In David Platt’s book Radical, he writes about how on a mission trip he visited with a group of believers in Southeast Asia. He said they had to disguise themselves to meet, and come in one or two at a time, to avoid suspicion. Every one of their prayer requests they shared in the meeting involved the persecution they were experiencing there where they served as Christian leaders. He said it was such a contrast to come back home, and see the freedom and prosperity of the church in America — and his book challenges us to consider how we use our blessings in light of the needs around the world. But I also have to wonder:  how long will the freedom and prosperity we have so long experienced last, especially if our nation continues to turn away the Lord?

This morning we begin our study of the Book of Habakkuk from the Old Testament. If you were here last Sunday, we learned how to say it, how to spell it, and where to find it. But most important about this book is that although it’s 2600 years old, it speaks right to where we are as individuals and as a nation today. As we see our society continue to turn away from God, how will we live? As our faith gets tested, How will we respond? Let’s look at what God shows us today in the first verses of Hosea 1, in message I’m calling: “Faith Under Trial: Living In a Nation Under Condemnation.”

I. WHEN YOUR PRAYERS AREN’T ANSWERED

:2 “How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and You will not hear? I cry out to You, ‘Violence’ yet You do not save.”

One of the prominent features of the prophet Habakkuk’s writing is that he asks God the hard questions about what he is going through. Right here at the beginning of the book, he asks God why his prayers haven’t been answered: “How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and You will not hear?” 

Some of us are in this same boat. You have prayers you have been lifting up to God, consistently, fervently — and it seems like it should be His will to hear and answer them; your requests are for good things; things that would seem to be His will — but He has NOT answered. Like Habakkuk, your heart is crying, “How long, O Lord, will I call for help and You will not hear?”

— Maybe you’re leading a ministry and wonder why God hasn’t heard your prayers to bless it, when it would seem to glorify Him if He would? 

— Or you may be an individual who is struggling with a personal illness or ongoing trial in your life, and it doesn’t seem like God is helping you with it.

— You may be a parent, crying out to God to do something in the life of your child, but God has not yet saved them or changed them. 

— Maybe you’re one of the many who has been praying for God to do something in our nation, and yet it just seems like it’s going from worse to worse! 

Habakkuk the prophet felt that same way 2600 years ago. He lived in a nation, like ours, that had been specially called and chosen by God — but also like ours, he saw it falling away from God and His ways, and his prayers didn’t seem to be changing anything. And so he cries out: “How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and You will not hear?!” 

One application we can make is that what we see in scripture here flies right in the face of the “name it and claim it” theology taught by some versions of Christianity, that as one teacher in Tulsa put it years ago, “God has given you a blank check” — you just write in there whatever you want, and He’ll give it to you. This “prosperity preaching” that goes for Christianity all over the country, promises you health and healing, wealth and prosperity, and success in whatever you do. Just come to Jesus, give your life to God, and you’ll have “your best life now”: you and yours will all be healthy, you will always be prosperous, and you will rise to the top of whatever field you choose, and all your prayers will be answered. Folks, that is NOT the Christianity of the Bible. That is not what Habakkuk found in his walk with God — that is not what Jeremiah found, or David found, or Paul found — they all experienced times in their lives when they cried out to God like this, “Why do I call, and You do not hear?!” “Name it/claim it/get it every time” is NOT Biblical Christianity! 

Listen: If all you want from God is a powerful Genie in the sky who gives you what you want every time you want It, you’re going to be greatly disappointed with the faith of the Bible. God is not some “heavenly vending machine” who just gives you all the “goodies” you want whenever you “push the right buttons.” The God of the Bible is a Sovereign God, He is the King of Universe, who has purposes beyond what you and I can fathom, who has plans that are way beyond our understanding, and timing of His own will. And there will be times when we do not understand His purpose, His plans, or His timing. There will be times when we will say like Habakkuk, “why am I calling and You are not answering?”  And Habakkuk shows us that It’s ok to say that. As we saw a few weeks ago, God is big enough to handle it! And in those times when we don’t understand what God is doing, our faith gets shaken to the core. When everything is great, and our prayers all seem to be answered, and we’re going from victory to victory — that’s NOT the best test of the reality of our faith. No, the best test of our faith is in those times when our prayers are NOT answered, and we feel forsaken, and we cry out “Why do You not hear? Why do You not save?”, THAT is when our faith really shows. Is it real or not? When all the props are taken away, do we still trust or not? Do we have enough faith say, “You know, I don’t understand this, but I’m just going to trust God.”

I once read a testimony on unanswered prayer by C.S. Lewis. He said that when he was a younger Christian, he seemed to have more answered prayers than he did as he aged. He said he believed that God was trying to encourage him in the early days, of His reality and power, by answering so many prayers — but as he grew in age and maturity, he often felt like God was withdrawing His hand, making him grow in his faith and trust Him, even when His prayers were NOT answered. And Lewis suggested that this often happens to us as we mature spiritually. He said, did not THE most spiritually mature person who ever walked the earth say: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” 

We ARE going to have unanswered prayers. We ARE going to experience things that we don’t understand. Some of us have been through times like that. Some of you may be in a time like that right now. The way things are looking in our nation today, many MORE of us may be going through times like that in the days and years ahead. Our faith WILL be tested. And we need to realize that genuine, Biblical Christianity is not “name it, claim it, and get it every time.” If that is all you want from God, you ARE going to be disappointed, because there will always be unanswered prayers; there will always be things that we don’t understand. And the faith of every one of us will be tested in times like these.

Now this may not be what you want to hear — and I tell you, you can absolutely go find a church down the road somewhere that will tell you what you want to hear — that God will give you everything you want — but that won’t change the fact that He won’t; because that is not Who God really is. The fact is, everybody has times when their prayers aren’t answered, when “name it claim it” does NOT work,” and when we don’t understand why God does what He does. Jesus Himself hung on the cross and cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” — and the truth is, you and I, like Habakkuk, are going to have times like that in our lives too. If you haven’t yet, you WILL. There WILL be times when your prayers are unanswered. The question is, will you grow in your faith enough to persevere in your walk with God, even when that happens? 

II. WHEN THE FOUNDATIONS ARE DESTROYED

Now what WAS the situation that Habakkuk had been praying so unsuccessfully about? It was the nation of Judah, and their declining moral standards, as they continued to turn away from God and His ways. We see this in the next couple of verses in Habakkuk 1: 

:3 “You make me see iniquity, and cause me to look on wickedness” He said there is destruction and violence…. Strife … and contention 

:4 is a revealing verse; it says “the law is ignored and justice is never upheld, for the wicked surround the righteous, therefore justice comes out perverted. 

Habakkuk lived during the reign of Jehoiakim, the King of Judah, who turned away from the word of God. This was the king who, when the prophet Jeremiah (who lived at the same time as Habakkuk) wrote down the words of God on a scroll and had it sent to him, after he had listened to just 3 or 4 columns, Jehoiakim cut it into pieces with a knife and threw it into the fire. The king wanted nothing to do with the word of God — so he literally cut it up and threw into the fire. That’s the situation Habakkuk was living in, that caused him to pray these prayers. 

Psalm 11:3 says “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Habakkuk lived in a time like that; he saw the moral foundations of his land crumbling right before his eyes — the same thing that we are seeing in our country today:

— Habakkuk said in :2 “I cry to You, ‘violence'” because of what he saw in his land. We see the worst kind of violence in our land today, in the unthinkable sin of abortion. Many of God’s people, like Habakkuk, have prayed and worked against this abominable practice, but it has continued over much of our country unabated. There are states in our country today where you can abort a baby that is one day away from being born — and even after it is born, if it was supposed to have been aborted but somehow made it out alive. Habakkuk cried, “Violence” in his day- and we can cry “violence” in the same way today, as babies are ripped from their mothers’ wombs — there is no violence known to mankind worse than this — being perpetuated in what is supposedly a “civilized” society! — but that ungodly violence continues in our nation, just like it did in the time of Habakkuk. 

—:3 “Why do You make me see iniquity.” This could be spoken by any righteous person in the United States today, where sensuality is not limited to computer screens or bookstores, but is displayed on virtually every comer of our land, on televisions, on billboards, every time you pick up a newspaper or see a magazine at the checkout stand or try to read a news article on the internet. Not to mention the flagrantly declining standards of dress. There seems to be no such thing as “modesty” any more. And the most vile wickedness proudly parades openly down the largest streets of our cities. The Bible says that Lot’s righteous soul was oppressed as he lived in Sodom, and righteous souls in America feel that same way today. “Why ….. do you cause me to look on wickedness?” 

— Then Habakkuk says in :4 “the Law is ignored and justice is never upheld”. Bible scholars tell us this is the language of the courtroom: justice was perverted in Habakkuk’s day. 

Can we say that justice is always upheld in our nation today? Or can you get away with certain things if you have the right name, or the right money, or the right connections? And how many times have God’s people prayed and fought and gained some hard-won victory for conservative, Biblical morality in the legislature, only to have some judge or court almost instantaneously strike down the law and declare it unconstitutional!

And there’s more looming on the horizon: 

— pastors and other Christians may soon be charged with “hate speech” for simply repeating what the Bible teaches about homosexuality. Tell me that some of you aren’t getting some of that indoctrination at the plants, or at the public schools, even now? And it may actually become illegal in our country just to teach what the Bible clearly says about morality — pastors in Europe and Canada are already been arrested for it — and it may be coming this way too!

— There’s more sobering, potential challenges ahead: after a gay marriage law passed in New York, one leader said in a TIME magazine article that he was not celebrating like so many were — because there were still many churches where they can’t have their “gay marriages.” When the law was passed in New York, part of the “deal” they made ensured exception clauses for churches and ministers, so they didn’t HAVE to perform those ceremonies. But the next step will be to target churches and ministers, who supposedly “discriminate” against homosexuals, and those churches and ministers will be punished by losing their tax-exempt status, and members will lose their charitable contributions deduction unless they comply. Soon we may have to decide:  do we want to keep the standards of God’s word or do we want to keep our charitable contribution deductions?  Let’s just prepare ourselves: let’s claim our charitable contributions as long as we can, because it’s a good stewardship of what God has entrusted to us. But let’s also have the attitude that we do not give to God’s work merely to get a tax deduction; we give because God commands it! And let’s be prepared to  continue to give to God’s work even if they do revoke our church’s tax-exempt status and we lose our charitable contribution deductions. 

These are just SOME of the things that we need to be ready for:

— The day is coming when you may have to choose between tax incentives and obeying God’s word. 

— The day is coming when you may have to make choices more difficult than that!  

— The day of the “casual Christian”, who can casually claim to be a follower of Jesus in our society but who doesn’t have to pay any price for it is quickly coming to an end. Our children may not know the America that we did. (They already don’t have the America we once did!)  We need to prepare them for it, and build scriptures, and worship songs, and Biblical standards into their lives — because wickedness is being poured into them almost 24/7 from the media and the world around them. We’d better prepare them — and we’d better prepare ourselves too.

Now, someone may say, “Bro. Shawn, you’re getting political.” NO, this is not political. This is moral. This is spiritual. The spiritual foundations of our country are being destroyed. That’s what Psalm 11 was saying; that’s what Habakkuk was seeing in his day — and that is what is happening in our day today. We are living in a day when the moral and spiritual foundations of our country are being destroyed.

III. WHEN JUDGMENT IS COMING

Because of the direction Judah had gone in Habakkuk’s day, God’s judgment was coming. Habakkuk said in :13 that God’s eyes were too pure to look with approval upon evil, and so it was; He could not. He was about to send His judgment. This is what we see in :5-12. “Look among the nations! Observe!”, He says in :5. In :6 God says, “I am raising up the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous people who march throughout the whole earth, to seize dwelling places that are not theirs.” The verses describing the Chaldeans (the Babylonians) continue through :11, where it says: “they will sweep through the land.” The judgment of God was coming on the land of Judah, because of their rebellion against His word. Habakkuk said in :12, “You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge; and You, O Rock, have established them to correct”. Habakkuk saw that this Chaldean army was coming to judge Judah for their sin, and to correct the horrendous wrongs of their society. Judgment as coming. 

And shouldn’t we have enough sense enough to realize that if our nation today looks and sounds just like the nation of Judah did in Habakkuk’s day, and that judgment coming upon them — that a similar judgment must await our nation as well — unless we repent? 

— I would love to stand up here and say that the brightest days of America are still ahead, but I don’t know that I can say that with a clear conscience. There is a judgment coming on our land — unless we repent. 

— I would love to stand here and proclaim that economic recovery is right around the corner — there may not; in fact there may be economic distress coming right around the corner — unless we repent. 

— I would love to stand here and promise with the song that I love, that “The Star Spangled Banner forever will wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave” – but I can’t promise that — if we don’t repent! 

The Bible says our God is a holy God. His “eyes are too pure to approve evil.” A nation that turned away from Him and ignored His standards would be judged in Habakkuk’s day — and Hebrews says our God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” If our nation does not repent of its wickedness before God — which at the present time it shows no signs of doing — then I have no doubt that it will experience the same kind of judgment that the nation of Judah did in Habakkuk’s day. Just like Habakkuk, we too live in a nation where God’s judgment is coming. 

CONCLUSION:
Now, there were some in Habakkuk’s day who were genuine believers in the Lord, like Habakkuk was. They had not fallen from God’s word; they had not participated in the moral decline of their nation. But like Habakkuk, they were about to be a part of a nation that would experience a devastating judgment. This is part of what Habakkuk wrestled with, as we will see as we go through this book.

So what do you do when you’re living a nation that’s going through judgment? The answer is: be faithful. In times like this book describes, “the righteous will live by faith.” So what does that mean that we should do? 

— First of all, if you’ve never owned up to your sins before God, and turned to Jesus as your Savior by faith, you need to do that today. How can you face what may be about to come upon our land, without knowing that God is with you? More importantly, how can you think about standing before God in judgment, without knowing that Jesus is your Savior? You need to put your faith in Him TODAY; then no matter what happens to our nation, you will “live” — you will have eternal life in Heaven, because of your faith in Jesus. 

— Second, if you say that you are already a follower of Jesus, then LIVE by the faith you claim. Don’t just SAY you’re a Christian; LIVE as a Christian. One of the biggest problems we have in America today is that too many people claim to be believers in God and followers of Christ but they do not live like it — they are living like everyone else in our society, basically cutting God out of their lives. 

Several years ago, there was a furor nationally over a video clip that NBC Sports played before the U.S Open golf tournament. The video was supposed to include the Pledge of Allegiance, but in the video they cut out the words “Under God, Indivisible”. Many Americans who heard that broadcast were infuriated that the openly liberal NBC staff would cut out the words “under God” — and rightly so!  But the worse truth is, that all around our country, millions of Americans who say they supposedly “believe in God” have pretty much already cut Him out of their lives anyway! 

Think of your own life: if you’d say that it’s wrong to cut “under God” out of the Pledge; have you in fact actually cut God out of many areas of your life?  For example: 

— Do you get up and seek Him first thing every day in His word and prayer because He’s so important to you — or have you basically cut Him out of your daily schedule? 

— If you say we should not cut out “under God” from the Pledge– are you making His day a day of worship – or do you regularly cut it out?

— If You believe there is a God who gives you everything you have, do you show you that by giving Him your tithe, the first tenth that belongs to Him — or have you cut that out?

— If you believe in living “under God” like the Pledge says, then are you consulting Him about the decisions you make, praying and seeking what His word says about what you should do — or have you cut Him out of your decision-making process?

See: what’s worse? “Cutting God out” of the Pledge — or cutting Him out of your LIFE on a regular basis? I think we all know what the answer is! 

Too many of us who might say, I’m really mad about how they cut “under God” out of the Pledge, in all honestly have for the most part already cut God out of our lives anyway!  We can sit here and shout: “Don’t cut God out of the Pledge!” all we want, but the sad fact is that NBC was closer to the truth than many of us would like to admit: most Americans HAVE cut God out — and some of us here today would have to admit that we’re among them!  What about your life? Is there some way in which you have “cut God out” of your life? In your morals? In your schedule? In your budget? In your decisions? Many of us would have to admit: we too have cut God out of big segments of our life. 

Now, we all fall short; there are so many temptations and distractions to draw us away from God today. But the question is: will you do something about it?  In a nation under judgment; where faith is under trial, and few people will really serve God — what will YOU do? How will YOU live? Will you be one of those that God will judge for your wickedness — or will you be one of the righteous, who — no matter what you see happening around you in a wicked society — will continue to live by faith?

INVITATION

How will YOU respond to what’s happening in our country today? I don’t mean politically — I mean spiritually. Will YOU walk with God no matter what? No matter if your prayers aren’t answered; no matter what everyone else does ….  Is there some way you have compromised what you should be doing? Are there some way you’re part of the problem?

What has God spoken to YOU about today? Talk to Him about that …

Confess any sin … ask Him to help you change what you need to.

— Most importantly, in a nation that may be facing God’s hand of judgment, you need to have a firm foundation of faith. You need to make sure that Jesus is your Savior today …