancient world. And he began to challenge the Assyrians and started to roll up territory. And started to come up towards Nineveh of the capital of the Assyrians. All of this was predicted by the way in Nahum, the prophet right before Habakkuk, that the time for Nineveh has come. Nineveh's going to be destroyed. And it was Nabopolassar, the king of the Babylonians who did it. He and his son, Nebuchadnezzar. And the two of them came up there and in the middle of that campaign, they conquered, they destroyed Nineveh and then in 605, he Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Egypt and the powerful forces of Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish, 605 and then he said, "I've heard about a little kingdom in Judah, with some gold and some precious stones and other things that's worth looking at." And that was Judah. And so Nebuchadnezzar started coming toward Judah. And it was Habakkuk that saw it right around that time before any of it came to be because he said, "Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed." So the Babylonians weren't really well known yet. So it's coming, it's coming their way.

God is getting ready, they're coming. Look what it says at verse 9-11, "They all come bent on violence, the Babylonians do. Their hordes advance like a desert wind and gather prisoners like sand, they deride kings and scoff at rulers, they laugh at all fortified cities. They build earthen ramps and capture them. Then they sweep pass like the wind and go on. Guilty men, whose own strength is their God." So the Babylonians are coming. And so Habakkuk had a complaint about the wicked Jews in Jerusalem. The wicked of his own people. And God's answer is, "Okay I'm going to bring the Babylonians to destroy this whole land." This is out of the frying pan into the fire, isn't it? Now, it's much worse. You're going to use the godless Babylonians.

And so he makes a second complaint, it begins at verse 12, look at his emotion look at verse 12, "O Lord, are you not from everlasting? O God, O holy one. We will not die, O Lord, you have appointed them to execute judgment. O rock, you've ordained them to punish." He's choked with emotion. Do you see all the emotional words in there. The word, "O", is an emotional word, isn't it? And so he's filled with emotion, he doesn't know what to say, look what he says. O Lord, my God, my holy one. O Lord, O rock.

Do you see what he's saying? He's torn up about this. It's shocking to him. And he uses a variety of titles here for God, he calls him Yahweh. That's what the word Lord, if you ever see the word Lord capitalized in your text, that's that covenant name for God, I am that I am the name Yahweh. We don't really know how to pronounce it, exactly, but that is God's covenant name and God you are the covenant God of your people. Are you going to step aside and let our enemies destroy us? You're the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, you're a covenant God. And he says, "My God, this is... " Habakkuk's praying to the God who he has loved, the God that he has worshipped, he calls him my God. I don't understand what you're doing. He calls him my holy one. God's holiness is in view. How could a perfectly holy God use such wicked men and then he calls him O rock, he calls him the rock. The picture of the rock in the Old Testament is of something unshakable, something that didn't move, something that never changed. It says in Malachi, "I, the Lord, do not change therefore you, O Jacob are not destroyed." You see how that works. God's unchanging commitment to his covenant, it meant that he wouldn't destroy his people.

God's rock-like qualities were David's place of refuge. Psalm 18 he says, "The Lord is my rock. He's my fortress and my deliverer. My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge. My shield in the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." A rock is a secure place, it's solid, it's a place of refuge in a time of danger. But is the rock crumbling now? Well, the first time the word rock is used of God was in the Book of Deuteronomy.

Now, the Book of Deuteronomy, was given to the Jews just before they entered the promised land. It was their instruction manual to the promised land. Kind of like a father giving the teenage of the keys to the car. "You need to have the car back by 10 o'clock, and the tank needs to be full and I need the keys in my hand. Or you're not going to get to keep the car or use it ever again." It's kind of like the rules of the road. And so God says, "Here's the promise land, and if you want to keep the promised land, you must follow these rules, these instructions." And so, the Mosaic covenant was given. But God gave more than that. He gave a prediction of how it was going to go. Something called "The Song of Moses", one of the most extraordinary things in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 32. Do you know how when you're a child, you learn Bible verses by singing and you can still remember them. Do you know what I'm talking about? You can memorize verses more easily by singing.

And so he gave them The Song of Moses, in which all of their history was predicted before any of it happened. The Song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32. And this is what it says, towards the end of The Song of Moses. Speaking of the people, the Jews. "Would that they were wise that they understood this, that they would discern their future." So it spoke of their future. "How could one man chase a thousand, How could, two put 10,000 to flight unless their Rock had sold them, unless the Lord had given them up indeed their rock is not like our rock, even as our enemies themselves attest." So there it is, God is called the rock. And basically, you can't be put to flight on the battlefield, Jews unless I give you over.

Unless I surrender and Habakkuk saw it, didn't he? He said, that's exactly what is happening here. He understood God's purposes. "O Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die." Do you see what he's saying? We will not be extinguished as a people, "O Lord, you have appointed them to execute judgment, O rock you've ordained them to punish." They're coming to discipline us, but we will survive as a people. But it's still distressing to him. God's purposes were to discipline his people. Now, God, it says in The Song of Moses dreaded something. He was afraid that if he gave his people into the hands of a foreign power that that foreign power would boast about their own military strength. So what he says in Deuteronomy 32: 26, He said, "I said I would scatter them and blot out their memory from mankind. But I dreaded the taunt of the enemy lest the adversary misunderstand and say, our hand has triumphed. The Lord has not done all this." And so he dreaded the taunt to the Babylonians, saying, "We beat God. We defeated God, the God who brought them out of Egypt. We're stronger than God." But God was willing to run that risk so that he might discipline his people.

And so Nebuchadnezzar comes and they get moved back to Babylon, and then God starts to educate Nebuchadnezzar, read about it in the book of Daniel. That's what that's all about. He's educating him, he says, No. No, I control you too. And he turned Nebuchadnezzar's mind to the mind of an animal, just like that for seven years, he became like an animal and at the end, you know what Nebuchadnezzar said? He said, "God rules over the kingdoms of men. And the kingdoms are like a drop from the bucket, they're nothing. He does as he pleases with all the kingdoms and the empires on earth." That's what Nebuchadnezzar said.

But his lesson day would come later, this was Jerusalem's day of learning. And so Habakkuk brings the meditation into the holiness of God. Look again at Verse 13, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?" It's an incredible statement of God's holiness. God can't even look at evil. That's what he's saying. His eyes are too pure.

It says in 1 John 1:5, "God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all." How can a sinner apart from Christ, think that they can stand before such a God on Judgment Day. God sees all things, he searches the darkest parts of our lives. Even the darkness is like light to God. He sees it all. But when it says his eyes are too pure to look on it, it means to look with approval on it to accept it. He certainly knows all about it or else how could he judge the world. But his eyes are pure and holy and he cannot tolerate wrong. He doesn't merely shrug and accept evil. He carefully notes it and will punish it. Every sin ever committed receives a judgment from God, do you realize that? Every little lie. Every great crime, all of it gets judged in one of two places, it gets judged at the cross of Jesus Christ, or it gets judged in eternity, in hell. But everything gets dealt with. God is meticulous, he is a judge. And his eyes are too pure and he does not tolerate evil. But then the question comes, the time lapse. Why doesn't he do it right away? As soon as the evil comes, why doesn't he judge it? Why does he wait so long? Why does he seem to tolerate evil? That is the question, Why do you tolerate evil men? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?

This is out of the frying pan into the fire. The Jews were evil that's true, they were doing bad things, but the Babylonians are worse. How can you use the evil Babylonians to do this work? They are idolaters, they are violent, they are greedy, they're merciless, they're cruel, they're arrogant, they're godless. How could God do this? And look what it says here in verse 14, "You have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler." This is a naturalistic explanation. It's like survival of the fittest, it's the food chain, right? We're like fish, there's no King here, there's nobody running the show, it's a mess, the big fish eat a smaller fish, the herring eat the plankton and the cod eat the herring, the mackerel shark eats the cod. We're like fish with no ruler. Who's in charge of all this? It seems to make no sense. And then on top of it all is the wicked foe with his hook pulling up the shark. He's in charge it seems of at all but he's wicked. It doesn't make any sense. And then after he pulls up the fish with his hook or with his dragnet, he sits down and has a worship service to his net. He sacrifices to a net, he's an idolater. It doesn't make any sense, God, are you ruling over all these things? And he delights in conquest.

Verse 15, it says, "And so he rejoices and is glad." He's arrogant, and boastful. They live in luxury, because of their nets. They're living high on the hog because they're good at fighting. They're good militarily." And then Habakkuk asked the question. Is it only survival of the fittest? Where is God in all of this? Verse 17, "Is he to keep on emptying his net, destroying nations without mercy? Is it going to go on and on and on? Is there no end to it?" It's an agonized question.

I'm going to pray. That's what Habakkuk says. I'm going to stand at my watch and station myself, on the ramparts and I'm going to wait on God. I'm going to hear, I'm going to listen and he's going to speak to me and he's going to tell me what is going on. Look at chapter two, verse one, "I will stand at my watch and station myself, on the ramparts. I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint." History is bewildering. I can't make sense of it. I don't understand God why you give such success to wicked and evil people. Universal history makes no sense either. I'm not able to trace it out. I don't see what's happening. We were supposed to be your people, your chosen people, and you're evicting us from the Promised Land. It doesn't make any sense. What are you doing? And so I'm going to wait. Much later, a promise came from God, James 1:5 and following, it says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind. Such man shall not think he will receive anything from God. He's a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." Habakkuk was no double-minded man.

He said, "No, I'm going to station myself on the wall and I'm going to watch. Not for the Babylonians. I know they're coming, I'm not going to stand and watch for the Babylonians. I'm going to watch for God's wisdom and for an explanation." And so he waited on God. Is not waiting on God, one of the hardest parts of the Christian life? Don't you have a hard time with that? I want the answer now, I want the judgment now. When I see wicked things I want it dealt with now God. We're so impatient. God is not impatient. Do you realize that this invasion by this Gentile power into Jerusalem is just the first of a series of Gentile overlords over the city of Jerusalem that has continued to this very day. How patient is God? If Habakkuk said, "We want the city back, God. Now, when is it going to come later this month? He'd have a long wait. 25, 26 centuries and still counting. What it says in Luke, the times of the Gentiles, God is patient. We are not patient. And so Habakkuk says I'm going to wait on God, I'm going to watch and I'm going to pray and I'm going to wait. And what is the answer. Well, you have to wait 'til next time.

Because the text says we're only going to chapter two, verse one today. But all of chapter two is the answer isn't it? It's the answer. And the answer is that I am sovereign and the Babylonians are going to get theirs in due time, and then whoever conquers the Babylonians will get theirs in due time, and through it all I am working and building a kingdom of glory that's going to conquer the whole earth. It's a hidden kingdom and you enter it if you're an individual person by faith, for the righteous will live by faith. That's what I'm doing. So, the answer is going to come to who stands and waits. So God then what is this patience for? Why is it you don't crush the wicked right away? Well, 2 Peter 3 tells us, "Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means, salvation." Do you understand that? God waits for the sake of salvation. It says the same thing in Romans 2:4, "Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance." The wait period is for people to get saved, it's for people to repent, to trust in this God, that's what it's for.

Now, God's patience doesn't last forever, does it? It's measured out. The sin of the Amorites in Genesis 15 has not yet reached its full measure and when it does, then Joshua will come and destroy them. That's how that works. So there's a measured out amount of waiting. God knows the number of days, but you don't, do you? And he's not telling you instead he's telling you today is the day of salvation. Today is the opportunity to come to faith in Christ. Today is the opportunity to be justified by faith, to have salvation, today. Because you don't know that tomorrow will come. God's patience does not last forever. Again, in The Song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32:35, "It is mine to avenge. I will repay. In due time, their foot will, their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them." In due time, it comes. And so God has measured out the waiting period, but the waiting period is for salvation, it's for repentance, it's for trusting in God.

I heard the sermon, a sermon by black preacher, a Presbyterian preacher named EV Hill, entitled, Sunset for the Wicked. And there he's dealing with the exact same issue from a different text Psalm 73, the prosperity of the wicked. I can't preach like him, I wish I could hear that live. Wouldn't that be something to hear? But inner-city church dealing with the prosperity of the wicked, of drug, gangs and other they seem to be doing well while the righteous seem to be in poverty and they're in danger all the time. When is God going to act? What is the patience for? And Psalm 73 the answer is the same. In due time, their foot will slip, at the right time their end will come. Sunset for the Wicked. Judgement will come on the wicked, but here's the thing, who then is wicked? Aren't we? Aren't we sinners? Weren't we at one point enemies of God? Aren't you glad that God didn't bring the curtain down, the day before you came to faith in Christ? Aren't you glad that the day didn't end before you had a chance to repent and trust Christ. Because it says in Romans 5, if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life. Aren't you glad that God didn't bring history to an end before you were reconciled to God because you were an enemy too.

And so God's patience means, salvation for people who have not yet trusted in Christ.

What application do we get out of this Habakkuk 1. First of all, it says the mystery of history. History is a mystery and you're not going to be able to figure it out, but God is weaving his sovereign plan out isn't he? And he's using some fibers, and some threads that you're not familiar with, but he knows what he's doing, he's got the picture in his mind, and he knows what he's doing. Even though for a time, it seems the wicked prosper and do well God is still using it for his glory, trust him and believe in the work that he's doing.

Secondly, God is holy, perfectly holy. His eyes see everything that you do. His eyes see everything that the most mighty military conqueror does. And yet he's patient, waiting for repentance. Thirdly, Sunset for the Wicked. Judgment will come at some point. God does not wait forever and therefore if you have never trusted in Christ, if you are not justified through faith in Christ, if you don't realize that every single sin will be paid for either at the cross of Christ, or on your own head on judgment day, if you've never seen that Jesus' blood alone saves, and you've never trusted in that, don't put it off. Today is the day of salvation. You don't know how long he's going to wait for you.

You don't even know if you'll be alive tomorrow, and therefore salvation for the wicked, God's patience means, salvation for those who need it, and that's sinners, sinners like you and me living by faith, simply believing in Jesus Christ. I want to say one final thing to you who are Christians, and that's about the holy eyes of God. Psalm 139, verse 1, David says, "O Lord, you have searched me and you know me." Right? What does that mean? You know everything about me, you see everything I do, you know it all. But then at the end of the Psalm, what does he say? "O Lord, search me and know me. Try me and see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the everlasting way." What is he saying? He's saying, "God, I know you see me, I want you to see me. Search me with those holy eyes. Show me if there's any evil inside me and move in me to turn from it and to repent."

Please, if you would, take your Bibles and we're looking this morning at 1 Corinthians chapter 15, at one verse in particular, verse 26. For there it says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Resurrection Day, Easter, is a day of great celebration. And worldwide, as I just prayed, our brothers and sisters throughout the world are praising God for his great resurrection victory, they're giving thanks, that death has been destroyed.

But I don't think we can really praise God acceptably, we can really understand what Jesus has done for us, if we don't feel the full weight of the burden that we had apart from Christ. The weight of the bondage that we had in sin and fear of death. We won't understand what kind of victory he won for us if we don't see the strength of the foe that he conquered. And we won't rejoice properly until we see the plunder and spoils that he has won for us, “Because I live, you also will live.” And so that's our purpose today, to meditate on those things.

There is, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, an already and a not yet aspect. Some of what we receive we already have, and we rejoice in that. But a good part of what we are to receive, we have not yet received, and so we're going to look at that today. We're going to see that death is an enemy. We're going to see that death is an enemy that has already been vanquished in some measure. And we're going to see that death is an enemy that has not yet fully been vanquished. And we're going to try to understand the significance of that. 

Now, in 1 Corinthians 15:26, it comes in a context. And we really can't jump right into the middle and preach on just one verse without understanding the context of this verse. Paul is speaking to the Corinthians here concerning the resurrection from the dead, and he was dealing with issues there in Corinth, all kinds of issues. But one of them had to do with the resurrection. Some of them didn't believe in a resurrection. Some of them didn't think that there would be a resurrection, or they misunderstood the doctrine. And so Paul writes this extended 58-verse treatment of the resurrection from the dead. You wanna understand resurrection, you come first to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, it's a solid block of teaching on the resurrection from the dead.

And first, in verses 1 through 11, he establishes the historical and biblical or prophetic fact of the gospel that Christ has indeed been raised before many eyewitnesses. Look at verses 3 through 6, he says, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the 12. And after that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” Five hundred eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I dare say that's ample evidence in a court of law to prove anything. God has not left himself without a witness, but we had, at that point, at least alive during Paul's day, over 500 eyewitnesses of the resurrection.

And he says that he was raised according to the scriptures. So not only do we have the eyewitness accounts, but we also have the prophetic word, we have the ancient scriptures that testified very plainly that Jesus must rise from the dead. Psalm 16, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, a number of other places. And this was the focus of Jesus' teaching. When he appeared, they still didn't understand from the scriptures that Jesus had to rise from the dead, had to rise. And why had to rise, because scripture cannot be broken, and it's glorious.

And so he first, in verses 1 through 11, establishes the historical fact and the prophetic fact that Christ has been raised. And secondly, in verses 12 through 19, he shows that the resurrection from the dead is central to our gospel. It's not an add-on, it's not something extra, we can't throw it out as though it weren't important. He says in verses 13 and 14, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” You're lost if Jesus hasn't been raised from the dead. This is not an extra doctrinal frill, this is the center, at the very core of what we believe as Christians. 

Thirdly, in verses 20 through 22, he shows a strong theological parallel between what happened to us in Adam and what has happened to us in Christ. He says in verse 22, “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” And so we died in Adam, all of us, the whole human race, and so all who have faith in Christ are alive in him. He's our federal head, our representative. And so he shows the theological parallel there.

And then fourth, in verses 23 through 28, he shows that Christ's victory over death is not yet complete, and that's the focus of our study today. It's not complete yet, it's not finished, but it's going on as history unfolds. He's winning the victory in every generation. He's not satisfied with just one victory over death, he's gotta win it for 2,000 years and more. He's gotta keep winning the victory generation after generation. And so he's unfolding, and it says in verse 25, “He must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet.” And that's a progressive work, isn't it? It's not happening all at once, but it's unfolding before us.

Fifthly, in verses 24 through 28, he shows that the final destruction of death is part of God's overall plan to bring the whole universe under God's sovereign control. Everything in the end will come under God's feet. He will rule over all things. Look at verse 24 and 25, “Then the end will come when he hands over the Kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all his enemies.” So when this work, this progressive unfolding work of the destruction of the enemies of God is finished, everything will be kind of wrapped up in a package by Christ and handed to the Father. He's gonna rule over it all.

Sixthly, he shows that life itself would be dramatically changed if there were no resurrection from the dead. He says, “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” What difference does it make how we live? Why be moral people if when we die there's nothing else? Why suffer for Christ? Why be martyrs for him? Why live that kind of life? It makes no sense, if Christ has not been raised from the dead. If Christ has not been raised from the dead, let's just become hedonists like our neighbors. Let's eat and drink, eat as much as we want, drink as much as we want, do what feels good to us. If there is no resurrection from the dead, if there is no Judgment Day, then live however you want, whatever pleases you. Life would be radically changed if there were no resurrection.

Seventhly, in verses 35 through 49, he describes the mysteries of the actual mechanics of physical bodily resurrection. And it is a mystery. There's not a person in this room who understands this fully, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” Listen, “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." Can you please tell me what a spiritual body is? A body like Jesus's that can walk through locked doors and through stone walls? Don't you believe that that stone was moved so Jesus could get out. He was already gone. He went right through the wall with his resurrection body. Can you explain that to me? What is a spiritual body? It's a mystery. But he says it's entirely different and yet somehow connected to what we had here on Earth, or else it couldn't really be called the resurrection, the mysteries of the mechanics of resurrection.

And then he says in the eighth section, verses 50 through 54, he proves that every single human being must have this transformation or they cannot enter eternity. You can't go just as you are, just as I am. You can't go that way. I would think you wouldn't want to. Those of you who are older know what I'm talking about. I want to be changed, I want to be transformed. I want a resurrection body. This body is not fit for eternity, is it? And so it says very plainly, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” We must go through death in order that we may be fitted for eternity.

And then ninth, he exalts in hymn form. Singing a hymn, he sings a celebration hymn over the victory that Christ has won through death. He says, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” This is like a taunt, isn't it? “Come on, death, show me what you got. You've got nothing left because Jesus has evacuated you of your power. Where, O death, is that victory that everybody fears? Where is that sting? It's gone. You're like a scorpion, and Jesus has plucked out that stinger and it's gone.” And so he's just rejoicing over that.

And then tenth, verse 58, he concludes with a ringing exhortation to work hard for Christ, because resurrection means that nothing we do for Jesus is in vain. Look again at verse 58, “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Isn't that wonderful? Everything you do for Jesus counts for eternity. It matters. And so stand firm, work hard, be diligent, and live that kind of life.

So there we have it, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, in 10 sections, showing that our belief, our faith in the resurrection of Jesus is at the very core of our Christianity. But now we wanna zero in specifically on this one verse, verse 26. Look at it again. It says there, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” And we're gonna see that death is an enemy, we're gonna see that death is an enemy that has already been destroyed, but we're also gonna see that death is an enemy that has not yet been fully vanquished.

Let's look at the first part, “Death is an enemy.” Death was born an enemy. What's death's mother and father? Was it not sin? Sin brought death into the world. It was sin that escorted death in this world. Through one man's sin, death entered the world. And so it says also in the book of James, “Sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.” And so death's parentage, sin, makes death an enemy. Therefore death entered the world to steal and kill and destroy, very much like the Vikings a thousand years ago. If you were on a coastal town and you looked out and you saw the Vikings pulling up those shallow draft longboats up on your beach, you run for your lives. You're terrified, because they mean nothing but to plunder you, to kill whatever they can find that they don't need, and to take from you everything. They're here to plunder and to destroy, and so it is with death. Death is an enemy that comes to steal and kill and destroy.

Secondly, death is a universal enemy. No nation is exempt. Bill led us in a beautiful, beautiful hymn, every tribe and language and people and nation singing praise. And why? Because every tribe and language and people and nation are subject to the scourge of death. There's nowhere you can go around the world where there's this one island of freedom from death. Everyone descended from Adam is subject to the scourge; death is a universal enemy.

And no class of people is exempt, it doesn't matter how much money you have, how wealthy or your position. It says in James that “The rich man fades away even while he goes about his business.” Even while he's en route to work, he's gone, he's dead. It doesn't matter what his position is. Death has no pity for the poor either. It's not like he feels sorry for them that says, “They're having a hard existence here, I'm not going to visit the house of the poor. I'll let them free from my scourge, but only after the wealthy.” No. No class of people is exempt.

No age of people either, it wants your heart torn out. Go to the children's hospital here in Duke, and you look at those little children connected to machines, striving to keep them alive. And maybe they'll survive and maybe they won't. But death has no pity on the young. Or you might think, conversely, well, here's an aged person who's gone through life and successfully, like a game of dodgeball has somehow managed to avoid death for decades, so maybe they have a secret, maybe they know how to beat death, how to defeat it. Douglas MacArthur, a courageous general, almost foolishly so, he would land on a beach just recently cleared from Japanese troops, and there would still be sniper bullets kicking up the sand around his feet and he wouldn't crouch. All of his advisors were around him and trying to pull on him, and he just didn't feel there was any bullet for him. And he never died on a battlefield. He went through World War I, World War II, and then the Korean War, and was never killed in battle. All those dangerous beaches never won. And then he stood up in front of Congress and said, “Old soldiers never,” what? “die. They merely fade away.” Was he right? No, he was wrong. Old soldiers die, too, it doesn't matter how courageous they are or how many medals they have. He's dead now. And so even the aged, they haven't found a secret, but they're under the scourge as well.

Death is a universal enemy, and no amount of virtue makes somebody exempt either. It doesn't matter how good a person you are. Who was the first person that died? It wasn't the first sinner. It wasn't Adam. It wasn't even the first murderer, Cain. Who was the first one that died? It was virtuous Abel, who opened up the grave for us. And so it doesn't really matter what your virtue is, death is a universal enemy.

Death is also a vicious enemy. Book of Nahum talks about the viciousness of the Assyrian Empire, the viciousness of Nineveh, the capital city, and all of the plunderings and the ruthless viciousness of their attacks. And this is what Nahum writes in Nahum 3:19, it says, “Everyone who hears news about you claps his hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?” Could that not be applied to death even better? Is not death endlessly cruel?

One of my favorite people from church history is Adoniram Judson, he was the first American missionary. He was working in Burma, went over early part of the 19th century, became a Baptist en route. He and his wife, Ann, they loved each other dearly, they went with a small mission group there to Burma and did incredible work. But it was a difficult area, and they had a little daughter, a frail little girl named Maria, a sweet little, little girl.

She never really took to life there in the jungle. She was going from one tropical fever to the next, and they were constantly concerned over her, and they prayed. And they had really consistently just given that little child up to God, Adoniram and Ann. And they prayed over it. And at one point, Adoniram had to go on some mission business, there was nothing for it, he had to go, but he was concerned that by the time he got back little Maria would be dead. And everyone knew about it. All the people in that area were praying for her, that she would survive.

And so he went and he was doing his business, and one day a ship captain brought him an envelope with a black seal on it, and the ship captain said, “I'm so sorry about the death of your little girl,” because he had heard all the stories and he'd been praying for that girl as well. Well, Adoniram Judson opened up that envelope and read inside the words, “Mrs. Judson is no more.” It wasn't the little girl, it was his wife, very suddenly taken with a tropical fever and died quickly. He went back and he was with his little daughter, and she died about a month later.

It was like a lance to his heart, the grief and the pain. He remarried a fellow, another missionary, named Sarah Boardman, and they had some time together, but it wasn't long before she died as well. Do you see the cruelty of death? It's not like, “Well, visit this one home and then you're free for a number of years.” Death will come back to the same home as often as the viciousness allows. Puritan theologian John Owen and his wife had 13 children. Only one lived past the age of 10, only one. She lived till she was 16 and then she died. Death is a vicious enemy.

Death is also a mocking enemy. Death stands to mock every earthly relationship, calls every earthly relationship temporary. Death also mocks every earthly accomplishment, every achievement. There's a story told by William Bennett in his book, Tales of Virtue. It's a story written by Leo Tolstoy. Basically, he's answering the question, “How much land does a man need?” Perhaps you've heard the story. There was this Russian farmer named Pahom, and no matter how much land he had, he always wanted more. He was very successful, so he kept having more money to buy more land. Then he heard that beyond the Ural mountains was this tribe called the Bashkirs, and they just wanted to trade over their whole region. And so basically they would give to you, for a thousand rubles, as much land as you could walk around in a day.

And so Pahom was excited about this because it was good farmland, and so he paid his thousand rubles and they put a stake on a hill and put his cap on it, and he began walking eastward. As soon as the sun came up, the day began, and he went. And he was walking eastward, and he's walking fast. And the farther that he went in the land, the better the soil got. And so he was enticed always to move farther and farther eastward. Finally, he realized that the day was more than a quarter passed, and he better start turning north and start to do the other legs of the rectangle. And so he starts turning north. By the time that lunchtime has passed, he's gone much farther than he ever imagined, but the land was beautiful and there was always one more hill, one more thing that he wanted to include, a river or a pond or something.

And then he realized he better start heading back, and so he made the legs too long, so he started heading westward. The sun was starting to get lower and lower, and he's in a race now. He puts in the third stake and he's gotta go straight back for that hill. He thinks he's got an idea where it is, comes up over the horizon, and sure enough, he hasn't missed, there's the hill where his cap is on top of the stake, but he is under tremendous duress because the sun is dipping quicker and quicker all the time.

The Bashkirs are around cheering him on, it's like the close to a marathon, and he's puffing and he's throwing off his coat and his face is red, and he gets up that one last hill and he flings himself for the finish line. And everyone cheers, he made it just as the orange ball dipped below the horizon. He won the race, and so they laughed and said, what a fine fellow, look at all of the land he's gotten, but they didn't notice that there was a little trickle of blood coming out of his mouth, and he's dead. The servant took the spade that he had been carrying with him all that journey and buried him six feet under and that's how much of Bashkir land that Pahom needed for his thousand rubles.

You see, death stands to mock all of your accomplishments, it doesn't matter how much land you encompass in a day, ultimately death stands as a mocker. And death finally is a sudden enemy, death comes unannounced, it comes suddenly with no warning, and it brings its vicious plundering hoard into your life when you least expect it.

That's the enemy that Jesus has overcome. Jesus has conquered the enemy, death is an enemy that has already been destroyed. Jesus Christ came to conquer death, he's our death conqueror. And he did it in his life. He did it while he lived. He did it through his miracles. One day he was coming to a town called Nain, and a widow was coming out and she had one son and he had just died. You can imagine the grief as there's no man to care for her anymore. And so Jesus comes up and he says to the woman, with tremendous tenderness, “Don't cry.” And then the people stand and they wait to see what Jesus will do. And then he speaks to the young man, and he says, “Get up,” and he sat up. I've said before at funerals, I don't know how Jesus behaves at a funeral, because he always breaks them up everywhere he goes. Whenever he comes to a funeral, he won't let it be a funeral anymore, and he does a miracle, he raises this widow's son in Nain and gives him back to her.

A chapter later, he comes to the house of Jairus, the little girl, and she's dead, they're crying, they're weeping. He says “Don't weep, she's not dead, she's only sleeping,” and he rouses her as well, and then certainly, you know the story of what he did for his friend Lazarus.

Jesus destroyed death in his miracles, he also destroyed death in his teachings. Listen to this one, John 8:51, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” That is a death-defying statement. If you keep Jesus' word, you will never see death. Just like he said at Lazarus' tomb, “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” That's a death-defying teaching, Jesus' amazing words, he claimed to have complete power over death. “No one takes my life from me, he said, but I lay it down freely. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back up again. This command I received from my Father, and by the way, because I live, you also will live.” Total power over death in his teachings, he claimed it.

Jesus also, while he lived, destroyed spiritual death by preaching the gospel. People heard the message and they were transformed from spiritual death to spiritual life. Jesus said in John chapter 5, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who has sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned.” He's crossed over from death to life. And then he said in John 5:25, “I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God. And all who hear will live.” What does that mean? He's able to destroy death just by hearing his voice and believing him, spiritual death.

Jesus also destroyed death more than anything at the cross. All other victories over death are small compared to this one. Spurgeon said, “These,” the resurrections that he did while he was there, “These are just preliminary skirmishes and mere foreshadowings of the grand victory by which death was overthrown. The real triumph was achieved at the cross.” What happened to the widow's son? Can you go talk to him and say, “What was it like?” Well, he's gone, he's dead. What about Jairus' daughter? She's dead too. Right? And what about Lazarus? Can you go talk to him? No, he's gone, these were just foreshadowings, not the true resurrection, but this was the genuine victory over death, won at the cross, because there is a death more severe, more serious than physical death, isn't there? It's death under the wrath and judgment of God.

And so Jesus Christ came to take your death penalty on himself, to drink the cup of wrath that you deserve for your sins. The wages of sin is death. He came to exhaust, to destroy your death by dying in your place on the cross, and to free you forever from fear of the second death, the lake of fire, which is hell. Jesus came to drink that for you, so you don't have to experience it. If you have faith in Christ, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God will never demand from you what Jesus already paid in your place. So through faith in Christ, the death is destroyed at the cross.

But Jesus also destroyed death at the empty tomb. 2 Timothy 1:10, “Christ Jesus has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”  I love what Spurgeon says here about the tomb. We imagine what would it be like to go visit that empty tomb? Do you remember how Jesus left it with linens, remember? And a grave head cloth that was folded up in a certain place, and all of that, Spurgeon says, he's getting it ready for you. It's like he's decorating your bedroom. He's transforming death this way.

Listen to what Spurgeon says, “When our great champion arose from his brief sleep of death and found himself in the withdrawing room of the grave, he quietly proceeded to put off the garments of the tomb. How leisurely he proceeded, he folded up the napkin and placed it by itself, that those who lose their friends might wipe their tears therewith; he took off the winding sheet and laid the grave clothes by themselves that they might be there when his saints come thither, so that the chamber might be well furnished and the bed ready sheeted and prepared for their rest.” Isn't that something? “The sepulchre is no longer therefore an empty vault, a dreary charnel, but a chamber of rest, a dormitory furnished and prepared, hung with the drapes with which Christ himself bequeathed. It is no more a damp, dark, dreary prison: Jesus has changed all of that!” He got the tomb ready for you. It's different now than it used to be, because Jesus has raised from the dead.

And Christ Jesus has destroyed, therefore, the fear of death. Hebrews 2:14 and 15, it says, “By his death, he might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” And I've said it before, I believe that there are some people, perhaps even in this room, who fear death and they shouldn't. And then there are others, perhaps in this room who do not fear death, and they should. It all has to do with whether you have faith in Christ or not. Because if you have faith in Christ, you need to fear death no more.

Listen to Spurgeon, he says, “Death, it is true, that thou art not yet destroyed, but our living redeemer has so changed thee that thou art no longer death, but something other than thy name. Saints die not now, but they are merely dissolved and depart. Death is the loosening of the cable that the ship may sail to the fair havens, death is the fiery chariot in which we ascend to God, it is the gentle voice of the great king who cometh into his banqueting hall and sayeth, ‘Friend, come up higher.’ Behold on eagle's wings, we mount, we fly far from this land of mist and cloud into the eternal serenity and brilliance of God's own house above. Yes, our Lord has abolished death. The sting of death is sin, and our great substitute has taken that sting away by his great sacrifice. Stingless, death abides among the people of God, but it so little harms them, that to them, it is not death to die.” Isn't that marvelous? Jesus has changed death forever.

And then finally, Christ Jesus daily destroys death for his saints. It says in verse 25, “he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” Jesus is not content with winning just one victory over death, He's gotta win 2,000 years of victory over death. Do you remember what happened when Stephen was being stoned to death? He was just about to die, and he looks up. And what does he see? He sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God, ready to receive him. Death has lost its sting for Stephen, he's not afraid. He said, “Look, I see Jesus standing at the right hand of God, ready to receive me.” This only incited his killers more, and they finished the job. But he said, “Lord Jesus, don't lay this sin to their charge.” He's done with this world, he's ready to go up.

And so Jesus wins another victory over death in Stephen's case, and so it is that the testimony of saints in one generation after the other is that death is no longer death for them, but merely a portal, a doorway into eternity. Thomas Goodwin, when dying, said, “Ah, is this dying? How have I dreaded as an enemy, this smiling friend.” Oh, that's a transformation. William Preston said, “Blessed be God! Though I shall change my place, I shall not change my company.” I've been walking with Jesus all this time, I just get to walk with him more closely. I'll change my place. But not my company.

Charles Wesley on his deathbed said, “I shall be satisfied with thy likeness. Satisfied, satisfied.” Those were his final words. Satisfied. Adoniram Judson who suffered so greatly said, “I'm not tired of my work and neither am I tired of the world. Yet when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school.” Do you think he's fearing death? Not at all. He's ready to go. And then William Everett for the last 25 minutes of his life, just said, “Glory, glory, glory.” For 25 minutes. How would you like to be in that room? Wouldn't you love to trade places? Death has changed because of Jesus, it's not what it used to be.

So in all of these ways, brothers and sisters, Christ has already destroyed death. By his miracles, by his teaching, by his spirit, he's brought us to a spiritual life, and our relationship with God is in no longer spiritual death. By the cross he has drunk your death penalty to the bottom, it's gone, and you will not suffer eternal death. And then by arranging the grave clothes, he's made your grave ready for you, not as a place of torment and suffering, but as a mere doorway into eternity.

In that way, death is already destroyed. How then is death not yet destroyed? It says again in verse 26, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” At a funeral service in Winona Lake, Indiana, the pastor said this, and it's so interesting, he said, “We are not in the land of the living, but we are in the land of the dying. But someday we shall be in land of the living.” Doesn't that turn the whole thing around. We think, we're in the land of the living, they've gone on, right? No we're in the land of those dying, for it is appointed unto men to die once and then comes judgment. 

And so death still remains, still in the future for each person that listens to me, and for me too. But someday through faith in Christ, we shall be in the land of the living, and so Christ has a final enemy, and it's the final enemy, it's not finished yet. He's not done with his victory. Christ hated this enemy, didn't he? He snorted with anger as he approached Lazarus' tomb, and then what did he do right before he raised Lazarus from the dead? He wept. And why? Because you're gonna go through some suffering, you're gonna go through some pain, and he's not going to save you from it, you're going to have to go through it. And he's not distant. He's compassionate, he's weeping. Christ has not yet destroyed death, total victory over death has not yet happened. Death still has its sway over our bodies. Do you realize that Jesus could destroy death today, if he wanted to, he could take it away today, no more death, he could decree, finished. But he does not.

And why does he not? Spurgeon says, “Christ uses death to preach wisdom to his saints, day after day.” Death preaches wisdom to us, it speaks to us and it teaches us infinitely valuable lessons daily conforming us to Christ's image while we live, death protects us from an eternity in sin corrupted bodies, for flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. Nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Death is the final foe, but death is not the worst foe, do you know what your worst foe is? It's not death. It is sin. Sin is your worst foe, the world, the flesh, and the devil, those enticements to sin. Those are your worst foes, but not death.

Verse 26 says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” What application can we make of this? First of all, death is not yet destroyed, be faith-filled and realistic about death, death is gonna continue to remain a factor as long as this world endures, beloved spouses will still be separated from one another; cherished parents will go on to be with the Lord, leaving us behind. Even precious children will be ripped from us, perhaps in an untimely way, death is gonna continue in this age.

Therefore, we need to let death make us wise. Psalm 90 verse 12 says, Teach us to number our days properly, so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Can I speak perhaps to somebody who's never come to faith in Christ now? There is no greater wisdom than to come to Christ now today, come to faith in Christ, so that death can become a friend, a doorway into eternity, rather than a doorway into eternal judgment. Come to faith in Christ. Through simple faith in Christ, Jesus' blood will cover you of all your sins and eternal life will be yours.

But even for the Christian death is meant to make you wise. Number your days, don't put off to the future what you know you need to do today. If there's any repenting of sin, do it today while there's time, make the most of every day through your spiritual gifts and through doing the good works that God has ordained that you should walk in them. Repent of the sins that are plaguing you, throw aside every weight and run the race with endurance. And don't wait because death comes unannounced, and then your opportunity for service is over, so let death make you wise, and also let death be the final foe.

The final enemy, not today's enemy, if today is not your dying day, Spurgeon put it this way, death is meant to be the final enemy, “Brother don't dispute the appointed order, but let the last be the last. I've known a brother wanting to vanquish death long before he died, but brother, you do not want dying grace until your dying moments. A boat will only be needful when you reach the river. Ask instead for living grace, then glorify Christ thereby, then you shall have your dying grace when dying time comes, your enemy is going to be destroyed, but not today. There is a great host of enemies to be fought today: the world, the flesh, the devil. You must be content to let this one alone for a while, if you live well, you will die well!” So ask instead for living grace today, and when the time comes and your final enemy does present himself to you, then you'll have grace to vanquish as well.

Time is short. Be diligent unto death. Verse 58 says, “Therefore, my brothers, stand firm, let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Work hard for Jesus today, because time is short.

And finally victory is certain, be triumphant over death, celebrate today. Rejoice. Go home and get on your knees and say, thank you Jesus that death is different for me now, now that I'm a Christian. Triumph over death. And look forward to the day when you get to watch Death and Hades thrown into the lake of fire, gone forever. Because in heaven, Revelation 21, there is no more death, or mourning, or crying or pain. Rejoice.

I'd like to ask, if you would, to turn to Habakkuk Chapter 1. Habakkuk was a minor prophet toward the end of the Old Testament, and you'll find him there after Nahum. Where's Nahum? Well, it's before Habakkuk. So there, you can find it that way. But we're looking today and we're beginning on a study today on Habakkuk. God-willing, next week, we'll be preaching on the resurrection. I'm looking forward to that. Really should be celebrating the resurrection every single day, but I'm looking forward to that. But we're going to begin the study this week in Habakkuk, considering the mysteries of God's justice.

Now, 100 years ago, the all-consuming issue that was facing the church, is the question, or was the question of science. Darwinism was making inroads. Einstein was right around that time, and had discovered the Theory of Relativity, and people wanted to know, is it possible to reconcile science and all of those new discoveries with the biblical faith? That was it. And why was that all? Because people felt that history was moving to a Golden Age as we entered the 20th century. There was a view called post-millennialism, the idea that the thousand-year reign of Christ would just be a kind of a seamless end to human history and we'd just move right on into a Golden Age in which all problems had been addressed. That human sin itself had been defeated. We were moving to a Golden Age, and then we entered the 20th century. And those dreams and those thoughts were shattered. First, by World War I, which left bodies strewn all over battlefields in Europe. There was some hope there because it was called The War To End All Wars. How faulty was that, because the greatest war in human history followed it, World War II, again, leaving millions strewn all over battlefields, this time all over the world.

And so, 50 years ago, the all-consuming issue that faced the church was the question of history. Was there any meaning to history? Were we going anywhere? Was there any development? Was there a hand on the tiller of the ship? Were we going anywhere? And then in the events that followed that, we've kind of moved into another question and that's the question of holiness. Is God a holy god? The question of history is, Is God a sovereign god? Is he loving? Is he just? Can he do anything? And after the Holocaust and all kinds of events, as the curtain rose after World War II, and we saw all the horrors of the Nazi regime, we say to ourselves, Is there a sovereign god? Is there a good god, a loving god, or do we have to rethink our doctrine of god?

Deep questions about God's justice, questions about God's power. And as people ruminated on that, they began to lose confidence in God, began to wonder if God was dead or if he was just different than we had imagined. And so, we moved into the question of God's holiness. And why? Because people began to live for themselves living for today. And so, we began recently in the last 20 years, a cultural war, in which we are struggling for the soul of America. And the question is there in the hearts of believing people is, is God holy? Does he care about the things in our culture, in our society? We seem to be losing the cultural war. It seems that every year brings more and more filth on television and in the movies, more and more of a perverse world view in the print media. And we want to know, is God a holy god, and does he care about these things? Year after year, abortion is still the law of the land, despite the earnest prayers of millions. Does God hear those prayers? Is a sovereign God able to respond to the prayers of godly people who are crying out with Habakkuk, "How long, O Lord, is this going to go on?" And what's remarkable is, as we look at these modern issues, and then look back at an ancient scroll, Habakkuk, 26 centuries old, we begin to see that the answers are right there.

Our God is a sovereign and a powerful God and he rules over history, modern issues addressed to their roots in an ancient scroll 26 centuries old. And I think as we go on in our study, you're going to see that more and more.

The context of the Book of Habakkuk is all about history. You have to understand who he was and when he lived. Now, his name, Habakkuk, means embracer. And you get the feeling of Habakkuk embracing God. He had an intimate and a powerful personal relationship with God. It comes out in these three chapters. He loved God and he was deeply concerned about the glory of God. We don't know much about him personally, but we do know that he was a prophet. If you look at Verse 1, it says, The Oracle that Habakkuk the Prophet received. Now, a prophet is a person who speaks the words of God, who can say, "Thus says the Lord," and the words come and they are God's words.

But the word oracle there, also translated burden, literally, it means burden. It's basically a burden that Habakkuk saw. And so he saw burden. He was a prophet and he had a vision. Now, many times, God spoke to the prophets in visions. He gave them visions of the future and visions of the present, as well. In Genesis 15:1 it says, "the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision." And so, Abram had a vision. Isaiah chapter one, verse one, it says "the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah." And so here is Isaiah, a visionary prophet, he's seeing things. Well, Habakkuk saw some things too. And the things that Habakkuk saw brought him deep distress and concern.

Well, what did he see? What was going on? Well, to understand that, you have to go back in time even further. God called a man, Abraham, out of Ur of the Chaldeans. Chaldean means Babylonians. He came from Babylon, followed up the Fertile Crescent just at the word of God, and ended up in a country not his own. And at one point, God spoke to him and said, "Do not be afraid, Abraham. I am your shield. I'm your very great reward." he said, "How can you give me anything? I don't have a child, I don't have anything." And he took him out and he showed him the stars, as we've talked about, and said, "Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky." Abraham heard that promise. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. He was justified at that moment.

Then God made him a second promise. "Your descendants will get this land. They're going to live in this country," but God's ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. He's a very patient God. And so, there was going to be a history. Abraham would not get that land. Isaac, his son, would not get that land. Jacob would not get it. The patriarchs would not get it. God waited for over 400 years, and in that time, Israel went into Egypt and in slavery, and they lived as slaves under the oppressive whip of the Egyptians.

And at the right time, God brought the deliverer, Moses, and he brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, through the Red Sea, heading toward the Promised Land. Of course, the Jews through unbelief could not enter that first generation. God gave them in the desert, the Mosaic covenant, the law by which they were to run their nation, by which they were to live. And it's in due time after that generation died off, he brought them into the Promised Land and fulfilled his promise to Abraham. And so, they entered the promised land. They took it over, militarily. God showed his power through Joshua and through the army of Israel. They took over the Promised Land and they drove out most of the inhabitants there.

They left some and those inhabitants began to pollute them with false ideas and false practices, false gods. And little by little, we began the cycle of sin and rebellion and idolatry, and then judgment and chastisement, and then repentance, national repentance and restoration, and then they'd begin it all over again. It happened in the Book of Judges, and it continued right on through all the Kings. At one point, at a key moment in Israel's history, God split his people into two nations, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. They were split, two different countries, in effect.

Israel, the northern kingdom, immediately went into gross idolatry and it wasn't long, the year 722, that Assyria came in, that mighty power, a Gentile nation, and took the northern kingdom away. And they didn't live in the Promised Land anymore through their sin. But God miraculously delivered the southern kingdom, Judah, and the city of Jerusalem, by sending a single angel who had went out and destroyed 185,000 Assyrian troops in one night. That's a busy night for an angel, powerful and godly King Hezekiah had spread the whole matter up out before God in prayer and God saved the southern kingdom for another 100 years, approximately.

The problem was that Hezekiah got sick. He was going to die, he was about to die, and God sent the Prophet Isaiah and said, "You know you're about to die. Put your house in order because you're going to die." And he turned his face to the wall and cried. He wanted to live longer. "I don't want to go to heaven," but he wanted to live longer. He said, "Alright, I'll extend your life 15 years." In that 15 years, he had a son named Manasseh who was born to him. Manasseh, the most wicked king in the history of Judah, immediately led Judah into even worse idolatry and sin than Israel had experienced. Manasseh took one of those descendants of David, one of those children, one of his own children and sacrificed him to a pagan god. Evil man, Manasseh. Eventually, the warning came through the prophets that God was going to judge Judah for the same kinds of sins. Manasseh had a son named Josiah. Josiah, a godly little boy, eight years old when he became king. Can you imagine the crushing burden of taking over the people of God at the age of eight? But he was a godly man and he grew up and restored and purified the temple, got the temple sacrifices back in order. You see, Manasseh had put an idle in the Holy of Holies.

But Josiah purified it, got it back going again, the sacrifices. And while they were doing the work on the temple, suddenly, the book of the law was found. This is probably the Book of Deuteronomy, and it was brought back to the king and he read it. And as he heard the words of the law of God, he began to weep. He began to cry. He began to tear his clothes because he realized that the wrath of God against their nation was great because they had sinned greatly. And so, he humbled himself under the word of God, Josiah did, and he began a one-man revival. And he began to clean up Judah. He began to clean them up of high places and Asherah poles and carved idols and cast images and worship altars of Baal and incense altars, and idolatrous... Places of idolatrous worship.

He also, for the first time, celebrated the Jewish Passover. All of these things were restored, but his time was short and he died at age 39. And immediately after that, the people began to slide right back into sin, the high places were immediately rebuilt by Josiah's ungodly son, Jehoiakim.

And it's in that context, at that time, that Habakkuk steps up. Now, Habakkuk looks around and says, "What is happening?" We've done all that already. Look what happened to Northern Israel. They got taken away by the Assyrians. The mighty Assyrians took them away. And now, we're getting prophets like Jeremiah who are telling us it's going to happen again. And Manasseh has led us into wickedness, but Josiah came and we had a revival. We had a national revival. We turned back to God. There was hope for us, and now we're right back in it again with Jehoiakim. And so, he's grieved about this, he's distressed intensely.

People of Judah and Jerusalem refused to listen to the prophets. They didn't listen to Jeremiah, and they wouldn't listen to Habakkuk either. And so, judgment was hanging over them at that moment. Like a the Sword of Damocles, just hanging by a thread. And the word of the prophet came. And the name of the judgment was the Babylonians. Because the Babylonians, just a little time before that, they've been really relatively unknown. They themselves were subject people. The Assyrians had conquered down the Fertile Crescent. The Babylonians lived down there. They were subject to the Assyrians, but they rose up. We're going to talk more about this next time we talk about Habakkuk, but they rose up. They overthrew the Assyrian Empire. They crushed Nineveh in 612, about five or six years, I think, approximately, before this book was built or written.

And so, they're rising up. The Babylonians are the new power on the horizon, but they're still relatively unknown. You see, the Babylonians had been Judah's friend. When Hezekiah had been healed from that illness, some envoys, some messengers had come from Babylon. And Hezekiah welcomed them and they congratulated him on his miraculous healing, and said, "We're so glad." And he said, "Well, I've got some things I'd like to show you." And he takes them into his store rooms and shows them the gold and the silver, and the costly jewels and all of the stuff that God had given. And, "Oh, boy, you have quite a collection here. Isn't that interesting? Let's make note of that, write it down. That's interesting. A little kingdom of Judah with lots of stuff. How about that?"

And Isaiah, the prophet, comes and says "Who are these men?" And Hezekiah said, "They're messengers from a distant country." "From what country?" He said, "The country of Babylon." "Well, let me tell you what's going to happen in the future. They're coming back with an army to take all this stuff." Isaiah saw it 100 years ahead of time. Hezekiah, you know what he said? "That's fine. It won't happen in my lifetime." That's what he said. And so, the Babylonians were hanging over Judah and Jerusalem by a slender thread. And the time was coming. The Babylonians were coming.

And that is the context. Now, the grief is caused by the behavior of the sin of Judah and Jerusalem. Look what he says in Verse two and following. Habakkuk complains to God and he says, "How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen, or cry out to you, violence, but you do not save. Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted." He's bringing a complaint to God and so that begins the conversation that the book of Habakkuk really is. Habakkuk starts with a complaint. You boil it down to this. "God, how can you, a holy just righteous God, having chosen a people, Israel, for yourself, how can you tolerate this wickedness? You gave us a law, we're breaking it. Do something."

Now, what do you think Habakkuk had in mind? A revival. Right? We had it under Josiah. Let's have a revival. Let's pray that God would revive us. Now, it doesn't say that but I think having lived through Josiah's reign, I think that probably was on his mind. Let's have a revival, and let's come back to God. That's what he was praying for. God gives him an answer. No, it's not going to be a revival, it's going to be a slaughter. It's going to be a destruction. The Babylonians are coming, and they're powerful and they're strong and they're swift. And you will be blown over like a tidal wave. I'm going to deport you, and I'm going to bring an end to the Jewish sovereignty over the Promised Land. I'm bringing an end to it.

Well, Habakkuk doesn't like that. It's what I call out of the frying pan into the fire. Right? And so Habakkuk responds back a second time. He said, "Now, wait a minute, God. How can it be that you will use a godless pagan nation who are even worse than us to discipline us for sin? That doesn't make any sense either. And so I'll tell you what, God I'm going to stand here on my watch. I'm going to station myself, and I'm going to wait until you give me an answer." Habakkuk 2:1.

And God's answer comes in Habakkuk 2. His answer comes in three parts. Part one. I'm going to judge the Babylonians too, because I'm going to raise up other nations to conquer them. And guess what? Other nations are going to conquer their conquerors, and it's going to go on and on.

And so, answer number two. The nations that are seeking to build human empires one after the other, after the other, and that's what it's been in human history, one empire after another, built one on top of the other. Alexander the Great built his fortress on the ruins of Nineveh. And just one conqueror after the other, they're going to be fighting for earthly human glory, and you know what? They are wasting their time. Why? Because the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. As the waters cover the sea, my glory will stand. You can't defeat me. And so, human kingdoms will rise and fall like a baseball thrown in the air. They'll reach an apex and then they'll come back down, one after the other. But my kingdom that I'm building patiently and gradually will stand forever. And everyone will see my glory.

Answer number three. Okay, that's the big picture. Big picture. Nations rising and falling, but God, what about me, personally? What about individual people in your land? Are you going to sweep away the righteous with the unrighteous? Don't you care about individuals? We see the big picture now, but what about individuals? I've got an answer there, too. Habakkuk 2:4. "The righteous will live by faith." And we're going to talk more about that in due time, but to the reformers, the Apostle Paul, in the New Testament picked up on that three times. "The righteous will live by faith." You want to survive? Trust me. Believe in me, and you will survive. Survive what? Survive in this world as long as I intend for you to, and then survive Judgment Day, ultimately. There is no condemnation, therefore, for those who are in Christ Jesus. By faith in Jesus Christ, you will survive Judgment Day.

So, that's a three-part answer. Babylonians are going to be judged by one kingdom. That kingdom will be judged as well. Ultimately, I am building my own kingdom. The glory of the Lord is going to spread over this whole world and individuals within it will be part of that through faith alone. That's a heavy answer. That's a deep answer and it sweeps over all of history. God, you are doing something in history and you're looking after the individual, too. And so, Chapter three is Habakkuk's godly response. He celebrates. First of all, he talks about God's power. When God comes to judge, he means business. He uncovers his bow and he calls for many arrows, not just a few. When the judgment time comes, it comes, and nothing can stop it. But in the end, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God, my Savior. I'm going to trust him, no matter what he does. Like Job says, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." And so the final word is Habakkuk 2:20, "The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the Earth be silent before him."

That's the whole message of the book of Habakkuk in about five minutes. Now, let's look at some of the details. Let's dig into Habakkuk's first complaint. Why does a sovereign and just god tolerate in justice? Look at Verse two, 2-4. He says, "How long O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen, or cry out to you, violence, but you do not save." Israel had been given a law, a righteous law, but they were not holding it. They were unjust, they were unholy. They did not follow the law, and they did not follow the righteous and godly example of Kings like David and Hezekiah and Josiah.

And so, they were ungodly, they were in sin. There was national wickedness, there was violence. Jeremiah diagnosed it this way. Jeremiah was a contemporary of Habakkuk. They saw the same things. So any description you get of Judah in the Book of Jeremiah, that's what Habakkuk was seeing. And what did Jeremiah see? He said, "As a well pours out its water, so she pours out her wickedness. Violence and destruction resound in her. Her sickness and wounds are ever before me. Take warning, O Jerusalem, or I will turn away from you and make your land desolate so no one can live in it." That's what Jeremiah said.

It's a cauldron, a pot of violence. People are killing each other. There's also treachery. There's idolatry. There's false religion, social injustice. The poor are being trampled. The powerful ones are taking the poor's houses and possessions and farms, and the poor had recourse back to court, but the courts were corrupt because of bribery. And so the whole system, he says the law is paralyzed. Nobody can do anything. And so, there's social injustice and the law is paralyzed. And why is that? Because the leaders are corrupt, they're wicked. The King Jehoiakim, all he cared about was a paneled palace with big windows, it says in the Book of Jeremiah at Chapter 22. He liked the big windows, and the smell of cedar. You smell that? The smell is... Boy.

And he doesn't care anything about the poor. And what about the judges? They're on the take, too. They're taking in financially and so the law is paralyzed, and there's extortion, and there's violence, and there's luxury. And so, what does Habakkuk do? He says, "God, how long do I have to put up with this?" And as a prophet, he probably could see it even more clearly. "How long do you make me look at these things until you act?" And so he cries out to God through patient watching.

God’s Apparent Silence

Now, the problem here is God's apparent silence. God is just too patient for us, isn't he? We look and we want him to act immediately. A bad guy does something, we want God to act immediately. And so Habakkuk is saying, "Do something about that." Events flow by, it seems, with no word from heaven. God seems to condone it. His silence is misunderstood. People think, for example, number one, that he doesn't exist. His silence proves that he doesn't exist. He's dead, God is dead. Or perhaps they misunderstand his nature. Maybe he likes wicked things, or maybe he's weak and can't do anything about it. He has good intentions. He just can't do anything about it. They misunderstand his nature.

Or they misunderstand his purposes. They don't see the plan. And so, Habakkuk does what a godly person should. When you're troubled, when you're distressed, you don't know what to do, you go to God in prayer. You say, "God, explain it to me. I don't understand." And so he brings it to God in prayer, a compassionate, a passionate complaint. Now, I don't think it's irreverent to pour out a complaint like this to God. Habakkuk was not being irreverent. He just wanted an answer.

And so God gave an answer. And the answer came. He said, "Look at the nations and watch, and be utterly amazed, for I'm going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if someone told you." Because I'm bringing the Babylonians, and they're coming to judge.

There's a book entitled, He Is There And He Is Not Silent. That's God. He is there and he is not silent, he's just patient. And when the time comes, the judgment comes, and the time had come, Habakkuk was hoping for a revival. Instead, judgment is coming. And look what he says in Verse five, "I am raising up the Babylonians." Does God have the power to do that? "I'm going to do something." Yes, he does. "I'm going to bring the Babylonians." How does he do that? Well, he's king. He's King of kings and Lord of lords. He can bring the Babylonians. "I'm going to bring them and they're going to defeat Assyria and then they're coming your way. And they're going to defeat you as well. The Babylonians are coming." And then, he goes on. It's not just, I'm going to bring the Babylonians. Let me tell you about the Babylonians. I'd like to describe them to you. And so he does, in Verse 7-11. Look with me.

He says, "I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people." That means they are bitter, they're harsh, they're hard. They have no love. They don't mind killing anybody, man, woman, and child. There's a hardness to them. And they're hasty, they're impetuous. They just move. They're unpredictable. You don't know where they're going to go on the battlefield. They are hasty, they're ruthless, they're impetuous. And they sweep across the whole earth. They've got a big vision of conquest. It's not enough to just take over Assyria. They want the whole world. They've got a world vision of conquest.

They "sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own. They are a feared and dreaded people." What happens is as you hear reports about this city or that city crumbling and falling, and your heart starts to flutter, and you realize they're coming your way. And so, other prophets liken it to be being a woman in labor. There's just a grief, there's an anguish, there's a pain. Other prophets talk about, it's like a drunkenness that comes over you, an insanity. And you don't know what to do because they're coming your way. They're a feared and dreaded people. And then it says they are a law to themselves, and promote their own honor. They do it all for their own glory. They're not following any kind of law except what they want to do. They are a law to themselves and promote their own glory and their own honor. And by the way, within that is the seeds of their own destruction, because God doesn't tolerate that.

But the time has come for God to use this wicked people, and so they come. And they sweep across the whole Earth. It says, they come from afar. Their horses are swifter than leopards, keener than wolves at dusk. What that means is the wolves haven't had anything to eat all day, and now they're ravenous. And you throw a little lamb, like Judah, in the midst of ravenous wolves, and it's gone. It's like a shark attack. That's what these Babylonians are going to be like, ravenous. And they're arrogant, too. Look at Verse 10 and 11. They deride kings and scoff at rulers. They laugh at all fortified cities, then they build earthen ramps and capture them.

A fortified city like maybe Jerusalem, with a wall? Yeah. No problem. They laugh. It will be absolutely no problem for us to get in here. And so, they're going to build an earthen ramp and they're going to capture it, and then they're going to move on. They'll shake the dust of Judah off their feet and they're going to move on and take over Egypt too. You are nothing to them. They're arrogant, powerful and strong. They deride kings and scoff at rulers. They laugh at all fortified cities, then they build earthen ramps and capture them and sweep past like the wind, and go on. Guilty men, listen to this, whose own strength is their god. Habakkuk is going to pick up on that the next time that we preach on this. We're going to talk about it. They ultimately sacrifice to their own military power. Their own strength is their god, and that's going to be their undoing as well. So he describes them. They're guilty men whose own strength is their god.

Now the message of Habakkuk is, that the guilty are punished eventually, but the righteous stand by faith. And so we have hanging over us a the Babylonian invasion. And the next time we're going to see Habakkuk's response. Now, we have some lessons here on history.

1) History is Under God’s Control

Number one. All history is under God's control. God sovereignly rules history. It's God that raised up the Babylonians, just like it was God earlier who raised up the Assyrians. And it will be God who raises up the Persians to conquer them. God rules history. Daniel put it this way. "The Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes. He rules."

Daniel also put it this way, "His dominion is an eternal dominion. His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, What have you done?" Do you know who said those words? Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, spoke those words. He said, "No one can stop his power." That's what Nebuchadnezzar said he learned personally, individually, about the sovereignty and the power of God.

2) History Follows a Divine Plan

Number two, history follows a divine plan. Jesus said, "I am the alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and the end." I wrote history. And it's following a plan. Every detail has been worked out. I know what I'm doing and we're on schedule.

3) History Follows a Divine Timetable

Number three. History follows not a human time table, but a divine time table. At his time, in his way, he will do it. Now, it took too long for Habakkuk, but of course, the response was bigger than Habakkuk wanted, right? Habakkuk wanted a revival yesterday. God promised judgment tomorrow. That's God's ways are not our ways. But everything is following a divine time table. Again, Daniel 2:20 says, "Praise be to the name of God forever and ever, his wisdom and power, wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons. He sets up kings, and he deposes them." That is God. He rules and his time table is his own.

4) History is Bound Up with the Kingdom of God

Fourthly, history is bound up with the kingdom of God. Everything must be seen in light of Habakkuk 2:14, "The Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." What is God's glory? It is his Kingdom, and that kingdom is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came to build a spiritual kingdom that will never end. And so, everything must be seen in the light of Jesus's Kingdom. Jesus came to set up the glory of God on this earth and through faith in Christ, we have eternal life.

5) Justice is Always Done in the End

Point number five about history. Justice is always done in the end. Habakkuk was frustrated by God's silence, but God is just. And in the end, all the wicked will perish, but here's the problem. Who is righteous? Who's righteous? Only those who are cleansed through the blood of Christ through faith, the righteous will live by faith. That's who's righteous. Now, how do we apply this to ourselves? Well, number one, I think our response to the wickedness that surrounds us here in America is huge. It's very important. What did Josiah do when he heard the law of the Lord? He tore his clothes. He wept, he was broken-hearted over it. And he got busy, and he started working. A one-man revival was Josiah. What did Habakkuk do when he saw the ungodliness and wickedness? He brought it to God in prayer. He was torn up by it.

Ezekiel was brought on a journey, a spiritual journey, by the power of God to show him a certain category of people in Jerusalem at that time, who wept and who aggrieved over the sins of their nation. And he said, "Put a mark on them. Put a spiritual mark on them." And then later in Ezekiel, the avenging angel went through with the sword and everyone who didn't have the mark was slain. And so your response is everything. Do you respond to the wickedness around you like Habakkuk, or do you respond with indifference? It doesn't matter how our nation is. Are you aggrieved? Are you enraged at injustice and wickedness? And does it make you pray and seek God? Praying with passion, and ultimately trusting an inscrutable God. What do I mean by an inscrutable God? It means you can't figure out what he's doing. Can you trace God's ways out? Do you understand his plan? Isaiah 55 says, "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are my ways your ways,' says the Lord, 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.'" And then Paul, after explaining the Gospel, said, "O the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord or been his counselor?"

We don't know God's ways, but ultimately, we know this. All of God's ways, all of his history leads to the cross of Jesus Christ. In the cross of Christ, I glory, towering over the wrecks of time. Jesus's cross towers over these kingdoms that have risen and fallen. And Jesus lived a sinless holy life, and called simple humble faith-filled people to enter a kingdom that would never end. And through faith in Jesus Christ, through that sinful, or sinless life that Jesus lived, we can take on his righteousness through simple faith in Christ. And Jesus, not only did he live a sinless, pure, holy life, he was willing to lay down that life on the cross and die in our place and to give us a righteousness that will enable us to survive Judgment Day. And not only did he die on the cross but he rose from the dead.

And next week, we're going to celebrate that great, that mighty resurrection. Jesus Christ and his kingdom alone explains all of history. And it also addresses the needs of every individual person who's listening to me today. Yes, there's a big huge plan for all of history but there's an individual purpose for you as well. Repentance and faith in Christ. Come to Christ today. If you haven't trusted in Christ, let today be for you the day of salvation. The righteous will live by faith.

Ordinarily at this point, I say, "Turn in your Bibles to...” and then we turn to a text, but this morning we have an unusual task before us. And many of you have this blue sheet, and if you didn't get one, please pick one up as you leave today. This morning, I felt led by the Lord and encouraged also by the Ministry staff to preach through the scriptural support for a proposed vision statement for our church.

Now, there was a time, and it's important for us to realize this and meditate on it, often there was a time when nothing existed but God. It's good to think about that, isn't it? A time when nothing existed but God himself, and there was therefore no light, except one light. Because the scripture reveals that the unchanging God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. So there was a time that there was a spiritual light, namely God Himself, but there was no vision yet of that light because there were no created beings. And so God ordained that there be created beings, and His first word of creation was, "Let there be light," and implied in that was an audience, vision, that there would be light receptors, those that could take in the light, meditate, think about it, reflect it, understand it. So when He said, "Let there be light," He was anticipating that there would be some that would come along who would see that light, rejoice in it, delight in it, but it came from Himself. It was his own light. He was the light, even that physical light that was created came from His word, "Let there be light."

And as you trace this right through to the end of scripture which Eric read for us earlier, there's going to come a day that there will be a new Jerusalem, a new heaven, new earth, isn't that glorious? And there's going to be a city there which is transparent with streets of gold that are transparent, and I've thought often about that. What is transparent gold? Have you ever seen it? But there's just this transparence to the Eternal City, isn't there? And what is it for? Well, it's because the only light in that city will be the glory of God, and Jesus Christ is the lamp of that glory. And so it's going to be a radiant, glorious place.

And therefore we could say from the very beginning of creation right through to the new creation, the glory of God, the light of God's self-revelation unifies the whole Bible. It is the grand theme of the Bible, the glory of God. And so as we think about who we're called to be as a church, what are we called to be and to do, we could do no higher than to zero in on the issue of God's glory and find out what we are to be in relation to the glory of God. Now, what is a vision statement? Well, it's certainly not scripture. That's at a lower level. It's a human organization of doctrines, but I think it's reasonable to assume that the Word of God is not merely those texts that we immediately find, but those things that can be logically deduced and reasoned from them - like the Trinity, for example. And so I think it's reasonable to have a statement like this that organizes and pulls together this great theme of the glory of God and what we're called to be. And so the statement runs like this, "We exist to delight in, display, and declare the glory of God equipping His people to spread that delight to all nations through Jesus Christ." And so this morning, I just proposed to unpack it and show how each one of these phrases has a scriptural support, a back-up.

Now, many Fortune 500 companies, Forbes companies, have vision statements, and they organize their year of business around that vision. But there's a vast difference between the vision statement of IBM or Ford Motor Company, and by the way, Ford has talked about how they got away from their vision originally. Now they're going to get back to the original vision. You've seen those ads. And so there's a sense of what the vision of Ford Company is. Well, I think there's a similarity to what a local church's vision is, but it's very different, too, isn't it? Because ultimately, the vision is passively received. We just simply see what is and what is? Well, it's the glory of God. And we see it, we receive it, we take it in, and we are absorbed by it. And so we have to take our vision statement also somewhat passively. We have to receive from scripture what God is saying that we should be as a people, as a church.

And it makes sense because the tabernacle, for example, when the time came to build the tabernacle, it didn't come up out of the imagination of Moses, did it? But God called Moses up onto a mount, and he showed him a pattern of what the tabernacle should be. Many people don't know that, but basically, God gave Moses a vision of the tabernacle. There was a pattern, and he said in Exodus 25:9, "make this tabernacle and its furnishings exactly like the pattern I show you." And so also the church must make everything we do, all of the furnishings of First Durham should come exactly like the pattern that he has shown us. So all I'm making it now is a point that we must passively receive this vision from God. He is the light, the light comes out from him, and we see it, and we rejoice in it, that's all. And also when the time came for the building of the physical temple, not the tent, the tabernacle that moved from place to place, but now they were established in the promised land, and there would be a place that all Israel would come to worship. And David had it in his heart that he would build a temple for the glory of God, and when the time came to build that temple, this is what David said to his son, Solomon. 1 Chronicles 28:19, he said, "'All this,' David said, 'I have in writing from the hand of the Lord upon me, and he gave me understanding in all the details of the plan.'"

Isn't that amazing? Did you know that God was an architect? That he gave David plans of the temple in writing? 1 Chronicles 28:19, look it up. And so it says in scripture that God is the architect and the builder of our faith. He is an architect, and so he gives us the plan. He gives us the vision statement. He tells us what we are to be, not the other way around. We receive it passively, and we delight in it, we rejoice in it.

But you know something, both the tabernacle and the temple were themselves just dim reflections of an Eternal City of God, right? The one that Abram was waiting for. He just saw it at a distance, and he confessed on this earth that he was just an alien and a stranger. And it says of that city in Hebrews 11:10, Abraham was "looking for a city which has foundations whose architect and builder is God." Now, in this world, God is building that city. It's a spiritual city. It is eternal, and he's building it step by step according to his plan, according to his pattern, by his ways. We don't come to God and say, "You know, I have a... I have an idea for the west wing of the temple. I think it would look good if we did it this way or that." We don't do that. Instead we receive from Him what He is doing, what He is building, and what is he building? He's building the church of Jesus Christ. And He has plans for that church, just like He has plans... He had plans for the tabernacle in the wilderness and for the temple of Solomon. So he also has plans, certainly He does, for the eternal city of God. Now, this vision statement is merely to be, I think, a distilling of what God is calling, not just First Baptist, to be, but really any church. Not every church needs to put it in this kind of language, but this is really what we are for. We do in fact exist to delight in, to display, and to declare the glory of God and to equip his people to spread that delight to all nations through Jesus Christ.

Let's look at the first phrase, "We exist to... " Let's just stop there. What does that tell you? "We exist to..." There's a reason we're here. There's a purpose behind First Baptist Durham. There's a purpose behind any local church. We're here for a reason. It makes sense. God is a purposeful being. He doesn't do anything for no reason. He doesn't waste his time. There is a purpose for this church. "We exist to... " And even before that, we simply exist at His word. We exist because He said so. We exist because He created us. Revelation 4:11 puts it this way, "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power." Why? Well, You created all things and by Your will or for Your pleasure, they were created and have their being. You were created for the pleasure of God. You were created for the glory of God. You were created to reveal God's glory. You were created also to enjoy it. You were created for that purpose, you individually, so also we collectively as a church.

And so we were created for a purpose, and we must live up to that purpose. Is there a purpose to the church? Absolutely. Ephesians 3:10,11 put it this way, "His intent," "His intent," that's purpose, His purpose, "His intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms according to His eternal purpose, which He accomplished in Christ Jesus, our Lord." We are to be putting the wisdom of God on display. That's what the church is for. We're getting ahead of ourselves, but I'm just telling you, we're here for a purpose. We were created for a reason. We exist, too. And I'll tell you, ever since we began thinking about a vision statement, that's really clarified some things for me, hasn't it? We exist to do what? To be what? It begins to start to weed things out. Why are we here? What are we doing? We exist for a reason. Well, what do we exist to do? What do we exist to be?

Well, first of all, we exist to delight in the glory of God. Well, what does this mean? Well, delight means to love, to rejoice in it, to celebrate it, to enjoy it. And I think what you really love, what you really enjoy, what you build your world around, that is your treasure, right? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Turn it around. What your heart is on, that's your true treasure. Well, God should be our treasure, God himself, and that doesn't happen lightly, does it? Naturally, do we enjoy God? Well, we already went through Romans 3 and says “there is no one who seeks God” naturally. We don't naturally enjoy God, therefore we need a heart transformation so that we really can delight in the glory of God. We can really be changed so that we do delight in it. Jesus spoke of the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin, those that were in opposition to Him. He said, "These people worship Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." That's the essence of hypocrisy. You come into the church, and you speak the words, you say the things you're supposed to say, but your heart is not in it. That's not why we're here.

We exist to delight in the glory of God, to really enjoy it, and that means first and foremost delighting in God Himself. Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Have you seen that verse before? Did you ever think of it that, if I delight in the Lord, he'll give me what I want, right? I've got a list of things that I have in mind, right? And if I delight in the Lord, and I do that delighting thing, then he will give me those five or six things I really want. It's kind of like Christmas time, right? Alright, I'll give you the delight, but you give me the desires of my heart. That's not what it's saying. If you delight in the Lord, what will be the desires of your heart? God and His things, right? That's what that verse means. So delight yourself in God and your heart will change, is what it means. You'll start delighting in new things. So we delight in God Himself, but more than that, we delight in God's glory. What does that mean?

It's the outward radiant manifestation of God. We're excited that God doesn't keep himself a secret. The best kept secret in the universe is God. No! He's not in the business of keeping Himself a secret. The heavens declare the glory of God. He's into self-declaration, self-glorification because He is God, and good thing because you get saved as a result, right? If God kept Himself secret, you wouldn't get saved because we call on the name of the Lord to be saved, right? So we're glad that God has a reputation around the world. He's well known. Look at Rahab, what saved Rahab? God's reputation saved Rahab. We've heard about what you did when you took your people out, God, through the Red Sea. We heard about that, and so we trembled. And I would like to be on your side. I would like to be saved.

God's reputation saves people, and so we delight in God's name. We delight in His reputation. Look at the next verse, Isaiah 26:8-9. "Yes, Lord... " Oh, aren't those two great words? Oh, that we learn to just say that. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord, whatever you want. Yes, Lord, that's what we want. "Yes Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you. Your name and renown are the desires of our heart." What is he saying there? "Your name and your fame." Isn't renowned, fame? He's renowned. Your famousness is what we want. We want You to be widely known, God, and we delight when You are. It's an exciting thing when an unreached people group comes to faith in Christ, isn't it? That's a delightful thing. And we delight in God displaying His glory. We're excited about it. I'm excited about it. We delight in that, and not only that, but we delight in the way that God has gotten his glory out. He's done it through certain channels, do you know that?

He's gotten His glory out, first of all, through physical creation. We need the rain, don't we? Praise God for that. I guess we were in drought conditions, and so it's a drizzly rainy day. Isn't it good to be inside, nice and warm, protected. But we delight in the physical creation as it manifests God to us. We don't look at the physical world the way a pagan does. We don't worship created things rather than the Creator, rather we use the created things to worship the Creator, and so we delight in them. Psalm 104:24 and following says, "How many are your works, O Lord? In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of Your creatures… May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord be glad in His works." That's coming from the heart of the psalmist. I hope your glory lasts forever, God, and I hope you're glad in the things you've made. And so we delight in the glory of God as revealed through creation.

Secondly, we delight in the glory of God as revealed more clearly in the written word, in the Bible. I've found that this is a real key spiritual test. The Word of God is a challenge, isn't it? Sometimes it says more than we want to hear. Does that say anything about the Word, or does it say something about what we want to hear? We must delight in the revelation of God off the pages of this Book, and not the God of our own fabrication - an idol, really. But the God as He has revealed Himself in this Book, God as revealed in scripture. We don't come to God and say, "God, I like to think of you as... " That doesn't mean anything. It says a lot about you, but it doesn't say anything about God. Rather, we say, "God, you tell me who You are, and I'll worship You." And he has. He's revealed Himself in His Word in His written Word, and we're to delight in that. We're to enjoy the Word of God. It should be a pleasure to have the Word just unfolded to us. Jeremiah put it this way, in Jeremiah 15:16, "When Your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty." If you bear the name of God, you will delight in His Words. You'll enjoy them. That's your pleasure. That's what you live for. You want to hear the Words of God. Why? Not so much because it's an exciting thing to go through grammar and syntax and all that. Why? Because God is revealed up off the words of these pages, right? "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory." And you say, "Amen. Oh, that I could have been there with Isaiah to see it." That's what the words do. And so we delight in the Word of God as it reveals God's glory to us.

And then third, and most clearly, we delight in the Living Word Jesus Christ, because He is God's highest revelation of Himself. Lord, show us the Father, and it will be enough for us. "Don't you know me, Phillip, after I've been with you all this time? Anyone who's seen me has…" what? "…seen the Father." Wow. Isn't that exciting? You look at Jesus, you see the Father. "I and the Father are one," said Jesus, Hebrews 1:3, put it this way, "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word." 2 Corinthians 4:6, "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness... '" That's Genesis 1:3, "Let there be light." The God who said, "'Let there be light,'" "…made His light shine in our hearts... " That's salvation. "…made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God... " Where? "In the face of Christ." And so as we see Christ plainly, we see God, and He is the highest revelation. So we delight in the glory of God as revealed in nature, in the scripture, and in His Son Jesus Christ.

And as a result of that, we're going to worship, aren't we? We're just going to worship. We're going to see the God of the universe, and we are going to worship Him, inside. In a minute, we're going to declare, okay? But first we have to delight. If you don't delight first, but declare, you're a hypocrite. You've got to delight first, and then comes the declaration, the praise. And so we worship by the Spirit of God. Psalm 43:3,4 - my kids and I were talking about this as we drove in -  it's a beautiful text. It says, "Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me, let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell." Send out your word God, and they're going to bring me home. I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. They're going to bring me home. Okay? To what end? Then will I go to the altar of God to God, my joy and my delight, I will praise you with the harp O God. And so, worship comes from this experience of the revelation of God.

Secondly, we exist to display the glory of God. Okay, we delight in it at first, but now we're going to display it. How are we going to do that? Well, we're going to put out lights, you see. We're going to put out - but it's not our light, is it? It's God's light, it's His glory. And so, we are going to be transformed. Our lives are going to be changed, transformed lives, putting God's glory on display. Isaiah 61:3 puts it this way, "They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord…" Why? “…for the display of His splendor." We're going to put God's splendor on display if we are oaks of righteousness.

Alright, well, how is God's glory put on display in us? Number one, by saving sinners like you and me. Isn't that wonderful? Look what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy 1:15-17, "Christ, Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst." Isn't that a hopeful Verse? You may have come today feeling, you're the worst of sinners. There's no hope for you. There is hope. Why? Because the logic works this way, if God could save Saul of Tarsus, he can save you. He was full of murderous threats against the Lord's disciples and boom, God saved him. And why, Paul, why did God save you? "But for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that…" why? "…in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe." Isn't that incredible? God took Paul, saved him and then put him on display. Say, Hey look, if He can save me, He can save you. And so, that's how it works with us. You can say the same thing, Hey, if he can save me, he can save you. If you're humble enough, you can put it this way, if He can save me, He'll surely save you. Because I'm the worst of sinners, and he saved me. That's about what Paul is saying. And he finishes up, "Now under the king, eternally mortal, invisible to the only God be glory and honor forever and ever." That's how it works, because I get saved, I just proclaim His glory. I'm excited about it. So our salvation puts God's glory on display.

Secondly, God's glory is put on display, because he doesn't leave you as the worst of sinners. He doesn't leave you there, he's going to sanctify you, he's going to move you on. You're not going to be at the same place after 30 years of being a Christian that you were when you started. You're going to grow to be like Jesus more and more. He's going to transform you from sinfulness to holiness. 1 Peter 1:15-16, "just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: 'Be holy because I am holy.'" What does holiness mean? Separation, separation from sin and evil, separation from this world. And as we live that kind of life, we're going to put God's holiness on display. People are going to say, What is it with you? First Durham, you're a holy church, why are you like this? Why are you separated from the world, why do you hate the things we love? Why? Because that's the way God is. And so, we put God's holiness on display. And not just His holiness, but all his communicable attributes, all those things that he gives to us, like His love and His mercy, and His patience and His justice, and His hatred of sin, and all of those things we put on display. It says in Ephesians 5:1, "Be imitators of God, therefore his dearly loved children and live a life of love."

And so, we put God's love on display, ultimately we put all of those attributes of God on display and how? By good works by leading a good life. It says in Matthew 5:14-16, "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl." That doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that? "Instead, they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father who's in heaven." That's how it works. He puts himself on display through you by transforming you and your good deed show it. When we do a health fair and people take their time and they come in Saturday, and they're there to serve as Jesus did, to minister to people's physical and spiritual needs, we're putting God on display aren't we? We're saying, “This is the God we love, this is the God we worship.” I'm putting Him on display.

Well, when I originally -  when we originally - worked on this statement that all it said is delighted and display, and we included evangelism and display, but it's not good enough, is it? We need to be even clearer, so I added a phrase, and I think we all saw the validity to adding the phrase not only to delight in and to display, but to declare the glory of God. Why is that? Let me tell you something, I don't mean to be insulting, but nobody's going to get saved by watching your life. Do you realize that? I'm not, again, I'm not trying to be insulting. I think you are seeking to live like Jesus as much as you can, and you're reading your little “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet and all the time, you're trying as best you can to be like Jesus. Praise God for that, but is that going to save anybody? Is anybody going to get saved that way? No. What has God ordained that is the power of salvation for people, the Gospel, the words of the Gospel, the word of life, an imperishable word. And so, we must verbally declare God's glory in the gospel of Christ so that others may be saved.

We declare the glory of God's name. Isaiah 12:4-5, "Give thanks to the Lord, calling his name, make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that His name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for He has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world." We proclaim the glory of God's name. We speak it. Jesus said to one of his disciples in Luke 9:60, but "…you go and proclaim the kingdom of God," go talk about it. Speak about the kingdom of God, that God is king and he rules. We also, when we come together here on Sundays, we declare the praises of God to each other, we speak the praise of God, we sing it, we speak it, we talk it to each other, not just on Sundays, but all week long. We speak the praises of God to each other for mutual edification.

But we do more than that. We speak the praises of God to non-Christians so that they may be saved. Romans 1:16 says, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it, the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." And so, Romans 10, faith comes from what? "…from hearing." Not from seeing, not from watching your life, from hearing the gospel. And so, we exist verbally to declare the glory of God.

We're going to especially declare the glory of God in portraying Jesus Christ and him crucified. Galatians 3:1, "…before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified." Colossians 1:28, "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ." Well, that's what we do, and that's what we are.

We exist for this reason, we exist to delight in and to display by our lives and to declare with our mouths the glory of God, but that's not enough. We have to reach out to others and say, What can I do for you? How can I equip you so that you can finish your life purpose too? It's not enough for us individually to do those three things, we have to equip God's people to do the same. You see how it works? And so, we are seeking to equip God. What does equip mean? Well, it means give them everything they need for growing in Godliness and fruitfulness.

First of all, we have to recognize that the true equipper is God alone, God himself. Look at Hebrews 13:20-21, "May the God of peace, moving ahead, equip you with everything good for doing His will. And may he work in us, what is pleasing to Him through Jesus Christ in whom be glory for ever and ever." May God equip you for doing everything good. May he do that equipping work. Who's the equipper? It is God. Alright, what is the tool he uses to do the equipping? The word of God, the scripture. "All scripture is God-breathed," right? And, "is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness," why? "So that the man of God may be," what? "…thoroughly equipped for every good work."

And so, God does the equipping through the word, but He also does it through the church, as we minister spiritual gifts to each other. Now we speak the Word, we take the word and we speak it to newborn infants, we're going to see people coming to Christ, aren't we? I look forward to that. I'm excited. It's already happened last week, two people received Christ, pray for them. We're excited, they're newborns and as newborn babies, what should they be yearning for? What should they be craving? How can we equip them? The pure milk of the word. Right? Give them the word. Alright, what about the older, more mature, wiser Christians, what do they need? The word, maybe not milk now, maybe the meat of the word, but still the word. "But grow in grace, in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever." We need the word as we grow in grace in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. So God uses the scripture, and we have to take responsibility for each other's lives.

You know, we're just so individual, aren't we? Do you know anybody here in this church? I mean, really? Are we a body together, the way we need to be? We need to watch over one another in brotherly love. We need to equip each other. You know, you look around and each one of you are going to go out through these doors into warfare, aren't you? You're going to go out into battle, you're going to be battling temptation, you're going to be battling problems in the world. If you're preaching the gospel, you're going to be battling persecution, and you need help, you need equipping, don't you? Because you're going to get worn down. And we're to be that for each other. We're supposed to protect each other from sin. "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful unbelieving heart," Hebrews 3, "that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." We need to protect each other from sin, and so, therefore we have to equip each other, say, brother, sister, I see this going on in your life, let me help you fight that battle with you, so that you're not alone. And then positively, I want to help you do all those good works that God intended for you to do.

"Let us consider how we may provoke one another toward love and good deeds, not neglecting, meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching." So we're negatively going to help each other, equip each other to fight the battle of sin, positively equip each other to be maximally fruitful for Jesus Christ. And all of this is done, I believe, as we spoke for a long time in Sunday evenings, through spiritual gifts, as the body of Christ does its work, it grows up as each part does its work. We're going to equip each other for full maturity in Christ. Well, it's a specific kind of equipping though, that we have in mind, we're equipping people to complete the great commission. It says, to spread that delight to all nations. What delight? Well, delight in the glory of God, that's getting saved, right? "The light of the knowledge of the glory of God …in face of Christ," boom, glory of God.

And so, we want to spread the delight of God's glory to all nations. Brothers and sisters, God's vision is worldwide, isn't it? And so should ours be. We are and should be a worldwide church. We should have a vision for the world. God has to some degree brought the world right to our doorstep, hasn't he? And not only just the international students that come, and that's true, but we are the fourth fastest growing metro region in the US. He's bringing people, they're pouring in, and we've got a world of ministry opportunities, intercity, right nearby us folks, we're accountable. And medical community, those people need the Lord, they need Christ. Day after day, they're working with sickness and death, they need Christ. And college students, whether they're internationals or not, they come here for a little while. They should come here to have their lives transformed because some of them came to first Durham, right? So we exist for a world of opportunities, our vision should be worldwide.

It says in Isaiah 66:19, "they will proclaim my glory among the nations." Psalm 96:2-3, "Sing to the Lord, praise His name, proclaim His salvation day after day, declare His glory among the nations." Christ's final orders to us. His final marching orders, we're the great commission. "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, therefore, go and make disciples of all nations." What's a disciple? Somebody fully equipped to do their work, a fully mature follower of Jesus Christ. Make disciples, not converts. Make fully mature followers of Christ, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded them. Baptizing them in name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything. And surely, I am with you always to the very end of the age. So God's vision is worldwide, and so should ours be.

One of the reasons that we put in here that we exist to equip God's people and not just church members, is that our vision should be to help Christians finish their work, whether they're members of our church or not. And so, there are some brothers and sisters, Southern Baptists and non-Southern Baptists that are on the front lines. They're ministering, aren't they? They're taking the gospel to unreached people groups. We should care about that. We should be involved in it. We should be involved financially. I'm not going to read the Philippians quote, but basically in Philippians 4, Paul says, “Thank you for sharing financially in my ministry. Thank you for equipping me to do what I needed to do by sharing financially.” And so, by giving to the cooperative program, by giving to other missionaries, by being generous and sacrificial, we are equipping them to take the delight to the ends of the earth, and we also equip them through prayer. 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2, Paul says, "Finally, brothers, Pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith." In other words, please pray that when I preach the Gospel, there will be fruit. And if you pray and take shares with me, take part in that, you are investing yourself in my ministry through prayer. We need to be doing that and we are, that's exciting. We need to continue to do that.

And the final phrase is in many ways the most important, through Jesus Christ. Now, obviously, the Glory of God includes Jesus Christ, but it's good to say it directly, openly through Jesus Christ, our existence, our vision and achievements come through Jesus Christ alone. Amen. It's only through Christ that we could even hope to do these things.

Look at Hebrews 13:20-21 again. We already saw it once, but look at it again. "May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead, our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, may He, the God of peace, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and look at this, may he work in us, what is pleasing to Him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever." Isn't that wonderful? May he work this vision statement, and it's true, the scriptures we looked at, May he work it into us through Jesus Christ. And Jesus put it this way, I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing, but if you're in me, you will do what? Bear much fruit. So it's all through Jesus Christ.

Now, this has been a little bit unusual morning, I prefer to just choose a text and move through it, but instead, we've gone across in a kind of a systematic theology way to what God could and I think is calling a local church to be. We exist to means we were created for a purpose, and so we must live up to that purpose. We exist to delight in the glory of God, speaks of a transformed heart, which delights in God Himself in His name, in his physical creation, in His word, and in His Son, how all of those revealed His glory. We exist to display the glory of God by having transformed lives, putting sin to death through holiness, putting his attributes, love and mercy and justice on display by our good deeds, and to declare the glory of God, to speak the words of the gospel to our neighbors so that they may be saved. And we exist to equip God's people, to give them everything they need, to be disciplers, to disciple each other, to watch over one another in brotherly love, to help each other on the way, and not just us, but all of God's people as they complete their missionary work through prayer, through financial giving, to spread that delight to all nations. We should have a nation, a worldwide vision for what God can do through our church, and all of this done only through Jesus Christ.

Take your Bibles, if you would, and look in them with me at Romans Chapter 8. This is going to be our last sermon in Romans for a while, and that's kind of exciting when you stop and think about it. I won't tell you how many messages we've had in Romans, but it's a lot. It's about a third of the preaching I've done since I've been here. So, it's really a remarkable journey. And we've seen very clearly, I think, as we've moved through Romans, how the Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

For in these 8 chapters of Romans, we've been taken from being dead in our transgressions and sins right into the very presence of God in heaven. And so we who deserve nothing but wrath have been assured of salvation in Romans 8, in the most lavish way. And therefore, I think it's remarkable this Christian faith of ours. I think it's an incredible thing, because God promises absolutely everything to us through Christ, doesn't he? And then he demands everything from us in Christ as well. And we're going to see that in the verses that we're looking at today. Recently, I've had the privilege of reading one of the most exciting adventure stories I've ever read in my life, and I'm continuing to read it.

I've read the children's version. Now, I'm going to read the adult's version, and it's about an expedition begun by Sir Ernest Shackleton, in August 8th, 1914, an expedition across the Antarctic. He was going to be, or attempting to be, the first man with his group to set out and to travel across the Antarctic. As he sailed from London on August 8th, 1914, what followed was the most extraordinary adventure, perhaps in history. The ship was trapped and then eventually, crushed by ice. The expedition was marooned first on the constantly shifting Antarctic ice pack, and then on a remote and uninhabited island. It took a daring open boat journey, a 22 footer with three sails, across 1000 miles of the most turbulent, dangerous, and frigid waters to rescue his group. Shackleton went out, a small expedition from the larger to bring back help. And the astounding thing about this incredible journey, this adventure, is that Shackleton lost not one single man committed to his care, but brought them all back safely.

Now, I found out recently that this story is going to be depicted at an IMAX, in Raleigh, very soon. And so, all of you are going to want to go buy tickets. I know I want to go see it, but this is an incredible story. The thing that's amazing to me is that the name of the ship was The Endurance, and I believe that Romans Chapter 8 is given to us, because we are in the midst of an incredible journey, a dangerous journey even more dangerous spiritually, I think, than the physical dangers that faced Shackleton and his group. And what does this journey call for but endurance, perseverance through faith in Christ.

What's also interesting to me is that August 1914 was the very month that armies began to march and World War I began. And so really, if you combine those two things, the moment you become a Christian, you are set to travel a perilous journey through a war-torn zone to accomplish a mission for God. And what does it take, but the kind of assurance that we are given in these final verses of Romans 8 that enable us with courage to set out on that journey. We are not going to be wafting up to heaven on flowery beds of ease, not at all. But rather, in the Book of Acts, Paul says it is through many hardships that we enter the kingdom of heaven. Americans almost need to be jarred awake to realize that. We are called to make a dangerous journey.

And I've come to realize also that every single blessing in the Christian life is given to us because of God's love for us, that we may be blessed thereby, but also that we may turn around and be a blessing to others. And so, it is also true, in the matter of assurance of salvation. The very thing that God's been laboring to do in us, in Romans 8, he works in us an assurance of salvation, but always for a purpose. And I believe that purpose is that we may accomplish the advance of the kingdom of God, in this world, no longer worried about our own future, no longer worried about our own salvation, no longer worried about anything whatsoever. We are now fit to be vessels for God, poured out for his glory until he takes us home. And so, I think, behind the assurance given in Romans Chapter 8, is a mighty and incredible mission laid before the church, the mission of taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Romans 10:14-15 says, "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news!'" You all are the ones with the beautiful feet. You are the ones who are called to take the Gospel across mountains and rivers and oceans, even the Arctic Ocean if need be, to people who've never heard. The blessings that God has lavished on you, that he is lavishing on you, are not meant to accumulate in some kind of a backwater, but rather are meant to motivate you to turn around and be a blessing to the nations, and that's the very thing that God intends to do by giving you assurance of salvation.

Christianity truly is an astounding religion. It asks ultimate things of us. It promises ultimate things to us, and it answers the ultimate questions of life. What kind of questions do I mean? Well, for example, what will happen to me when I die? Or what does the future hold? What does the future hold? What is going to happen to me in my future life? These are the kind of questions that Paul is dealing with here at the end of Romans Chapter 8. The Christian version of it is, can anything separate me from the love of God in Christ? Look at that in Verse 35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" We have therefore set before us the eternal, the sweet love of God in Jesus Christ, the sweetest gift that we've ever received. We are loved totally. We are loved unconditionally. Contrary to what we deserve are we loved and we have been loved before the foundation of the world.

In Jeremiah 31, "I have loved you with an everlasting love and therefore in love and kindness, I have drawn you." Isn't that marvelous? What a lavish thing is the love of God in Christ, and yet it's also complicated as well, isn't it? It's a little bit difficult to understand, because the very ones that God loves mainly us, he also is willing to say, you're like sheep for the slaughter. We're going to talk more about that in a minute, he's willing to pour us out like a drink offering, and how can that be? We don't understand his love. Our love is based on constantly shifting emotions and value judgments and assessments. So our love is not a secure thing, but Christ's love is very different. It asks incredible things of us and gives incredible things to us contrary to what we deserve, and it's a difficult doctrine.

Difficult Doctrine of God’s Love

Recently, there was a book written by DA Carson entitled "The Difficult Doctrine of God's Love," and in it he goes through five different types of God's love. And I think if we don't understand that properly, you will get no assurance of salvation from Romans Chapter 8. You have to understand, God loves people in different ways. This morning, we received an example of God's love given indiscriminately to all people, righteous and unrighteous alike, namely the pouring rain. And we need the rain to live, without the water we cannot survive. And so, God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, indiscriminately loving all in that way. But the kind of love discussed here in Romans Chapter 8 is of a different kind. It's the love of God in Christ Jesus, for us, the very thing that we have talked about.

Now, this is so important. Why do I say that? Because if we believe that God in the kind of a weak general way, loves everybody, but yet you might still end up in hell, what kind of assurance is that? God's loving me, but I might go to hell? That's a terrifying thing. I want to know what's going to happen to me when I die, I want to know. And that's why we need to understand Paul's question Paul's way. Who shall separate us from the kind of love I've been talking about here? The kind of love that transforms you, the kind of love that saves you, the kind of love that brings you to heaven. Can anything separate me from that love? And the answer is no, and therefore we have a full-blooded assurance of salvation. We must understand love that way.

And so, Paul weighs the ultimate question, what does the future hold? Can I be separated? Can I be separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus? Now, this word separated comes up in many different contexts in the Bible. For example, in Matthew 19:6, talking about marriage, he says, "What God has joined together, let man not [what?] separate." So there's that idea there of a divorce. And the question we'd ask spiritually is, "Am I going to be together with Christ forever? Is there a possible separation between me and the one who love my soul? Is there a divorce in our future?" Or there's another kind of separation, separation that comes through departing, through leaving.

We feel this, we're a very fluid society. We're together for a while and then people leave and we move on, there's a tearing and a ripping from that separation, when we're called to leave a place. In Acts 1:4, on one occasion, Jesus was eating with them and he gave them this command, "Do not depart from Jerusalem, don't separate yourselves from the city because a gift is coming to you from on high." Or even more poignantly speaking of the Holy Spirit, in 1st Samuel 16:14, "Now, the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul and an evil spirit tormented him." So there was a sense in which the Spirit had been taken from Saul, you know what I'm talking about? And so David cries out after his sin with Bathsheba in Psalm 51, he says, "Take not your Holy Spirit from me." He's yearning, he's concerned over this matter.

And so we can ask the ultimate question, will I be asked to depart from my share in the heavenly Jerusalem? Or will the Spirit depart from me so that I'm separated from the Holy Spirit? Separation, can anything separate me? Or there's another kind of separation, separation that comes through holiness, holiness itself, there's a picture of separation. Separate unto the Lord, this kind of thing, like the holy vessels that are used in the temple, they're separate unto the Lord, they're holy to the Lord. So therefore, in the final analysis, there's going to be a separation of wicked from righteous.

And my question is, will the holiness of God move him to separate himself from me? Talk about King Uzziah, 2 Chronicles 26:21. It said he had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in a separate house, leprous, and excluded from the temple of the Lord. You see that.

And so, we want to ask, is the holiness of God finally in the end going to catch up with me, and I'm going to have to be separated from him forever? And so finally, there's a separation that comes on judgment day. He speaks of a separation of the wheat from the tares. He speaks of a separation of the good fish from the bad. Good fish are collected in baskets, the bad are thrown away. He speaks of the separation of the sheep from the goats. The sheep are on his right and the goats are on his left. And those on his left, he says to them, "depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."

There's a separation. I want to know, am I going to be wheat separated and brought into his barn or am I going to be chaff burned with eternal unquenchable fire? I want to know this. Can anything separate me from Christ? That's the question that Paul's seeking to answer here. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Now, here, we face the issue of what I call ostrich assurance, I've referred to this before. What I mean by that is, well, the ostrich is an amazing thing, isn't it? What does it do when danger comes? What does it do when trouble and hardship and persecute... What happens? What does the ostrich do? It sticks its head in the ground and hope it's going to go away.

Does ostrich assurance bring any kind of assurance at all? The assurance of faith is to get your head out of the ground and look full on at what is coming at you and say, God is bigger than that. God is more powerful than that, and nothing can separate me from the love of God. And so, we have here, I think a red blooded assurance, something that's facing everything that could possibly happen to you and some of them will. That's the whole challenging thing. If you have an ostrich assurance, you're not going to be able to face, it won't measure into your theology, you won't be able to understand why is God doing this to me if you don't understand what's going on in these final verses in Romans Chapter 8.

And so, he goes through the various kinds of separators, the things that could come to separate you from Christ. And he weighs each one of them, he looks at them separately, and he looks at them and he weighs them and he sees, can this or that or the other separate us from God? And that's what he's doing here at the end in Romans Chapter 8.

Tribulation

The first thing he looks at is the issue of tribulation. In Verse 35 he says, shall trouble or a better translation is tribulation, it's a very common word, tribulation or troubled distress something difficult, and Jesus deals with this in John 16:33. He says that in this world, you will have trouble. It's the same Greek word. You're going to have it. Have you ever seen those little pocket books of promises from God?

This is the promise, John 16:33, "In this world, you will have trouble." I didn't find it, I was flipping through, I didn't see it in there. I thought, "wow, it's not in there." I didn't own the book so I couldn't write it in there. John 16:33, "In this world you will have trouble." Or everyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. These are promises from God. But Paul is not giving us an ostrich assurance here, he wants us to face it. You're going to have trouble, but shall those troubles separate us from Christ? That's the question he's dealing with here. There's going to be tribulation. Actually no, they don't. If anything they make you stronger, they make you more powerful if you're truly a Christian.

Now that's a big if, isn't it? That's been the issue all along in Romans Chapter 8. Assurance is given to true Christians. Those who have no assurance, those who are not true Christians should have no assurance, you should repent and trust Christ. You should not be comfortable and safe and easy in a position which you're not a Christian yet. Assurance isn't for you if you're not a Christian, it's for the Christian. There is therefore now no condemnation for who? For those that are in Christ Jesus. Those that are Christians. And so, he wants to give you assurance and if you are genuinely a Christian, tribulation or trials actually help you in your Christian life. We already covered that in Romans 5:3-4. Not only so, but we rejoice in our tribulations, our trials, we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.

What's another word for perseverance? Shackleton will tell you, it's endurance. It produces endurance in you, the ability to stand fast. Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces proven character, and proven character results in hope, and hope does not disappoint, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So those trials actually make you stronger, they give you a full-blooded hope, you go through these hard things, you say, I made it through, I'm still a Christian, I still love Jesus. I've survived.

Now flipside, the trials, the tribulations also sift out the true from the false, don't they? When a time of persecution comes in the church, there's a sifting there, isn't there? And Jesus talked about that in Matthew 13:21. He talks about the seed that falls in various kinds of soils, the seed that falls on the rocky soil it says the one that received the seed that fell on the rocky places, is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy, he might even walk the aisle during that joy. No joke, it might be a time of excitement for him, and then immediate receiving of joy, but when trouble or tribulation or hardship comes because of the word what happens to him? He quickly falls away. And so, there is a sifting out, but tribulation or trial will not separate a true Christian from Jesus Christ.

Distress

Neither will distress, you look at the second word he says distress, the idea here is a very strong Greek word, the concept of being crushed on every side. Can you imagine like the walls coming in from both sides, just like this, and there's a sense of increasing pressure. Do you ever dive down into a pool or into the ocean and just keep diving deeper and deeper, and you feel that increasing pressure starting pushing on you. And that's what can happen when you're living a life of faithfulness and obedience to Christ, there can be times when there's just a pressure from every side pressing in on you. Apostle Paul knew about this in 2nd Corinthians 1:8, he says, "We were under great pressure far beyond our ability to endure so that we despaired even of life." There's a crushing that goes on, and he says this happened "so that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead." The pressure comes but it didn't separate Paul from Christ.

Persecution

Well, what about persecution? That's when you get a human being who uses all of their intellect and their abilities and their creativity and their power to make your life miserable. It's called persecution, and it happens at lots of different levels. People insult you, falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me, Jesus talked about that. That's persecution. People just saying things, people insulting you all the way up to people wanting to kill you. All of that's just the range of persecution and Jesus said "rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

So he goes through these things, and then he lists those things. Those first three things, I think are unique to Christians, it's the stuff that happens when you step out boldly to be a Christian. These other things can happen to anyone, but they're especially true of those that are boldly ministering for Christ. Famine, nakedness, danger, sword. Famine means you're stripped of food, nakedness means you're stripped of clothing, danger means you're stripped of your peace of mind, and sword ultimately you're stripped of life itself. But the amazing thing is none of those things can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate you. Thank you. Amen.

Famine

Shall famine separate us from the love of God? No, you may run out of earthly food, but you will never run out of the bread of heaven, the bread of life.

Nakedness

What about nakedness? They may strip you of clothing, Paul lists that as something that happened to him in 2nd Corinthians 11. Without clothes. And so little moments in church history when ask about, but don't delve too deeply, but it happened. He was without clothes, he was stripped of clothes. But you're never going to be stripped of the righteousness, the cloak of righteousness that you will stand in on Judgment Day. That's the basis of your standing with God. Nothing can take that away from you.

Danger

What about danger? What is danger but potential evil that might happen in the future. It causes anxiety and fear. That way you don't move out. You're not witnessing to your neighbors, you're not witnessing to your boss. You're not witnessing to your family members. They might not like you. They might hurt you. They might oppose you. That is true. They might. Probably, they will actually. But danger, is danger going to separate us from the love of God in Christ? No. 2nd Corinthians 11:26, Paul says, "I've been in danger from rivers, I've been in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea, and in danger from false brothers." Most dangerous kind. And in all that danger, I was never separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Sword

And what about the sword? Does the sword ever get unsheathed against a Christian? Ask James. In Acts, Chapter 12, his head was cut off by Herod, by the sword. Tradition has it the same thing happened to Paul. It was the sword that was waiting for Paul in the future. He wouldn't be crucified, he was a Roman citizen, so he was executed by the sword most likely. The sword was in Paul's future and he said, "It's not going to separate me. It might separate my head from my body, but it will not separate me from Jesus Christ.

Now he has weighed all of these different kinds of things, now he goes a little deeper. He considers why do these things come to us at all? I thought we were children of God? Is God not powerful enough to protect us? Why are these things coming to us? Why do we even have to discuss them?

God Considers Us as Sheep to be Slaughtered

Well, he discusses that in Verse 36. Look at it. "As it is written, for your sake, we face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

That's another one of those skipped verses. You can't skip this verse. If you skip it, you don't understand the assurance of Paul's talking about. It's a powerful verse. And this, I think, is the key to understanding all the assurance he wants to give you. You're going to need this kind of assurance. You're going to need to be fully equipped with assurance if you understand this verse and move out accordingly. You're going to need this kind of assurance if you move out accordingly based on Verse 36. What does it mean? Well, we're considered, it says sheep for the slaughter. The word is reckoned. There's a reckoning. God has basically put you down in his accounting book as a sheep to be slaughtered. That's the way he thinks about your earthly life here on earth. The time you're left here on earth.

In heaven, you are a child of God, nothing can touch that, but on earth you are considered, you are reckoned as a sheep for the slaughter. That's what I think it says. Now this word reckon has been very important in Romans, hasn't it? Romans 4:3, it says, "Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." God put Abraham's faith down in his book as righteousness. Good for judgment day. And that's the way we get saved. We're reckoned righteous through faith in Jesus Christ. We're counted righteous that way. Furthermore in Romans Chapter 6, we are called to reckon or consider ourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. It's the same word.

And now here we are told that someone, somewhere, we are not told who, but we know, has reckoned us or considered us sheep for the slaughter. Well, who did that reckoning? It's got to be God. God considered it that way. He counts us as sheep for the slaughter. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a martyr for Christ, the end of World War II, said this, "When Christ bids us follow, he bids us, come and die." And he did. He said take up your what? Your cross. Let's say you lived in Palestine in the first century and you saw a man walking down the road surrounded by Roman soldiers and carrying a cross. What would you think about him? Well, in the modern language, you'd say, "Dead man walking." "He's a dead man." Hadn't happened yet but that's where he's going, he's going to die. No question about it. Any hope for escape? Any hope for parole? Any phone call coming from the governor? No, no, and no. He's going to die.

And so what do you think Jesus meant when he said, "Take up your cross daily and follow me." So he's calling for your sake. And this is the key, at the beginning of the verse, he gives us the key, for your sake, we face death all day long. What does that mean? For you, literally because of you, because of your name for your name's sake, he leads us in passive righteousness for his name's sake, for the advance of his kingdom. For his glory, because of him, we face death all day long. Because of him and for his glory, we're considered sheep to be slaughtered. Now Jesus, did he live out this principle? Yes, he did. He did. In Isaiah 53:7, "He was oppressed and afflicted yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the" what? "to the slaughter. And as a sheep before his shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."

Who led him? Who gave him over to death? Who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. Who was it that did that? It was God the Father. Now let me ask you a question? He didn't spare his own son that... Do you think he's going to spare you? If the head of the house has been treated like that, how about the servants in the household? That's hard to hear, isn't it? But it's true. We're considered sheep to be... Considered his own son sheep for the slaughter, how much more we who are his servants?

Has this principle been lived out by Christ's sheep? Yes, it has gloriously. For 2000 years, Christians have taken up their cross and have been willing to die for their savior. Why? So that the kingdom of God might advance. Brothers and sisters, we have a glorious heritage. We don't know the 10th of it. I can't wait to get to heaven and talk to the martyrs. I want to find out what motivated them. I want to know them even more. I want to know the Christ whose spirit imbued them and empowered them. Don't you want to know them? Don't you want to be like them? Why lead a small life? We're called to be more than conquerors? We're called the rise to conquer.

Yes, this principle's been lived out by Christ's sheep. He taught it to his disciples. "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it does what, produces many seeds." Think about that. What's that seed supposed to do? Fall into the ground and die, whereupon it produces what? Many seeds, which then are supposed to go fall into the ground and die. This is the way the kingdom advances. It's always been this way. Paul put it this way about himself in Acts 20, "And now compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city, the Holy Spirit warns me, that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me. If only I may finish my race and complete the task the Lord Jesus gave to me, the task of testifying to the Gospel of his grace."

I consider my life worth nothing to me. I reckon, I account my life nothing to me. Paul's following his own savior and the way he thinks about his life. And then it says in Revelation 12:11 of the holy martyrs, "They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." Has the church lived this out? Yes, it has. How do you think in a mere 200 years or so, the gospel of Jesus Christ conquered the Roman Empire. How did that happen? How did it happen? How did it happen that an empire which had Nero and Marcus Aurelius and all these terrible persecutors, one after the other, Caligula and all these other, how did it happen that eventually Constantine declared himself to be a Christian?

Well, Tertullian said, "The blood of martyrs is seed for the church. The blood of martyrs is seed for the church." But what happened is centurions would take simple everyday common place people out and kill them, and the centurions would watch how they would die, and then they would get converted. There are many accounts of centurions who later, who had earlier executed Christians were later executed for their faith. And how did that happen? Because these folks didn't consider their lives worth anything to them. They're willing to die for Christ. It's a great story about Felicitas, a widow, a mother of seven sons, pagan priest denounced her. The authority’s brought her in to threaten her with death if she didn't renounce Christ and her courageous answer, I love it, rings through all of time. This man is standing threatening her with death, and this is what she says to him, "While I live, I shall defeat you. And if you kill me, I shall defeat you even more."

Isn't that incredible? And then they brought in her seven sons, one after the other, and thought that they could get at her through them, no dice. Every one of them was ready to die for Jesus Christ. And they did die in different parts of the city. The emperor said they have to die in different parts of the city. And so there are testimony spread all over the city, and everybody got to see how they died. And God welcomed them into heaven.

Why are we considered sheep for the slaughter? Well, first of all, we need to die. Don't we? We need it. Are we done being saved? Is your salvation complete? Are you perfect? Are you like Jesus? Then you need to die day after day, after day. You have to die to yourself, you have to die to your own desires. You have to die to what you want. You have to die to your own reputation, your own plans. You have to die, be willing to die, and we need that. But you know something? More than that, others need us to die. Don't they? Other people who haven't heard of Christ yet.

The Example of John Frederickson

So many examples of this. In 1900, John Fredrickson, was a missionary in India. He purposely went to a famine stricken region of India and rescued hundreds of starving children, transferring them to the care of other missionaries. Then he went back into the region and worked so hard day and night that he came down with dysentery. He died on September 5th, 1900, when one of the children that Fredrickson, whom they called Sahib, had saved, heard about his death. He exclaimed, "Two have died for us, Jesus and Sahib." And out of his life, and his death came countless Christians, Indian Christians, who live for Jesus Christ. 1900.

The Example of Jesse and Evelyn Brand

How about this one 1907, Jesse Brand went as a young missionary to serve in disease ridden Chat in India called the Mountain of Death. They could see fleas jumping from dead rats to live ones or even to other living things, even babies. It was a terribly disease ridden, infested area. And this man went just to bring the gospel and one year of medical training. That's all he had to offer. And he went in there and he served, and God preserved him for a while, went back to England and on furlough was talking about the needs, and a young woman listened to him speaking, Evelyn Harris, she was a wealthy London socialite. She committed herself to go to India as a missionary. Eventually, the two of them got hooked up and they got married. You know where they spent their honeymoon? Ministering in Shat to the people that they were called to minister to.

Over the number of years that they ministered, 25,000 people were cared for in one year. Jesse preached over 4000 times in 90 villages, churches had sprung up in these villages. Tons of people led to Christ. And then Jesse, finally, 1928 came down with malaria and died. Just poured himself out for Christ. The Indian Christians buried him with the epitaph. He delivered up his life to the Lord in behalf of the people. Evelyn Brand continued to minister. She raised their son Paul. Paul Brand wrote a book with Phillip Yancy called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. He became a missionary doctor ministering to lepers. Perhaps you've read the book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, and also In His image. That was his parents. Amazing.

The Example of Jim and Elizabeth Elliot and Tona

And we, two years ago, had Elizabeth Elliott here. Probably the most famous martyr story of the 20th century. What people don't know is that one of the six Auca Indians that killed her husband and the others came to faith in Christ and said, "We need to go up river to the warring Aucas." It's another faction of the Aucas that they've been warring with for years. "We need to go up river and witness to them. They went up river." This man, his name was Tona, went up river and he volunteered to go to share the gospel, and as he was sharing the gospel they attacked him with an axe and killed him. And as he was dying, he cried out, "I am not afraid, I will die and go to heaven." His attackers cried out, "We'll help you go." And they killed him and with his dying breath, Tona whispered, "I forgive you. I'm dying for your benefit." And many of those down river Auca Indians also came to faith in Christ. Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it bears many seeds.

We're in verse 36, "As it is written, 'For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.'" The fact of the matter is, our God is not our... He doesn't think about things the way we do. He's not trying to protect you in this world. He's actually trying to pour you out in this world, and he does it by giving you assurance. He's calling on you to be willing to be slaughtered. Your reputation in the world slaughtered. Your earthly comfort and ease slaughtered. Your superficial friendships with non-Christians slaughtered. That's the hardest of all, isn't it? I worked in a workplace and you have these superficial, easy kind of comfortable relationships with non-Christians, and you never share the Gospel. You never challenge yourself. You're never willing to go out on a limb, and then you leave that company. Those people never came to Christ. Never heard a word from you. And on it goes. Are you willing to die to that easy, comfortable relationship?

Because if they don't come to Christ, it gets really weird, doesn't it? It gets awkward and difficult, and you have to be willing to pay that price. Superficial friendships with non-Christians slaughtered. Perhaps even your professional career slaughtered. And how long all day long we're considered that way, sheep for the slaughter. And why? For his name's sake.

In the end, Paul answers the question, "Can anything separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?" No. Look at Verse 37, "No. In all these things, we are super conquerors." Isn't that marvelous? "More than conquers through him who loved us. For I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."

Is that not the answer to the ultimate question? No, nothing can. So why are you afraid? Why hold back? Why die with any resource not having been spent? Can death separate you from Christ? No. I am the resurrection, the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. What about life? Sometimes it's easier to die, isn't it? What about another 40 years of life in this place? Can that separate you from Christ? No. He will sustain you through all the twists and turns, persecutions, temptations. He'll get you there. Can an angel separate you from Christ? No. They're ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation. What about a demon? Let's includes Satan in that. Can he separate you from the love of God in Christ? Absolutely not. Because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

What about the present? Can anything going on right here and right now separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus? Answer, no. What about the great unknown? The Future? Oh, that's the one. I worry about that. What am I going to be in 20 Years? Don't underestimate the grace of God. He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. So nothing in the future is going to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. In short, nothing in all creation shall be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

What is the application? Die for Christ. Take up your cross today. Be willing to say no to yourself. Be willing to walk as Jesus walked. Be willing to pour out your life. I want to close with this.

The apostle Paul, the end of his life. He was in prison and he said, "I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure." What do you think Paul meant by departure? Death by execution. He was convinced he was going to die. It was over. But it's interesting what he said first, I am already being what? Poured out like a drink offering. Had not God been pouring Paul out for years? Pouring him out, pouring him out, pouring him out, day after day, pouring him out, and this is my picture of God at the end of Paul's life. He looks in the cup. Oh, there's a little more, a little more of Paul. Pours him out some more, until it's gone.

That's the God we serve. And then what happened to Paul? For me to live as Christ and to die is gain. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. And so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. What are we afraid of? Let's rise to conquer as a people of God. Let's be super conquerors for Jesus. Let's leave nothing, no stone unturned, no resource that we have available to us unspent for Jesus Christ.

Turn if you would in your Bibles to Romans Chapter 8. We're looking this morning at verses 31-34. And I am just so excited to preach this message. I am so excited to bring you through these verses. I wish I had 10 sermons, but we don't. We just have this one morning to look at some of the most phenomenal verses in all the scripture. And my goal is simple. I already prayed about it. If you're a Christian, I want you to walk out of here this morning with a firm and settled assurance of salvation. It changes everything. If you're assured of salvation, it changes the whole way you live. It changes the way you put sin to death. It gives you energy and power and strength for service to Christ, and it changes the reasons why you do that service.

It is so important, and that is why God has lavished on us verse after verse in Romans Chapter 8, that we might have a full assurance of salvation. Now some people are word people and some people are picture people. Some people do better with the concepts and words and others just like a picture to be established in their minds. And I want to put up a picture that's not found in the text, but I think it's in harmony with it. A picture of a mighty castle, somewhat like a medieval castle, like Camelot. You know what I'm thinking of. And in that society, the King ruled over that society. And there were powerful walls. It was a fortress, and there were people working in the fields around. There were farmers bringing forth their crops. There were tradesmen that were plying their trades and merchants that were plying their merchandise and all of it under the protection of this liege Lord.

And the King would provide protection, militarily for those people. They were his people and he saw to it. He was committed to provide their protection. And as somewhat a father, he was going to be providing them with all of their provisions, opening his store rooms that they would have all that they needed if there was, for example, a time of famine. Just like the time of Joseph in Egypt, when he stored up so that the people would be cared for in time of need. He was also ultimately the judge and he dispensed justice. And he ruled with fairness if he was a good king. And there were counselors around his throne giving him good counsel and giving him advice. And so it is that I think in our text, we have a picture of God as a mighty king. And in effect he's asking us into the fortress and he's saying, "Come and look at my armory, and look at all the power that's here." And who is powerful enough to come against you as a foe and conquer you? If I am for you, who cares who's against you? A mighty king. And he's saying, "Come and look at my armory, look at my omnipotence, look at my power, and it's at your disposal for your protection."

"Secondly, if I am a generous father, if I haven't spared my own Son, that which is most precious and valuable to me, how much more will I give you all the lesser things you need to accomplish the things you need to do in this world. Come and look therefore at my store rooms and see how full they are, and look at my heart of generosity in which I've already committed myself to give you everything you need for life in Godliness. So look at my store rooms and look also at my courtrooms. Look at my courtroom. I am a judge and I dispense justice. And if I declare you to be not guilty, is there a higher court in the land? Is there any other authority that can come and say, ‘Yes but... There is guilt in this case’?" Who shall bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies, who cares who condemns? If God has justified us, that's the end of the matter. He's the highest court.

And then there is Jesus standing at the right hand of God, interceding for us like a priest. You don't find the word priest in here, but his priestly ministry is all over that verse. He died for us. More than that he was raised to life and he is standing at the right hand of God and is interceding for us. And if you grab all of these four themes and pull them together to your heart, you have a full and solid assurance of salvation. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame of mind, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. That is a solid assurance and the Bible gives it to us today.

For Those Who are IN Christ Jesus

Well, you've had the sermon, you have the whole thing. It's all right there, but let's look at the details because they're so precious. Realize that from verse one all the way through verse 39 of Romans Chapter 8, Paul has been laboring. Really God is laboring through Paul to give us a solid assurance of salvation. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." All the way to verse 39, "There is nothing in heaven or earth or under the earth that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus." And so it's all about assurance, but he's constantly clarifying those for whom this is true. It is not true of those who have not trusted in Christ as Savior and Lord. It is not true of those who are not born again by the Spirit. There is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. Just as you will not be drowned during Noah's flood if you're on the ark, but if you're not on the ark you're in danger. So there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And he talks also about the ministry of the spirit.

The Centrality of the Holy Spirit

I really think that verses 1-27, to the most part, can be drawn together into the ministry of the Holy Spirit to bring us assurance of salvation. That's all that the Spirit does to minister assurance of salvation. He works in us so that we're living not after the flesh, under the law, but in a whole new way by the power of the Spirit. We're living a new life. We've been born again into newness of life. We're walking in a new life. And then in verses 5-8, he touches on the mind. The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. Really the Greek there says the mind in the Spirit, and so we have a sense that we are, if we're in Christ, we're in the Spirit. We've been moved into a new realm. It's like we live in a new country, the realm of the Spirit, and we are no longer under law.

We're in the Spirit, and it also says, the Spirit is in us. We are in the Spirit, and the Spirit is in us. And so he's working a new mind, a new way of thinking. He's renewing our minds all the time so that we see things differently. We think about things differently. As a result, we also have a sense of the indwelling Spirit testifying to us directly that we are children of God. How precious is that? How precious is it that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you and saying, "You're a child of God, you're a child of God." Assuring you like a beacon that you are in fact a child of God. And moving in you to cry out, "Abba, Father." Oh, the preciousness of the Spirit's work. That relationship between us and the heavenly Father. But it's the Spirit's activity all the time. He's assuring, and he's leading us too. He's leading us, we're led by the Spirit. If we're led by the Spirit we're children of God. Isn't that plain? If you're not led by the Spirit, you're not a child of God, none of this applies to you. Please come to Christ, then you can be a child of God and be led by the Spirit. But if you are led by the Spirit, you're a child of God.

And what does it mean to put sin to death daily, to grow in holiness, to hate sin, to fight it, to follow the Spirit, and by the Spirit, put to death the misdeeds of the body? This is all the work of the Spirit, and He gives a hope that doesn't disappoint, even though our bodies are falling apart, even though there is corruption in this world, even though creation is groaning, the world is groaning. We ourselves groan inwardly as we wait for our final adoption, yet we have a hope that can't dim, that hope will not disappoint. God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and we have a solid assurance, even in the middle of our suffering, physical suffering, disease and death. We still have a hope that nothing can defeat. And then in the end, he says that The Spirit intercedes for us. He's praying for us. This is all the ministry of the Spirit. Do you see it? Verses 1-27.

The Father, The Son and The Spirit All Work Together for Our Assurance

Next, he gets to the work of God the Father, how it is God who causes all things to work together for good. It is God who reached back before the foundation of the world and predestined you to be a child of God, and it is God who's working out that decree. So secondly, we have a sense of the working of God the Father in this matter.

Now, you might say, "Why is it reversed?" I don't think it is. It's not like we start in Romans with chapter 8. We've been talking all long about God the Father and his activities. But in Romans 8, The Spirit's work is discussed first, and then the decrees of God, the predestining and providential working of God is talked about. So God the Father… And we're going to look more at God the Father. "He who did not spare His own Son." This is the one that we're talking about, the ministry of God the Father.

And then thirdly, we'll look again at the ministry of Jesus Christ. That intercessor, the one who died for us and rose again, and nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ. Do you see the Triune God in Romans 8? Father, Son, and Spirit all working together for what purpose? To give you a solid assurance of salvation. And why does God want you to have that? I've already alluded to it. Does it not affect everything? Suppose you weren't sure whether you were going to Heaven or not. Suppose you thought you were going to Hell, and then you began to move out and start living a good life, doing good deeds. Would that not be an insult to Grace? That's a dangerous way to live your life, because then you think, "Have I done enough? Have I done enough?" Is there an enough? There's never an enough.

Therefore, we must understand grace. We must understand assurance so that we can live differently. And does God have work for us to do? Oh yes, He does. There is a lost world out there, and we are called by the power of the Spirit to go out. We're called to minister. And if you don't have assurance of salvation, how are you going to do it? Your eyes have got to be on yourself. These are eternal issues. If you don't know whether you're going to spend eternity in Hell or in Heaven, I would urge you with all haste to gain a solid assurance through faith in Jesus Christ. What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? So you've got to have assurance of salvation and God's working it in us in Romans Chapter 8. Now, we've already looked somewhat in an overview, but what I'm going to do in these verses, I'm going to put this picture before you of God as an omnipotent King in verse 31. He's made a covenant relationship with you, and he's putting all of his power at your disposal. God is for you. Awesome power at your disposal.

And secondly, we're going to look at Him as a generous Father who didn't withhold His own son, but gave Him up, and He wants to give you all things as well. We're going to talk about that. Thirdly, we're going to talk about Him as judge. "Who shall bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?"  You get the sense of, "Who dares to do it?" Who dares to stand up before me and bring a charge? Because I have justified them through faith in Christ. Who cares who condemns? We're going to talk about that and then finally, the priestly ministry of Jesus, standing at the right hand of God, interceding for us.

Six Questions

Now, he asks six questions. I think this is very interesting how Paul proceeds here. He's asking rhetorical questions. A rhetorical questions is a question that's asked by a speaker or a preacher to gain an effect. It's not meant to be answered, but it's meant to make you think about proof.

And he asks a series of six of them, one after the other. Look at the first one.

"What shall we say in response to this?" We're going to end there today. I want to know what you response is to all this. What is your response? What shall we say in response to all this?

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" That's the second question. Do you see it?

Thirdly, "He who did not spare His own Son, how will He not also along with Him, graciously give us all things?" It's a question, isn't it? Do you see the series of questions?

And then, "Who shall lay any charge against those whom God has chosen or against God's elect?" Verse 33.

In verse 34, "It is Christ Jesus who died. Who is He that condemns?" Do you see the question? There's a series of six questions here.

And then finally, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" So he's asking a series of questions to get you to think about a basis of assurance.

In effect, this is how I think assurance works. The Bible establishes certain spiritual facts, it establishes facts. It calls on you to believe those facts and reason out by faith your assurance. If you don't believe the facts, you'll have no assurance. If you don't act out mentally on the facts, you'll have no assurance. You have to work on them. It's kind of like God setting a meal in front of you, and you need to chew the food. If you don't chew the food, you'll have no nourishment. And so you've got to think about the facts that are set before us and then work on them by faith, and then your assurance goes up, up, up as you do it. It happened to me this morning, and you need to just feed on the Word. And then the more you do, the more your certainty goes up. Doesn't that make sense by the way? Faith comes from what? Hearing the word, and as we hear the word and as we work on it, our faith just goes up, our assurance goes up.

Let's look at the first one. God, His omnipotent commitment to us as king. Look at verse 31. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" In a sense He's taken you into Camelot and He's said, "Let's go look at my armory. Let's look at what kind of power I have. Realize who I am. I am the omnipotent God. Is there any power greater than mine? Is anyone [to put it in John Chapter 10 language] able to snatch you out of my hand? Is there any power in heaven or earth or under the earth stronger than me?"

And so therefore, if God is for us, who cares who's against us? Isn't that about the attitude here? Now it says, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" But that's what he's saying. No foe can touch you as long as I rule heaven and earth. You're safe. You're safe. Now, what does it mean "if God is for us?" God for us? He's taking who He is, His resources, and bringing them to you for your benefit. "I am for you," is what He is saying. You know the word Emmanuel, it means God with us. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. So in effect He's saying, "I am your covenant Lord, I'm your covenant King, and I am putting my power at your disposal. I am for you. I am going to protect you. I am with you. I'm going to care for you."

Now this is not at all to say that we don't have enemies. If God is for us, who can be against us as though we have no enemies. We do have enemies don't we? Actually, we have very serious enemies. For example, our own sins, and so if God's going to be for us, he has to deal with our sin. And in Matthew 1:21, just before that Emmanuel verse, it says of Mary, "She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus." Why? "Because he will save his people from their sins." Jesus was sent to save us from our sins. If God's going to be for us but not deal with our sins, we're lost. But we are not lost, because Jesus, whose name means salvation comes from Yahweh. That's what it means. He is sent into the world to deal with our sins. You will give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. So God is going to put all of His power at our disposal. He is for us. He's a mighty king. Omnipotent. Listen to what He said to Israel in Isaiah 43:2-3, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you pass through the rivers they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. The flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior." Isn't that powerful?

Protection in the Midst of Enemies All Around Us

No matter what you go through in your life, I am with you to save you. I am mighty to save, and I'm going to get you through it. And therefore, what enemy can defeat us? Now, we do have our sins that threaten us, but we dealt with that through Jesus. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. We'll talk more about that later, but do we have any other enemies? Oh yes. We live in a vicious anti-Christian world, do we not? This world is no friend to your faith. That's why it says in 1 John 2, "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life comes not from the Father, but from the evil one." There's a sense of evil in this world. And the world is no friend to your faith. You live in a dangerous world. Therefore, Jesus said, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves." We'll talk more about that next week, how all day long we're considered sheep for the slaughter. We're surrounded by a world that's hostile to our faith. We do have enemies.

We have physical enemies, human beings. Some of our brothers and sisters know exactly what I'm talking about. People in totalitarian or oppressive regimes where they don't know if the government's going to send police in the middle of the night and arrest them. House church leaders that are doing work for God. Suddenly they're arrested and they disappear. You never see them again. They have enemies, they know that there are enemies. And there are also people like in the Sudan, maybe not the government oppressing them, but they are roving bands of Islamic fighters that are trying to crush Christianity, and they'll come in the middle of the night and kill you in your bed or steal your possessions. There are enemies out there.

We have them even here in America. If you desire to stand up and live for Christ boldly at work, you'll see what I'm talking about. Pretty soon you witness to your boss. Suppose he doesn't come to faith in Christ, then what? About six months later, you get your review and you did a terrible job all year, and, "I do not recommend him for a raise," and all this kind of thing. It happens. We do have enemies in this world at different levels. Even more, we have spiritual enemies, don't we? It says in 1 Peter chapter 5, "Be self controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him standing firm in the faith because you know that your brothers throughout the world are going through the same kind of sufferings."

So all over the world, we have a personal enemy. Isn’t that wonderful to know that we have a personal Savior, Jesus Christ? Because we have a personal enemy, the devil. And we need salvation. We need protection. So when we look at this verse and verse 31, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" It doesn't mean that we have no enemies. Do you think Paul didn't know what persecution felt like? Don't you think he knew that his enemy, the devil was prowling to destroy him? He knew he had enemies, but the point is, it doesn't matter because God is so powerful. I get the picture of a kind of a scales. And you've got the force of human opinion like an ounce, or if you like the metric system, a gram, okay? Like that. And then you've got demonic oppression and satanic oppression like a pound or kilogram there on the scales. We're Americans. A pound. Leaning like that. And then we've got God whose got all the mass of the universe. And all that really matters is what side He's on. You see what I'm saying? Nothing else matters. If God is for you, it doesn't matter who's against you. You will triumph. You will be more than a conqueror. You will overcome. You will be victorious. But if God is against you, then who can help you? Who can help you?

At one point, He says in Jeremiah, He's speaking actually at that point to Babylon, He says, "‘See, I am against you, o arrogant one,’ Declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty, ‘for your day has come, the time for you to be punished.’" Oh, how terrifying is it to have God as an enemy. Oh, that's terrifying. And I want you to feel the weight of it. Because if you're not a child of God, God is against you. John 3:36 says, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. But whoever rejects the Son will not see life for God's wrath weighs on him, remains on him." God is your enemy if you're not a Christian.

But if you are, everything has changed, and God is not your enemy and He never will be again. And therefore it doesn't matter who's set against you, because you will be more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ. If God is for us, who can be against us? That is God's infinite power as King. So we've gone into the castle and we've seen the armory. We've seen the power of God at our disposal. We've seen that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the whole world is against you. If God is for you that's all that matters. By the way, doesn't that make things simple in life? Isn't it true that all that matters is what Jesus thinks about you?

It just doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Matter of fact, Jesus goes so far as to say, "Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you." Woe to you because that's how they treated the false prophets. It doesn't matter what the world thinks. What matters is what God says. And God is for you if you're a Christian.

Look at verse 32, we see here God's infinite generosity as a Father. "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. How will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?" Isn't that an incredible verse? Could we not spend five hours thinking about that? You really should. Go home and just pick this verse apart. You could be the rest of your life trying to understand all the ramifications of verse 32 of Romans 8. But here we have, continuing with my homely analogy, we're coming into the castle, and we're looking at the store rooms, just like Joseph. Remember how Joseph had huge store rooms of grain to provide for the people during a time famine or lack? So this Mighty King inside the walls of the fortress is saying, "I have got provisions for you. I have everything you need for life in Godliness. And not only that, I have a commitment to give it to you. I'm a generous Father." There's a logic to this verse.

God the Father Delivered His Son Up to be Crucified

"He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. How will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?" The central idea to this verse is the preciousness of Jesus Christ to the Father. Do you see that? Jesus is precious to the Father. Is there anything in the universe more precious than Jesus to the Father? Answer, no. Jesus is the most precious thing He could have given. "This is My Son," He said at the baptism, at Jesus' baptism. "This is My Son, My only Son, whom I love. With Him I am well pleased." Do you not sense the flowing out of love from the Father to the Son? That love is what saves you, by the way. It's the love of God in Christ Jesus. Look at verse 38-39, you know what I'm talking about. It's there. But the love of God in Christ, for the Father to the Son, there is no higher love. The Father loves His Son, He's precious to Him. And so it says in I Peter 1, "You know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from your empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect." The preciousness of Christ, the value, the weight of Christ is the centerpiece here. And what is He saying? Well, a shocking decision. He did not spare His own Son.

Now, what does that mean? Well to spare means to hold back. To say, "You can have all this but not my Son." Now that's eminently understandable, isn't it? Put yourself in the place of a father with children, or a parent with children, and you find out that a neighbor child needs a liver. Not a kidney now, a liver. Would you give up your child's liver so that that one can live? Would you do it? Be honest now. Say no, no way, even. Now I'll give money. I will pray. I will be there. I will do what I can, but there is a limit to what I will do. I would not do it.

Well, let me ask another question. Would you do it for an enemy who hated your guts? But that is the love of God for us. While we were still sinners, He gave His Son. That which is most precious, most valuable. He did not spare it. Did not hold it back. He said, "Of all there is in the universe, there is nothing more valuable than Jesus. And I give Him for you. I give Him up." So what's the logic to the verse? If He's given that, He'll give anything. If there's anything withheld from you, it's not for lack of love or lack of provision. It's for wisdom's sake. He can give you anything. He's given the most. That's the logic of this. Now, what does it mean? We've talked about spare. He did not spare His Son, but gave Him. The idea of gave is delivered. He delivered Him over. Delivered Him to what? Well, think about it. He delivered Jesus to His enemies. He delivered Him up to humiliation. He delivered Him up to scourging. He delivered Him up to rejection. He delivered Him up to trial and to condemnation. He delivered Him up to torment, and to shame, and to darkness. He delivered Him up to wrath. And He delivered Him up to death. Well, who delivered Jesus? Who delivered Him? Well, was it Judas?

Did Judas deliver Jesus? Well, yeah. Actually, this word is used in Matthew 26. Judas said, "What will you give me if I deliver Him over to you?" He said to the high priests. And so they measured out 30 pieces of silver, and Judas watched for an opportunity to deliver Him over." Did Judas deliver Jesus or not? Yes, he did. What about the high priests and the chief priest, and the Pharisees, and all of them? Did they deliver Jesus? Yes, they did. Matthew 27:1-2, "Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death. They bound Him, led Him away, and delivered Him over to Pilate, the governor." So Judas delivered Him. The Sanhedrin delivered Him. What about the Jewish people themselves? Yes, they delivered Him too. It says in Acts 3, Peter to the Jewish people, "You delivered Jesus over to be killed, and you disowned Him before Pilate, though he had decided to let Him go." So the people delivered Him up. What about Pilate? Did Pilate deliver Jesus up? Yes, he did. It says of Pilate, "Then Pilate released Barabbas to them but he had Jesus flogged and delivered Him over to them to be crucified." But who really delivered Jesus? This verse tells you who really delivered Him. Those were all the human actors, wicked men who didn't know what they were doing.

God knew what He was doing. And God the Father delivered Jesus up to all of these wicked men who put Him to death. It was God who delivered Jesus. Now, ultimately, these men and Peter knew this. In Acts 2:23, "This man, Jesus of Nazareth, was delivered over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge. And you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death." And here we have the mystery of the eternal decrees of God and human responsibility on who it is that delivered Jesus. The humans delivered Him. But it was ultimately, Romans 8:32, God who delivered Him. Isaiah 53:10, "It was the Lord's will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer." Do you hear that? It was God the Father's will to crush Jesus and make Him suffer. Why? Because He loved to see His Son suffer? No, for the same reason Jesus did it, for the joy set before them. For the joy set before the Father and the Son, He crushed His Son. Why? So that we could be saved, so that we could have eternal life. He did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all.

Now, what is the logical conclusion? That is the greatest blessing that could ever have been given to you. Every lesser blessing is yours as well, as you need it. And He's wise enough to give you the things you think you need but really don't. Are there anything in that category? Things you think you need but you really don't? Many.

Our hearts are constantly yearning for things, aren't they? We want things. We want things. But God is wise. And so He withholds things from us that would not help us. But He gives us those things that will make for life in Godliness. And nothing will be withheld. Now, I'll tell you what. Something just struck me when I hit this verse and I started to meditate, and I realized every single blessing I have in my life is lesser than the blessing of Jesus dead on the cross and risen from the grave. There is no higher blessing I have ever received. That includes my own justification. That includes all of the spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. You see the logic? I gave you Jesus, I will give you justification. I gave you Jesus, I will give you sanctification. I gave you Jesus, I will give you glorification. I will give you all of these things. I will write your name on my hands, my forehead. I will never forget you. I will hold you. But these are all lesser blessings than the one I gave when I gave My son. He is the highest blessing there is. And He's been given for you. Now, this is a rugged verse, isn't it? In one sense, you say, "Wait a minute. My child died last year of Leukemia. How is it that He withheld that from me?" Or "He didn't withhold His own Son, but my spouse died last year. How can that work?" Well, realize this, that God's eyes are on eternity. And in this world we suffer.

Jesus suffered in this world, didn't He? Suffered more than we will. The Apostle Paul suffered in this world. We're going to talk about that next week. All the suffering that God causes us to go through all day long, we're considered sheep to be slaughtered. There's hard things we have to go through in this world. But He knows what's coming next. What did Paul say? For me to live is Christ, and to die is what? Gain. He's got His eyes on eternity.

The third one is God's final authority as Judge. Look at verse 33-34, "Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns?" Now here we're being escorted, we've left the armory, we've seen the provision room, the store room. Now we're in the court room inside the castle. The King was the final authority in medieval society, and he was the Lord. And what he said went. And if the king acquitted you in a matter, it was over. There were no higher courts. Has the King of the Universe acquitted you in His court? Yes, He has justified you by faith in Jesus Christ. We've already been through all that in Romans 3 and 4. Justified by faith. "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." God has justified you. Let's remind ourselves what that means. He has declared you legally not guilty of your sins, by cloaking the righteousness of Jesus on you positionally.

He has said "Case dismissed," alright? Well, who's going to bring an accusation against you? Well, just like earlier when I asked about enemies, do we have an accuser? Oh yeah. Well, is there ground for accusation? Yes, there is. We sin a lot, don't we? And as a matter of fact, the more you go on in your Christian life, the more you realize just how much you're not like Jesus every day. And in any ways you're not like Jesus, either actively or passively, you've sinned. In terms of the position and the call, we are called to love God with all of our heart, to put ourselves totally at His plan's disposal the way Jesus did, to love our neighbor even to the willingness to pour out ourselves into death.

Now, obviously, Jesus had a role to play that we don't, but in terms of faithful obedience to the Father, we are called to be like Him. So there's ample ground for accusation. James 3:2 says, "We all stumble in many ways." Did you hear that? 1 John 1:8 says, "If anyone says or claims to be without sin, he's a liar and the truth is not in him." So we've got plenty of sin. Well, is there somebody who'll take up the task of accuser? Oh yes. His name is Satan, and actually the word Satan means opposer in court of law. Prosecutor I guess would be one way to... He's the one that's prosecuting your case. He's accusing you. I think in that way he's the ultimate hypocrite of all time. Has there ever been a being that's sinned as much as Satan? And yet he's there so righteously accusing you of sin all the time, but that's his role. He is called, in Revelation 12, "The accuser of the brethren." He is the accuser of brothers and sisters in Christ all the time. Do you feel that accusation? Do you feel it inside your heart and your conscience? And sometimes, we accuse ourselves as well. There is ground for accusation, but what is this verse saying? He's going to throw out all accusations against you.

There's no condemnation for you on Judgment Day because of justification. It is God who justifies. Who dares condemn when He says the final word? He will silence every tongue accusing you on Judgment Day. Isn’t that beautiful? There's a picture of this in Zechariah 3, of the high priest Joshua. He was a real man, physically alive, etcetera. And he's standing before the angel of the Lord, and he's covered with disgusting, filthy garments. And at his right hand is Satan, the accuser, and he's accusing Joshua. And the Lord says to Satan basically, "Stop it, be quiet." He rebukes him. He says, "The Lord rebuke you Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you." That's what's going to happen on Judgment Day. And then He says, He gives a command for Joshua and He says, "Take off those filthy robes, take them off and put on him a clean linen garment and a beautiful turban on his head." Picture of the justification by faith in Jesus Christ. He's not going to listen to any accusation against you on Judgment Day. Now, for whom is this true? Well, it's the same people it's been true for throughout the chapter in Romans 8. It's not for everybody. There will be accusations that will stick on Judgment Day.

If Jesus is not your Savior, if He's not died in your place, if you've not had the burden of sin rolled off of Him and received His gift of righteousness, there will be many accusations against you and they will all stand. It says in Job 9 that you can't answer Him once in a thousand times, because they're all true, and that's why we need a Savior. But if you are one of God's chosen, it says, "Who will bring any charge against God's elect?" That's what the Word says, God's chosen. If you're one of those and you have received by faith this salvation in Jesus Christ, there will be no accusation that will stand against you on Judgment Day. Now, we have seen the activity of God the Father, haven't we? He is an Omnipotent King putting all of His power at your disposal. If God is for us, who can be against us? He is also a generous Father opening the storehouses of His bounty to you, giving you anything you need for your life. He is also the final Judge, isn't He? The Authoritative Judge who's declared you not guilty.

Now, we have Jesus in His priestly ministry. Look at verse 34, "Christ Jesus who died, more than that, who is raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is interceding for us." Jesus is God's ultimate Counselor at the right hand of God, and He is bringing your name right to the Father and He's saying, "He's mine. She's mine." Just praying for you all the time. Remember earlier we said the Holy Spirit intercedes? We also see here Jesus interceding, and it's on the basis of His Own Blood. He died for us and He's pleading His Own Blood on your behalf. More than that, He was raised to life. He's living, constantly it says, to intercede for you. He is making perfect intercession. Does Jesus ever ask for anything from the Father that the Father doesn't want to give Him? Are the Father and the Son ever at cross purposes? Well therefore, Jesus, whatever He asks for He gets, and He's praying for you. He is making perfect intercession, and what is the focus of His intercession? No question about it. It is your faith.

The night before Jesus was crucified, He said to Simon, "Simon, Simon, Satan demands to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And after you have turned, strengthen your brothers." Is that not a beautiful picture of the intercessory ministry of Jesus? He is interceding to the Father about Simon's faith. To what end? That it would not fail. And will it fail? No, it won't, because God will sustain it constantly.

After you have turned, strengthen your brothers. That is a picture of the intercessory ministry of Jesus, and that is another ground for you to have full confidence in your salvation. It says in Hebrews 7:24-25, "Because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him because He constantly lives to intercede for them."

Now, we have seen four reasons why you should have a full assurance if you're a Christian. I guess I want to say, by way of application, verse 31, "What then shall we say in response to this?" What are you goanna say? Well, let's look at the facts.

First, fact number one: God is an Omnipotent King. Is anyone stronger than Him? Well, then reason out that no one will be able to snatch you out of the Father's hand, that God is for you, doesn't matter who's against you, fact number one.

Secondly, is God a generous Father? Has He opened up His storehouses? He's given His Son, that which is most precious. He will give you everything you need for life in Godliness. Nothing will be withheld. Therefore, it is impossible that anything you need to make it to Heaven will be withheld from you.

Number three, fact, God has final authority in His courtroom. When He puts that gavel down, you are dismissed. The case is dismissed, not guilty forever. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Therefore, does it really matter who's goanna be accusing you on Judgment Day? It is God who justifies, who dares condemn?

And the fourth fact is that Jesus died in your place. If you're a Christian, He died in your place and He rose again from the dead, and He stands at the right hand of God and is praying for you. Let me ask you a question, can anything separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus? The answer is no. So what shall we say in response to this?

Well, if you're not a Christian I just want you to say, "Take me Lord, I'm Yours. I want to be saved. I want this. I want full forgiveness of sins." There's no other Savior. There's no other name given to man by which we must be saved. I want to be saved. Come and talk to me, whenever. An invitation in a minute, just come and talk to me. Don't leave this room without trusting Christ as your Lord and Savior. Give yourself to Him. But if you're already a Christian, be assured. Be assured of salvation, realize that what God has put at your disposal will succeed and you will go to Heaven through faith in His name.