St. Timothy's Church

Habakkuk

July 13, 2008

 

In the Name of God: + Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

There is much discussion swirling around about the economy.

 

About 44% of the nation thinks it’s the primary issue in the presidential election.

 

Not national security – not social security or reform of earmarks – not abortion

not education or crime or declining morality or pornography.

 

A large percentage of American’s are concerned about the ability to earn, spend and possess – to have what makes us happy, comfortable, and feel successful.

 

News organizations publish discouraging reports daily on as many media outlets as possible to spread the news of bad times.

 

It is true that crude oil prices are obscenely high – and it’s also true the skyrocketing costs will affect a wide spectrum of our economy sooner or later.

 

The housing market is down – home values are down - repossessions are up – I would assume bankruptcies are also on the increase. Food prices are up – as are airfares.

 

The bull market economy of the past 8-10 years seems to becoming a bear market BUT could it possibly keep up the pace it was on? 

 

Don’t all economies eventually slow down? 

Don’t the markets always self-correct from time to time?

Do we honestly believe the “good times” will always be good? 

 

Do we really believe we can spend, and spend and keep buying and buying with unlimited credit with salaries that keep going higher and higher?

 

So yes, we are experiencing some real differences as opposed to just a few months ago.

 

But the writing has been on the wall for some time. . . we just ignore it.

 

Phil Gramm, a former Texas senator, who holds a PhD. In economics and is vice-chairman of the Swiss bank UBS started a minor firestorm when he said that Americans “are whiners” who have been hoodwinked and are in a “mental recession”.

 

Immediately McCain distanced himself from Gramm saying “he disagreed” and Obama scored political points galore by among other things saying “it’s not whining to ask the government to step in and give families some relief”.

The war of words and slick “gottcha’s” continues and we applaud the one who says government will fix your problem while really does nothing about the root cause: runaway consumerism.

 

It’s funny to think that we can somehow have an economy where people have racked up billions of dollars of credit card debt, where the government has racked up a huge deficit, the people in general have huge spending power, yet many are claiming poverty while lines formed at the AT&T stores to buy the latest iphone 3G with gasoline at a record high.

 

Friday, IndyMac Bank closed it doors and will reopen tomorrow under FDIC control.  IndyMac specialized in Alt-A-loans which allowed buyers to borrow with little documentation of their finances. This will cost the FDIC several billion dollars.

 

One of the answers from government is to have the treasury send out checks to many American families as a stimulus package (we may have borrowed money from China  to do that) and another solution suggested is to raise taxes to help bail everyone out by expanding the size of the government!

 

Will someone help me understand this – Is there no sanity in this situation?

 

I’m reading David McCullough’s book John Adams.

 

Early on McCullough describes John Adams father.  Adams loved his father, and said he never met any man his equal and learned the values of “industry and frugality” which he never forgot and lived throughout his life.

 

John Adam’s was known to work his own farm – never using slaves but only hired men.

 

He worked and as a farmer knew that there would be good years and bad years;

bumper crops and crop failures.

 

He did not look to the government for subsidies or bailouts but recognized there is an inherent risk in living and that there are consequences for decisions and little excuse or substitute for hard work.

 

Under-pinning all of this was John Adam’s faith in a righteous and sovereign God.  God provided the soil, the seed, the weather, the crops – it all came from God.  Adams responsibility was to live in gratitude and work the land as God had given it to be worked.

 

Keep in mind the tension between frugality and runaway consumerism and how runaway consumerism has replaced God in the lives of many in this country. We’re going to turn to Habakkuk and learn something about the age he spoke to and how his message in at least one way applies to us.

 

The year is around 600 BC – it’s the period of the final days of Judah which comes to an end in 586 when Jerusalem is sacked and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s army. Habakkuk prophesied when Jehoiakim was King of Judah –  608-598.  Jehoiakim was quite the opposite of his father the good and faithful reformer king Josiah; under Jehoiakim Judah slid further and further into spiritual darkness. Just to give you another benchmark this is also the time the prophet Jeremiah is active and uttering God’s oracles against the nations and Judah.  In 605 Egypt has been defeated at Carchemish thereby ending any hope of a strong defender to join Judah against the powerful Babylonians.

 

The message of Habakkuk comes mostly in the form of what we might call complaints:

 

1.2, “How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen . . . . “

 

1.13b, “Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?  Why then are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”

 

Judah’s idolatry and wickedness had grown – why isn’t God doing something?  When God indicates the Babylonians will be used as a source of judgment against Judah Habakkuk replies by saying the Babylonians were more wicked than Judah?  How would God allow that?  God replies He will judge Babylon as well.

 

The history of God using an even more wicked nation to judge His chosen people then judging the nation itself is well documented.  God will use evil aggressors to judge His people in order to turn them back to Him.

 

There’s another message in Habakkuk which we also cannot forget; this message deals directly with the concerns expressed last week and in a sense helps to amplify them.

 

There are two passages I want to point to -

 

The first is found in 2.4, “. . . . . but the righteous will live by faith”.

 

The second is a bit longer and is found in 3.17-19, “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 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 is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.”

 

Ben Stein, economist, writer and TV personality, was being interviewed about his latest book called “How to Ruin the United States of America”.

 

He lists six ways to ruin our country – one of which he says is to exile God from public life and substitute Him with “things”.

 

As I quoted last week – the founders of this country believed that America must rest upon the foundation of God –

 George Washington said, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible”.

 

Franklin Roosevelt said,  If we ever forget that we are One Nation under God, then we will be a Nation gone under." 

 

In 1606 the Virginia Colony issued a common statement of mission.  In it we find these words, “Lastly and chiefly the way to prosper and achieve good success is to make yourselves of all one mind for the good of your country, and your own, and to serve and fear God the giver of all goodness, for every plantation our Heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted out.”

 

Where we do not worship God we begin to worship ourselves or the things we can buy and possess. . . such possessions become more valuable to us than our knowledge of God.

 

Our backs are turned to God and our itchy ears and greedy desire for things become our god’s – god’s that are helpless, useless and worthless (See Matthew 6.19-21).

 

Habakkuk 2.18-20, “. . . Of what value is an idol, since a man has carved it? Or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak. Woe to him who says to wood, 'Come to life!' Or to lifeless stone, 'Wake up!' Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it. But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him."

 

The reverse of the folly of idols is trust in God lived out in faith.

 

Knowing that God is real, present, and our only true source of joy and fulfillment.

 

God who is transcendent yet imminent hears, sees and is active among creation – His ways are just and righteous – and His will to reconcile man to Himself is found in the Person of Jesus and His Cross and shed blood.

 

God says through Habakkuk that even though I have given you a revelation and it “waits for an appointed time” – it doesn’t happen immediately – it will certainly come.

 

Trust and wait upon the LORD.

 

When economies weaken – Trust and wait upon the Lord.

 

When wars rage – Trust and wait upon the Lord.

 

When enemies are at our door steps – Trust and wait upon the Lord.

 

When disease runs rampant and seems to have its way with us – Trust and wait upon the Lord.

 

When death seems to have an unquenchable appetite – Trust and wait upon the Lord.

 

Through God’s Grace and strength we can say, “The Sovereign LORD is my strength.”

 

This is not a cliché – it more than a slogan – it comes from the depth of human misery and suffering:

 

In late summer, 1775, the “bloody flux” (epidemic of dysentery) ripped through Boston and the surrounding areas.  John Adam’s younger brother, Elihu was stricken and died. 

 

Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, “Such is the distress of the neighborhood that I can scarcely find a well person to assist me in looking after the sick . . . so mortal a time the oldest man does not remember. . . . woe follows woe, one affliction treads upon the heel of another.”  Some families lost three, four and five children.  Some families were entirely gone. 

 

Albert Camus describes the death of a young boy from the Plague in his book of the same name.  He describes the child’s wails of agony – tortured by fever, sores and overwhelming delirium and pain.  At one point a priest dropped to his knees and yelled, “My God, spare this child”.  Then the child grew silent and Camus wrote: His mouth still gapping, but silent now, the child was lying among the tumbled blankets, a small shrunken form, with the tears still wet on his cheeks.” 

 

Much of life can be unbearably horrific and agonizing – we come to see that death has never enough, never satisfied. (Hab. 2.5b)

 

God says this through Habakkuk about the Babylonians, .8-11, “Their horses are swifter than leopards,  fiercer than wolves at dusk. Their cavalry gallops headlong; their horsemen come from afar. They fly like a vulture swooping to devour; they all come bent on violence. 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 past like the wind and go on— guilty men, whose own strength is their god."

 

I can absolutely understand how loosing a job or taking a job at a much lesser salary can feel like “horses swifter than leopards and fiercer than wolves at dusk.”

 

One of my friends that lived next door to me growing up emailed me the other day –

 

Greetings Terry and Olivia:  I pray this email finds you and your family in good health and happiness. Keep me in your prayers, please.  After 22 years with Cardinal Health, I have been laid off due to restructuring.  My daughter has moved to Michigan but that is not an option at this point in my life because of the depressed economy there and I have to work to age 65. Anyways - it was quite a shock to me but I feel it is a blessing in disguise.  Placing this situation in God's hands has kept me very peaceful and not worried. Take care and I hope to hear from you soon.

 

I can understand how disease can feel “Like a vulture swooping to devour”.

 

Our souls are severely tested – and tormented by the unknowns we face . . . . we can feel as though these perils “all come bent on violence” against us.

 

Loosing ones house – filing bankruptcy – can leave us feeling as though “the horde advances like a desert wind and gathers prisoners like sand.”

 

This is where faith meets heartache;

abundant life or abundant dread results depending on which one wins the day.

 

Sitting face-to-face with God’s word Habakkuk says:

 

3.16, “I heard (referring to God’s Word) 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.”

 

He yields to the wisdom of God – he does not lean on his own understanding even though he complained to God on two occasions – God graciously transforms Habakkuk’s complaints into a picture of the future God is going to bring to His people.

 

Paul echoes the core of Habakkuk’s faith when he says that whatever condition he finds himself in he is content . . . . . I’m sure Paul never enjoyed being shipwrecked, or cold or hungry or caned or stoned . . . . but he did find in the midst of little or plenty that his knowledge of Jesus was worth more than any possession he had or worth more than anything he may have lost.

 

America must wake up and turn back to the LORD in full force.

 

America – we must accept Him as our First Love, our most heartfelt desire – and faith as our greatest possession.

 

God allows hard times – God evidently allows aggressors to test us – down turns in economies are temporary – they always run in cycles. . . . . .

 

What is truly eternal is God and His will for us to glorify Him and know Him.

 

I have to tell you, my friend Gerrye blessed me and encouraged me when she wrote she felt a certain peace about being laid off after working for the same company 22 years.

 

Phil Gramm causes me to admit that I whine when things don’t go right . . . . . even though the politicians are making points by refuting him, Mr. Gramm is giving us a piece of wisdom for us to chew on.

 

Habakkuk is saying we are to trust God when the worst is past, is present or is about to come.

 

The idols we carve out through our spending are worthless false god’s.  False god’s that rust, breakdown, get eaten by moth’s, are stolen – become obsolete. They are not the stuff of real life – do not begin to encompass the will of an active and loving God.

 

Listen to the prophet once again and embrace it with your soul and heart.

 

“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 pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

 

When all is said and done He is LORD – and In Knowing Him we will find JOY.

 

The sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to go on the heights.

 

Let the Church say, “Amen”.

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