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Hello my “Walking with Jesus” Friends,
Have you noticed the date today? December 7. It’s amazing to me how often God has aligned a significant event in history with today’s date, as we are on this exciting ‘walk with Jesus’ journey through the Bible. I don’t really plan it, God seems to orchestrate it, and it has happened again today!
Does December 7 mean anything special to you? 79 years ago December 7 was a Sunday, and much of Europe was embroiled in war as the German Nazi war machine was sweeping through Europe like an unstoppable plague. Hundreds of cities and towns had been destroyed, thousands of people killed or taken captive. While the world didn’t fully recognize it yet, concentration camps and gas chambers were being constructed by the Nazi’s and a horrific plan was underway to rid the world of every living Jewish person, and many other people of certain ethnicities. Today we call it the Holocaust, and oh may we never forget it!!
Suddenly, on December 7, 1941 everything changed, as Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and America was forced into what quickly became the great second World War. As you look around our world today my friends, what has changed in 79 years? What lessons have we learned, what progress has been made? This year of 2020 we’ve been fighting another global war called Coronavirus. The first case was discovered in China one year ago this week. Today we will likely surpass 64 Million cases and 1.5 Million deaths worldwide in the past 12 months!
Let’s turn the clock back, beyond December 7, 1941, all the way to 609bc and the city of Jerusalem. As always, we’re looking to see what God can teach us from His Word, which He will apply to our day. 2 Chronicles 35:20-27 are the closing comments about the life of king Josiah, who had become king of Judah at age 8 and led the people in the greatest societal reformation and spiritual revival in many decades. We’ve looked at that these past few days.
In 612bc, the Babylonian armies had marched north and conquered the grand city of Nineveh. It was shocking, since that city seemed invincible, and the collapse of the Assyrian Empire had begun. Three years later, in 609bc those Babylonian armies marched west from smoldering Nineveh, and just as the Nazi’s had done across Europe, the Babylonians conquered town after town, across vast regions, approaching Carchemish where a final great battle would take place determining who would be the dominant world power for the next century!
Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, fearing Egypt would eventually be conquered by one or the other of these two great global powers, led his army north, planning to side with Assyria in an attempt to defeat the Babylonians. But to reach Carchemish the Egyptian army needed to march right by Jerusalem, through the length of Israel. King Josiah and his small Israeli army tried to stop them, but to no avail and the glorious season of Josiah’s reign came to an end with Josiah’s death on the battlefield of Megiddo, (2 Chronicles 35:20-29) which by the way, is the same wide plane the foretold final battle of all time, Armageddon, will one day take place. (Rev. 16:16)
Notice this brief commentary from 2 Chronicles 35:24 “Josiah was buried in the tombs of his fathers [the kings], and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for him. Jeremiah, the prophet of God, composed laments for Josiah and to this day all the men and women singers commemorate Josiah in these laments. These became a tradition in Israel…” These ‘laments’ of Jeremiah are not his writings which we have in the Bible as the book of Lamentations. Lamentations are other ‘laments’ or poems/songs of grieving which Jeremiah wrote in the subsequent years as he brought God’s messages of warning to the people of Judah, as after Josiah’s death they once again turned away from God, and God finally brought upon Jerusalem and Judah the judgment He had promised. I’ll share more with you about lessons we can learn from Jeremiah in days to come. For today, let’s hear another voice speaking to us from those fateful days around Josiah’s death. His perspective will help us in December 2020, as we look at our world.
As God has often done in history, God raised up several people to speak truth, wisdom and hope to God’s people as war raged all around them in those years around 609bc. First you may remember it was Mr. Nahum who encouraged the people of Jerusalem with news that their primary adversary Assyria was going to be judged by God with the attack of the Babylonians and Nineveh would be destroyed. Then, it was Jeremiah and he would be God’s spokesman for more than 40 years. And now a new voice, Mr. Habakkuk!
It may take you a few moments to find the little book of Habakkuk near the end of your Old Testament, but it will be worth the search, I promise! I wonder if this sounds like how you feel sometimes as you read global news these days: “How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but YOU do not listen? Or I cry out ‘Violence!’ but you do not save? Why do You make me look at injustice? Why do You tolerate wrong, O God? Destruction and violence are everywhere around me; there is strife and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails…” (Habakkuk 1:1-4)
You’ve heard the accusation against God many times, I’m sure. “If there really is a God, and if He is holy and loving, how then could He possibly allow such evil, such suffering, such violence and wrongdoing all over the world?” I wonder how you have responded to such questions, my friends?
The short, three chapters of Habakkuk are actually the record of a conversation between Mr. Habakkuk and God. Habakkuk brings his complaints, his hard questions, his concerns for the world to God and he waits. God then answers and Habakkuk listens and ponders. Then, after a while, Habakkuk brings more questions, and he waits. God answers again. Habakkuk listens carefully to God’s response and he ponders.
May I ask… have you done that? Are you confident enough in your relationship with God that you can bring to God the really hard questions about life, maybe even questions so difficult you can’t find the words to adequately express how you really feel?
Do you remember what Jesus said “Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take MY yoke upon you and learn from Me…”(Matt. 11:28) As we are ‘walking with Jesus’, honestly now… is this your experience or do you feel distant from God, maybe even afraid of God? Let Mr. Habakkuk help us in this. . .
Finally, in response to God, Mr. Habakkuk records his powerful prayer of adoration, praise, and submission to Almighty, Holy, Sovereign God, in the face of global warfare and great suffering all around him. May I urge you to read all three short chapters, slowly, imagining you are sitting alongside Mr. Habakkuk as he surveys his global landscape around 609bc… the death of a wonderful king Josiah; the smoldering ruins of the great city of Nineveh; the huge armies of Babylon sweeping across what we know today as ‘the middle east’; the Assyrian army awaiting them at Carchemish, and Egypt’s armies heading north through Israel, to a gigantic military clash of three great military powers.
Listen to a little of Habakkuk’s conclusion after much reflection…I urge us to own this for ourselves on this December 7, 2020, as our eyes and minds ponder the news of our day: “LORD, I have heard of Your fame; I stand in awe of Your deeds, O LORD. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known, and in Your wrath, remember mercy… Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pens and no cattle in the stalls, yet I WILL REJOICE in the LORD, I WILL BE JOYFUL in God my Savior.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength… HE enables me to go on…” (Habakkuk 3:2,17-19)
God invites us, my friends, all around the world, to assume this posture. To hold so tightly to the greatness of our God, the faithfulness of God, the truthfulness of His Word and His promises, and finally the never ending certainty of JESUS Christ as our Savior and Lord, present with us by the power of His Holy Spirit alive in God’s people!
Do Paul’s words echo in your mind just now… “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Jesus, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? Christ Jesus who died, more than that who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through HIM who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Romans 8:32-39)
Do I hear a global AMEN chorus rising up in every language all around the world, as we join our voices with both Mr. Habakkuk and Paul in our strong, confident, declarations of the assurance we have in Jesus Christ… regardless of the circumstances around us?
I’ve brought this song to you once before, and I invite you to worship with it once again. In my mind I can see hundreds, maybe thousands of you all around the world joining with me in worship of our great, timeless, glorious Jesus Christ! Here are some of the lyrics…
“What is our hope, in life and death? CHRIST ALONE, Christ alone!
What is our only confidence? That our souls to HIM belong!
Who holds our days within His hands, what comes apart from His command?
And what will keep us to the end? The Love of Christ in which we stand!
O sing Hallelujah, Our hope springs eternal,
O sing Hallelujah, now and ever we confess:
Christ our hope in Life and death!”
Click to read today’s chapters: Habakkuk 1; Habakkuk 2; Habakkuk 3. (At the top you can choose a different translation.)
NEW FEATURE: Click here to listen to a dramatized reading of Habakkuk 1; Habakkuk 2; Habakkuk 3.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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