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Chuck Smith :: Sermon Notes for Habakkuk 3:17, 18

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"JUMPING FOR JOY"
Intro: Striking contrast between condition and experience condition described, utter desolation - experience Jubilation.
I. HE DID NOT BEGIN ON THIS LEVEL 1:2-4.
A. He saw the violence and anarchy.
1. Things are deteriorating, and you're not doing anything about it.
B. God assures him that He is working vs. 5.
1. "If I told you, you would not believe."
2. God was to bring the Chaldeans as instruments of judgment.
a. To Habakkuk this did not seem fair.
C. Habakkuk retreated to the tower to wait and see.
1. While there was no God shared with him a secret to help sustain him.
a. "The puffed up on earth will be destroyed, but the just shall live by faith. "
D. A prayer of Habakkuk Chapter 3.
1. "I have heard thy speech and was afraid, keep alive thy works."
E. In communion with God, he now looked beyond present calamity, to God.
1. Secret of strength.
2. Too often we get completely bound up in our situations.
3. He began to look at God's power in history.
a. Though everything was destroyed, God was able to create all that is necessary to sustain life.
1. Manna, water from rock, quail.
2. Elijah under juniper tree, angel fed him.
b. God can multiply our little and make it last.
1. The widow's barrel of meat and cruse of oil.
2. The shoes in wilderness.
c. If necessary, God could sustain without food.
F. Everything else may fail, but God will not fail.
1. God has resources of which we know nothing.
2. Our point of panic is when we can't see.
The desolation described 3:17.
II. THE JOY OF HIS EXPERIENCE.
A. His knowledge produced confidence and his confidence produced joy.
1. "I will rejoice in the Lord." Lit. "Jump for joy."
2. "I will joy in the God of my salvation." (spin around.)
a. We have experienced this joy when all is going well.
1. We just received a raise.
2. Our team just scored touchdown.
b. How about:
1. We just got fired.
2. The referee called it back.
3. "Rejoice in the Lord."
a. Not in circumstances, they can change.
b. Just received check for $50,000 building fund - YIPPEE. It bounced - gloom.
III. HOW DID HE COME TO THIS PLACE OF VICTORY?
A. Started with honest doubt. Don't be angry with Him.
1. It's only the man of faith that can doubt.
a. If God does not exist, everything fixed and mechanical, 2+2=4; 4+4=8; You live, you die.
2. He did not start a society for doubters.
a. He took his doubts not to friends but to God.
B. He retreated to the tower to wait on God.
1. Simplest commands hardest to keep.
a. "Rest in the Lord."
b. "Stand still."
c. "Fret not thyself."
2. While waiting on God he was not delivered from desolation, but given secret of God to sustain him through desolation.
a. "The just shall live by faith."
b. God's word brought true victory and rejoicing.
May God lift our vision above our circumstances that we might look upon Him, the master of circumstances. He has infinite resources more than sufficient for your need.
Sermon Notes for Habakkuk 3:17, 18 ← Prior Section
Sermon Notes for Habakkuk 3:17-19 Next Section →
Sermon Notes for Nahum 1:7 ← Prior Book
Sermon Notes for Zephaniah 3:14-17 Next Book →
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