1:12-2:1 I will stand at my watch

Habakkuk 1:12- 2:1 O LORD, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy
One, we will not die. O LORD, you have appointed them to execute judgment; O
Rock, you have ordained them to punish. Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are
you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? You
have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler. The
wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them in his net, he gathers
them up in his drag-net; and so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to
his net and burns incense to his drag-net, for by his net he lives in luxury and
enjoys the choicest food. Is he to keep on emptying his net, destroying nations
without mercy? I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will
look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.
Habakkuk was living at a time when evil flourished, and though hed cried to God,
Pay attention and take action, nothing changed for many years. Why was
wickedness always paramount even amongst the people of God in the land of
promise? Habakkuk was deeply perplexed; How long, O Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen? (v.2). Gods first answer was for Habakkuk to look outside
his own borders. God wasnt simply the Lord of Israel; he is the God of the nations,
and if only Habakkuk would observe what was happening outside the Promised
Land hed notice that God at that moment was in the process of raising up the
Babylonians and soon hed be using them to punish his own people for their sin.
Now this shocking truth created another problem for Habakkuk and it was this, that
the cure seemed worse than the sickness. The evil of the Babylonians was much
worse than the wickedness of the Jews. So where does the man of God go from
here?
1. THE PROPHET WORSHIPS THE ETERNAL HOLY ONE.
Habakkuk affirms, O LORD, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One,
we will not die (v.12). Why does he begin like this? Dr. Lloyd-Jones is helpful as
he considers these words. When were perplexed at the Lords strange dealings
with us then, he says, it is essential to have the right approach to God. The Doctor
phrases it like this, It is much more important that we should know the method of
approach that that we should have pat answers to particular problems (Fear to
Faith, I.V.P, 1953, p.25). When God seems to be crushing us or bewildering us
with life-threatening providences, how should we respond? What can we learn from
Habakkuk this Old Testament Messiahist? Hes been long burdened for the glory of
God. Hes had to face constant discouragement and hes been crying to God for
help. What is happening? Why isnt God doing anything? The answer is that God
is really doing something and it is quite extraordinary; he is giving the order for the
merciless Babylonian army to invade the land and chastise his own defiant people.
When God announces something like this it makes any Christian stagger;
Habakkuk has been given the wine of astonishment to drink.
In the particular words before us we are reading the next response of Habakkuk,
how he reacted to the news of the forthcoming calamity. Notice that Habakkuk
doesnt panic; he doesnt curse God; he doesnt give up the faith. He begins by
using his mind and his understanding, and he thinks about the God he knows.
Habakkuk is doing well; he is displaying the right approach to God. We see that
Habakkuk begins by affirming some fundamental convictions about the nature of
God. These are truths of which he has absolute confidence. In other words he is
going to approach the invasion of the Babylonians, the future siege of Jerusalem,
and a future exile in Babylonian slavery with these theological certainties that begin
our text. I am saying that this is the purpose behind these opening words of his; O
LORD. Are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die (v.12).
Let me try to bring this home to us by a very simple anecdote. Last week a
Christian woman who had had a pain under her arm for a couple of years saw a
specialist because her own doctor had said there was nothing to worry about. She
was unhappy with his response. She pointed out to the specialist exactly where the
pain and lump was located and he found it. He said to her, Oh . . . when there is a
lump there it usually is linked to breast cancer. He told her that in her face and
she was shocked to hear his words. She later wept as she thought ahead, and
considered her little children. She spoke emotionally to her husband and to her
mother about all this; she couldnt have spoken to anyone better as I judge them to
be the most sensible Christians in the whole world.

Then what do you do next as a Christian on occasions like that? You know what
we are saying at this moment, at the beginning of this sermon? We are insisting
that you must have the right method of approach, even if you dont have the pat
answers. This dear woman did what Habakkuk did, she took the great doctrines of
God that are the warp and woof of our existence and she went to the Lord with
them. She said the sort of thing that Habakkuk says here, O LORD. Are you not
from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die (v.12). In other words, she
stayed her heart on Jehovah. Remember how the Lord Jesus taught us when to
pray to begin by saying, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name . .
. In our distresses we pour out our hearts to God and we begin by worshipping the
Lord. Now that story has a happy ending; they scanned the lump and it was
revealed later this past week that the lump was a mere cyst, quite non-malignant.
The principle I am seeking to establish is that in times of trouble, when your life
seems to be falling apart, you must get hold of every piece of faith you possess
and set it all on the all-providing love and power of God. We restate our deepest
convictions of trust and hope in God as we pray. We buttress our requests with our
knowledge of who God is. In the inquest of Princess Diana last week there were
harrowing details of people gathering round the badly damaged car in the tunnel.
They were helpless at the extent of the injuries of the four people in the car.
Princess Diana was saying again and again, Oh my God . . . My God . . . Who
would have dreamed that her life would end like that? Where now the glamour and
the glitter? What does it profit a woman to gain the whole world and perhaps lose
her soul? She cried, My God! When you are desperate to whom do you turn? You
cast yourself on God. Is he a God you know? Is he worth knowing only at
desperate times? Is there any reality in that pronoun, My God? If not why not?
Why are you ignoring God in these days of health? They will not last for ever. They
cannot last for ever. Habakkuk turns to a God he knows and he lays hold of the
eternal holiness of the Lord. That is not simply good psychology; because prayer
is not a remedial exercise for ourselves. We are going to wrestle with God about
our greatest concerns. We intend to raise urgent fearful providences in his
presence and we begin this way, in laying a proper foundation of submission, trust
and hope in the relationship.
George Muller of Bristol would pray to God pleading with him, laying his concerns
and hopes before him, one after another. There was one time of great need in his
orphanage and I read that he actually pleaded eleven different arguments why God
should send help. There was this reason and that reason, each one was like a
great knock on the rapper of the door to heaven. Muller was saying to God that this
matter was so important to him and he could think of all these reasons why God
should hear and answer. The rapper on the door was becoming a battering ram! It
was not that God needed to be convinced. It was not that God had to be reminded
that he was holy and eternal. It was not that God needed to be told how cruel was
the Babylonian war machine. It was not that God was slow to give. It was not that
we can change Gods purpose the Babylonians certainly were coming! The
reason for pleading and arguing, asking, seeking and knocking, is that this is the
God-appointed way that blessing comes. As we argue with God our desires are
more earnest and more fervent, and we are given encouragement to believe we
shall obtain what we are asking for.

Let me remind you of an incident when the early church was confronted by one of
the forms of the Babylonians which God was permitting to threaten their very
existence at that time. In this case it was the Sanhedrin, the supreme court in
Jerusalem. The Jews had arrested Peter and John, threatened them and released
them commanding them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus (Acts
4:18). For the early Christians that was quite impossible; their response was, We
cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard (Acts 4:20). What did
they do? The gospel fire was burning in their bones; they simply couldnt contain it,
but if they released it this would result in fires of persecution. So they went to the
congregation and they reported what these Babylonians had threatened to do to
them. So the congregation prayed, and how did they begin? Just as Habakkuk
began here; it is the identical approach of a calm mind staying itself on Jehovah
and worshiping him.
Sovereign Lord, they said, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and
everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your
servant, our father David: Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the
Lord and against his Anointed One. Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together
with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy
servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided
beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your
servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and
perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant
Jesus. After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And
they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly (Acts
4:24-31).
Do you see their response? It was not to summon the churches to a night of
prayer. Let us occasionally have days with special emphasis on prayer, but there is
no magical quality to praying all night. The early church did not pray all night,
indeed on this occasion they do not seem to have spent a long time in praying.
From the natural reading of Acts chapter four we gather that they came together
and then one man led in prayer. The whole congregation was agreed in what they
heard as they listened to that prayer. When they had finished they breathed out
their Amens and God certainly breathed his Amen by shaking the building in which
they were gathered and he gave them a new measure of the Spirit to face their
Babylonian attackers. Then they went to their homes.

I have been saying to you that that is what happens in your life at a very personal
level when you discover a lump. You instinctively pray in your hearts, then and
there, Lord may it not be so! Grant that it is not malignant! Then you tell your
friends, and later you formally and thoughtfully go to God when you have gathered
your feelings and thoughts and you pray about it. It is then that you worship the
God; O LORD. Are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not
die (v.12). You have moved from the initial praying, Lord, help me. O Lord, help
me to a more considered praying.
Habakkuk begins by filling his mind with the wonderful vision of the eternity of God
and blessing him that he is no fly-by-night. As Dr. Lloyd-Jones says, God is the
eternal God, the everlasting God, from everlasting to everlasting. He is not like the
gods whom men worship; He is not like the god of the proud Babylonian army; He
is God from eternity to eternity, the everlasting God. There is nothing more
consoling or reassuring when oppressed by the problems of history, and when
wondering what is to happen in the world, than to remember that the God whom
we worship is outside the flux of history. He has preceded history; He has created
history. His throne is above the world and outside time. He reigns in eternity, the
everlasting God (D.M. Lloyd-Jones, From Fear to Faith, IVP, 1953, p.29).
Our opponents rise in a day and by the end of that day they are nothing, the
Spanish Armada, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, and so on,
who worries about such men today? But our forefathers thought their freedom, the
whole life of their nations and the cause of the gospel itself was being threatened
because of these Babylonians. Yet those men were raised up in the morning; they
reigned for a few hours in the afternoon, and by the evening they were dead and
buried. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. How different is the
living God; when we turn to him we acknowledge, Are you not from everlasting?
Gods sovereignty reaches back to eternity. His purposes, even to the appointment
of wild, heathen Babylonians to attack and dismantle Judah, were no impetuous
decisions of the moment. In eternity God purposed to call out a people to himself
through the seed of the woman the seed of Abraham, the line of David, the
Messiah, the Lamb of God. He then permitted the serpent to bruise Christs heel.
This is what the God who is from everlasting had determined and this is what he
did. That is why we, the people of God, will not die.
Then notice that it is not only on the everlastingness of God that Habakkuk stays
his heart, it is on Gods holiness. He was utterly confident that whatever God will
do proceeds from his holiness. All his decrees are holy decrees. The decree to
permit the fall of man; the crucifixion of his blessed Son, the Day of Judgment and
the eternity of hell all these come forth from the holiness of God. So did the
raising up of the Babylonians. So it is with everything God sends into our lives, our
good seasons, our bad seasons, our winter times and summer times, our sickness
and health, our malignant lumps and our benign lumps, our riches and poverty, our
best days and our worst days, our gains and our losses are all traced on our dials
by the Sun of Righteousness. Nothing is permitted to touch the church except as
the holy God permits. What comfort this is when Gods enemies are around us.

See how Habakkuk refers to him My God, my Holy One (v.12). There is no
doubt that one of the most crucial attributes of God is his holiness. You notice that
in the very name given to the third member of the Godhead; he is not called the
loving Spirit, though he is, or the omnipotent Spirit, though he is that too, but he is
the Holy Spirit. But am I personally convinced that God is holy so that I can say
with Habakkuk, My God, my Holy One? Has he changed my heart and made me
holy also? Does my conduct respond to the fact that his Spirit is holy? In my private
life, my business transactions, in my student life, my family life, in every single
aspect of my life, is it imprinted upon my heart that the Holy God is a consuming
fire, and that his word runs, Be ye holy for I am holy? When I read a book, when I
surf the web, when I watch television, when I engage in conversation, talking to
other people at work, at college, does this fact imprint itself upon me that in me and
with me and alongside me always is My God, my Holy One? I fear to grieve him,
to lose his operations and his sanctifying energy in my life. As he which hath
called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. So the first thing
Habakkuk does at the news that the Babylonians are coming in, is to worship the
eternal holy one.

2. THE PROPHET BOLDLY CHALLENGES THE LORD.

So Habakkuk worships, reassuring his heart with the truths of the eternal holiness
of a personal God. But then he expresses his perplexity. O Lord, you [the eternally
holy one]have appointed them [the godless Babylonians] to execute judgment; O
Rock, you [the Rock of Ages] have ordained them [mere grains of sand] to
punish. Maybe its a question because there are no exclamation marks in the
Hebrew. He is challenging God, Have you appointed such people as these to
execute judgment and punish? Then Habakkuk goes on and reminds the Lord of
his utter perfection, Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate
wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the
wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? (v.13).
You understand this Christian dilemma, as Walter Chantry expresses it, How can
God see and hold his tongue when the evil devour those more righteous than
they? At this point the grappler, Habakkuk, is taking hold of Gods holiness to
argue against the Lords plan to use the defiled Babylonian army to ravage Judah.
What a bold statement to be made in the very face of the Almighty! It seemed to
Habakkuk that Gods tolerance of Babylon was inconsistent with his holiness. The
Lord was allowing the more wicked to swallow up the lesser. Where is Gods
holiness in such an action, especially Gods intention to be silent as the Babylonian
troops march into the land? One who witnesses a sin and remains silent partakes
of the guilt of the sin (Lev. 5:1). How could God keep quiet as Nebuchadnezzar
swallowed Jerusalem and marched righteous Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach,
Abednego and Ezekiel off into exile? Silent, while holy Jeremiah poured out
lamentations?

The prophet in prayer then poetically elaborated the holocaust which Judah would
soon endure. (Because of our short-sightedness toward the sweep of history we
refer to the atrocities of Hitlers third Reich against the Jews as the holocaust. It
was only one of many. There was a holocaust for the Jews under Assyria, one
under Babylon, one under Rome, and another perpetrated during the Second
World War. It remains true in our day that shrill anti-Semitism threatens the Jews of
Israel and elsewhere.) Habakkuk gives us a vivid and accurate description of
Babylonian conquest. You have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures
that have no ruler. The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them
in his net, he gathers them up in his drag-net; and so he rejoices and is glad.
Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his drag-net, for by his net
he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food. Is he to keep on emptying his net,
destroying nations without mercy? (vv. 14-17). Men made in the image of God
would be caught like fish, with hooks and dragnets. Babylonian art pictured these
aftermaths of victory in the same terms. Those captured and marched off into
captivity were strung together with literal hooks thrust through each persons lower
lip. Such cruelty was proudly celebrated by the captors. No pity was shown to the
defeated. False gods were worshipped as giving Babylon remarkable power over a
multitude of nations as they relentlessly fished for more victims. Habakkuk is
praying against the worst of human depravity that was crushing the civilized world.
(Walter Chantry, Banner of Truth magazine, April 2007, Great Prayers in
Devastating Times, pp. 32&33).
O LORD you have appointed them to execute judgment? Arguing with God is
very strange, because we know that God is really right all the time. He knows more
than we do; he sees more than we can the very end of a matter far off into the
future. He can take into consideration things we never could know, and yet he
encourages us to plead with him as Habaakkuk does, or as Abraham pleaded with
him about his decision to destroy the people of Sodom. You are not going to
destroy the city if it has fifty righteous men, or forty, or twenty, or ten, are you? and
God listens kindly and answers Abraham point by point because he knows
Abrahams heart and appreciates Abrahams concern. It is like Jesus addressing
Jerusalem which is becoming Sodom-like and reproaching those people, I would
take you under my wings and protect you, but you wouldnt come. Jesus even
wept over this doomed city though he knew it was going to be destroyed by the
Romans sent there by God. The fact of a predestinated destruction was no basis
even for Jesus to be indifferent to their punishment. Let him weep. Let us
Habakkuk weep. Let us weep.
So I am saying that personal integrity and love for people is the spirit with which we
fill our mouths with arguments when we present our petitions to God. Making nice-
face to God is foolish; trying to hide what were thinking from him when our hearts
are broken or seething or smashed flat is folly. When you read the Scriptures you
dont conclude that God expects or wants fakery, not if the Psalms or the Prophets
are any indication. God wants integrity on our lips and in our hearts. Im thinking of
such instances as Moses telling God, Then the Egyptians shall hear about this.
He asks God if joy in Egypt over the destruction of Jehovahs people is what God
wants. Joshua says, Have you brought us all the way here simply to be delivered
into the hands of the Amorites? The psalmist says, Why, O LORD, do you stand
afar off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Psalm 10:1) My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the
words of my groaning? (Psalm 22:1). O you hope of Israel, its Saviour in time of
trouble, why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler who turns
aside to tarry for a night? (Jeremiah 14:8) O LORD, you have deceived me, and I
was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a
laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me (Jeremiah 20:7). Here is
argumentation which has been inspired by God the Spirit. That is the way we are to
intercede with God. Has that note disappeared from our mid-week Prayer Meeting?
We feel one with Moses and Joshua and David and Jeremiah as they prayed
seeing evil prevailing and sinners ignoring God, then let us pray like those men
prayed. I am simply pleading with you, lets be honest with God.
But lets never forget what Habakkuk also shows us from the way he begins his
prayer that we have to be honest about God. The Scriptures, beyond earnest
argument, portray God as merciful, kind, all-powerful, all-wise and faithful. He is so
committed to the good of his people, that he is incapable of allowing anything
finally harmful to befall them. So any Christian is not going to deny those Divine
qualities in his praying. That is not an option.
So heres the deal; Habakkuk is standing at the overture of a nauseating, horrible
disaster. What does he do? He tells God honestly what it looks like to him, and he
reminds himself of the eternity of God and the holiness of God. Habakkuk is a
creature of time, limited in his grasp of things, his mind tainted by sin. He is aware
that he never sees anything exactly as God sees it. Never. Ever. Things are the
way God sees them, not the way we see them. So we have to remind ourselves
that Jehovah still is whom he says he is, not the way a horrible invasion by the
Babylonian army seems to say he is. Humbling, isnt it? But true. Dont we want the
truth? Ah, yes; we just wish it were different. But there it is. The Babylonians with
their cruel nets and hooks are coming and they are coming at the time and in the
way God decrees, and we break our hearts.

3. THE PROPHET STANDS AT HIS WATCH.

Habakkuk says, I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will
look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint
(Hab. 2:1). So Habakkuk has boldly challenged God to face up to what God has
decided to do. The prophet has nailed his complaint to the mercy seat, and now he
tells us he will look at it from that perspective. In his Daily Bible Readings James
Philip thinks that this is referring to the ancient practice of ascending a high place
like a watch-tower in order to secure an extensive view; the watchman can see
from his vantage point the approach of the enemy, or of a messenger bringing
news from the front, or the army commander can obtain a birds eye view of the
deployment of his forces. The important point is that in viewing any situation from a
vantage point perspective is gained, and you cant get this when you are up too
close to the situation. This is as true in the spiritual life as anywhere else. It is
essential to stand back from spiritual problems, and become detached from them,
in order to see them as God sees them. Near at hand, and inextricably involved in
them, one tends to have a distorted view of them.
You build a watchtower for yourself by knowing the Bible. You build one by
knowing the history and the confessions of faith of the church. You build one by
familiarizing yourself with the state of the church around the world, but above all
you stand at your watch by going into the secret presence of God and pouring over
things with him. You see things in a new way when you have talked them over with
the God the Wonderful Counsellor. That is the highest perspective of all.

God in this prophecy is taking Habakkuk up high and letting him look at things from
that perspective. That is the privileged place of watch for every prophet. From the
presence of God we can assess the church and the world more clearly. From there
we can see how God is working, what answers were getting from our complaint.
We are back where we started arent we? We are discussing the importance of
having a right approach to God, having a viewpoint from which to see what God
has to say about these problems. We look at the lump in our armpit, or the odd
behaviour of a member of our family from the perspective of the mercy seat of
God.

Do you have a watchtower, a place above the meeting places of the chattering
classes, the politicians, and media men, and journalists, and columnists? Do you
have the place of eternal perspective where you can hide away and think and
judge the passing fancies and trendy opinions of the world? Habakkuk in his
distressed state of mind could go to a quiet place and close the door. The God
whom he met there in secret rewarded him openly with wisdom. Habakkuk is
determined not to leave that place until God answers and solves his perplexities.

So Habakkuk has prayed presenting two complaints to God, and now he watches
and waits for the reply. What can we learn from him? Three comforting
conclusions;

i] Standing at our watch makes us courageous. Habakkuk was courageous with

God and loving to the people of God. Both qualities are indispensable. Christians
are called to be strong in the Lord, to stand in the evil day, to be good soldiers of
Jesus Christ. Whatever happens to the person who confesses God as My God,
my Holy One, even when the Babylonian war machine comes rolling into the
nation, he will not fear, because none of those chariots and horsemen will alter his
ground of confidence. If Habakkuks confidence had been in himself, in his fellow
men, in money, in his goods, in prosperity or anything material, what the
Babylonians might do to him and his family might scare him stiff. But what soldiers
can do to a man who has confidence in God can never affect the ground of his
confidence. No calamity changes Gods love for His people.
Suppose we did face an invasion, and a nuclear war, what then? None of those
things will separate Gods people from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Those things have no power, no influence whatever on the unchangeable
love of God. We dont know what this 21st century holds, but God does. Suppose it
does hold the most dreadful things, wouldnt they happen exactly according to
Gods decree? God has told Habakkuk what the prophet already knew, but now in
a vital way, that the Lord was in charge of the universe. We are serving a God who
orders all things after the counsel of his own will. Do you think he has left
anything out? Do you think he has forgotten something? Do you think God has left
one or two things to chance, that hes not sure what is going to happen? Is there
anything outside the circle of Gods decree and Gods control? Nothing happens
but what God ordains. You may approve, you may disapprove of what he ordains,
but nothing happens apart from what God ordains. That being so, and the Lord
who is from everlasting, the one I call my God, my Holy One who will not let us die,
then why give into fear? Christians are courageous people.

ii] Standing at our watch gives us hope. The Babylonians could do nothing at all by
themselves absolutely nothing they couldnt even do the most basic thing of all,
take a single breath by themselves, because their breathing was in Gods hand. If
Babylonians could do nothing by themselves how much more is it true for us who
love to be in Gods hand? Sometimes Gods hand is in everything in mercy and
sometimes his hand is in everything in judgment. Who shapes the earth but God?
Who makes the mountains vomit smoke and fire but the one who made the
mountains? We grieve over some things he does, but he does them nonetheless.
Nothing occurs but his power is in it.
We dont know what awaits us in the coming days but we do know that there is
divine appointment God has made with each one of us it is appointed unto men
once to die. It is unavoidable. As we read the book of the Revelation we know
beyond dispute that the day is coming in which all things sha1l be shaken. We
know that the glories of earth and its treasures will all melt away. We know that the
very stars will fall from heaven. We know that terrible things are to come, but
nothing without the will of God. Men and women, some people live in fear, even
some Christians seem to be constantly looking for something to be afraid of. That
is not the Christian point of view. That is not the way that those who say, O LORD,
are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die should
anticipate the century ahead. The Christian view is given us in the words of the
apostle Paul in the epistle to the Romans, Whether we wake or sleep (whether
we live or die) we are the Lords. I know no softer pillow at night for anyone than
that. If we die we shall be for ever with the Lord and to be with him is to be beyond
the reach of all fear. The day will come when the trumpet will sound and the dead
shall rise. The Lords children have no fear of the resurrection. They are secure in
Christ. They have resources that the world knows nothing of and, with those
resources, they can go into the unknown future.
iii] Standing at our watch is the most practical place to be. To station ourselves on
the ramparts, and look to see what God will say to our complaints is a very helpful
activity in every practical way. When men are frightened they tend to act in haste
and when they act in haste they very often do the wrong thing. When a man stands
at his watch and does his duty, he doesnt usually rush into folly. Many absurd
actions have been done under the influence of panic. How valuable in the hour of
crisis and need is the right method of approach, the presence of mind we get from
knowing God, the calmness, that ability to weigh up the situation from the
perspective of the high place of communion with God and handle it and act
accordingly. I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give
to this complaint (Hab. 2:1). People ask you about your future, what are you going
to do as you near retirement, and get older, and you say to them, I will look to him
to see what he will say to me. My friends, the very best presence of mind flows
from standing at your watch with God, and waiting to receive his directives
though the answer may take some time. Lose your head and youve lost the battle;
lose your heart and you have lost everything. Oh to lay hold of the prophets
expectancy, I will look to see what he will say to me. The Lord bless his Word and
give us this simple, wholesome confidence and courage for the glory of his great
name. Amen.
28th October 2007 GEOFF THOMAS