Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Excellence”
Our Bible verse for today: “Look around at the nations; look and be amazed! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it.” Habakkuk 1:5 (NLT)
Our thought for today: “Just be faithful.”
In recent days we’ve been considering lessons from Old Testament prophets regarding how God’s faithful people can live with excellence even when their society is crumbling and falling apart all around them. Today I want us to consider one final lesson from the prophet Habakkuk.
Habakkuk was living and ministering in the land of Judah in its final days before they would suffer total destruction at the hands of the Babylonians. Habakkuk saw the calamity unfolding all around him and he was incredulous that God would actually allow it to happen. In 1:1-4 we read of how he cried out to God in frustration and confusion. He simply could not believe that God would allow the evil Babylonians to have victory over His chosen people.
Then in 1:5 and following, God answers Habakkuk by telling him that not only is the devastation coming, but that the nation is going to crash and burn in such spectacular fashion and it will be a sight to behold.
Habakkuk, still unable to accept that this could possibly be God’s final answer, decides that he is going to simply go before God in extended prayer and wait until God gives him more clarity about what’s happening, why it’s happening, and how it’s all going to turn out. We read of that in 2:1. Beginning in 2:2 God answers him with a long narrative that goes on for 19 verses and which describes how in the future, when the time of punishment and correction of God’s people is over, it will be time for the Babylonians to be punished and for God’s people to be restored.
There are three key verses in that narrative which provide all the guidance we need for dealing with our current cultural and political situation in the USA. Verse 3 says, “This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.” Verse 4b reads, “But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God”, and verse 20 tells us, “But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him.”
So there it is right there. As we, the people of God in the USA today, watch our society slowly but surely deteriorate, we are to remember that God is sovereign over the affairs of nations, and that in His way and in His time His plan for the nation will unfold. And while that’s happening, we’re to be patient and continue to be faithful.
The instructions we received from Jesus in Matthew 5:13-16 that we are to be salt and light in our society still apply. We are to be actively engaged in the affairs of the nation; we are to advocate and work for righteousness and for Biblical principles; we are to oppose evil; and we should vote. But we are not to despair if things don’t appear to turn out the way we hoped they would.
God is still sovereign over the affairs of our nation, and nothing is happening that is out of His control. Our job is to be faithful and to trust Him.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 