Earnestly Engaging God in Faith

Habakkuk 2:1-20 March 15, 2020 preached by Doug Cooper Download Time of Reflection Quotations “The truth does not change according to your ability to stomach it.” ~ Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), American writer “Remove from the Christian Religion, as Christendom has done, it’s ability to shock, and Christianity…is altogether destroyed.  It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, […]

Habakkuk 2:1-20

March 15, 2020

preached by Doug Cooper

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“The truth does not change according to your ability to stomach it.”

~ Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), American writer

“Remove from the Christian Religion, as Christendom has done, it’s ability to shock, and Christianity…is altogether destroyed.  It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them, …it forgets the qualitative distinction between man and God.”

 ~ Soren Kierkegaard, 19th c. Danish Philosopher

“God is God. Because He is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will, a will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.”

~ Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015), Christian missionary, author and speaker

“Faith is not a refuge from reality. It is a demand that we face reality, with all its difficulties, opportunities, and implications. The true subject matter of religion is not our own little souls, but the Eternal God and His whole mysterious purpose, and our solemn responsibility to Him.”

~ Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), English Anglo-Catholic writer

“The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.”

~ C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Christian scholar and writer

“What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far country. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus.”

~ Brennan Manning (1934-2013), American author and former priest

Habakkuk 2:1-20 (NASB)

1   I will stand on my guard post

And 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.

2   Then the Lord answered me and said,

“Record the vision

And inscribe it on tablets,

That the one who reads it may run.

3  “For the vision is yet for the appointed time;

It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.

Though it tarries, wait for it;

For it will certainly come, it will not delay.

4  “Behold, as for the proud one,

His soul is not right within him;

But the righteous will live by his faith.

5  “Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man,

So that he does not stay at home.

He enlarges his appetite like Sheol,

And he is like death, never satisfied.

He also gathers to himself all nations

And collects to himself all peoples.

6  “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—

And makes himself rich with loans?’

7  “Will not your creditors rise up suddenly,

And those who collect from you awaken?

Indeed, you will become plunder for them.

8  “Because you have looted many nations,

All the remainder of the peoples will loot you—

Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land,

To the town and all its inhabitants.

9  “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house

To put his nest on high,

To be delivered from the hand of calamity!

10 “You have devised a shameful thing for your house

By cutting off many peoples;

So you are sinning against yourself.

11 “Surely the stone will cry out from the wall,

And the rafter will answer it from the framework.

12 “Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed

And founds a town with violence!

13 “Is it not indeed from the Lord of hosts

That peoples toil for fire,

And nations grow weary for nothing?

14 “For the earth will be filled

With the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,

As the waters cover the sea.

15 “Woe to you who make your neighbors drink,

Who mix in your venom even to make them drunk

So as to look on their nakedness!

16 “You will be filled with disgrace rather than honor.

Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness.

The cup in the Lord’s right hand will come around to you,

And utter disgrace will come upon your glory.

17 “For the violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you,

And the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them,

Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land,

To the town and all its inhabitants.

18 “What profit is the idol when its maker has carved it,

Or an image, a teacher of falsehood?

For its maker trusts in his own handiwork

When he fashions speechless idols.

19 “Woe to him who says to a piece of wood, ‘Awake!’

To a mute stone, ‘Arise!’

And that is your teacher?

Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver,

And there is no breath at all inside it.

20 “But the Lord is in His holy temple.

Let all the earth be silent before Him.”