Habakkuk's Prayer

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So we have a wonderful opportunity. If I haven't met you yet before, if you're new here, my name is Carl. I am not the real thing. The real pastor is working elsewhere today and I'm just working into the rotation to give him some opportunities to invest more time in ministry at FGCU. So I'm part of that plan. And a joy and privilege it is to be a part of it too. Thrive exists for the sake of relationships, building a relationship between you and Jesus so that your relationship between you and Jesus might spread to you and the people you love. And that as it spreads from you and the people you love, it goes with others and we become community. And if there's something that you can't order online, it's community. It requires our presence in the presence of Christ and God in our center. That's why Thrive exists. But let's go on with the program. I'm working a new system here so let's see how it goes. Oh, it works. Cool. All right, a quick review. Where we been? Habakkuk, legitimizing complaining to God. So many Christians want to be nice and when they feel kind of issues or concerns, don't want to complain about them. And in the prophet Habakkuk, whoever you want to call it, complaining is legitimized. It's the only prophet that I know and have found in the Old Testament that exists because Habakkuk wants to bring a complaint to God. Every other prophetic message, God taps somebody on the shoulder and says, listen, I want you to bring a message to them. Now Jeremiah wrote Lamentations and he did a lot of complaining. But he complained about what God was calling him to do and the message he was being called. Habakkuk just pops up and says, we got to talk. And starts complaining to God. So he's the first prophet to do that. And he's seldom preached on, seldom taught. He's buried as a minor prophet way back in the Old Testament with an incredibly powerful message. With three chapters, we found four messages. And the first message is, you need to know it. Do you have a complaint against God? Are you wondering? Are you mad? Are you tired? Are you exhausted? Are you confused? Bring it! Don't ignore it. God says, bring it. In the Matrix, remember that? Neo? You know, bring it. God wants to hear from us. And if you listen, if you review the Psalms, you'll see that they don't always have wonderful messages. Oh God, you're full of praise. There's a lot of, where are you? What are you doing? In 38 years of ministry, before I retired, there's a lot of opportunities that I had in ministering to others, in ministry to children who were suffering and dying, and funerals of loved ones. And suddenly that family's left in the lurch. Where I started, I said, Lord, before I go to this family, you're gonna have to help me. Because I don't know what you're up to. I don't know where you were. I don't know why you did what you did. And the message from Habakkuk is, God invites us to say, bring it. Talk to me. Though the vision delay, wait for it, and it's a point in time, the just shall live by faith. What we discovered in week two is complaining is legitimized. And this little, little phrase, the just shall live by faith, was buried back in Habakkuk's time. And it would, what I love about this is Habakkuk was, during all of his complaining, this is what the Lord says, the just will live by faith. And this little gem, this little jewel, takes the focus off of Habakkuk, off of the scenarios, off the situation, and places it where it belongs, center solely on the faith that God gives to us. And so what we learn is that it launched a reformation. It launched a change in the world. We are here because Habakkuk was given this message, the just shall live by faith. And what I like about this is Habakkuk is full of questions for God. He's going, what, why, how, what? And God says, all right, remember, just shall live by faith, and wait for it, wait for the vision. Habakkuk couldn't have had any sense in his mind at all. What was about to happen was the reformation, that a guy named Martin Luther would initiate a reformation that would change the world. And I speak to you not as a Lutheran, but as somebody who read Time Magazine, if you remember we saw that. Time Magazine ranked the most influential people of the last thousand years, from 1,000 to 2,000. Not an LCMS journal, but Time Magazine said Luther was number three. Point of that is certification that God's promises will come true. Imagine, now imagine this, imagine God trying to explain to Habakkuk, there's going to be a reformation in Europe. And the first question Habakkuk would say, what's reformation, where's Europe? So it gives some perspective on why God doesn't answer us, because the answers oftentimes that we would get would be the relative equivalent of trying to explain a European reformation to Habakkuk in 600 BC. This is how do you g...