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Habakkuk
00:32:19
When evil prevails and God seems absent, what should His people do? Today, R.C. Sproul follows the anguish of the prophet Habakkuk to the Lord’s assuring reply: The righteous shall live by faith. For your donation of any amount, receive R.C....
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To live by faith means to live by trusting God. And that means, dear friends, by trusting what God says.
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The Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:17, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith, or translated another way, the just shall live by faith. I'm glad you're joining us today for Renewing youg Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. As it is written, Paul said, and what he was saying was, as it was written in Habakkuk, and God used this text, Paul's quotation from Habakkuk, in significant ways in the history of the Church, especially during the Protestant Reformation. So what was God saying to Habakkuk, and what had he said to God that led to this great Reformation truth being recorded for God's people? Here's Dr. Sproul to continue his series Great Men to Live by.
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The life and message of the Prophet Habakkuk. Habakkuk's book is very short. It's considered one of the minor prophets because of the size of that book, which is only three short chapters. And Habakkuk has often been considered, in some degrees, an abbreviated version of of the prophet Isaiah. Habakkuk speaks of the impending judgment that God is bringing to the southern kingdom Judah, and presumably he utters his oracle very shortly before the actual implementation of that judgment comes to pass. Let's look at the first chapter of the book to get a little bit of the flavor of Habakkuk the oracle, which Habakkuk the Prophet saw. Isn't that a strange combination of words? An oracle is usually something that one speaks or one hears, but obviously the message that he pronounces is one which he first of all gets through a vision from God. And it begins with a complaint by the prophet, where in agony and prayer, Habakkuk, whose name incidentally means embrace, he cries out, how long, O Lord, will I call for help, and thou wilt not hear? I cry out to you, Violence, yet thou dost not save. Why do you make me see iniquity and cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are in front of me. Strife exists and and contention arises. Therefore the law is ignored and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous, and justice comes out perverted. I'm sure that every Christian at one time or another in their Christian pilgrimage has had to face what some of the saints of old called the dark night of the soul. When we go through periods of spiritual depression, when it seems as when we pray, the prayers don't go beyond the ceiling, and we feel that God is absent, that we are alone. We are not rejoicing in the sense of God's presence, but rather crying in the overwhelming, oppressive sense of his absence. Add to that the dilemma that has faced the world for centuries and probably is the most frequently raised objection against the Judeo Christian faith. And that is, how can a good and holy and righteous God sit by apparently idly, and watch wickedness triumph in the world? Well, we sometimes think that such questions and problems are the reserve of unbelievers or those who are weak in their faith. It seems indeed startling that this kind of question would be raised from the lips of one anointed to be a prophet of Israel. And yet this is precisely the mood of Habakkuk as he cries out to God, O God, Allah. So I have to keep praying and there's no answer. I come to you, I cry out to you, I say, look at the violence, the injustice, the evil that surrounds righteousness in the land. And there's no answer. You're silent. What kind of a God are you that sits back and watches your law be ignored and you are not quick to vindicate your people? Remember, Jesus dealt with that problem somewhat with the story of the unjust judge in the New Testament. The importunate widow who sought to have relief from oppression. And she came to the judge who had no regard either for man nor for God and just kept beating away at the door and beating and beating and beating. And Jesus point of the parable was that we ought always to pray and not faint. We ought not to give in to despair. And yet Habakkuk opens his prophecy with himself being on the edge of despair. He comes right up to the rim and he complains. And God answers him in verse five. And he says, look among the nations and observe. Be astonished and wonder. I'm going to do something, Habakkuk, that even though you are a prophet who proclaims the word of God, if anybody believes in the truth of God's word, it certainly should be the bearer of it. But if you, as much as a saint as you are Habakkuk, you wouldn't believe what was going to happen if you were told. I'm going to have to show it to you. But I want you to keep your eyes open and watch. Because here's what I'm going to do. I am raising up the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous people who march through the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs. They are dreaded and feared. Their justice and authority originate with themselves. That is, they have no heavenly sanction for their law. Their horses are swifter than leopards and keener than wolves. In the evening, their horsemen come galloping. Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle, swooping down to devar. All of them come for violence. Their horde of faces move forward. They collect captives like sand. They mock at kings and rulers or laughing matter to them. They laugh at every fortress and heap up rubble to capture it. Then will they sweep through like the wind and pass on. I'm going to do that, I, says the Lord God. I'm going to raise up this impetuous, bloodthirsty, abhorrent nation and use it to crush my people. Judah. Now, if you think Habakkuk had a problem when he starts his complaint against God, how do you suppose he feels now when God tells him? You think you're seeing wickedness now? You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till you see the hordes of Chaldeans that I am going to raise up to bring against my people. So now the lament becomes all the more emotional. In verse 12, Habakkuk cries out, wait a minute, God. Are not thou from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One, and thou, O Rock, has established them to correct? Your eyes are too pure, too holy than to even look upon iniquity. How God is what the prophet is saying now. Could you tolerate such evil? Why do you look with favor on those who deal treacherously? How can you be silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? Why have you made men like the fish of the sea, like creeping things without a ruler over them? And the Chaldeans bring all of them up with a hook and drag them together with their net. God, I. I just don't understand how you could do this. Habakkuk had trouble swallowing this, and he says in chapter two, I will go stand upon my watchtower and I will station myself on the rampart and I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me and how I may reply when I am reproved. I'm not going to take this sitting down, God. I want an answer to my question. And if I have to scale the ramparts of heaven itself, I'll do it. And I'm going to my watchtower. You see that little magazine that's disseminated around that takes its name, Watchtower, obviously from this book. Habakkuk says, I'm going to stay in that watchtower and I'm going to watch and see what happens and I'm not moving. I'm going to be like Simon Sty, ladies. I'm going to climb my flagpole and I'm going to sit there obstinately enduring until you answer my question. Then the Lord answered me and he said, record the vision and inscribe it on tablets that the one who reads it may run. For the vision is yet for the appointed time it hastens toward the goal. It will not fail. And though it tarries, wait for it, for it will certainly come, it will not delay. Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him. The proud one who stands in rebellion and in defiance and in arrogance over against God. His soul is not right within him, but says God, the just shall live by faith. Where have you heard that before? Did you hear it in Aldersgate in London? Did you hear it thundering from the pulpit in Wittenberg? Did you hear it coming from the writer of the Book of Hebrews? Do you hear it twice from the pen of the apostle Paul as he unravels for us the mystery of our own justification in the New Testament? That which is the thematic statement of the entire Epistle to Romans is called forth from this seemingly obscure, relatively unimportant, small, minor prophet of the Old Testament. In the midst of the blackest hour of Jewish history, God says to his people, the just shall live by faith. That's my answer to you, Habakkuk. Shut your mouth, get down off your watchtower and live by faith. What does he mean? Close your eyes, take a deep breath, take a leap of faith from on top of your watchtower and jump into the dark, and maybe Yahweh will catch you. Or Jesus. That's not what he's talking about when he says the just shall live by faith. To live by faith means to live by trusting God. And that means, dear friends, by trusting what God says. That is not intellectual suicide. It's the most intelligent thing you can ever do. But see, we are so foolish, so stupid as to assume that when there's a difference of an opinion in our midst, if God says one thing and the whole world says another, because the world is near to us and dear to us and present and seemingly at times, effective, we are tempted to put our trust in what man says rather than to trust in the living God who is patient and whose word sometimes takes such a laboriously long time to come to pass, Today the issue in the Church is the infallibility of the Scriptures. It's not a question of the impeccability of a book. It's a question of the trustworthiness of. Of God himself, of God's word. Day after day after day after day, the Christian is brought into conflict between values expressed on the one hand by God's Word and those endorsed by social scientists, by teachers in school, by ministers and all kinds of groups of people in the world. And we're caught in that crushing pressure of two opinions. It is arrogant to embrace man and deny God. And when you do that, your soul is not right. There are times when we have to tie ourselves to the mast. Like Ulysses going through the straits with the sirens calling him and beckoning him to the left and to the right, to bring him into the rocks and to destroy his ship. He tied himself and stuffed cotton in his ears lest he fall into the temptation. But the just man lives by that faith. He trusts God sometimes. That faith, you know, is not just an easy, casual flippant. I believe sometimes Christians, if they're going to be people of integrity, have to hang on by their finger saying, you want me to trust you? And I see the ravenous wolves of the Chaldeans coming forth here to destroy my people. I'm supposed to trust you that it's all going to come out in the wash in the end? I'm seeing them destroy everything that we've worked for generations to build up. And I'd see them in the vision taking away my people captive into a strange and foreign land. And you want me to trust you? God, Is there any hope at all that they'll ever be restored? That they'll ever come back from captivity? There are no signs of hope whatsoever, only destruction. I'll never live to see it. God says, habakkuk, the just shall live by faith, not a blind faith. Look at my tracker. Read the history. Where do you get faith? I'll tell you. The only way I know to get faith. The Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I don't know any other way to get it, but to fill yourself with the word of God. Read it, read it, read it, read it. I see all the problems that confront me daily. God's word dealing with throughout history, and God demonstrating in the arena of history that he is worthy of our trust? Joshua lived by his faith. Sure, it's in verse six. Will not all of these take up a taunt song against him, even mockery and insinuations against him, and say, woe to him who increases what is not his? For how long on it goes? So finally, in Chapter two, the very last verse, after he complains about all of the wickedness he sees and the unrestrained, unchecked, unbridled practice of idolatry that spread throughout the land, again we see that beautiful word that I talk about all the time in the Bible. But, huh, but verse 20. The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him. How often that's used as a call to worship in our churches. And we stand up there and say, the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him. Here's a man hanging faith by his fingernails. You know, this is just a full call of worship spot. The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth. Literally, he's saying, shut up, because God is here and God has spoken. And let all men be liars. I'm going to trust what God says. That's what it means to be a believer. That's what it means. Not just to recite creeds or theology, to actually live by trusting what God said. That's what it's all about. So then he prays, lord, I've heard the report about you, and I fear I ask you to revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years. Make it known in wrath. Remember Mercy. See, we read church history today, and we read of glorious periods of bright and burning fires of faith throughout church history. We're not living in a period like that today. And I don't know how many times I've gone off on a fantasy trip in a dream world, standing in the shower and say, oh, wouldn't it have been great to live in the 16th century to have been there with the vibrancy of faith that marked the great leaders of their day? Oh, when people actually believed in the things of Christ in the Church, wouldn't that have been greater in the first century or in the fourth century, under the leadership of Augustine and so on down through the pages of the past. I find myself doing that from time to time. And I pray like Habakkuk, oh, God, revive your work in the midst of the years. Make it known, make it visible your kingdom is too invisible. In wrath, remember Mercy. And in verse eight, did the Lord rage against the rivers? Or was thy anger against the rivers and thy wrath against the sea? And on down they went away at the light of thine arrows, at the radiance of thy gleaming spear. In indignation thou didst march through the earth. In anger thou didst trample the nations. Thou didst go forth for the salvation of thy people. He's singing. You know mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Thou didst go forth to the salvation of thy people, for the salvation of thine anointed. I heard he says in verse 16, this is one of my favorite texts in all the Bible. I heard and my inward parts trembled. God finally spoke. At the sound, my lips quivered and decay rottenness entered my bones and I trembled in my place because I must wait quietly for the day of distress. I have to stand here and wait for the people to arise who invade us. God is saying, you stand there and watch it happen and trust me for the end. When I heard that he said I was sick to my stomach. Then what's he say, huh? Though the fig tree should not blossom, there be no fruit on the vine. Though the yield of the olive should fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls. Listen to that again. Let's translate that into 20th century terms. Though the fig tree should not blossom, though our oil wells run dry, though all of our steel mills shut down, though Chrysler and Ford and General Motors go bankrupt, if New York City is reduced to ashes, if the stock market crashes totally and completely and the dollar is devaluated to zero, though all commerce, all food production, all culture of America is brought down to absolute desolation. Nevertheless, says Habakkuk, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation, for he makes my feet like hinds feet and causes me to walk in high places. Let the world fall off the cliff, let the mountain crumble. I will walk with my God and rejoice that he is God. That's the kind of people God wants for his people, people who live by faith. Trusting God for your future, that's a man to live by.
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And as R.C. sproul said earlier today, that's not intellectual suicide. Trusting God is the wisest and smartest thing we can do. It's good to have you with us for renewing your mind, and I hope that you're being helped this week as Dr. Sproul introduces you to some of the prophets of the Old Testament. And stay with us as I have another guest in the studio who I'll introduce to you in just a moment. You can continue this series at your own pace when you request all 13 messages by giving a donation today at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. The team is standing by and would love to process your donation, get you this week's resource bundle and even pray for you. So call us at 800-435-4343 or use the link in the podcast Show Notes and we'll unlock this series for you in the free Ligonier app. Plus sends you RC Sproul's hardcover book that does a deep dive on the life of Joseph. This offer does end tomorrow, so don't delay. Our global digital offer also includes this series and the book, so if you live outside of the US and Canada, be sure to show your support and respond@renewingyourmind.org Global thank you. Can I also ask you to pray for today's Renewing youg Mind Live event in Melbourne, Australia? Sinclair, Ferguson and I are there for the event. We're at capacity and registration has been closed for months. Please pray for Dr. Ferguson's teaching and that it will be a joy filled and warm evening of fellowship as Renewing youg Mind listeners gather together to thank God for 30 years of broadcasting truth. Thank you for praying and I look forward to next week's Renewing youg Mind Live event in Sydney. Check my social media accounts wbingham for photos Yesterday Chris Larson joined us to discuss the findings of the 2025 State of Theology survey. Today, Stephen Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College, is with us. Dr. Nichols, today I've asked you to help us look at some of the more sobering findings.
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I think listening to Dr. Sproul over the years telling us how important it is to know who God is and that gets revealed in here, the lack of knowledge. But there's a corollary to that and that is how important it is to know who we are. And one of the alarming results of this survey is that evangelicals knowledge of who we are is very anemic, in fact heretical. So here are some statistics for you as part of this bad news. 64% of evangelicals believe that everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God and 54% affirm that everyone sins a little. But most people are good by nature. Now the reason why that is alarming is because it gets to the heart of the gospel. If we don't understand who we are and our true need, we'll never look at Christ on the cross in the proper way. We'll not understand the Gospel. We'll not understand the depth of his work on our behalf. And so as we understand these doctrines, we begin to see how they are all really interconnected and interrelated and when we see results like this, it should.
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Capture our attention as a church historian. How did the church in the United States get to this place?
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Yeah, that's a fascinating question. And we could write a book on it. Nathan. I think the American church has always shown a sort of allergy to confessions. And if you don't have that confession to sort of guide you as you read scripture and piece scripture together, well, that leaves a vacuum. And culture is going to fill that vacuum. So we may think we're reading scripture with objective, unbiased eyes, but many times we're coming at scripture rather affected and impacted by our cultural sensibilities. The other thing confessions help us do, they help us pay attention to the whole counsel of God to piece this text together with this piece over here and see how they fit together and then have a much more healthy doctrine. Without those confessions, we tend to find our pet texts and our pet doctrines and we just camp out there. So, for instance, the American church loves a joy and happiness and love, and so they want to stress the love of God. They have challenges sometimes with the holiness of God or the righteousness of God or the wrath of God. And so they may be very earnest. They may think they're very governed by biblical principles or biblical texts. But there's an unhealthy, the Biblicism here that's not kept in check or kept in a context of this whole counsel of God that's provided for us through theological reflection.
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Even though the church today seems to prefer to speak of the love of God, as you just said, the survey results also reveal that evangelicals in the United States don't really understand the love of God either.
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Yeah, just a statistic to sort of back that up. The survey reveals that 94% evangelicals agree with this. God loves all people in the same way. What's really shocking about this is the general population actually is better than evangelicals at this. Only 83% agree with that statement from the general population. So here's a case where the evangelicals are more wrong than their non evangelical neighbors.
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Why is it dangerous to get the love of God wrong?
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Yeah, I think we have to understand that there is a common grace. Sometimes theologians will speak of a love of benevolence, that there is a sense in which God loves all people. A good example of this, as Paul tells us in Acts 14:17. Yet he did not leave himself without a witness, for he did good by giving you rain from heaven in fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. Well, that is very easy to see as the benevolence of God and the gifts of his love for humanity, not just food for utility, but gladness. But Jesus comes along and he elevates a love of God to beyond common grace, to soteric or salvation salvific grace. Jesus tells us in John 15, as the father loved me, so I have loved you, and so remain in my love. And when we get to a text like Romans 7 as Paul's beginning that tour de force of the Gospel, he says to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.
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Well, Dr. Nichols, I'll have you back tomorrow if you're willing so we can discuss more of the results and also how the survey classifies evangelical.
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Oh, I'm looking forward to that, Nathan. Thanks.
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If you'd like to take the survey, share the results with your church, or explore the results for yourself, you can find it at thestateoftheology.com to close out this week's series, Great Men to Live By, RC Sproul will look to Jonah and the lessons we can learn from his life. So be sure to join us Friday here on Renewing youg Mind.
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Sam.