Habakkuk: The Solution to Disappointment, Discouragement, Depression and Despair

Habakkuk: Embracing Providence and Choosing Joy: The Solution to Disappointment, Discouragement, Depression and Despair

Introduction: Read 1:1-4:
Bill Gothard once described disappointment as “God’s way of dimming the glamour of the world and deepening our ability to enjoy Him.” J. O. Fraser, the missionary to China wrote, “All discouragement is of the devil. [It] is to be resisted just like sin. To give way to the one is just as bad and weakens us as much as to give way to the other.” Martyn Lloyd Jones said that “a depressed Christian is a contradiction in terms.” He added, they are “a poor recommendation for the Christian faith.” Satan’s goal is to bring God’s people to the place of despair so that he can say to the unbeliever, “Do you want to be like that?”

I think many Christians struggle with the four D’s. People experience the four D’s for many reasons: failed expectations about life, career, family, mates; people’s words, or people have always let them down; nothing’s ever gone their way; business ventures failed; layoffs, their favourite hockey team never makes the playoffs; their health is failing; their things are always breaking; their bills are always piling….

Pastor’s are not immune to the four D’s either: his church is not as big as the one down the road; he’s always having to replace members when they move away; attendance is down; sermons seem more like exercises in scholarship than Spirit empowered prophetic Words of God; members can be critical without even knowing it; people die; people get sick; everyone else seems to be getting rich in their secular careers….
We can’t change the providence of God, but Habakkuk offers us the solution to the problem of the four D’s, which I call “embracing the providence of God and choosing joy.” Let me explain how; but first, let me introduce our prophet du jour.

Habakkuk’s name fittingly means “one who embraces”. He is not known outside of this book, but it is clear from the inscription that he was probably fairly well known at the time of its writing. He prophesied during the turbulent 7th century BC, at a time when ancient empires of Egypt and Assyria were crumbling and alliances were failing and new and more insidious enemies were advancing on the horizon of the Judean hills. He was a contemporary of Jeremiah and Ezekiel who shared the ministry of preaching the coming destruction and captivity of Israel.

I. Three Complaints:
Habakkuk contains three questions of the Lord- three complaints and closes with a Hymn. His first complaint we already read in vv. 1 to 4 is a complaint about the iniquity of violence. His complaint echoes the complaint of so many of the Psalms, as well as the complaints of Job and Ecclesiastes: “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer.” And not only that, but the wicked have the power over the righteous to enslave and do violence to them. This is a question even in our day. Why does China enslave Tibet? Why do the terrorists have the bombs and the peaceful man must cower? Why does a wicked man kill three innocent children?

And God’s only answer to Habakkuk’s question is that it is only going to get worse… much worse.

And so Habakkuk complains a second time in 1:13 and he appeals to God’s holiness this time saying,
You are of purer eyes than to behold evil,
And cannot look on wickedness.
Why do You look on those who deal treacherously,
And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours
A person more righteous than he? (1:13)

And the Lord answers again as though he were answering Job and saying, “who are you to question me?” God responds to Habakkuk with five woes in chapter 2:6 to 19 and then He concludes in v. 20,
Nevertheless, the Lord is in His holy temple.
Let all the earth keep silence before Him.

God also makes this important theological claim in 2:4 and if you blink you may miss it; but this obscure verse transformed the face of Christianity; it is the heart of the gospel: “The Just shall live by faith.” And Habakkuk get’s it. 700 years before Jesus and his apostles turned the Roman Empire upside down with it; 2000 years before Martin Luther’s reformation restored it to the gospel; Habakkuk is transformed by this truth; it’s as if he is born again and he is truly justified as his testimony demonstrates in 3:17 in his hymn of faith:
17 Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
18 Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
19 The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills.

II. Things that Discourage:
In verse 17, Habakkuk explains the things that can discourage:

1. The fig tree may not produce. When I read this I always think of Jesus in the gospel, towards the end of his ministry, when he came to the fig tree for a fig and found no fruit. In the gospel the fig tree is a metaphor for Israel. Jesus could have been discouraged by Israel’s outright contempt towards their long desired deliver and he could have thrown his hands up and walked away; but he was obedient even unto death and as a result, the father has given him a bride that is made up of billions more people from every tribe and nation and tongue.

We all have unfulfilled expectations- they can cause us to want to give up; but I think what God wants is for us to persevere. Some of the greatest missionaries often went years and decades without seeing a single convert. One of the earliest missionaries to Korea was stoned to death by the man who later became a missionary himself and today Korea sends missionaries all over the world.

2. The Vine represents the grape which was used for wine. Wine was used to purify water as well as for celebrations, like the wedding at Cana of Galillee. Maybe the celebrations of life- the weddings and the feasts- have failed to bring you the joy they once promised. The vine may not produce wine, but Jesus showed that he could even turn water into wine if we ask.
3. The Olive was often used for anointing and as a medicine. Maybe your medications aren’t keeping up with your illnesses. Maybe modern medicine has failed and you are left to depend on prayer.

Pharmacies are full of snake oils; pills that promise to do everything from restoring your hair to removing unwanted fat to making you more muscular. But these are just vanities. There’s nothing wrong with wanting more hair and less fat, but he have a far greater- by his stripes we are healed. One day we will be raised in spirit body that will no longer ache from disease nor will it ever produce tears of despair.

4. And then the fields and the farm; they may also fail to yield. This is our labour, our livelihoods, our toil. Sometimes we can work for years at a ministry or a church or a mission field or a career or a school and just feel like we’re spinning our tires.

I’ve experienced that in my ministry: sometimes I look at my work with the eyes of the world and question the value and than encouragement will come to me from the place I least expected it. People will tell me how something I said or did meant so much to them and- to be honest with you- I did not even intend to do it.

As Christians we do not just labour for temporal things. We labour for things that do not rust, nor moth destroy, nor thief steal. Those things that we labour for are safely stored away in heavens treasury. But like everything that is stored in a safe, it can be forgotten- out of sight, our of mind. Don’t lose sight of the treasures you have stored- they are still there.
III. The Solution
But in spite of that or maybe because of that because it is the providence of God, Habakkuk says,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.

Habakkuk embraces providence. It’s like Job who asked “shall I accept good from the Lord and not calamity also?” And Paul testified to this truth saying, “whether I am rich or poor, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Habakkuk puts his behaviour ahead of his feelings, he does first and then feels. He chooses the verb and the adjective follows; he rejoices and then he experiences joy.

To rejoice does not mean empty or vague happiness like the song son’t worry be happy. Rejoicing means worshipping. It means recalling all of the Lord’s goodness to us and all his times of deliverance and then offering up joyful praise and thanksgiving to God even in… especially in the most desperate, discouraging and depressing times. It means singing and even shouting to God; being undignified before men:
Let the saints be joyful in glory;
Let them sing aloud on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,

And proverbs 23:16 says, “Yes, my inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak right things.”

And then the result is that we take joy in God- what this means is that we go round about with excitement- an excitement that comes from expectation that the Lord is our deliverer, that he promises to work all things together for good, that every good and perfect gift comes from the Lord and He’s already proven Himself worthy of that claim.

This joy is infectious- it results from testimonies and openly rejoicing before unbelievers and scoffers as well as encouraging other believers.

IV. God’s Part
And God does his part too, Habakkuk says that
The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills.

Last week I talked about Nahum’s beautiful feet; this week is almost a sequal to Nahum; not only do our feet become beautiful, but God also makes them strong and swift like a deer. This is the essence of what God said in 2:4, “The Just shall live by faith.” Our justification will be our strength and make us swift and sure footed in rocky crags of adversity. Macarthur comments,
As the sure-footed deer scaled the precipitous mountain heights without slipping, so Habakkuk’s faith in the Lord enabled him to endure the hardships of the imminent invasion, and all of his perplexing questions.[1]

It reminds of what Paul says in Phil 2:12-13
…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13
In other words, choose to rejoice, choose to embrace the providence of God. And we have this promise in the very next verse
…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

Conclusion
So if you are discouraged this morning, don’t let the devil have the victory. Choose joy, choose victory, choose to rejoice.

Notes:
[1]MacArthur, J. J. (1997, c1997). The MacArthur Study Bible. Nashville: Word Pub.