Rejoicing in Troubling Times

The reading this morning comes to us from the book of Habakkuk. It's one of Israel's minor prophets. His book is nestled at the back of the Old Testament between Nahum and Zephaniah. We'll be reading from chapter three, the prayer of Habakkuk. Oh, Lord, I have heard the report of you.

Your work, oh, Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. God came from Timan and the holy one from Mount Peran.

His splendour covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise. His brightness was like the light rays that flashed from His hand, and there He veiled His power. Before Him went pestilence, and plague followed at His heels. He stood and measured the earth. He looked and shook the nations.

Then the eternal mountains were scattered. The everlasting hills sank low. His ways were the everlasting ways. I saw the tents of Kushan in affliction. The curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.

Was Your wrath against the rivers, O Lord? Was Your anger against the rivers or Your indignation against the sea when You rode on Your horses, on Your chariot of salvation? You stripped the sheath from Your bow, calling for many arrows. You split the earth with rivers. The mountain saw You and writhed.

The raging waters swept on. The deep gave forth its voice. It lifted its hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their place at the light of Your arrows as they sped at the flash of Your glittering spear. You marched through the earth in fury.

You threshed the nations in anger. You went out for the salvation of Your people, for the salvation of Your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck. You pierced with Your own arrows the heads of his warriors who came like a whirlwind to scatter me, rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret. You trampled the sea with Your horses, the surging of mighty waters.

I hear and my body trembles. My lips quiver at the sound. Rottenness enters into my bones. My legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us.

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

He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places. This is the word of the Lord. We've been looking at this little book tucked away towards the end of the Old Testament over several weeks now. We've come to the last chapter, chapter three, and potentially the last message.

It's a great book. I found it really useful. It's useful because it tells us how to handle evil times, whether those times are within society, the communities where we live, or throughout our world, the world over, or our own personal individual evil times. A few weeks ago, we saw how Habakkuk despaired and complained to God. He laments the state of his country, the corruption that had set in at all levels of society.

As far as Habakkuk was concerned, there was injustice and evil everywhere. It was all he could see. Maybe he thought that good times were coming, that the previous king of Israel, King Josiah, who had just died, would restore the nation, reform the nation. But his sons were evil, and effectively, they reversed many of the good things that had taken place under their father. So things were looking grim.

Habakkuk complains. He complains to God. In a sense, he really holds God to account. We are Your covenant people, Lord. You describe us as the apple of Your eye.

You made promises to our fathers. Remember, we're the nation that's called to bring salvation to the whole earth. And now just look at the mess that we are in. Habakkuk complains, God answers. And God says something that Habakkuk least expects.

It's an answer from God that he just can't understand. Habakkuk has learned that as far as God is concerned, He'll be busy raising up a new world superpower. The great Babylonian empire is going to come in and crush Israel. Eventually, God's people will be deported, and they'll be placed in a strange land where they do not want to be. And the description at the very end is the result, where it says there are no figs, no grapes on the vine, there's no paddocks producing crops, there's no sheep, no cattle in the stall.

It's all the result of this invasion looming from the north coming from the Babylonians. This is starvation level, societal collapse of the worst kind. I think of Gaza in our day. We've seen pictures and images, have we not, of people starving, desperately hungry, children severely malnourished, people there starved to death. Habakkuk looks around his own country and sees things happening in a similar vein.

It's not until the very end of his book that he comes to terms with it. We would have to say, however, that he's not distressed, he's not beside himself with grief and sorrow, and neither is he angry at God anymore. He stopped complaining to God. Reading these words as Rob just read them to us gives me goosebumps, and it makes you realise he faces the reality of what God is going to do with joy. In fact, he says it's possible to face that kind of a disaster and still have a life of joy even in the middle of it.

Now let's think about that for a second. How do you and I ordinarily come to the conclusion that we can be joyful? What do we need to have in life to be truly joyful? I can't speak for all of you, but I can say for myself that I have to be able to say that I have a roof over my head, a wife and children who love me, grandkids who at least know how to wipe their own noses, generally keep good health, have some cash to splash, and then for the most part, I can be reasonably joyful when things are going well for me, when my fig tree is blossoming, when there's some fruit on the vine, when the money's there, when the health's there, when things are going the way I want. And then if you were to ask me, how's your life?

Well, I'll be quick to say and even give it a pious twist. Ah, thank you for asking. My peace and my joy are in the Lord. Isn't that how it goes? But wait a minute.

This man, Habakkuk, he'd found a way to have this joy in the Lord quite apart from life circumstances, because quite frankly, everything in his life had gone wrong. And he knows that God knows, and God seems to have done nothing about it. And yet, at the very end, in his letter of his book, he's rejoicing. It's actually identified as a psalm, these very last verses of his book. We've been reading throughout the book that he was overwhelmed by the sad state of his nation to the point where he bitterly complains to God, not once, but two times over.

He's become fully aware of the prospect of what God was going to do, raising up these dreaded Babylonians against Israel. And he knows full well what the consequences are going to be. Financial ruin, houses destroyed, starvation level right throughout society, poverty, and eventually, deportation. But his experience, so he says, is joy. Joy in God, the God of his salvation, verse 18.

Now how does that happen? How do you do that? And I want to show you this morning something that Habakkuk has learned to do because he's doing it even though the fig tree does not blossom, and there are no grapes on the vine and no cattle in the stall. He's saying, in spite of nothing going right, I will rejoice in the Lord. So what does it mean for you and for me to rejoice in the Lord consistently, not just in good times, but in the bad times as well, even in your own personal evil times, in your suffering?

Not to rejoice for your suffering, but in your suffering. Nobody wants to rejoice for suffering, but in or during suffering. We're going to learn four things this morning about this rejoicing in suffering. So we're going to ask four questions of the text. What is this joy?

When does it happen? How is it done? And why is it possible? What it is, when it happens, how it's done, and why is it possible? First of all, what is this joy?

Do you know what it is? Verse 19 likens rejoicing in your suffering to walking surefootedly on the mountaintops. See, after he says the Lord my God is my strength, then the rest of the verse, verse 19, he makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places. Now what's he talking about here?

Well, it's a figure of speech. It's called a metaphor or a word picture, if you like. To rejoice in suffering is like walking surefootedly on the mountaintops. To go up high on the mountaintops, of course, is very dangerous. Elderly folk amongst us will know it can be dangerous just walking on flat ground.

Just a slight unevenness in the surface that you're about to walk on can be a real hazard. It's the reason we have two disabled parking spots right outside the front door of the church. But to climb up on top of a mountain is incredibly dangerous. Just one little slip and you're a goner. Think of the bottom car park even for a moment, and then on a wet Sunday.

And if you're wearing your good Sunday shoes, you'll know how dangerous it can be. But if you're able to navigate it, if you're able to walk surefootedly, if you're able to be up there on the mountaintops and live up there, well, in ancient times, it was the safest place possible that you could be. The people who lived on the high ground, you see, they were regarded as being invincible. They could not be attacked. For an enemy going uphill towards them, it was extremely dangerous.

Not only that, people who lived on the heights could see for kilometres in all directions. So they could see their enemies coming, not only hours, but even days ahead. They had vantage point. They had real perspective. Now this is saying that when suffering comes to you and me, and it will come, when disappointments and failures and hard times come, they're pushing you up, literally.

They're pushing you up towards the heights, towards the mountaintop. What does that mean? Well, I've seen people go through suffering, and you've seen people go through suffering. And some of them get softer, more tender, and others get harder, and they get tougher. Some get more empathetic, and others compassionate.

Others get more cynical and bitter. Some get more humble, and others get more arrogant. You know, there is nothing that can make you more arrogant than suffering because suffering can make you feel like, well, nobody understands me and what I'm going through. Not even those closest to me can understand me. In a sense, it can make you feel so noble, so self-righteous.

Other people get more fragile or get more sweet. Oh, thank you for caring for me, but please tell me how are you? How are you feeling today? And so other people get extremely awkward when you talk about their suffering. What's this to you?

It's none of your business. You haven't got a clue what I'm going through. And it costs them. It costs them in terms of relationship with loved ones and family and friends. In other words, what I'm trying to say is that suffering will either make you a far, far better person or a far, far worse person than you were before.

Suffering will either destroy you spiritually and emotionally or will put you on the heights, says Habakkuk. In fact, it actually says literally in verse 19, he makes me go onto my high places. This is personal. This is your place, your high place, and my high place. High places that can grow character, can grow closeness to God, gain perspective, able to see things more clearly.

I once talked to a man who was dying. That's what pastors do. He wasn't that old, but he had suffered horribly for many months prior to his passing. And I remember him saying to me something like this: the closeness to God that I've gained, the reality of God in prayer, the sense of His presence and the sense of His love, and the understanding that I have of my own heart, the beauty that I see in prayer, the vantage point that I've got now, now that I'm dying. In other words, I've been raised to the heights by my suffering, and I've never been so sure footed.

God makes me tread on the high places. He's giving me protection from my enemies, and I have a great perspective on life. And then without wishing to be hurtful, he said, I wouldn't give this up even if God were to give me a few more years. I don't want to give this up. I'm on the high places.

Well, what happened to this man? His suffering pushed him, pushed him to the heights. So this rejoicing is something we can learn to do in evil times because Habakkuk describes the goal or the purpose of it as like walking on the mountaintops. Now secondly, when does it happen? When does walking surefootedly on the mountaintops actually go on?

The answer is that it happens concurrently, that is to say, at the same time as you experience sorrow and grief. Rejoicing in the Lord doesn't happen after sorrow and grief. Rather, it happens during sorrow and grief, at the very time we suffer. And this is extremely important to see. Look at verse 16.

It's Habakkuk's very human, very normal response to everything that he has been seeing. All through chapters one and two, he's been seeing what God is going to do, and then his response. I hear, and my body trembles. A little insight. In Hebrew, it says my bowels trembled.

Don't think about that too long, but you get the picture. My lips quiver at the sound. That means he's crying. Rottenness enters into my bones. My legs tremble beneath me.

It's like he's shaking like a leaf. He can't even stand on his own two feet. He's smitten with grief and sorrow. And then he says, yet I will wait quietly for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us. The word quietly wait means deep peace, real poise, which means his life is still being held together.

So what he's saying is that though his world is falling apart, he has it together. He's filled with peace. The very great danger, you see, is to think that rejoicing in the Lord is all about us, about having a stiff upper lip, a grin and bear it kind of an attitude, a kind of stoicism. We might say things like, well, don't let it get to you. In other words, it's about our performance, about our ability to hang on to Christian virtues like love, joy, peace, gentleness, and self-control.

And at this level, some people can feel so bad, so disappointed. They say that it's a lack of faith and it must be the work of the devil. But that's not what you see here. God is doing this. God is sending in the Babylonians.

God is the reason there is no fruit on the vine. God is the reason there's no cattle in the stalls. You know, Job chapter one. Remember Job, all those horrible things that happened to Job. And what does it say?

After losing his cattle, sheep, and the produce from his paddocks, after losing his servants and even his own children, Job got up, tore his garments, and fell on the ground and cried out. And then the text says, in all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. How? How did he not blame God? As the conversations go on in the book of Job, you get to the point where you realise Job's suffering presses him more and more into God.

That God pushes him onto the heights. Grief and sorrow actually enhance his joy in the Lord. Suffering, you see, will drive you more and more into God. It presses you into God. It's a bit like the temperature outside.

Outdoors, it can get cooler and cooler, right? But yet the temperature we experience inside feels comfortable and warm. The sorrow and grief make it cold, but inside, the temperature is warm. Think about it.

The cold outside is what we encounter when we suffer, and it presses us to come inside where it's warm and comfortable. Therefore, when we are outside in the cold, we're not afraid of the cold. The cold doesn't destroy us. Rather, it helps us enjoy the warmth of the air-conditioned comfort in this room. And it's the same with our suffering, with our own evil times.

These things press us onto our heights. Think about Jesus for a moment. In the gospels, He sees the crowds. When He heals the blind, the lame, and raises the dead, Jesus weeps over them. He's distressed about them.

He sees what He sees are lost people in pain, hurting people. He feels their pain in this evil world. And as He struggles with that, He shows raw emotion. And yet, we read in Hebrews, for the joy set before Him, He endures the cross. His joy is not the cross, not the pain, not the suffering, the agony, but His joy is in what comes next, the knowledge of doing His own Father's will, of being victorious, of being the reason why people are saved, forgiven, and healed.

When you and I feel real sorrow, real grief, we can cry too. We can produce tears. And that's entirely consistent with what Habakkuk feels here. But like Habakkuk, we're not to be so absorbed with ourselves that we can't experience this joy. This joy that presses us deeper and deeper into God.

The joy of the Lord happens in the middle of our sorrow, in the middle of our pain, in the middle of our hurt and our distress. These things, the grief and the sorrow, the pain and distress, enable us to feel the joy causing us not to sink, not to be overwhelmed by them. In other words, you remain emotionally and relationally healthy. That's how it works. And now how do you do it?

How do you rejoice? Number three. It's not a feeling that comes such as that if you hold on long enough in your sorrow and grief, something, you know, will change. It's actually a discipline, something that you do in the middle of sorrow and grief. And I suggest there are two parts to it because it's what we see in this chapter.

It's repeating and remembering. Repeating. Notice what it says in verse 18. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

Now something happens there in that text that happens so often in the Bible. It's such a deep pattern in the Bible that we get kind of used to it. Those of us who've been reading the Bible for years, perhaps don't even notice it anymore. But what I want you to notice here is what's going on in this verse. Habakkuk is repeating himself.

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. Why repeat himself? Why say it twice? It's saying the same thing, saying it slightly differently.

Come to think of it, why does Paul say the same thing in Philippians four? Rejoice in the Lord always. And I will say it again, rejoice. Why two times? We benefit from that because it goes a little deeper than just saying it once.

Repetition, you see, has a way of getting the meaning into our head, but also our heart, drilling down deep where it's going to do us some real good. It's the only way you're going to get help in suffering and grief. The discipline of repeating, going over and over again and again. And secondly, it goes without saying, remembering. And this is the main thing that Habakkuk does in chapter three, verses one to 15, which is actually amazing.

That chapter is really the retelling of the story of the exodus. The pestilence and the plagues is how God got them out of Egypt. The shaking of the ground, that is Mount Sinai. The trampling of the sea, that's the crossing of the Red Sea. What he's doing is going back to the gospel.

He's remembering the first version of the gospel because the exodus was the only version Israel had in the Old Testament. It's what God commanded Moses to remember as they went in and took possession of the land that was promised to them. Because the children of Israel became slaves under Pharaoh, they didn't have the power to get themselves out of Egypt. But God came, and miraculously, He intervenes. He enters history, and He brought them out, and they were saved.

And as they were saved, the Egyptians and all those who stayed behind suffered judgment. And the reason is surely this. God does punish evil, but He saves those who believe and trust in Him. This is the day that Habakkuk is talking about, the day of vengeance that belongs to the Lord in verse 16. Yet I will wait quietly for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us.

But he's also trusted that God saves people. In verse 13, You went out for the salvation of Your people, for the salvation of Your anointed. What he's saying here is I've got to connect with what God has done throughout history in the past. I've got to make that connection with my present situation and then know what God has done in the past. Habakkuk is remembering.

He's repeating what he knows about God to be true, about the God of his salvation, about the God of the exodus. Now lastly, why is this possible? Why is it possible for you and for me? And that's most important this morning. Habakkuk was looking at the exodus, which was the gospel as far as he knew it.

That was the reason for his peace, the reason he could take joy in suffering. But we have a perspective on the exodus that he did not have. What is that perspective? Something I mentioned a few moments ago about Jesus and the joy set before Him and what He accomplished on the cross and the celebration of His victory. We all know the first version of the gospel, I trust.

Moses told the people to slaughter a lamb, to put blood on the doorposts of their houses. They were not any better or any worse than the Egyptians. Why should God spare them from the angel of death? Why should God deliver them from oppression, injustice, and slavery? The blood.

The blood that was on the door frames of their houses. It was a symbol or the sign of God's forgiveness. It's what the children of Israel needed to believe in to be saved. It's what they needed to trust in. In the words of Leviticus, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

But, of course, years later, Jesus was the sacrificial Lamb of God, and it was His blood that He gave so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be liberated from sin and evil and even death itself. And if you believe in Jesus Christ because He was the Lamb, because He gave His blood for you, then I put it to you, you have peace and joy because I mean nothing, and I mean nothing, can separate you from this great love of God that cost Him His one and only Son. Now I'm not saying this morning that there will be smooth times ahead, that there'll be peace and prosperity. Those of us who are financial wizards amongst us will recognise we've only just launched into a new financial year, and none of us knows what fortunes or misery it will bring. But throughout it all, Christians know how to rejoice.

Christians are the kind of people who are repeating, who are remembering. They know the gospel. For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. Look this morning, don't you see the worst thing that ever happened throughout all of humanity, throughout all of history, turned out for our good? By it, God gives us life and a future with Him.

The greatest injustice the world has ever seen, it turns out to be the greatest good for the world. And in Jesus, we're declared righteous before our Judge. So we know and believe that all things work together for good. We are more than conquerors, says Paul, in Christ. The promise here is that even the bad things that happen to us will work for our good.

We won't always see it, but our joy is in the Lord, the God of our salvation, not in our circumstances or our situation, and in none other. The Lord, the God of our salvation. And if you have this hope, you recognise the best things are still yet to come. He saved us to push us up ever closer to the heights, to your heights and my heights. And sometimes, that's going to involve suffering and sorrow.

But He did it so that we could have unspeakable joy when we finally meet Him face to face. If you know this today, right now, you can look at all human suffering including your own, and you can say, this evil cannot do me any real harm. Only mischief. Suffering will mess around with you and me. But the day will come when we'll recognise it will all be in vain.

For we will triumph over them and even over death itself, over all suffering. That is if you know the gospel, if you know Jesus and His blood that washes us clean. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that it's possible for us to rejoice not for our suffering, but in our suffering while we're in pain, while we're suffering grief, while it still hurts. We thank you for Your Son who's not unfamiliar with our suffering, who shows us great sympathy.

We thank you for Jesus who suffered the ultimate injustice. Thank you that Jesus was prepared to go all the way and shed His blood on the cross. And when we remember that, when we repeat that, then we begin to realise a victory that Jesus has accomplished for us. A victory that nothing or no one will ever take away from us, not even death itself. Oh Lord, push us to the heights we pray, where we remain sure footed and able to rejoice.

Because Lord, we want to commit to trusting You more and more to give us the strength to do it. Help us this morning to take that into our hearts by the power of Your Holy Spirit so that when suffering happens, it will just push us to the heights. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus when we say together, Amen.