Sermon Extras

New Years Sermon 2021 Habakkuk 3:16-19

INTRO> This definitely isn’t the way I envisioned us as a church starting 2021 but it is what it is and that’s the reality of it all. As I was preparing what to say on this first Sunday of the year, I had many options but wanted to be honest. After 2020, how do I as a pastor serve you best?

• The only thing that is certain when you look back at history is uncertainty.

*ILL> When you look back at how people in the past handled uncertainty there is one man that you will learn about. Victor Frankl (Pic) He was a Holocaust survivor and clinical physiologist , he wrote about his experiences in those concentration camps in his book “Mans Search for Meaning” In the book he talks about how not matter what they were facing, uncertainty, they made it through. He said that there was one thing that made the most difference:

• “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl

CONTEXT> We see this very principle no more clearly than here in the OT book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk was an OT prophet who spoke the word of God to the people who were going astray. The whole first half of the book is Habakkuk complaining about what is happening. Then God tells him that some bad things are going to happen, God is raising up Israels enemies to take them captive. The whole first half of the book is Habakkuk complaining and questioning God, then something changes. Some of the most beautiful words in all of the Bible are found in these verses because there is a shift, a choice. V17-18 is Paramount. He lists all of these things from the most valuable to the least valuable and says even if all of these things happen..

Big Idea > I can’t choose my circumstances but I can choose my attitude in my circumstances.

(I can’t choose my circumstances in 2021 but I can choose my attitude.)

ATTITUDE– is the lens through which I look at life.

APP> Habakkuk makes three statements that I believe, if we choose these same 3 statements, we can have the same change that he experienced and have a deeper, better walk with Jesus.

• I will wait for the Lord. v16b
  • This is a massive contrast to the way the book began, “How long O Lord…” Habbakkuk 1:2 and now he is saying that he can wait? How does he arrive here? How does he wait?

1. The hard work of prayer. “A prayer of Habakkuk…” Habakkuk 3:1
2. The hard work of Bible memory. Verses 3-15 are an OT summary recap filled with scripture references to OT passages.

APP> I will wait for the Lord in 2021 by doing the hard work of prayer and Bible memory.

2) I will rejoice in the Lord. v18

• This isn’t just some blind, hallmark feeling. Habakkuk faces the facts so much so that he said his body gave out in v16.
• He knows that there is only one source of joy that is unshakable, that is in the Lord.
• “Our joy is in proportion to our trust. Our trust is in proportion to our knowledge of God.” G. Campbell Morgan

APP> I am reminded of the worship song that we sing from time to time in Church entitled, “yes I will” “I count on one thing The same God that never fails Will not fail me now You won’t fail me now In the waiting The same God who’s never late Is working all things out Is working all things out…And I choose to praise To glorify, glorify

APP> In 2021 I will rejoice in the Lord.

3) I will rely on the Lord. v19

• This strength has to come from somewhere, it’s not anything that we have on our own.
• This is a corporate prayer, used in the temple. I will rely on the Lord with God’s people in 2021.