When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops. - Habakkuk 3:16

When God Says It’s Enough

Heeding the Warning – 3:16-19 is Habakkuk’s response to God’s prophecy of the utter destruction of Israel as a nation. He is responding by stating his faith. In that faith, he will find rest in the terrible day of God judgment.

Back in chapter 2 God said, Habakkuk 2:2 And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. God was giving a warning, to the faithful, to those who live by faith and know the word of God.

When Habakkuk sees the future of his nation, Israel, he is filled with a terror so great that it makes him physically and emotionally ill. Habakkuk 3:16 When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble

And Habakkuk was listening to God’s warning, He believed God’s warning and he was stating that he would turn to God and do what God said, v16 “that I might rest in the day of trouble.”

Habakkuk describes what he saw and understood in the next verse. Habakkuk 3:17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:

Because of God’s judgment upon Israel’s sin, everything the people of Israel count on to sustain themselves and survive, would be gone.

When the Babylonians arrive, like a plague of locusts, the invading armies take what they, and what they don’t want they destroy. The nation's wealth, their heritage in the Temple, the hope for prosperity in the future and their survival as a nation is at destroyed. How can any survive? How can the righteous survive?

Habakkuk says, It is by faith, hearing and heeding God’s warning and then living by faith to find hope and rest in the day of trouble.

None of us are prophets, we can't see as Habakkuk did, the problems even the catastrophes that are coming our way.  I don’t have to be a prophet to know that this world is filled with sin and evil. We know what God does about sin and rebellion against Him as our Creator and God. Judgment is coming. We read of it in the book of Revelation, and that vision  should scare us as Habakkuk scared him. In fact, what John saw in his vision on Patmos is much worse than what any Old Testament prophet saw.

 Nor does God’s punishment of sin and sin’s consequences wait until the rapture and the opening of the 7 seals of the scroll of Revelation. Sin is all around us and so is the judgment of sin. And that also should make us tremble like Habakkuk.

I could fill the rest of our time and every sermon from now until the end of the year with examples of sin and its consequences, rebellion and its punishment by God.

One of the worst thing about sin is that its consequences don’t always stop with just the person sinning. Alcoholic fathers destroy their families. Sexual sins like adultery, pornography, homosexuality and transsexuality devastate lives, the future and result in broken families and even destroyed nations.

Sin by its very nature is against God’s creation and so it tries to destroy what God has made.

James 1:16-18 Do not err, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

What James says in the positive is true in the negative, “Every evil and imperfect gift cometh from the Father of lies, in who there is no stability neither hope of light. Of his will he destroys us with the words of deceit that we should be the corruption of God’s creation.

What is our recourse in the day of trouble?

What was Habakkuk’s? You heed the warnings in His word and you “walk by faith” as God told Habakkuk. That faith, real faith, working, walking and willing faith is the only thing that will make the difference when the day of trouble comes.

The Psalmist said it this way in Psalms 46:1-5  God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.