We're gonna look at Habakkuk three, but before we do that, let's take a moment to settle our hearts, especially mine. Seek the Lord and ask him to help us. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful to be here as your people gather together for the Sunday school hour. Looking forward to the wonderful time of worshiping you with the church when it gathers in the coming hour. Lord, we're looking at your word. and we're mindful that we are but dust, we are frail creatures so fraught with sin and we need you, we need your help and we need your spirit in order to understand your word rightly. So to that end we ask that you would equip us and forgive us of any sins which we may even be ignorant of that would keep us from being in right relationship with you and rejuvenate us by your spirit that we would be able to perceive your word rightly, that we'd be able to see you rightly in it and be shaped into the image of our Lord and Savior. It's in his name we pray, amen.

All right, I don't have a display for us. So we're gonna look at Habakkuk three. All I would have written down would have been, just an outline, so you're just gonna get that from me in verbal form. We're gonna divide this into three parts, okay? So we're gonna look at verse two as the first part, one and two, and then verses three to 15, and then verses 16 to 19.

Now, we live today in days where, I don't think this is just the doom and gloom that is on the news cycle. I think everyone has a sense that things are just bad. Wickedness seems to have really broken out in some really extreme kind of in-your-face ways. We saw this especially in the previous administration at a federal level, which was really being pushed by the federal government. I'm not gonna say that this government is necessarily more sanctified or anything, though there's certainly a desire to bring about to judge by the law that there wasn't in the previous administration. And looking at the world around us in the Western civilization and what was formerly the Christianized West, things are just dark. And there's a sense of, I think we can identify a little bit with Habakkuk, even though we're not members of a covenant nation, the covenant nation of Israel, we can identify with Habakkuk when we look at the world around us and say, Lord, there's violence all around. There's injustice all around. There's what feels like the wholesale annihilation of the unborn constantly. And there's sexual perversion that's just rampant. And depending on what court system you're in, there's really no hope of justice. So there's a sense in which you can cry out with a backache, Lord, how long?

And the solution to that, to the feeling, to that weight that we have on us, is not to say, well, good news, he's gonna bring the Babylonians in. I guess for us, if it was to the north, he's gonna bring the Canadians in. But the solution's not, look at how he is going to bring an invading force to destroy us, because that wasn't even the solution that the Lord gave Habakkuk. The solution the Lord gave Habakkuk was, I am working. That's the solution. And that's where we also can rest because the Lord is working.

So Habakkuk chapter three. is Habakkuk's response after he's posed the first question of, Lord, how long will I call for help and you will not hear? I cry out violence, yet you do not save. That's chapter one, verse two. Then the Lord's saying, I'm raising up a people to bring about my judgment, and that's the Chaldeans. And then Habakkuk's saying, but hold on a minute. They're worse than us. So isn't it evil for you to use evil to judge a more righteous people? And won't that reflect on the Lord? And he has that phrase there where he says in verse 13 of chapter one, your eyes are too pure to approve evil and you cannot look on wickedness with favor. In other words, if you're using the Chaldeans to judge us and you're increasing Chaldean dominance in the world, but they're totally wicked. I mean, they think that they do everything in their own power and they worship their own power. They worship their own military might. Sounds kind of like us. Then isn't that, doesn't that somehow, bring some sort of stain on you is the tension that Habakkuk is feeling.

And the Lord says in verse four of chapter two, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith. The New Testament uses that. in a, certainly in a way that's in a total agreement with this context, but I think Habakkuk is emphasizing, or the Lord is emphasizing in this verse in the book of Habakkuk, that a righteous person trusts the Lord. So there's sort of this, you'd call it, the Greek grammar word would be the nomic use, which is just a general principle. It's a characteristic. And so a righteous person is one who trusts. The New Testament, if I'm remembering rightly, will use this to highlight that initial moment of faith. But that's not, it's not as though that emphasis somehow excludes that a righteous person trusts for his whole life or her whole life. Okay, so just if there's some tension there.

There's a lot of times there's theologically liberal scholars who will look at those kind of things and say, that's a contradiction, see, we can't trust the New Testament, totally reinterprets the old, which is just bonkers garbage, okay? Just don't listen to that. So the righteous one trusts the Lord and obeys. The Lord then goes on to explain more about how he will judge the wicked nation who's going to judge Israel. So there's this hope that you can have in the Lord's working. because it's not like he's done working and it's not after the Babylonians come in and destroy. He's protecting and working with his people and we know from history that the Babylonian Empire existed really only for the time of Israel's captivity. And they were a people that were especially brutal. Yes, I don't think they were quite as brutal as the Assyrians, but they were not a godly people by any means, but the Lord used them for the judgment of his people and also the protection and salvation of his people.

And we'll see that that's actually an answer to Habakkuk's prayer in chapter three. So chapter three then, is Habakkuk's response where he's saying, where he's praying. And it's really, this is a psalm. This is really how we should understand this. This is a, it's a song.

You can see this in verse one of chapter three, a prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, according to the Shigionot. I don't remember what psalms, I didn't write down. I should have, which psalms have that, a version of that word. And at the very last verse, the very last phrase, Bottom of verse 19 says, for the choir director on my stringed instruments.

So chapter three is a psalm, doesn't belong in the book of psalms, but it's a psalm that is written by Habakkuk in response to knowing how evil his days are and how the Lord will Avenge, let's say bring vengeance on the wicked and protect the righteous.

So this chapter might not be what you immediately think of when you think of Habakkuk. I'm not gonna tell you it should be, but I'm gonna tell you it's really useful. It's very helpful because when we look at the dark world around us and we cry out to the Lord and we know the Lord has promised in his word that every deed will come into judgment Every word said in secret will be brought to light and will be judged.

And the Lord will certainly avenge himself against the wicked and protect his people. We expect glorification in the kingdom at the Lord's return. All those things are true. And while we're waiting for that, what do we do? I think this chapter tells us.

So here's those three sections again. And I'm gonna just say this, this is how to respond to dark times, or how to respond in dark times. First, ask God to act. Okay, that's verse two. Lord, I have heard the report about you and I fear. O Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy or compassion. He's petitioning the Lord to not just act in judgment, but to act in salvation. 

Okay. Um, When he talks about this, I have heard the report. The report is probably what has been mentioned in the first two chapters of the book, where the Lord has answered him twice, talking about what he's going to do. And those really help us to see that God's ways are not our ways. His works are higher than ours. His wisdom is unsearchable. His ways past finding out, I'm just pulling from any Bible phrase that comes to mind along that theme. We don't see what's happening and understand all of the inner workings and how all the pieces fit together. All we see is what's happening, right? 

But the Lord is working in each and every circumstance. And we see that, this is what I emphasized a couple weeks ago, where I was saying the Lord is absolutely sovereign. He's the one who has decreed whatsoever comes to pass, and he's the one who brings it about, brings about his decrees. He exercises his decrees in the works of creation and providence. The Baptist catechism, probably very similar to the Westminster, shorter or larger catechism. It says this in question and answer 10 and 14. Here's question answer 10. Question, what are the decrees of God? Answer, the decrees of God are his eternal purpose according to the counsel of his will, whereby for his own glory he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. I think that's word for word how the Westminster puts it. 

Question answer 14. What are God's works of providence? God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions. So that's this, the catechism itself, it's a statement of biblical doctrine, of Christian doctrine. And when we think of the Lord working, behind, we might say behind the scenes, right? It's what's not visible to us. We just see the play, what's on stage, but there's all these workings backstage, right? And above to bring in all the different things and to bring in all the set pieces and everything. We don't know what's all waiting for us. We're just watching the show as it plays scene by scene. But behind all of it, is the Lord working to bring about his good purpose. And his good purpose includes the salvation of sinners. His good purpose includes the judgment of the wicked. His good purpose includes overall the declaration and display of his own glory. Think of how in Ezekiel he says, for my own namesake, I will do this. And then over and over again, then you will know that I am the Lord. Then you will know that I am the Lord. Then they will know that I am the Lord. That phrase repeats over and over again throughout the book of Ezekiel.

So when we're asking, you know, what is God doing? And we're seeing the world, you know, we see these little glimmers of good in the world, but mostly it just looks evil and more and more evil each and every day. The answer is the Lord is accomplishing his purposes. And when we can see that, and looking through scripture, especially through the Old Testament, helps us see that, and that's what Habakkuk's gonna do here in the next section.

It causes us to just sort of sit back in awe and wonder and realize it's not like God's left his throne. The evil I see in the news cycle, or on the social media post or whatever. The wickedness that just sort of breaks forth all of a sudden and captivates everybody across the nation. Think of like a 9-11 style calamity. Or even a Hurricane Katrina, where that's not a person doing that, that's natural forces, which is, that's an act of God, right? Was it an insurance that they used to classify those things as acts of God? So we even just had that in our vocabulary, in our cultural understanding.

When we see all of that, it's not mindless. The human action is mindless or is evil, but there's someone working behind it all to bring everything towards a glorious purpose, okay? And we see this in, you see this in the grand scheme of things where everything's running to glory, but you also see this in how the period, the moments of greatest evil can often be used by the Lord to bring about wonderful expressions of his love and glory and the saving gospel, the power of the saving gospel displayed.

You think of, this is dangerous to use this example because I think people are on very different sides of this, but let me just say it. After Charlie Kirk was murdered, then they had this, the huge TPUSA, they called it a memorial, I don't know really what it was, but his wife forgave the killer. And there were questions about whether that was genuine. She's come out to say later that it was, so I'm just gonna take her at her word. And I think there were probably many believers asking the Lord to use this evil against her husband for an expression of the gospel, for the Lord to put himself on display in the power of the gospel. I think we saw it. You wouldn't have seen that if the evil hadn't happened, okay? So that's just one example, vivid in our minds. There's probably somebody who's gonna come up to me and mention somebody some podcaster said, but we'll talk about that later.

So what is Habakkuk crying out for the Lord to do? He's crying out for the Lord to, he says in the middle part of verse two, revive your work in the midst of the years. Midst of the years, he probably means while we're being judged, okay, in my day, in his day, midst of the years, maybe from the time of the Babylonians judging until the Babylonians are judged in the midst of the years is probably contextually what he's thinking about. And so he's asking for the Lord to work for his people and to remember mercy in this period of wrath.

Now the following section, especially if you look at verse 13, where it says, So he says that the Lord had gone forth to bring about the salvation of his people. And that's in a section we'll see in a second that's really thinking about the works of the Lord in the history of Israel's people, probably primarily in the Exodus. But then it's mentioned in general terms to where it could really fit any period of the Lord acting on behalf of his people that you would have seen in scripture. So he's asking for the Lord to be faithful to his people as he has been in the past.

In the same way that you can look in the Old Testament, you can look, especially throughout the first five books, the Torah or the Pentateuch, and you can look and you can see how the Lord chose Abraham, and then, you know, protected, it gave this promise that went to Abraham's son, and then to his son, then protected that son, Jacob, and then eventually brought him to Egypt, and then brought them out of Egypt, and conquered the Egyptian nation, and then conquered the land, and then as they rose up, the Lord appointed judges to save the people and deliver them. And you see how the Lord, through all of this, all of this, the history of the people of Israel, was being faithful to his people and bringing about his saving work.

So I think when Habakkuk is saying, in your wrath remember mercy, or in rage remember compassion, since the context of what's about to come is gonna be looking back on what the Lord has done, he's saying, he's asking the Lord to save your people even while you've judged them, or even though you've judged them, or even in the midst of you judging them, save them.

So what would be the first application for us from this prayer for thinking about how to respond in evil times, in dark times? It'd be ask God, how did I phrase it? Ask God to act, which is to call on God to save and to use even his wrath to spare his people, to overcome their enemies and to save his elect. If we were to apply this to, we're not gonna apply this in a national sense, we'll apply this in a sense to the church, his people are the church, right? Then we would say that in the midst of all the evil in the world right now, and it's probably true that the visible church needs to be pruned quite a bit with how many false prophets and false churches are out there and how many hirelings are occupying the pulpits, at least across America, especially on the West Coast and the Northwest.

Even though there's, If the Lord is going to bring in these dark times and is going to make things more difficult in order to purify his people, I'm thinking the church here, the Lord will certainly act to advance his gospel and save sinners. And you and I are a part of that mission. What we're doing right here right now is part of that. Mission. So, call on the Lord to act in his providential working to bring about his saving purposes. That's step one.

Step two. It'll be this. Then, remember how God has acted. Remember God's mighty works. This is the huge section. This is verse three to 15. Let me read these.

God comes from Timan, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor covers the heavens, and the earth is full of his praise. His radiance is like the sunlight, and he has rays flashing from his hand. There is the hiding of his power.

Before him goes pestilence, and plague comes after him. He stood and surveyed the earth. He looked and startled the nations. Yes, the perpetual mountains were shattered. The ancient hills collapsed. His ways were everlasting.

I saw the tents of Kushan under distress, and the tent curtains of the land of Midian were trembling. Did the Lord rage against the rivers? Was your anger against the rivers? Or was your wrath against the sea that you rode on your horses, on your chariots of salvation?

Your bow was made bare. The rods of chastisement were sworn. You cleaved the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and quaked. The downpour of water swept by. The deep uttered forth its voice. It lifted high its hand. Sun and moon stood in their place. They went away at the light of your arrows, at the radiance of your gleaming spear.

In indignation, you marched through the earth. In anger, you trampled the nations. You went forth for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You struck the head of the house of the evil to lay him open from thigh to neck.

All right. Oh, sorry, 315. You pierced with his own spears the head of his throngs. They stormed in to scatter us. Their exaltation was like those who devour the oppressed in secret. You trampled on the sea with your horses on the surge of many waters.

When you look through the Old Testament, and when you look at how the Lord acted on behalf of his people in Let's especially think of how he acted for Israel. So how he protected Abraham and his house, how he led Israel to Egypt and gave them the best of the land, allowed them to flourish and grow into a mighty people, and then how he led them out of Egypt and overcame Egypt, how he split the Red Sea so they could walk across. how he provided for their, for them to have food and water, how he provided for their sandals to never wear out or their garments to never wear out.

You know, you think about it, if you're constantly walking and moving for 40 years, you'd think that eventually you'd fray your garments from just normal movement. No, that never happened. The Lord provided all these things. He provided for the judgment of the people in the land. He led them across the Jordan. and he provided judges for their salvation after they'd occupied the land under Joshua and conquered it. He provided the kings for them.

The way the Lord had been faithful to his people and how often the Lord had put on display, not just his providential working of directing his instruments of the people of Israel, you think Joshua or Moses, but how he'd displayed great miraculous power in behalf of his people, or on behalf of his people. 

When you remember that that is your God, all of a sudden now, the first step, calling to God to act, it actually means something. At least it feels like it means something, right? Of course it means something. You're calling on the God of creation. But it feels like it means something, because you say, no, that's my God. I'm praying to the same God who split the Red Sea. who caused Sinai to tremble, right, who appeared in a pillar of cloud and fire. That's the same, I'm praying to the same Lord, you think about it, even just the second person of the Trinity, the Son, who stood between heaven and earth after David had counted the people and done this census and then had, had come and a sacrifice at the threshing floor of Orin, that's right there on Mount Moriah, and that's where the Temple Mount would be built. 

The same Lord who had his sword drawn and is there between heaven and earth, The same God who judged the Egyptians and displayed himself to be the true God as opposed to all of their false gods that were typified in each of the judgments that he worked. In the MacArthur Study Bible, there's even a chart somewhere in that period where the Lord's judging Egypt in the first 12-ish chapters of In Exodus, there's a chart where it talks about each god of Egypt and how they were symbolized by each of the things that the Lord used to destroy Egypt, from the flies to the frogs to the Nile, all of that.

That same Lord who has displayed his glory so powerfully and has recorded that for us is your God and is your Lord. who, especially during this season, who came in the flesh in order to seek and save the lost and die to pay the penalty for your sin and rise again to secure your justification in life so that we will be with Him for all eternity in glory, worshiping Him as our Lord.

That same Lord is the God of the Bible. So remember who He is and what He's done when you're praying to Him.

Okay, I just walked you through, you know, just a bunch of statements about how he worked and acted, because that's what Habakkuk does here. So just notice these references or these general statements, which seem to be allusions to, especially the Exodus, but I think of the Exodus and the period of the judges and the conquest and all of that.

Temen is Edom, and that's southeast of Judah, and Paran is in the Sinai Peninsula. So there's this idea of the Lord coming from the South, bringing his people up into their land, okay? I say, well, that's what he did. He led them out of Egypt into Sinai, and then protected them, was with them, and then moved them up into the land and went before them visibly in the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.

In verse five, it mentions pestilence and plague. That makes me think of the Exodus judgments against Egypt, certainly also the judgments against the Lord's people who were wicked. There's that, when the people grumble after Korah, Korah's rebellion, and Moses takes Aaron and says, hurry and make atonement, put incense on and go before the people and make atonement for them, because the plague is already breaking out from the judgment of the Lord. I think it's 16,000 of them die, if I remember the number right, from that plague, because of their complaining, which is a rebuke to us.

So the Lord's judgments against the wicked are very visible. The mountains quaking, I think of Sinai. God moving through Midian is, that's North Sinai, the North Sinai Peninsula. Yahweh's power over rivers and the seas. What does that make you think of? The Red Sea, the Jordan River, especially. The sun stood still. Makes me think of the battle where Joshua was fighting and the son moves back, or even the one where the son stays still until Israel overcomes their enemies.

And all of this is for what purpose? He doesn't tell you until verse 13, almost near the end of this section, which is, you went forth for the salvation of your people.

Okay. We can't be overly mechanical in how we think of the Lord, that the Lord is acting, you know, purely for his own ends, as if that's disconnected from us. He's actually told us that his own ends include our salvation, which is just stunning when you think about this.

So why is God acting, you say, for his own glory? Amen, I agree with you. But how he's determined to bring about his glory is through your salvation, which is not just I say that as if it's like a lesser work, the salvation from your sins. That is the greater work. Overcoming the wrath of God versus overcoming the works of evildoers and the work of the devil and all of that. It is the greater work, overcoming the wrath of God and the judgment of God. But you're not given a get out of jail free card when you're saved. And then the Lord's like, all right, you're good. Or like courtesy card, so if the cops pull you over, you can say, hey, I know the chief, so you should let me go. That's not what it is. It's that the Lord saves you, and yes, he determines your eternal destination, but then he's faithful to preserve you and carry you along and even protect you from the works of evildoers. Even if they were to harm you and take your physical life, your eternal life is secure. It's holistic. It's from conversion on to the end of eternity. He acts for your salvation, for his glory. It's striking. So we need to remember that. We need to remember how he has worked and why he's working so when you cry out to him, you have faith and you're confident in his good providence, okay?

Let me jump ahead. I was gonna go to some other passages, but I don't have time. So let me jump to this. Final thing is this, and it's exactly what the Lord told him to do in chapter two, verse, is it four? Chapter two, verse four, which is wait and trust. Or we could put it the way the hymn puts it, trust and obey. Okay? There's no other way to be happy in Jesus. It's right. That's true, that's just the Christian life.

Wait and trust, verses 16 to 19, let me read these. I heard and my inward parts trembled at the sound of my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones and in my place I tremble because, notice this, notice why. Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress. For the people to arise who will invade us. Habakkuk's just been told what is going to happen in his own day, which is the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the people of Judah. And this is going to happen because the Lord is going to judge his people. And so Habakkuk is told, all that's gonna happen, trust me. What else can he do, right? How do we respond to imminent threat on a societal level, okay? What should Habakkuk have done? Should he have hidden his money and precious metals? Should he have taken martial arts classes? Should he have built a bug out shelter in the Judean wilderness? Should he run to Egypt where there's real freedom? What should he have done? He just has to trust and wait, right?

Okay. I'm not saying we sit on our hands or we don't see what's coming and make preparation, but I'm saying we don't start saying, I see the evil coming and I got to figure out how to solve this and get out of this. Because if we're all honest with ourselves, there's nothing you or I can do, right? There's nothing we can do. 

If we look at the state of Washington and Oregon politics, we say, well, Idaho is a constitutional carry state. There's real freedom there. At least I can buy an AR. But what does that accomplish for you in the end of things? It accomplishes nothing. All you've done is just moved yourself to one place. You're still gonna find the human heart there. And guess what? If evil is rising up and overtaking the nation, then it's gonna get there too. 

Who's the only one that can bring about true justice and who can actually direct the hearts of men? The Lord. So you live wisely and you trust the Lord. That's the only thing you can do. 

Habakkuk, all he could do was just wait and see the army coming. I think that's instructive for us. We wait and we trust. 

And he has this wonderful statement of faith in verses 17 and 18, which is in our memory work, which we've been doing every week.

 Though the fig tree should not blossom, 
and there be no fruit on the vines, 
though the yield of the olive should fail, 
and the fields produce no food, 
though the flock should be cut off from the fold, 
and there be no cattle in the stalls, 
Yet I will exalt in the Lord. 
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

There is a certain hope that Habakkuk has in the Lord, his God, which is your God and my God. There is a certain hope he has that allows him to then look at evil, quite literally marching its way toward his city, and say, the Lord is working, the Lord is good, and what can man do to me? I will trust in the Lord.

You and I, when we seek the Lord out of a knowledge of who he is and what he's done, can have the same hope. and the same fixed, stable faith.

So then you hop on whatever social media it is you look at, and everyone's losing their minds because of the latest thing that in five minutes is gonna be trumped by the next thing that's gonna kill us. And the reaction is to go one of two ways. Either we're all gonna die, every man for himself, run for your lives, or just despair and hopeless, nothing matters, and doom and gloom kind of thing. You can look at all of those and say no. The Lord has ordained whatsoever comes to pass. He's working his good purposes. He's working for my good, for his glory. And even if all this evil should overtake me in my circumstances and my environment, I will be faithful to him and trust him because I am secure in him.

We're in a dark city. I'm thinking Portland, Vancouver is like one massive city, right? We're in a dark city. To a city where it's, you know, when I was in the Midwest, I left my house unlocked for a week while I visited here. And I went back and everything was exactly where it should be. Nothing was touched. And my driveway was plowed. That would not happen here, right? You leave your car idling outside your house while you run in to grab something and you come out and it's gone. At least that's how it was in Los Angeles.

And we're in a dark city where the presence of evil is quite literally right outside our doorstep. How do you walk and stand and have faith in our kind of circumstances? Well, the way Habakkuk is. know who your God is, and how he's acted in the past, and how he's acted for you.

Let me read you this missionary statement from, or this missionary story from John Patton, who was a missionary to the cannibals in the New Hebrides, which I think is Papua New Guinea now, where the New Hebrides was. Well, the Hebrides of Scotland, and they named the Pacific Islands of the New Hebrides. And the cannibals were there, and this is in the middle of the 1800s. And he's expressed his desire to go and evangelize the cannibals. And this one man, Mr. Dixon, says, but you'll be eaten by cannibals. And he says this, Mr. Dixon, you're advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I'm eaten by cannibals or by worms. And in the great day, my resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer. There is a certain hope that allowed him to think correctly about his circumstances and the expected circumstances if he did what he was going to do. And he did, and that whole area, I think, in New Guinea, is dominated by, I think, a Presbyterian Christianity because of this Scottish missionary. So the Lord blessed his labor.

So. We rest in the faithfulness of God. This is what he says in verse 19. The Lord God is my strength. He has made my feet like hinds feet. He makes me walk on my high places. If Habakkuk lived through the destruction of Babylon, there's a good chance he died in the destruction or through the destruction of Jerusalem. There's a good chance he died in the destruction of Jerusalem or was taken captive or was left destitute with nothing and probably died shortly after.

How can he make this statement that he walks on his high places? Well, he's thinking of his eternal hope. He's thinking of security of his salvation in the Lord. He's not thinking of just better environmental circumstances, right? which is not to deny the reality. He still said that he was in anguish and his lips quivered because he, you know, had to wait for this invasion. So the conclusion is the words of the hymn, trust and obey, or whatever my God ordains is right. His holy will abideth.

All right, questions, comments? Yes, ma'am. In the beginning, you alluded to an almost universal acceptance of the fact that we indeed live in dark days. But however, in the midst of our population, there's a segment in Western society, especially here in the Northwest, of those who would disagree with you. And I'm referring to the so-called progressives, who believe that man is eventually evolving into utopia and outgrowing sin. And we know this mindset has been creeping in for several centuries. My question is, was this mindset around in the very, very earliest church? Had Satan yet twisted thinking of that way? And when did progressive thought actually begin? Are we looking at the 18th century? Or was it around in the very early?

Yeah, progressive thought as we know it today really comes from two things, from the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Right, Rick? You sent me that video. That's what I'm pulling from. And the Enlightenment, which was sort of the, very much in line with the French Revolution, had this idea of man now advancing man. It was all for the glory of ourselves. And there was a whole lot of secularism mixed in with that. Even the French Revolution, which is really an enlightenment revolution. I think it was Notre Dame that they basically purged of Christian iconography and then raised up the statue, I think, inside of it, but maybe they just paraded it through the streets. Lady Reason, so they worshipped this false goddess Reason, weird stuff. And so the Enlightenment ideals are really those ideas of progressivism.

But then progressivism has a whole lot of Freud mixed in with it as well. So, there's a good book, two good books, both by Carl Truman. There's one called, I think it's Strange New World, I think is the title of it. That's the easier version of the more academic one, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. And I read The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self It took me half of it to finally be able to understand how he was writing. So I understand what you're saying. He's too smart for you. But he lays out a very helpful case for how we got from a Christianized West to now somebody can say, I'm a man trapped in a woman's body, and everybody takes that as logically coherent. And he sets out to answer that. How did this happen? and he walks through, a lot of it has to do with romanticism, a lot of it has to do with Freud. So that would be a helpful book for you. I think the smaller version, Strange New World, I think is he's making a similar argument, but he's framing it in a much easier way to access. Both of them are published by Crossway, I think. 

So the early church had different heresies. Our heresies have to do with the human constitution. And that's probably the biggest one. And you'll notice that we're very materialistic. So whereas the early church usually denied the humanity of Christ, because they were so focused on the divine being good. Our day and age denies the divine, except for subjective mystical experience, and therefore thinks of Jesus in purely kind of evolutionary scientific terms, so he must have just been a man. So you see our heresies run in that sort of, materialistic way, which tucks right in with the Enlightenment and would make sense than why the perversions of our day even have to do with human constitution. 

So that would be the Enlightenment. When did the Enlightenment begin? That was in the early 1700s, I think, when the Enlightenment began. And that would probably be where where the root of what we know of as progressivism, whether it's political or... 

They were German. 

Yeah. 

Yes, ma'am. 

I'd like to do a flip on this instead of us waiting to see what God's going to do. He's already done. everything is going to do on the cross. And he could be waiting to see what we're going to do, which I think he's been doing ever since Constantine. Because we've become political, we've become nationalists, we've become idolatrous, we have picked up weapons and fought our way through and done a lot of damage. So, I see it totally from a different perspective. He's waiting to see, he's given us everything we need to do what he wants us to do. Certainly he's given us everything we need to be obedient to him in the word of God and in giving us his spirit. 

I'm not, it is not right to say that he's somehow no longer working. so maybe I'm not understanding you right, but he's, Habakkuk is driving at the point that the Lord is working his work. Right? Where he's now given us marching orders. We'd given Habakkuk, he'd given the people of Israel marching orders too, but was still working. But a lot of what you see the evil is to let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. The world is not glorifying your father in heaven because maybe our works are not what they should be. I'm just saying. 

Yeah. I think it's a different conversation than what Habakkuk's driving at. 

Correct. 

Correct. 

But I'm focused on what happened in between. Because you said, we can only just trust and wait. And I don't see it that way. I mean, trust and wait, yes, but in the meantime, in between time, we should be doing what God asked us to do. 

Yeah, I think that's more a matter of emphasis than, it's not exclusive, it's not exclusive, they're not, what's the word? They're not mutually exclusive. It's not trust and obey or get busy. I think it's both together. Trust the Lord and so be faithful to him. And if you don't, trust him and trust that he's working. Because he has to be the one to prosper your work. So if you're saying, well, I endeavor to go portray the love of Christ to my neighbors around me, whoever that neighbor may be, you know, in the Good Samaritan sense, anybody who you run into who's in need, then, you know, it's a situation of unless the Lord builds the house, he who labors to build it labors in vain. It's that situation. 

So if you're saying, well, he's done everything, so now I need to get busy. Well, but he still needs to be the one empowering and prospering your busyness, right? I'm not denying that. I'm not throwing that part out. I'm simply saying that when he went to the cross, he gave us, he rose and he sent the spirit to us to give us the tools to do what he's asked us to do. 

you know, go ye therefore. And it also said, you know, good works, not... I don't see good works in war, for instance. I mean... Right. Yeah, you do. Anyway, I do not see... Another conversation. 

I think judgment begins at the house of God, and I think the church is what needs to... And I'm not saying this group, you know, I'm not... The church writ large, broadly speaking. The large, visible church, the body of Christ, whoever they be, is divided right now, totally torn to shreds. And that's what I think needs to be... How can the world believe if that's what they see? 

I think we're on a cusp of revival, personally, but that's my subjective opinion. Yeah, yeah. Other questions, come. All right. Let me pray, then we can take a break. 

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this time and this encouragement to be faithful to you, in our lives now because we know that you are faithful to us in accomplishing your great purposes of our salvation and of bringing about your glory and your honor in this world. We ask that you would equip us to worship you in the coming hour and rejuvenate us in your glory. this break that we have and I pray that you bless our fellowship and encourage each one of us. We thank you for those members who weren't able to make it here today as they usually do and ask that you bless them on the way and bring them back in the coming weeks. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.