A Hymn of Faith: The Faith That Sings Before the Victory
Sermon notes from Pastor Zairreus Patterson at One Community Church on Habakkuk's journey from questioning God to rejoicing in him before circumstances change.
A Hymn of Faith
Pastor Zairreus Patterson · One Community Church
Part of the series Faith That Shows Up.
How did Habakkuk get from arguing with God in chapter 1 to singing to God in chapter 3? He opens with confusion and grief, but closes with celebration and glory.
Though. Yet. Because of God.
Bad News, Real Fear
Judah has become corrupt. Violence fills the land, and God announces that he will judge his people through the Chaldeans, the empire of Babylon.
Habakkuk hears this and trembles. He must wait quietly for an invasion he cannot stop.
Have you ever received bad news that caused you to tremble because you knew it was coming and there was nothing you could do about it?
Though
Habakkuk takes account of everything that could go wrong: no figs, no grapes, no oil, no harvest, no sheep, no cattle.
He names the loss he is preparing to face. Even the future looks empty.
But that is not the end of the story.
From Though to Yet
Habakkuk has heard the bad news and counted the losses. Yet he chooses to rejoice in the God of his salvation.
Why? Because the Lord is his strength.
What happened between “How long?” and “Yet I will”? If we can understand that movement, we can recognize faith that shows up.
When Faith Collides With Reality
Life changes without asking permission. One phone call, one doctor's visit, one conversation, one unexpected loss can turn the life you planned into the life you have to survive.
Sometimes the hardest part is the uncertainty: God, where are you? Why them? Why me? Why now?
This is faith in the hospital waiting room, in the marriage that still hurts, with the child who still has not come home, when you have done everything you know to do and heaven seems silent.
Everybody Has a Though
Some people did not walk into church. They crawled in. Behind the smile is worry, grief, anxiety, or tired faith. Worship may be a whisper. Prayer may be a sigh.
Though the marriage still hurts. Though the diagnosis was not what I prayed for. Though my child is still running from God. Though I have prayed and nothing seems to change.
The question is not whether you will have a though. What will your faith do when your though comes?
Trusting the One Behind the Swing
When Pastor Patterson pushes his youngest son on the swing, his son keeps asking, “Daddy, higher.” He does not ask for a strategy, credentials, or a five-year plan. He trusts the person pushing him.
Yet on the swing of life, we stop and ask God to explain every push.
We want tomorrow's explanation before we give God today's obedience.
Faith is not knowing every next step. Faith is knowing who is directing your steps.
2 How long, O LORD, must I call for help but You do not hear, or cry out to You, “Violence!” but You do not save?
3 Why do You make me see iniquity? Why do You tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me. Strife is ongoing, and conflict abounds.
4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.
5 “Look at the nations and observe— be utterly astounded! For I am doing a work in your days that you would never believe even if someone told you.
6 For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans — that ruthless and impetuous nation which marches through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.
7 They are dreaded and feared; from themselves they derive justice and sovereignty.
8 Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves of the night. Their horsemen charge ahead, and their cavalry comes from afar. They fly like a vulture, swooping down to devour.
9 All of them come bent on violence; their hordes advance like the east wind; they gather prisoners like sand.
10 They scoff at kings and make rulers an object of scorn. They laugh at every fortress and build up siege ramps to seize it.
11 Then they sweep by like the wind and pass on through. They are guilty; their own strength is their god.”
12 Are You not from everlasting, O LORD, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. O LORD, You have appointed them to execute judgment; O Rock, You have established them for correction.
13 Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil, and You cannot tolerate wrongdoing. So why do You tolerate the faithless? Why are You silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
14 You have made men like the fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler.
15 The foe pulls all of them up with a hook; he catches them in his dragnet, and gathers them in his fishing net; so he rejoices gladly.
16 Therefore he sacrifices to his dragnet and burns incense to his fishing net, for by these things his portion is sumptuous and his food is rich.
17 Will he, therefore, empty his net and continue to slay nations without mercy?
God's Answer Raises Another Question
Prophets typically speak to people on God's behalf. Habakkuk speaks to God on the people's behalf, questioning and arguing.
He sees Judah's corruption and collapsed justice and asks, “How long?” God answers that he is raising up Babylon. Habakkuk's problem deepens: why use a kingdom worse than Judah to judge Judah?
Sometimes God's answers create deeper dependence rather than greater understanding. God does not explain everything. He gives Habakkuk a revelation of himself.
The Circumstances Have Not Changed
The righteous live by faith, not by explanation or by everything making sense.
By chapter 3, Babylon is still coming. Judgment is still coming. The circumstances have not improved, but the prophet has.
God was not merely doing something for Habakkuk. God was doing something in Habakkuk.
While you focus on what you are waiting for God to do around you, consider what God may be doing within you.
The Heart of the Message
Faith is not believing God will always change your circumstances. Faith is believing that your circumstances cannot change your God.
Faith believes God's character even when it cannot explain God's conduct. It refuses to interpret God through circumstances. It interprets circumstances through God.
The diagnosis, economy, relationship, job, plans, and your entire life can change. None of that changes God. Because he does not change, faith has something to stand on when everything else shakes.
1. When Life Falls Apart, Faith Faces Reality
Before the yet, there is a though. Habakkuk names the devastated reality he is preparing to face without allowing it to determine what he believes about God.
We sometimes rush people through the though because we cannot wait to get them to yet. But God inspired verse 17 just as much as verse 18.
God is not embarrassed by your pain or uncomfortable with your questions. He does not require you to pretend.
Faith tells the truth about reality without making reality God.
Faith Can Say, “This Hurts”
You can trust God and admit you are disappointed. You can believe the Bible and say you do not understand.
Scripture includes faithful people who cried, lamented, and struggled: David, Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus in Gethsemane. Jesus did not deny the cup. He surrendered it.
Following Jesus does not mean you will never hurt or have questions. Difficult seasons are not necessarily evidence that you have done something wrong. Faithfulness and struggle can occupy the same space.
Your circumstances have a voice, but they do not get the final word.
Questions That Expose Our Trust
- What have you already decided God cannot do?
- Where are you praying while making decisions on the assumption that your prayer will not matter?
- Where have you interpreted God's silence as God's absence?
- Where have you stopped obeying because obedience did not produce results fast enough?
- Where are you asking God for direction while giving him only options you already approve?
- Where do you publicly say, “Your will be done,” but privately mean, “As long as your will looks reasonably similar to mine”?
Stewardship or Control?
Unbelief does not always look like atheism. Sometimes it looks like control, anxiety-driven planning, or refusing to move without a guaranteed outcome.
Planning, preparation, and wisdom are not wrong. The question is:
Is my plan an act of stewardship or an attempt to live without needing God?
Even experienced faith can become compartmentalized: trusting God with eternity but not your schedule, with heaven but not Tuesday.
Ask, “Where is God asking me to trust him now?” Faith is not something we graduate from.
One Foot on the Ground
On a swing, keeping one foot on the ground can give a false sense of security: if you fail me, I still have this.
But when his son's feet leave the ground, he depends on the one pushing him. His laughter says, “Daddy, I know you've got me.”
When did you last face something you could not fix, change, or resolve and say, “God, I know you've got me”?
You do not have to understand every push when you know the one behind it.
2. When God Makes You Wait, Faith Worships in the Wait
Nothing in Habakkuk's circumstances changes between verses 17 and 18. Habakkuk changes.
Worship is not merely singing songs in church. Worship is my whole life's response to the worth of God.
- Obeying without demanding an explanation.
- Celebrating someone else's answered prayer while waiting on yours.
- Serving faithfully when nobody notices.
- Asking God to change you while the person you think needs changing remains the same.
Habakkuk is not celebrating suffering. He is declaring that suffering does not determine God's worthiness.
2 O LORD, I have heard the report of You; I stand in awe, O LORD, of Your deeds. Revive them in these years; make them known in these years. In Your wrath, remember mercy!
3 God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah His glory covered the heavens, and His praise filled the earth.
4 His radiance was like the sunlight; rays flashed from His hand, where His power is hidden.
5 Plague went before Him, and fever followed in His steps.
6 He stood and measured the earth; He looked and startled the nations; the ancient mountains crumbled; the perpetual hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting.
7 I saw the tents of Cushan in distress; the curtains of Midian were trembling.
8 Were You angry at the rivers, O LORD? Was Your wrath against the streams? Did You rage against the sea when You rode on Your horses, on Your chariots of salvation?
9 You brandished Your bow; You called for many arrows. Selah You split the earth with rivers.
10 The mountains saw You and quaked; torrents of water swept by. The deep roared with its voice and lifted its hands on high.
11 Sun and moon stood still in their places at the flash of Your flying arrows, at the brightness of Your shining spear.
12 You marched across the earth with fury; You threshed the nations in wrath.
13 You went forth for the salvation of Your people, to save Your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked and stripped him from head to toe. Selah
14 With his own spear You pierced his head, when his warriors stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though ready to secretly devour the weak.
15 You trampled the sea with Your horses, churning the great waters.
What Happened Between Though and Yet?
Habakkuk remembers God's power, faithfulness, deliverance, and character. He gains a bigger view of God and a clearer view of himself.
Waiting reveals you to you. You thought you were patient until God made you wait. You thought you trusted until he stopped explaining.
Waiting also forms things. Patience requires something that cannot be hurried. Trust requires something that cannot be controlled. Endurance requires something you cannot immediately change.
Sometimes the wait is not standing between you and God's purpose. Sometimes the wait is part of God's purpose.
Do Not Waste the Wait
What if God is building something in you that an immediate answer could never produce? What if someone else needs to see you trusting God while the field is still empty?
This does not mean every delay is God withholding something until you learn a lesson. God's providence cannot be reduced to a simple formula. But God wastes nothing.
Alongside “God, when will you get me out of this?” pray:
“God, what are you building in me while I am here? Show me something about you I could not see before. Build something in me that comfort could never produce.”
Waiting on God, Not Just an Outcome
There is a difference between waiting on God and merely waiting for circumstances to change.
We can spend the wait staring at the door, refreshing email, checking the account, or watching the phone. But Habakkuk's confidence has an object: God himself.
The greatest gift God can give you is not something from his hand. It is himself.
When everything else changes, God is your constant.
A Constant When Life Is Out of Tune
Pastor Patterson tells of a retired music teacher who answered a student's daily request for good news by striking a tuning fork: “This is middle C.” Others might sing flat and the piano might need tuning, but his reference point remained constant.
The illustration points to Jesus. Whatever is unstable or out of tune around us, he remains holy, sovereign, faithful, good, and worthy.
Maybe waiting is not always God bringing everything around you into tune. Maybe God is retuning your heart.
3. When Life Gets Too Heavy, Faith Finds Strength in God
Habakkuk does not merely say that the Lord gives him strength. The Lord is his strength.
God's strength does not mean you never get tired, cry, or ask for help. Sometimes strength is getting out of bed. Sometimes it is admitting, “I cannot do this myself.” Sometimes it is obeying while your emotions scream something else.
God's strength does not always make you feel strong. Sometimes it simply keeps you from quitting.
Still Here Because He Is Faithful
You cried, but you kept going. You grew tired, but you kept going. You had questions, but you are still here.
Looking back, you realize it was God sustaining you, not your own strength. Not because you were always strong, but because he has always been faithful.
Christian maturity is not God making you strong enough to stop needing him. It is realizing more deeply that true strength means depending on him all the more.
The Mountain Did Not Change. His Footing Did.
Habakkuk describes feet like a deer's, able to navigate rocky heights. He does not say God removed the mountain. God changed his footing.
Sometimes God flattens the mountain. Sometimes he strengthens your feet.
Babylon is still coming. The future is still uncertain. But God has formed a faith that can stand where the old Habakkuk could not stand.
His situation did not get easier. Habakkuk got deeper.
The Father's Presence Is Settled
Eventually, Pastor Patterson's son begins pumping his own legs on the swing. He no longer keeps looking back to check whether his father is still there. That has already been settled.
The father who pushed him has not abandoned him.
Stop spending the whole ride looking behind you. Recount what God has already done. While you wait for him to work in your circumstances, look at what he has already done within you.
A Bigger View of God
Between “How long?” and “Yet I will,” Habakkuk's view of God became bigger than his view of his problem.
Faith is not pretending your mountain is small. It is remembering that your God is great.
Faith is not saying the diagnosis is not serious. It is saying the diagnosis is not sovereign.
Faith is not saying grief does not hurt. It is saying grief does not have the final word.
Faith is not saying, “I understand.” Faith is saying, “I know him.”
Though Friday, Yet Sunday
Jesus did not merely tell us to trust God through unanswered questions. He trusted God through unimaginable suffering: Gethsemane, Calvary, and the tomb.
Though he was crucified. Though he was buried. Though the disciples scattered. Though hope appeared dead.
Yet Jesus rose. God wrote yet over the grave.
When I cannot trace his hand, I can trust his heart, his power, and his character.
Habakkuk's bigger view of God's strength, deliverance, and faithfulness moved him from though to yet: I will rejoice because God is my strength.
