Habakkuk 2:1-4, 3:17-19

&nb= sp;

In= the meantime, we live by faith.

A sermon preached by

Rev. William O. (Bud) = Reeves

First United Methodist Church

Hot= Springs, Arkansas

June 24, 2007

One of my favorite stories has to do with a mo= nk who signed on with a very strict monastic order. In fact, they were so strict that = the monks had to take a vow of silence which could only be broken every five ye= ars, and then with only two words. After his first five years, the monk went in = to see the abbot for his two-word interview.&= nbsp; The abbot said, “My son, you have been with us for five years = now; what two words would you like to say?”

The monk said, “= Bed hard.”

“I see,” t= he abbot said. “You are excused.”

After five more years,= the monk went in again to see the abbot. The abbot addressed the monk with, “So you’ve been with = us 10 years already. What two wo= rds would you like to say?”

The monk said, “= Food bad.”

“I see,” t= he abbot said. “You are excused.”

After five more years, fifteen in all, the man appeared before the abbot one more time. Again the abbot asked, “What= would you like to say?”

And the monk replied, “I quit.”

The abbot responded, “Well, I’m not surprised. All you’ve done since you got here is complain!”

It’s easy to be a complainer, isn’t it? There’s always something we can gripe about if we want to. Sometimes even our prayers can bec= ome a list of complaints, as we tell God everything that’s wrong with our l= ives and the world. We pour out to= God our litany of woes, and you know what?&nbs= p; God listens. It’= s OK, because our God is a big God, and he has been hearing the complaints of his people for millennia. God can= take it.

Even in the Bible, we = hear prayers of complaint over and over again.&= nbsp; Many of the Psalms contain complaints. Moses complained to God about the stiff-necked Hebrews. Elijah complained to God about the hardship and persecution he suffered. And the prophet Habakkuk starts of= f his book complaining to God.

Understand that Habakk= uk lived in a troubled time in the history of = Judah, which was the southern ki= ngdom of Israel. Internally, they were being ruled = by a series of weak kings. Externa= lly, the Babylonian horde was descending upon them from the north. Clearly the days of Judah w= ere numbered. So Habakkuk wails t= o God: “O Lord, how long shall I cry= for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing = and look at trouble? Destruction = and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justi= ce never prevails.”[1] Habakkuk’s complaint rises to God.

Having issued the chal= lenge, then the prophet climbs up to a high place and sits down to wait for the Lo= rd to answer him: “I will keep w= atch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”[2] I think it’s really interesting that when Habakkuk hits the hard times, the first one he goes t= o is God. For many of us, when we = hit the rough places, the first thing we give up on is God. Habakkuk doesn’t quit believ= ing; he doesn’t quit practicing his faith. He goes directly to God for answer= s.

And God does answer, doesn’t he? He says, “Write the vision; make it plain= on tablets, so that a runner may read it.&nbs= p; For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it = seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”= = [3] The promise had been made, bu= t it had not been fulfilled. The p= romise of peace, the promise of prosperity, the promise of the Kingdom of God—Habakkuk had heard of it, but he had not seen it.&n= bsp; He was still waiting for fulfillment.

Sometimes there is a l= ong time between the vision and the fulfillment. One of the most recognizable symbo= ls of our nation, the Washingto= n Monument, almost ne= ver got built. It was the dream o= f an architect named Robert Mills, who presented the plans in 1836 to the fledgl= ing Washington National Monument Society. It was a big dream—555 feet of granite, the tallest structure = in the world at that time.

But funds came in so s= lowly that construction on the monument did not even start until twelve years later. Then the engineers discovered that the ground would not support the weight of the monument, so= it had to be dismantled and moved to a new site. Work proceeded slowly, and then a = series of acts of vandalism in 1854 stopped progress altogether. Robert Mills, the architect, died = the next year, with the monument looking like a squat, ugly, 150-foot stump.

But his vision did not die. Twenty-five years later, forty-four years after Mills’ plan was adopted, work resumed on the monument. Four years later it= was capped off. And today the Washington Monument stands as = the tallest masonry structure in the world, visited by over a million people a year.= [4]

Sometimes there is a l= ong time between dream and fulfillment, and in the meantime, we have to go on living. Habakkuk lived in the meantime. We spend most of our lives in the meantime, too, somewhere between the dream and its fulfillment. So how do we live where we are? How do we live = in the meantime? Habakkuk gets the a= nswer from God. God answers his pra= yer of complaint. God tells him how = to live by faith.

Let me put it like thi= s: “The righteous by their faith= shall live.”[5] Whatever order you put the wo= rds in, this is one of the most significant verses in the whole Bible. It is picked up and repeated in th= e New Testament several times, and it forms the basis of our understanding of salvation. “The righteous by their faith shall live”; what does that mean?

“The righteous” are those who are in a rig= ht relationship with God. ItR= 17;s not about how many good things you’ve done, and it’s not about = how any bad things you have not done. It’s all about our relationship with our heavenly Father. We come into that relationship when= we confess our sins, ask Jesus Christ to be our Savior, and give our heart to him. Righteousness simply mea= ns living in relationship with God.

John Guest, in an arti= cle called “Only a Prayer Away,” describes such a relationship: “Just as husband and wife live out their lives against the backdrop of being married, so do we live out the entirety of our lives against the back= drop of a constant relationship with God. He is always there, always loving us, always ready to listen to us.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> As we recognize his unwavering commitment to us, we are able to live in the day to day adventure and chall= enge of his presence. We enjoy the dialogue. It’s as if we= say, ‘Oh, I must talk to him about this!’”[6]

One of the things I heard both my mother and my mother-in-law say shortly after the deaths of their husbands was that somet= hing would happen in the day, and they would involuntarily think, “Oh, I n= eed to tell my husband that!” Then they would realize with fresh pain that their husbands weren’t around= to talk to any more. The good ne= ws is, God never leaves. He is always there for us. We can always l= ive in relationship with him. That&#= 8217;s righteousness.

“The righteous by= their faith shall live.” Our relationship with = God is built on faith. What is faith= ? Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as R= 20;the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is belief in spite of evidenc= e to the contrary or lack of evidence. Faith is belief in the meantime between vision and fulfillment.=

If you had predicted i= n the summer of 1995 that the Northwestern University Wildcat football team would play in the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1996, people would not have called you a person of faith. They would h= ave called you a fool. Northweste= rn had the worst record in college football. They were a small, academically demanding school competing with some= of the great football powerhouses of the nation—<= st1:City w:st=3D"on">Michigan State, Ohio State, Notre Dame. They were a perennial laughingstock.

But Coach Gary Barnett= took his team to the Rose Bowl that year. He began with summer practice, instilling the goal in his players. He ordered a Rose Bowl flag to fly= over the field house, and he kept a fresh rose on his desk every day of the season. At the very first team meeting of the summer, he told the boys that they needed belief without evidence. They had no evidenc= e that Northwestern could play football. If they were going to compete, they needed first to believe they could compete. “You know what that’s called?” he said. “That’s faith.”[7]

But faith has to do wi= th the heart as much as the head. It= is more than just intellectual belief. It is trust. It is dep= endence upon God. Faith means living = in the arms of your loving heavenly Father, trusting in him and depending on him a= nd following him. Peggy Briscoe,= a British preacher, remembers being six years old during the Battle of Britai= n in World War II. The bombing of = London was so sev= ere that her parents took Peggy and escaped the city. Secluded in a cabin in the country= , they were pelted one night by a thunderstorm.&n= bsp; Frightened by the storm, yet also aware of a much larger storm called war erupting all over the world, Peggy was anxious and upset.

Her father sensed her feelings and put down his newspaper and said, “Come here, little girl.” When Peggy crawl= ed up in her daddy’s arms, she could feel the beating of his heart. Suddenly the threat of the storm a= nd the war faded away, and she felt safe and warm and happy again.

In the stormy times si= nce World War II, Peggy Briscoe remembered her earthly father and realized that= her heavenly Father loved her even more. When she grieved over her mother’s death, when she was threate= ned with violence for doing street evangelism, when she anxiously awaited the doctor’s diagnosis, she sensed her heavenly Father saying, “Come here, little girl.” She= said, “As I rest in that safe place knowing that my Father is bigger than a= ny storm that beats against the window pane of my life, I can watch the rains = and listen to the thunder, knowing that everything is going to be all right. Here I can feel the beat of my Father’s heart.”[8] That’s faith.

“The righteous by their faith shall live.” This is the good news. A relationship with God built on faith brings us life—life abundant now= and life eternal forever. This is= the vision that awaits its time—the Kingdom of God. But we don’t have to wait un= til the end of time to truly live. We can do that now! We can exper= ience life in its fullness. We can = have salvation!

We can live with confi= dence day by day, despite any troubles we face.&= nbsp; In the Letter to the Hebrews, the writer quotes the prophet Habakkuk, encouraging his readers: “Do = not therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings great reward. For you need endurance, so that wh= en you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet ‘in a very little whi= le, the one who is coming will come and will not delay; but my righteous one wi= ll live by faith. My soul takes = no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back.’ But we are not among those who shr= ink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.̶= 1;= = [9] We can live with confiden= ce in the meantime between promise and fulfillment, because we are already tasting the reward God is giving us. =

So even in the midst o= f a devastating situation, the prophet Habakkuk can live by faith. Even in the midst of the most devastating situations of our lives, we can also live by faith. Habakkuk begins with a complaint, = but he closes his book of prophecy with this beautiful expression of faith:

Though the fig tree does not blossom,

And no fruit is on the vine;

Though the produce of the olive fails

And the field yields no food;

Though the flock is cut off from the fold

And there is no herd in the stalls,

[In other words, though everything in the world goes to pieces]

Yet [what a huge little word!] I will rejoice= in the Lord;

I will exult in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my strength;

He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

And makes me tread upon the heights.[10] =

That is the victory fo= r the meantime. That is the victory= of faith. That is the victory of= God!

Let me close with a st= ory about a football game on a balmy October afternoon in 1982. It wasn’t Northwestern, but = it was nearly as bad. It was Badger stadium on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In those days the team was horrible, yet sixty thousand die-hard Bad= ger fans had jammed the stadium to see their team sacrificed to the Michigan St= ate Spartans. As the score became= more lopsided, a strange thing began to happen.= At odd moments, a cheer and applause would erupt from the Wisconsin crowd.&n= bsp; With no apparent connection to the game, there would be shouts of joy from the stands. <= /span>

How could they cheer w= hen their team was losing miserably? Because at the same time, seventy miles away, the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team was beating the St. Louis Cardinals in game three of the 1982 World Series. Half the football fans were listening to th= e baseball game on their radios, and= they were responding to what was happening in Milwaukee, not in Madison. They were not limited by their phy= sical circumstances; they were celebrating a distant victory.= [11]

Our ultimate victory w= ill happen someplace other than here, when we enter the Kingdom of heaven and f= ully experience the victory of eternal life.&nb= sp; But we can enjoy that victory today by faith—faith in the visi= on God has given us, faith that God will work it out, even if he does not use = our timetable. We can trust in our relationship with him, and we can celebrate the life we know through Jesus Christ. That’s how we t= ouch heaven today! Amen!