(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

You have like one minute, basically. Just look at it during the service and then write up the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service and then you can go through the service. The light of the world is Jesus. Come to the light, it is shining for thee. Sweetly the light has dawned upon me. Once I was blind, but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus. He dwellers in darkness with sin-blinded eyes. The light of the world is Jesus. The wash at His bidding and light will arise. The light of the world is Jesus. Come to the light, it is shining for thee. Sweetly the light has dawned upon me. Once I was blind, but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus. In need of the sunlight in heaven we're told. The light of the world is Jesus. The land of the Lord is Jesus. City of gold, the light of the world is Jesus. Come to the light, it is shining for thee. Sweetly the light has dawned upon me. Once I was blind, but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus. Brother Ed, would you pray for us please? Amen, let's go to 206 in our hymnals, 206. Oh say, but I'm glad. Song 206, Oh say, but I'm glad. There on the first. There is a song in my heart today. Something I never had. Jesus has taken my sins away. Oh say, but I'm glad. Oh say, but I'm glad, I'm glad. Oh say, but I'm glad. Jesus has come and my cup's overrun. Oh say, but I'm glad. Wonderful marvelous love he brings. Into a heart that's sad. Through darkest tunnels the soul just sings. Oh say, but I'm glad. Oh say, but I'm glad, I'm glad. Oh say, but I'm glad. Jesus has come and my cup's overrun. Oh say, but I'm glad. We have a fellowship rich and sweet. Tongues can never relate. Abiding in him the souls retreat. Oh say, but I'm glad. Oh say, but I'm glad, I'm glad. Oh say, but I'm glad. Jesus has come and my cup's overrun. Oh say, but I'm glad. Won't you come to him with all your care. Weary and worn inside. You two will sing as his love you share. Oh say, but I'm glad. Oh say, but I'm glad, I'm glad. Oh say, but I'm glad. Jesus has come and my cup's overrun. Oh say, but I'm glad. Very good singing on the bulletin. We still have a couple over on the cabinet. We have our Bible memory verse, Psalm 63 verse 8. And on the inside we have our service and soul winning times. We also have our stats for the month and year end. Is there any soul winning numbers captured for the last few days? Alright, keep up the good work on soul winning. Continue to pray for the Darnells who are expecting in June. Also, we have our upcoming guest preaching. Brother Chris Segura is coming, or he did come I guess this past, or this is this Sunday isn't it? The 20th. Brother Chris Segura is coming this 20th. And then March 6th, Brother Dylan Oz is going to be preaching. He's actually going to be preaching that Thursday and then sticking around and then preaching both services on Sunday. So he's going to be here with his, I believe maybe his family, I don't know. But he'll be here for the whole weekend. And then Brother Ben Naim is going to be coming Sunday March 20th. The Thursday after March 6th, I think it's March 10th, yeah that's right. March 10th, Brother Chris Segura is also coming. So I'm going to be preaching in LA in March. So that's why Brother Dylan is coming to preach for that Thursday. And then I'm preaching in Oklahoma the following week. So that's why Brother Segura is also coming to preach for us that Thursday. But I should be here all the other Thursdays before and after that, God willing. But we have a lot of guest preachers coming down here. Make sure to thank them for coming out here. And Brother Segura loves coming out here. So we really appreciate him coming out here. Coming up very soon, it's not this Saturday, but next Saturday there's a soul winning marathon in Waco, Texas. It's at Pecan Bottom Park as we're going to meet 9 a.m. for breakfast. And then we'll go out for soul winning, we'll meet back at the exact same park for lunch. And then go back out for some more afternoon soul winning. Is anybody, who's planning on going from here? Alright, great. That's real exciting. And then also March 24th, 25th, 26th we have a soul winning seminar at Steadfast Baptist Church in the Hearst, Texas if you'd like to participate. Then Pure Words is hosting a soul winning marathon in College Station again, April 2nd. Also there's an Austin soul winning marathon that's happening, I believe it's at the end of April. Let me see, let me make sure I have this right on my calendar. Oh I'm sorry, no it's May 21st. May 21st. But I just want to put it out there in case people are interested. But I think I was trying to time it where we would go and it would be warm, but like right before school gets out. So we'd still have like a lot of people there maybe or whatever. We're going to try and make Austin normal is what I say, alright? Because they say they want to keep it weird, but we want to make them normal. So we'll give them the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's pretty much all I have for announcements right now. Let's go to our third song. We're going to do our handouts. We're going to do Psalm 139. Psalm 139. And your handout, you might have to grab one of these from the neighboring row. Or you can just even use your Bible. It's verses 19 through 22. Psalm 139. There on the first. Surely thou will slay the wicked. Surely thou will slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me, therefore ye bloody men. Depart from me, therefore ye bloody men. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? Am not I grieve with those that rise up against thee? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? For they speak against thee wickedly. For they speak against thee wickedly. And thine enemies take thy name in vain. And thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? Am not I grieve with those that rise up against thee? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? I hate them with perfect hatred. I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them mine enemies. I count them mine enemies. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? Am not I grieve with those that rise up against thee? Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? Good singing. We'll at this time turn our Bibles to Habakkuk chapter number 3. Brother Samson is going to read for us. Habakkuk chapter number 3. We'll read the entire chapter and we'll pass the offering plate. Habakkuk chapter number 3. Follow along with me if you will. We'll start right here in verse 1 where the Bible reads, A prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet upon Chiginoth. O Lord, I have heard thy speech and was afraid. O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years make known and wrath remember mercy. God came from Timon and the Holy One from Mount Pharanah, Selah. His glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of his praise. And his brightness was as the light and he had horns coming out of his hand and that was the hiding of his power. Before him went the pestilence and burning coals went forth at his feet. He stood and measured the earth. He beheld and drove the sun to the nations and the everlasting mountains were scattered. The perpetual hills did bow, his ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Kishon in affliction and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? Was thine anger against the rivers? Was thy wrath against the sea? That thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation? Thy bow was made quite naked according to the oaths of the tribe, even thy word, Selah. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. The mountains saw thee and they trembled. The overflowing of the water passed by. The deep uttered his voice and lifted up his hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation. At the light of thine arrows they went and at the shining of thy glittering spear. Thou didst march through the land in indignation. Thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation were thine anointed. Thou woundest the head out of the house of the wicked, discovering the foundation unto the next, Selah. Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his villages. They came out as a whirlwind to scatter me. The rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly. Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses through his heap of great water. When I heard, my belly trembled while it quivered at thy voice. Rottenness entered into my bones and I trembled in myself that I might rest in the day of trouble. When he cometh up unto the people, he will then bathe them with his fruit. Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine. The labor of the olive shall fail and the field shall yield no meat. The flock shall be cut off from the fold and there shall be no herd in the stall. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength and he will make my feet like hind's feet. And he will make me to walk upon my high places to the chief singer of my stringed instrument. I ask for a quick word of prayer. Amen. So we're concluding the book of Habakkuk and if you can remember, Habakkuk is essentially kind of having a conversation, a back and forth conversation with the Lord. And it's regards to just the evil and the wickedness that he's seeing in the land. And specifically, we're thinking about the timing of Jerusalem. I'd kind of dated this book around the time of Isaiah. I believe that's still probably pretty accurate timeline as far as kind of when we're placing this book. And Isaiah also does the same thing where he's preaching a lot against Jerusalem and the children of Israel and essentially warning about the coming and impending judgment from Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians specifically. Now in chapter number one, he's kind of frustrated because he's telling God like judgment does never go forth. And he's just like, what in the world? Like the law is slack. And he's just like, he's bringing up all these grievances. And he's kind of just frustrated thinking like, why is no one ever being punished? Why does it just seem like there's a lack of judgment? And then God is just basically responding by like, no, no, no, it's coming. No, no, no, there's going to be a nation, a wicked nation that's going to come and destroy the children of Israel and punishment is going to be crazy. And then he's just kind of like, well, if that's true, if you know we're wicked and then you're bringing these wicked Babylonians in to come and destroy us or whatever, then what's going to stop that from just perpetually happening? Or like, why would you allow wicked people to just kill even more wicked people? And then he's basically saying like, no, no, no, then I'm going to judge them, okay? So it's not like, oh, you know, we're going to get away with it. We get punished. And then it's like, oh, no, no, the Babylonians aren't going to get away with it. They're going to get punished, okay? So they're kind of having this back and forth conversation. Habakish is very frustrated. He's not really getting things. And then God's just basically kind of explaining to him that it's important to follow my commandments period and that judgment will always come and that the wicked will always get what they deserve. And we have to understand that the Lord is righteous in judgment. From eternity's perspective, we're not going to look back and think like, I don't know if you judged that correctly. I don't know if you judged that rightly, Lord, or I don't think they got what they really deserved. No, no, from eternity's perspective, we're going to be like, how righteous are their judgments, you know? And we would fear the Lord's judgments, many of the evils that happen today even. People always talk about how life is hard and we're going through all these hardships and life kind of sucks and there's all this bad stuff. It's like they don't realize it's just judgment from God. And the fact that we live in such a sinful and wicked nation and we just basically rebel against the Lord and we constantly have the punishment doled out to us in judgments, they just don't really reflect that to God. In the sense that it's a judgment, they just think like, well, if God exists, bad things wouldn't happen to me. And it's like, no, no, no, no. The reason why bad things are happening to you is because God does exist. Because He's judging you for all of your sin, for your rebellion, for you not hearkening unto the Lord, for all your fornication, for all your murder, for all your witchcraft and stubbornness and all the other nonsense that's going on, all the other sin that's happening in the world. And even at the big end of this chapter, of chapter 2, He had said that there's people like literally worshipping stones. I mean, what's more insulting than rejecting the God of the universe, the one who spoke everything into existence that exists above the heavens to then have people literally looking at a rock and saying like, this is God, you know. That's pretty insulting. That's pretty, you know, that's going to make God really angry and really mad because He's saying like, you guys are infinitely better than a rock. And you're going to worship a rock? Like, you know, you don't really think that the God that created you is better than you are? You know, you're going to worship this dumb rock that can't even speak, can't even move, you have to carry it, you have to do everything for it. It's like this is just nonsense. But isn't that the world we live in today? We live in a nonsensical world. We literally live in a world where people think that men are women, women are men, you know, just everything's upside down, math is racist, you know, everything. It's just like, what are you even talking? I mean, just the nonsense that's coming out of people's lips. People that are getting famous on YouTube. People that are getting famous on social media. They're like making burp sounds or like fart noises or something like that, like to music, and it makes them famous. And it's like, why do people care about this? Why does that have 15 million views? You know, why is it that the idiots and the morons of this world, why is it that the perverts and the deviants are being elevated in our society? It's because our society elevates stupidity. Because when you reject God, you become a fool. The fool has said in his heart there is no God. So you end up becoming a complete imbecile, a complete moron to the point of insanity that you think a rock literally brought you forth. Or you get to the pseudo-intellectual, you know, position of, well, actually, nothing exploded. It's like I am more likely to believe that a rock is my dad than that nothing exploded and created everything. Yet this is the most sophisticated viewpoint. This is the real, you know, the real intellectuals. They're like, oh, actually, you know, there was this incredible amount of energy, you know, all in like nothing, and then it like exploded. And it's just like, what are you talking about? You're a moron. You're an idiot. You want to know where infinite energy came out of nothing? It's when God spake. He said, let there be light. That was infinite energy coming out of nowhere. But you know what? There was a somewhere that came from? It came from God's lips. That's where it really came from, okay? He spoke everything into existence. So in chapter number three, we're kind of concluding with Habakkuk kind of realizing what God has said and the punishments that are being doled out. It says in verse number one, a prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shiginoth. Now here's the thing. Shiginoth is not mentioned but one time in your Bible. So your guess is about as good as mine, all right? But I have heard, you know, I tried looking up just what some people believe. It seemed like nonsense. I have heard one pastor put forth that he thinks it's possibly an instrument. And I think that's a legitimate interpretation of this passage that, you know, it's kind of like, because this is really a song, this third chapter is like actually a song that should be played in music. And if you look at the last verse, it says the last phrase, to the chi singer on my stringed instrument. So he's kind of like making it clear this is actually like music. You know, this would be put to music. This would be something that he would sing. So potentially the Shiginoth or whatever is like an instrument. There is another psalm. If you keep your finger, go to Psalm 7. And I don't know if your Bible has this or not, but some Bibles right above the psalm, it kind of has this like just description above your psalm. I'm just curious who all has this. If you have like a real basic Bible, it may not. But I've seen this at least in mine. Who has it in Psalm 7, okay? It says Shigion of David. Like I have that right. So that's a similar word, but it's not the exact same form. So you know, this kind of in my mind is saying like it's a song of David. So like Shigion is like a song. So then Shiginoth is kind of like maybe the instrument that's making the song or making the music or whatever. So they're kind of a related word. So that kind of just gives us an idea of what this means. I'm not going to say dogmatically that I know for sure I'm going to start selling Shiginoth or something, like the biblical instrument where you can play Habakkuk 3. You know what? I mean, pretty much all the instruments that we use and that we love are stringed instruments, you know, the piano. You know, the piano is just like a harp. It's really just because if we flipped it up, you would see that it's just like a harp or whatever and it's got all these strings. And you know, it's really just got a few notes just repeated several different times on there. You know, it's got your scales or whatever. It has, you know, a lot of keys on there, but that's just because it's kind of repeated over and over and you've got different octaves and things like that. But, you know, the instruments that we love, guitar or we love the piano or we love, you know, a harp or we love a lot of these instruments that are the stringed instruments and the Bible constantly talks about praising the Lord on stringed instruments. In fact, David was known as a musician and would play on the harp and would play great pieces and play music and he's the sweet psalmist as the Bible describes him. Many of the psalms are attributed to David specifically as the author and I'm guessing composer in a sense that he's, you know, also putting this stuff to music. And so, you know, a great man of God, Habakkuk, obviously filled with the Spirit of God, able to give us not only just the words of God but music. One thing that's interesting about this piece of music here though is that I don't see a repeating chorus a thousand times, you know. And you can find that in the Bible. There is a few psalms where it has like a repeating chorus which I like that because that tells me that God's okay with it but he wants it in moderation. So, it's nothing wrong with technically having a repeating chorus and even using the same kind of phrase over and over in a song but when it's like one out of five, a hundred and fifty, you know, that's not the majority of what we should be consuming. And in fact, when we look at this, this is some deep doctrine, some really intense information that's being delivered in Habakkuk chapter number three which also tells me when we sing songs, our songs should have doctrine in them. They should make sense, they contain a lot of information. In fact, the psalms themselves, when you read them, I often forget completely that it's actually music. It just seems like it's just giving me detailed information. It's just great literature on top of the fact that it's a song. So, we shouldn't have songs where if you read the lyrics, you're like, what is this nonsense? You know, there's most songs today, if you read the lyrics, it just makes no sense by itself. It would only make sense in the context of people singing it. And in fact, it seems like complete trash unless you put really good music with it. And what I've noticed is you can put anything with great music and it sounds good because of the great music. That's why most songs, you don't even know what they're saying. I mean, most songs, like the world today, when you first hear them, it's just you're making vowel sounds. You're just kind of like... And little kids, they'll just make up words to the song because they don't even hear it right. They don't even know what it's saying and they love it. They have no idea what it means. I'll admit, growing up, many of the songs that I liked, I didn't really know what the lyrics were. And then even after that, even kind of getting them, I wasn't really even thinking what it was trying to say. It was confusing. It didn't really make sense. I wasn't really appreciating the song for the lyrics. It was just the tune. It was just the melody that was kind of catchy. But that's not really the type of music that God wants. God is emphasizing the lyrics and the meaning over the melody because notice what got preserved. We don't have a tune, but we do have the words. So what's more important about God's music is the doctrine, not a catchy melody, not a catchy tune. And he also wants it to be sung, not to just be listened to. Oh, I just want to listen. There's nothing wrong with listening to great music. But you know what? God commands us to sing. God commands us to come to the house of the Lord and to sing it. That's why I like our style of singing the hymns rather than going to a participation sport of your modern evangelical church of the day where they have a rock band and everybody just sits back and watches the show. Christianity is not a spectator sport. It's a participation sport. We're supposed to participate in serving the Lord. We're supposed to come to sing ourselves and to praise the Lord. God doesn't get glorified by us watching other people sing to the Lord. He gets glorified by us praising the Lord. And you know, it's better that you sing the words of God and praise to him with a less catchy tune than the most catchy tune ever with just nonsense words. Just like, ah, ah. Look, the Pentecostals, they don't even use words. They're speaking in tongues when they sing, which is just gibberish. It's meaningless. God is not getting glory by us just being like, ah. You know, like, oh, but it sounded good. Who cares? It didn't sound that great, okay? It wasn't that wonderful. If it was so catchy, the world would sing it. You know what? The world doesn't like the garbage Christian music, okay? It's the bee music at best, all right? They don't really like Christian music. It's only the Christians that really want to be like the world, but they can't go all the way, so they kind of have this compromised mix of music that they sing. But you know what? We need to be completely different. I'm not trying to be as close to the world as possible. I'm trying to be as close to God as possible. I'm trying to do things the way he would want us to do, and I believe, even though we didn't preserve the exact tune, that a lot of the psalms and the hymns that we sing have catchy tunes. I love them. I constantly am humming them and thinking about them and singing them and whistling them because they're really catchy and it'll really stick with you, and so there's nothing wrong with having a catchy tune, but you know what's more important is the doctrine. What's more important is the words here. Now, he says in verse number 2, oh, Lord, I have heard thy speech and was afraid. Now, that's the right response. When you hear the word of God, it scares you, not that it's just like, man, it's just my best life now. Oh, it's everybody's best life now. Now, he's just saying, hey, will you tell me what's going to happen to my city and what's going to happen to the Babylonians terrifies me because that was really scary what you just said. Like, what's going to happen? He says, oh, Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years and the midst of the years make known and wrath remember mercy. So he's kind of at first thinking like, it's kind of funny. He gets to this point. He's just like, man, you're never going to judge these people. Judge it never happens. You're just going to let them get away with it? And then God's like, no, this is what I'm going to do to them. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Can't we, like, have some mercy? You know, like, wait a minute. You know, really? That's kind of harsh. Isn't it kind of funny, though? He's just like, he doesn't really, he's so mad that judgment isn't happening. And then God's like, oh, yeah? Here's what I'm going to do. And he's like, wait a minute. Like, can't we have some, like, mercy? In some of this wrath? Because he didn't think it to be that bad, OK? But he also wants them to be revived. And he wants the work, just thy work, in the midst of years. You know, he still wants Christianity to prosper. The prophet doesn't just want Christianity to go away. He doesn't want the service of the Lord to just go away, even though all these people deserve to be judged. And notice that he's not asking for what we deserve. He's asking for mercy. Meaning that, ultimately, the prophet's goal is saying, look, I don't just want people to get what they deserve. I want them to just turn back and serve the Lord. I want revival. That's what I really want. And you know what? A true man of God, a true prophet, a true pastor, wants revival, not judgment, OK? He doesn't want people to just die and go to hell. He doesn't want people to just get horrible consequences for their sin. He just wants people to start serving God. And sometimes you get frustrated and you say, why is no one serving God? Why is nobody doing the right thing? And so they're kind of like, God, why don't you kick these guys' butts a little bit? Why don't you kind of judge them a little bit? But not for the purpose of destroying them, the purpose of reviving them, the purpose of bringing them back to the Lord, the purpose of getting them right with the Lord. You know, you sometimes see this in a sibling's, where they really want their other sibling to be punished. OK? Their sibling does something wrong, and they're just kind of like, here's the paddle. You know? Dad, they did it. You said not to do this. And I didn't do it, but they did. You know? I did right, but here's the paddle. OK? And here's the thing. The reason why it would be good for that is if you just want your brother to obey. But you know, if the parent was like, well, I'm going to destroy them. It would be like, no, no, no. I don't want that to happen. I just want them to do right. I just want them to obey mom and dad and to start doing the right thing and being a good sibling. And that should be the same for us. You know what? I don't want the city of Houston to just be destroyed because it's so wicked. I don't want them to just get what they deserve. Because if we got what we deserved, a hurricane would come in hurricane season and just be gone. The whole city would just be wiped out. I mean, you've got Joel Osteen here, OK? I mean, we've got so many false prophets. We've got so much wickedness in this city. We literally, Houston, had a gay mayor. It had a dyke as its mayor of the entire city. I mean, how much more wicked are you going to get? How much more wicked do you want to get? Right? If this city got what it deserved, if we got what we deserved, it would be complete and utter destruction. So what should you rather want? You rather want revival in the midst of judgment. You want revival in the midst of wrath. Hey, God, pour out your wrath. You know what, in the midst of that, bring us some revival too. Bring us some people back to the Lord. Revive us again. Get people back to the Lord and serving God. And sometimes it takes judgment. Sometimes it takes hardship. Sometimes it takes difficulty. Sometimes it takes struggle for people to get waken up a little bit and say, hey, come back and serve the Lord. Get back right with God. Unfortunately, when you're just having so much wealth and so much prosperity, and you've got the second home, and you've got all the goodies, it's hard to want to serve God because you've got so many extra good things to do. So what God will do is He'll take all those things away from you and you'll basically have nothing. So then you'll be like, well, I guess I'll go serve God. You know? At least I can go and do that, right? And sometimes that's how God works and it just basically gets us back in the door and then when the Holy Spirit works in our hearts, it reminds us of why this is more important anyways. And we say, you know what? That other stuff was junk anyways. It wasn't fulfilling anyways and we can actually turn back to the Lord and have a revival. And you know what? That's what God wants. That's what the men of God want. It says in verse number three, God came from Timon and the Holy One from Mount Peron, Selah. So the Selah helped indicate this music too, okay? That's like kind of a music thing. His glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of His praise and His brightness was as the light. He had horns coming out of His hand and there was the hiding of His power. Now this is kind of interesting, a lot of things that are being described here and there's a lot of context that we can kind of put this chapter in. We've got to think about the first context. What's the first context? Babylon's going to come. Babylon's going to destroy the children of Jerusalem and really just everyone, but specifically we're caring more about the Jews, okay? And then they're going to get judged. So that's kind of the main context that we're talking about. But there's a future Babylon that's coming too and there's a judgment that's going to happen with the Whore of Babylon and we're talking about end times type things and there's a little bit of a parallel here that we kind of pick up. When it's talking about the Lord, notice that some of the descriptions here, it says He had horns coming out of His hand. Now that's really interesting. Go to Revelation if you would. Keep your finger here and let's go to the book of Revelation and let's go to chapter number five. Now one thing that's interesting about some of the language of the Bible is God will often describe things about His right hand, His right arm, and what He's actually referring to is Jesus when He's actually talking about my right arm has brought me salvation. That's talking about how Jesus is the one that basically brought salvation unto us and He kind of refers to Jesus as His right arm. And you know, your right arm is signified as being like strength and it's like your primary, it's your primary worker in a sense. Now if you're left handed, you're weird anyway so you won't get any of this. But basically normal people that are right handed, they realize that that's where your strength is, that's where your power is. If you're going to do a task, it's your right hand. You're going to fight, it's your right hand. It's kind of like that primary instrument that you're using. So that's what is kind of picturing with Jesus is He's like God's right hand in the sense that He's doing all the work. Often when you have a comrade or you have a partner or whatever and you say He's my right hand man, why do you put Him at your right hand because that's kind of like the picture of He's your strength, He's going to do the most for you and everything like that. So let's kind of talk about horns in His hand. I think that the hand there is kind of a symbol of Jesus. Now the second part of those is horns and when I hear horns, I always just think of the devil. That's kind of why I think of it. Because we think of cartoons and Bugs Bunny and you've got this devil with horns and a pitchfork and stuff like that. I also think of just the Antichrist. The Bible talks about him having horns and stuff like that. But the Bible also describes Jesus this way. Look at Revelation chapter 5 verse number 6. And I beheld and lo in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts and in the midst of the elders stood a lamb as it had been slain having seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. So notice the Bible says that the Lamb of God has seven horns and that those seven horns are the seven spirits of God. Now this makes perfect sense because the devil is not original. The devil never creates anything new. The devil's a counterfeit. So of course the devil has his horns but you know what? His horns are to try and emulate the Lord Jesus Christ because he wants to be like the Lord Jesus Christ so he has his horns. But you know what? The horns of the Lord Jesus Christ are a picture of the spirits of God that are going forth out into the world that are trying to reach people. You know in the book of Isaiah we have a description of the seven spirits of God. One of those is like the fear of the Lord. And you know what? That's a great spirit to have. Going forth into this world is the fear of God. And you know what? When you hear about judgments that are coming for the wickedness that should strike fear into the hearts of men. That is one of the spirits that's coming. So if we go back to chapter number 3 when it's saying here, you know, hey, he had horns coming out of his hand. You know what that makes me think of? It makes me think of the seven spirits of God that are coming out. You know, he's basically giving them out into the world and he's trying to, you know, bring the world back to what revival? And you know what will revive America is the fear of God. You know why people don't get saved? Because they don't fear God. They don't fear hell. They don't fear the Bible. They don't fear the judgments that are coming from this book. And the primary reason why people aren't even fearing is because they don't even hear it. How are you going to be afraid of something you've never heard of it? You know, children have nightmares from the things that they heard and saw. You know, they don't usually end up having bad dreams. And it's something you've never seen, you've never heard of. No, it's the movie you watched, right? It's the show you watched. It's something that somebody brought up. And that's how the imagination essentially works. And that's what brings what? Fear into your heart. You know, whenever I sleep and I dream, it's always stuff that I've already heard about or things that I thought about or whatever. You know, obviously it might get weird. It might be like a weird version of it or something like that, you know. But it's not just this radical new thing that you've never thought of or you've never heard of. It's stuff that you did hear about. And usually it's recent. You know, it's kind of something that someone recently brought up and you're kind of worried about it. The same works with God in the sense that people aren't going to fear the Lord when they've never even heard about it. When no one's even opened up their mouth and showed them verses about hell. You know, sometimes you knock on doors and you ask people about hell and they don't even know. They just say like, oh, it's separation from God. Like that's the least of your worries, buddy. It's fire. It's eternal fire. It's weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's utter darkness. It never ends. Then people are kind of like, oh, it sounds terrible. You know, like you don't want to go there. But you know, you're not going to be afraid of hell if you've never heard about it. If you don't know anything about it. If to you it's just separation from God, what does that even mean? You know, that could mean anything to anybody. It's open to interpretation. But you know what? Burning alive for all of eternity, there's not a lot of open to interpretation of that. That just sounds terrifying. That's just horrifying. Weeping and gnashing of teeth, no rest day nor night, torment. I mean, these are words people, you know, can relate to and realize there's something to fear. There's something to be worried about. And I guarantee you, many unsaved people in this world, after hearing about hell, sleep and they're terrified of it. They wake up in a hot sweat thinking like, I don't want to go to hell. But you know what? Unless someone comes and preaches the gospel, that's where they're going. And you know what? Unless we open up our mouth, they won't even fear. And without the fear of the Lord, how are you going to have revival? How are you going to have revival without people opening up their mouth boldly and preaching the gospel? And you know, when we go to preach the gospel, we're not just bringing the good news. In fact, I would say that's not right. You should bring the bad news. You're a sinner deserving of hell. You're condemned to hell. You know, in order to get someone saved, they have to first realize they need to be saved. It's like, why would I get saved if I'm not going to hell? It's like, you've got to first realize you're a sinner deserving of hell. Then I need to be saved. Now, they are already there whether they realize it or not. We're just trying to help them realize they're in terrible condition, they're in terrible state. And that makes me think of the horns coming out of his hand. You know, these spirits of God that are going throughout the earth, through the Lord Jesus Christ. What is the Lord Jesus Christ? He's the word of God. And the word of God is going to bring those spirits in this earth. You say, how is it practiced? Like, how are these spirits going through? It's not like radio waves. It's not like it's going to get picked up on their phone. You know how it gets picked up? You and me opening our mouths boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel. Us opening up our mouths and preaching the word of God. That's going to bring the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of the fear of the Lord. That's how we're going to get these spirits emanating through the world is by men opening their mouth to preach the word of God. And it says, and there was the hiding of his power. You know, it's a shame. There's so much hidden from the general population about God. Why? Because no one's opening their mouth. No one's showing them what's really going on. What's really happening in this world. They're blind, you know. If our gospel be hid, it's hid to them that are blind. You know, this world just doesn't even know. And we're supposed to go out there and we're supposed to preach the gospel. It says in verse number five, Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet. Now, the wrath is coming. We're kind of talking about this wrath that's coming. And he talks about pestilence. And when you think about the wrath of God, pestilence is often associated with the wrath of God. You think about Exodus. They have great pestilence. They have, you know, locusts. They even have, you know, other pests and other kinds of issues that are coming upon them. Lice, you know. That's horrible, you know. They have all kinds of other issues that are kind of just attacking them. When we have, in the New Testament, we talk about the book of Revelation, you have locusts from hell. Talk about pests. And look, I don't know if they have raid that takes care of those types of locusts. They sound pretty rough, you know. I think that none of the raids are going to work. I mean, those things are vicious. You know, you might spray it, but, you know, they're just going to laugh it up. They're just going to come and attack you anyways, okay. And when it's talking about the punishments of God, you know, he can punish you in ways that are unimaginable. I mean, the plagues in Egypt are unimaginable. And the plagues that are written about in the future coming judgment are unimaginable type of plagues. The Bible talks about those that received the mark in their hand, they're going to get this, like, sore in their body. That's going to really be a frustrating thing. But even, you know, with the children of Israel, the children of Jerusalem, in Deuteronomy, chapter number 28, God already told them all the horrible stuff he was going to do to them whenever he judged them. And it's mind-blowing. Let's go there for a second. Go to Deuteronomy 28. Some of it is like eating their own children. Now that's, we can't fathom that. And this is what you have to understand. No normal person would ever do this, okay, under regular circumstances. But what happens is you don't realize the pain of hunger. So where you get to a point where you'll do stupid and insane things. It's kind of like alcohol in the sense that normally you wouldn't do certain things. But under the influence of alcohol, it'll allow you to do them. Like you wouldn't, you know, just trip and fall. You wouldn't stumble. You wouldn't, you know, under drugs. Sometimes people under the influence of drugs will literally think their hand is food or something. Start eating their hand or ripping off their skin or just doing like bizarre things in their own body because they're under these influences. When you're under the influence of hunger, like you don't even realize what you would do. It gets so excruciatingly painful. Now I don't know what this is like in entirety. I only have a small sample, okay. But I'll tell you this. I went on a diet one time and I was still eating every day, right. I was just eating a low calorie diet for a man. It was like 2,000 calories a day. And I got to the point where carrots sounded delicious. Like carrots were like cake. And I'm thinking like this is weird, you know. How in the world could carrots taste so good? You know, I'm like licking the, you know, I'm licking the carrots. It's just like, oh man, this is so good. Every meal I had when I was going through this phase was just like the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. I mean I would have eaten vegetables that I would normally not have eaten and thought they tasted wonderful. And I started realizing like wow, like if you went like a couple days without eating, you'd probably eat anything. I mean you'd eat Indian food, right. I mean you would eat just weird stuff. You might eat ranch, you know, tea and stuff like this. I mean you could eat anything. Maybe that's why people in Texas, maybe they like skip meals or something, I don't know. But if you've gone just weeks and weeks without eating, weird stuff will start sounding good. And in the Bible it talks about they sold like half part of half, like a dove dung. Dung. They're buying it. And it was like went for a lot of money. And I don't know the equivalency, but it'd be like I just paid $10,000 for half of bird poop. I didn't even get the whole thing. I just got half of it to eat. Isn't that gross? I mean but no one would ever do that. Okay, no one's going to be like thinking that. But you get so hungry and they get so hungry they're going to eat their own children. This is the type of judgments that God is doling out. You know, this is not coming from the wicked. This is coming from God who's giving them this type of judgments. He also talks about the pestilence. Look at verse 21. I mean this doesn't sound good at all. He's just saying like, hey, everything that I could possibly do to punish you, I'm going to do it. And you know, sometimes death is not the worst punishment. God's saying like, look, I'm going to make every part of your body hurt. I'm going to give you all kinds of incurable diseases. I'm going to make it where you have no food. I'm going to make like everyone hate you. I'm going to make you eat your own children. I'm going to make all of your food turn to mildew and just every bad thing. You should get fired, your clothes ripped, your skins and boils. You have internal pain, external pain. No one likes you. I mean just like every bad thing you could ever imagine. He even says in verse 27, Now, Emera just put an H in front of that. That's called hemorrhoids. That's a place you don't want to have any kind of pain. And he's saying, I'm bringing this stuff. And notice he says, you can't even be healed. Incurable diseases. And you know what? People that hate God, they get incurable diseases like AIDS. Like HIV. Like find the cure for HIV. It's incurable. There is no cure. It's stupid. It's stupid to try and find the cure for these incurable diseases that are just clear punishments coming from God. And you know what? God will bring the pestilence among people that reject him and hate him and want nothing to do with him. That's why it's important to have the fear of the Lord. Go back to chapter number three. I wonder if that's what the sex education class was like if less people would rebel against the Lord and commit fornication. The burning of goo. I don't even know what that is. I don't want to find out. The emerods. The itch. The scab. Things that you can't be healed from. You know. That's what they even used to teach when I was in school. And you know what? That actually deterred people. I remember people in high school just saying like, the only reason I don't want to commit fornication is just so I don't get an STD. That was the only thing holding them back. And it's like, you know what? The fear of the Lord can still work. Just the fear of being punished. The fear of evil happening unto them. But you know what? When there's no punishment, evil abounds. Back in chapter number 3, it said in verse 5 we had read, it says, and burning coals went forth on his feet. It also makes me think of Revelation 1 when it talks about Jesus. It talks like his feet were like, it says they were burned in a furnace of fire. And so we kind of see that same metaphor or kind of analogy as to describing the Lord. It says in verse 6, he stood and measured the earth. He beheld and drove asunder the nations. And the everlasting mountains were scattered. The perpetual hills did bow. His ways are everlasting. So again, he's the one that created the whole earth. Hebrews chapter number 1 makes it very clear that it's his hands that formed every single thing. And he's going to fold them like a napkin. He's just going to fold them up and they're going to all perish or whatever. And he's the only one that's truly everlasting. This world is just, we're just passing through. The earth is just going to be burned up. It's going to be destroyed. And they're going to basically succumb to his will eventually. You know, the Bible talks about in Revelation when we have the coming judgment, how all the mountains and the hills, they're going to basically evaporate. They're going to completely go away and they're not going to be any of these mountains or anything like that. And just think about moving a mountain. You know, that's a pretty extreme thing. Mount Everest or some of these giant hills, obviously in Houston you don't even know what mountains are. So there are these tall rock formations that come out of the earth. He's just basically saying like, or hills, I guess you don't have anything. It's just kind of flat around here. But you actually go to different parts of the world, there's just mountains everywhere. You know, and there's hills everywhere. And it's just saying like all these things are going to just bend to the Lord's will. You know, and it's really difficult to even cut roads. You know, it takes lots of energy and effort for a man to even cut just a small tiny sliver of a road around these mountains. Yet they're all just going to succumb to Jesus' will because he's that powerful. Verse 7, I saw in the tents of Cushion and affliction and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? Was thine anger against the rivers? Was thy wrath against the sea? That thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation? Thy bow was made quite naked. According to the oaths of the tribes, even thy words sealeth. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. The mountains saw thee and they trembled. The overflowing of the water passed by. The deep uttered his voice and lifted up his hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation. At the light of thine arrows they went and at the shining of thy glittering spear. Thou didst march through the land in indignation. Thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. So, he's talking about how the earth is responding to the Lord. OK. Talking about mountains, you know, basically succumbing to his will and he's talking about rivers and he even brings up the sun and the moon. And what I think is how he's describing this. He's kind of describing in a poetic sense for the immediate application. OK. And all these things are succumbing to his will, but it's not like God is just really angry at rivers. He's just like, man, that river. You know, it's just flowing the way it's flowing. Man, that mountain. Oh, that sun or whatever. No, no, no, no. He's actually just mad at the people. OK. But they are succumbing to his will to show his power, to show his might, to show that he's actually the king of the universe and that even these powerful things like the sun, the moon, the rivers, the mountains, everything like this, they all quiver and quake and fear and tremble at the Lord. And look, if the moon and the sun are afraid of the Lord, how much more us? The dust of the earth. I mean, we're nothing in comparison to the sun, in comparison to a giant mountain in the sense of scope, in the sense of like grandeur, of power. Obviously, we're more important and we're not trying to undermine that. What I am saying is just in sheer significance of just power, might, scale, it's just saying if they're trembling at him, how much more should we leave at his presence? And he's coming here and he's marching to the land and he's mad. That's what indignation is. And he threshed the heathen in anger. Now, some people have this weird idea that God is just like Santa Claus where he just gives you toys whether you've been naughty or nice or something. Or they say like, oh, Santa will give you a lump of coal. But no one ever gets lumps of coal. Has anybody ever gotten a lump of coal for Christmas? I'm just curious. No one's gotten a lump of coal. All right, so no one got that. It was just like this scare tactic that wasn't really real. It was this idle threat. It was basically just something to scare you, but then you find out that it's not a real threat. And we realize that kids really aren't any better because of Santa. No kid's just like, I don't want to lie today because I don't want to get a lump of coal for Christmas. I've never heard a kid say that. They might be afraid of their parents. They might be afraid of the Lord, something that's actually real. But the Lord God, the God of the Bible, is actually angry. The Bible says he's angry at the wicked every single day. And the Lord is just furious at certain times in the Bible. He's going to put people in hell for all of eternity. Do you really think that hell is a great place or something? Do you think he's doing that because he loves people? No, he's doing it because he's mad at them. He's doing it because he has great anger, and he's angry at sin. Now, this is again where people get mixed up. Oh, well, God's mad at the sin, but not the sinner. No, no, no, you're wrong, because without the sinner, sin wouldn't exist. I mean, what a foolish idea to say that God's mad at this abstract idea of sin, but not the person that actually committed the sin. Right? Let's say someone kills your brother, and you're like, man, I just hate murder, but I don't hate the guy that killed him. I just hate the idea of murder. You know, what a bad concept. What a bad idea. No, no, no, you're going to get mad at the guy that killed him. You're going to be mad at the guy that committed the murder. You're going to get mad at the rapist. No, you're going to get mad at the child molester. No, you're going to get mad at the guy that lied and stole and did wickedly, and you know what? God is holy and righteous, and he gets mad and angry at every lie, at every theft. I mean, the Bible says these six things that the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto him. Multiple of them are about lying, lying lips. God just hates a lie coming off every lip. It makes God angry when someone lies. And you know what? I know all about it, because when my kids tell me a lie, it makes me angry. I don't like it. I don't think like, oh, that was great. Great, good job. You're really good at lying. In fact, they are really bad at lying, OK? Although sometimes it's confusing, you know? And you start thinking like, uh-oh, you know, you tell me the truth. I'm going to figure out the truth here. You know what? We should hate sin. The Bible says, abhor that which is evil and cleave that which is good. And you know what? It makes no sense to love people that just do wicked. That just doesn't even compute. The Lord is not pleased with the wicked. The Lord is not pleased with those that do evil. The Lord doesn't like the horrible atrocities that are being committed every single day. The Lord is going to punish those people. It makes them mad. And the Bible says he's going to thresh the heathen in anger. Now, what is thresh? Thresh is not a word that we often use, but threshing is pictured with wheat. Now, when you get wheat, you basically are beating it, OK, to get the grain out of the wheat. You have the wheat crop. And then it basically has kind of a seed, as it were, in the wheat crop. In order to extract that, you end up beating that wheat, which is called threshing it. So it's a picture of the Lord just beating people to end up punishing them. And he's not even just beating them. He's beating them in anger is what the Bible says. The Bible says he's going through the land. He's mad. And he's threshing the heathen in anger. And you know what? That's what the Lord is going to do to the children of Jerusalem with Babylon. He's going to have Babylon march through the land, and Babylon is going to thresh the children of Jerusalem with anger. The Bible says they're not going to spare. The Bible says they're going to do horrible things to the women, to the children. I mean, it's just going to be a horrible, horrible judgment that happens against them. And you know what? The same thing's going to happen in the book of Revelation with the Whore of Babylon. The Bible says that God is going to judge the great whore, and he's going to basically have this destroying wind come upon them and destroy them. Go over to Jeremiah chapter 51. It's kind of right there in the middle of your Bible, really big book of the Bible. Got 52 chapters. So 51 is right there kind of towards the end. And in Jeremiah chapter 51, it's kind of prophesying about what's going to happen to Babylon. And so what you have to understand is that when someone does something wrong, when someone sins or does wickedly, God will punish them. But sometimes the way he punishes them is by bringing someone that's even more wicked than them in their life to punish them. But then that person's going to get punished. And so it's kind of a perpetual cycle. So Babylon comes to judge Jerusalem, but then God's going to judge Babylon. And look how he describes this. Verse 151. Thus saith the Lord, behold, I will raise up against Babylon and against them that dwell in the midst of them that rise up against me, a destroying wind, and will send unto Babylon fanners that shall fan her and shall empty her land. For in the day of trouble they shall be against her roundabout, against him that bendeth, let the archer bend his bow, and against him that lifteth up himself in his brigadine, and spare ye not her young men, destroy ye utterly all her host. Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, and they that are thrust through inner streets. For Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of hosts, though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel. Flee out of the midst of Babylon and deliver every man his soul. Be not cut off in her iniquity, for this is the time of the Lord's vengeance. He will render unto her a recompense. It says in verse seven, Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand that made all the earth drunken. The nations have drunken of her wine, therefore the nations are mad. Babylon has suddenly fallen and destroyed. How for her? Take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed. So, really this whole chapter is just constantly hammering this thought. Babylon is going to be destroyed, and the Lord is going to destroy the heathen in anger. He gets very angry at them, and he's going to do evil unto them, and really every single one of them. That's why it's saying, like, get out of them, you know, get away from Babylon, because he's going to judge them and destroy them with such a wicked destruction, such an evil destruction, that you don't want to be around there. And the Lord didn't forsake Jerusalem. He's punishing them to get rid of the evil element, so that he can bring back the righteous remnant. And throughout history, this is what God has done, go back to Habakkuk, go forward in your Bible, go to Habakkuk chapter number three, the minor prophets, write up the book of Nahum, and we have to realize throughout the timing of history, major civilizations will rise, and they become so evil and so wicked that God would judge them and completely destroy them, and then bring in another nation, that then rules on top of them. You kind of have this picture with the Babylonians get taken over by the Medo-Persians. Then the Medo-Persians get taken over by the Greeks, and then the Greeks get taken over by the Romans. Now here's the thing, none of those nations are righteous. All of them are bad, okay? Medo-Persians, wicked. Greeks, wicked. Romans, wicked. And then all the nations after that, still just evil, still wicked, that keep punishing them. Do you know what keeps surviving? Christianity. Do you know what's still here? The New Testament church. You know, even though the nations change, the cultures change, all the things are kind of changing constantly, one thing's remaining the same, the word of God. Christianity will continue to go forth, save people, continue to go forth, and God keeps sparing that righteous remnant throughout every generation. And they're the ones that are going to survive all that evil when it comes upon a society. We even see this fulfilled in times with the rapture. God is going to literally allow a horrible tribulation to come upon the earth, horrible atrocities and evil war and all kinds of evil pestilence, and then, in fact, just a complete manhunt where anybody that has the testimony of Jesus Christ isn't going to be able to buy and sell, they're going to be hunted down like a terrorist or something, and yet they're going to still make it through because the Lord will return and pull them back out, and then he's going to destroy the entire wicked element that's left over. And once he's destroyed, then we come back and rule and reign with Christ on the earth. We have to understand that these pictures of the physical elements bending to his will kind of makes me think of the end times because we have pictures like the sun and the moon responding to the Lord. The moon is turned into blood before that great notable day of the Lord. You have the picture of all the mountains sinking down. So you kind of have this element of the geography of the entire earth bending to the Lord's will and shifting to the entire Lord's will. Now that's something we really haven't observed today. I've never seen these great miracles, but at some point in the future we will literally see the earth just transform before our eyes where there will be no mountains, the entire earth will be burned up, we'll get a new heaven and a new earth, and the new heaven doesn't have sea, which I know some of you guys are partial to. You're kind of close to the sea, you've got gals, you've got the beaches and everything like that. The Bible says the new heaven and the earth don't have any sea. So I'm kind of excited about that. And I'm really hoping for no wind. I don't want wind. He says in verse 13, Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed. Thou woundest the head out of the house of the wicked by discovering the foundation unto the net. Now, he's saying that he's going forth to bring salvation. And, again, what is he saving? Well, he's saving the righteous remnant from the wicked because if the wicked were allowed to perpetually do their thing, the righteous would be destroyed. So if Jerusalem's allowed to just keep doing their thing, eventually they'll get rid of all of God's prophets, all of God's people that's completely gone. And the same would be with Babylon or with any of these nations. So God has to kind of come in at the last minute and rescue them. Kind of like with the rapture. God's coming in and preserving his people there at the last minute. And he's coming for his people. It also says that he woundest the head out of the house of the wicked. This makes me think of a verse. Go to Genesis chapter 3. All the way at the beginning of your Bible. Genesis chapter 3. So it says that the Lord's going to wound the head out of the house of the wicked. Now, Genesis chapter number 3, God doles out curses to the man, woman, and to the serpent that was in the garden. Look what he said to the serpent in verse number 15. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head and now shall bruise his heel. So notice the prophecy about the Lord Jesus Christ. He's going to crush the head of the serpent. And right here in the back of chapter number 3, it brings up that salvation again and how he's going to wound the head out of the house of the wicked talking about the devil. At the core, at the root of all of these nations is the devil. The devil is the one that's in charge. The devil is the one that's leading these people. And it's no different today. You know, I think that sometimes we get a carnal perspective where people would say, oh, the George Soroses of the world are in charge. You know, there's these rich ruling elites or the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Facebook owner, or the, you know, the President of the United States, or the Hillary Clinton, or there's this secret group of people, or Mao Zedong, you know, or Xi Jinping, or, you know, whatever it is, whatever leaders there are in the world, I don't think anybody thinks Justin Trudeau's in charge of anything, okay? He can't even get the truckers in control of his nation up there in Canada, all right? Don't you know me, all right? But it's not any of them that are in charge. The devil is leading all of them. All of the leaders of this world that are wicked are just pawns of the devil. It's the devil that's working in their lives. It's the devil that's bringing all this wickedness. But Jesus will come and he'll bruise the head of them. He'll remove them. All of the minions the devil sets up, God will just knock them down. He sets up, you know, Nebuchadnezzar, God knocks them down. He sets up Alexander the Great, God knocks them down. He sets up Nero, he sets up Caesar, he sets up, you know, whatever president he wants, God will knock them down, and ultimately the devil's going to set someone up, the Antichrist, and guess what? Jesus is going to knock them down again. And the head is often a picture of the top of leadership. It's kind of that who's in charge. The Bible talks about the head of the household, right? Or the head of Christ is God. The head of the family is the man, right? The head of the woman is the man, okay? And so we kind of have this picture of the head as being in charge. You know, our head is in charge of us, right? My hand's not deciding what I do. My elbow's not deciding. My knee, my foot isn't deciding. This is making all the decisions up here, okay? It's kind of picturing that leadership, and it's saying this head of the house of the wicked, he's going to crush, he's going to destroy. So whatever they will to do, whatever they want to do, whatever they dreamed up, God's going to bring it to naught. God's going to just completely end it. He's going to stop it from happening. So even though the Babylonians take over and do a lot of stuff that they wanted, eventually God's just going to crush that, and he's going to bring salvation unto his people. It says in verse 14, Thou didst strike through with the staves the head of his villages. They came out as a whirlwind to scatter me. Their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly. Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters. When I heard, my belly trembled, my lips quivered at the voice, rottenness entered in my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble. When he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops. So he's talking about what's going to happen, and in the immediate context again is Babylon's going to come, Babylon's going to destroy his city, Jerusalem, and it's going to be a horrible destruction. And then they're going to get destroyed too. And when Habakkuk hears this, he has this bad feeling in his stomach. And whenever you're kind of nervous or you're scared, that's kind of typically where you feel it. You know, you feel it down in your gut, right? You kind of get that nervous pit of your stomach, and it just kind of hurrs and it feels bad. He's saying like his belly's just kind of like trembling, and his lips kind of start quivering. I mean, he's just kind of like scared. When someone gets nervous, they kind of start to shake a little bit, and they may stammer with their lips. If you've ever had to talk to someone when you're nervous or you're scared, you're kind of like nervous. That's what he's saying. He's just getting like so nervous. Rottenness entered in his bones. Rottenness is kind of a picture of being fragile, right? If something was rotten, what would happen? It could just snap just so easy. It could just break. It could just fall apart. He's basically saying he has like no strength. He's just like, he's just so terrified. He's just so scared. It's like the bone is the picture of strength in your body. If it was rotten, you're just like jello. You know, you're just kind of like, if you had no bones, you'd just be kind of like this little like blob or whatever. He's saying, I trembled in myself. He says, when you're going to invade them with troops. Verse 17, although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in thine vines. The labor of thy oil shall fail, and the field shall yield no meat. The flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hind's feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places with the chief singer on my stringed instrument. Now, it ends on a high note, but we have to understand the context. He's saying, even though the fig tree doesn't blossom, and when the besiegement happens, or whenever the city of Jerusalem is sieged by Nebuchadnezzar and his army, they completely run out of everything. Every economic resource is completely depleted. All of the food, all of the economy, all of just everything that can be related to just prosperity and everything's just gone. It'd be like walking into the stores, and the shelves are just bare. I mean, there's just nothing. There's no food. There's not even canned lentils. I mean, there's just nothing. No peas, you know. I mean, you couldn't find ranch dressing even, okay? You couldn't find Indian food. You know, you couldn't find anything. I mean, you couldn't find ramen. I mean, you can't find Twinkies. Nothing. The fig tree's not there. You can't even find asparagus. I mean, you can't find just the weirdest vegetables. I mean, you couldn't find nothing. It's just gone. All the food's gone. He says there's no fruit in the vines. The olive is failed. The fields have no meat. The flocks cut up from the fold. There's no harvest. He's just saying it's all gone. What if every business was shut down, no food was coming in, all of the earth was just barren, there's just no hope, whatever, and he's saying, yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. He's saying, no matter what happens, no matter what evil is going to befall us, no matter what judgment you bring upon us, you know what? I am going to rejoice in the Lord and the joy and the God of my salvation. He says, you know, I don't care what happens. I'm just going to still praise the Lord. Think about Job. Job has to go through this. And he says the Lord gave and the Lord take away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And let's think about what happened to Job. He lost all of his kids, all of his money, all of his herd, sheep, flocks, everything in one day. The same day. In fact, he finds out about it in like five minutes. It's just like all the kids are dead, all the money's gone, every good and possession you've ever had, everyone's dead, it's all gone, it just evaporated like that. And then the next, you know, week or so, he then gets boils all over his body where he's like scraping himself with what's called a pot shirt. It's basically a broken pot and he's just taking like a fragment of a broken pot and he's just kind of like itching his body, it just hurts so much. And it's funny that when God wants to punish a man, he still leaves his nagging wife, you know. He's like, I know how to punish this guy and I'm not going to take his wife away. No, no, no, no, no. I'm going to leave her, you know. He's like, his whole goal is to get him to curse God. And he's like, I'm not taking her away. Let's keep her in the mix, okay. And she comes around and she's like, why don't you just curse God and die, Job? And he's like, you know what? Blessed be the name of the Lord, right? I mean, he's got everything stripped away, every bad thing's ever happened to him and he says, you know what? I'm still here and I can still just praise the Lord and I can still be grateful for, you know, the fact that I had good stuff. Because at the moment, there's not really a lot to be, you know, thankful for in the moment. But you know what he could be thankful for is the stuff that he had. He got the opportunity. Here's a perspective that's a little bit different. Let's say you lose a loved one. And we all lose loved ones, whether that be our parents, you know, whether it be a cousin, a brother, a sister, you know, God forbid, a child. We're going to lose people in our lives. We're going to have death or other means by which we lose someone. Instead of looking at the situation as you lost them, what if you looked at it, I got 10 years to be with that person. I got 50 years to be with that person. What a blessing that I got to know that person for 5 years or 10 years or however long it was, as opposed to saying it's now gone, being thankful for what you got, being thankful for the relationship that the Lord allowed you to have with that person or the moment in time that you were with them. You know, you lost 10 children, but you know what? It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. You know, I'd rather even God forbid someone really special to me died have had the opportunity to still love them up to this point than to have never had them in my life, and so I could still be thankful that the Lord allowed me to have that relationship even though it ended, even though it wasn't the best or even though it was taken away violently away from me. You know, I could still just say, you know what, I'm still glad I got that opportunity. I'm still glad I got to have that person in my life. I'm still glad I got to have that house. I'm still glad I got to have those things. You know, as long as you got breath in your lungs, you should be praising the Lord for the things that He's given you and that He's blessed you with. And he ends on the high note. He starts out just questioning why God's not going to judge anybody. Then he realizes how bad the judgment is, and he's just so terrified. But he says, you know what, God? Even if you bring this horrible judgment, I'm still going to rejoice. I'm still going to praise you. And it really kind of should be similar for us in this life to say, you know what? I don't know what the future holds. I don't know what evil may come tomorrow. You know, sufficient in the days of the evil thereof, right? And even if something really bad happens, I'm still just going to praise God that I'm not going to hell. Because no matter what happens to me, the worst punishment you can dream up, I still won't go to hell. And it still won't be like hell. You know, there's horrible punishments people have gone through on this earth. You know, even crucifixion is obviously a pretty bad punishment. But even probably arguably worse things or more drawn out things. You know what? The worst day on earth is still better than one second in hell. And you can still just rejoice. If you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and he gave you eternal life, you can still rejoice that you have salvation. Because you know what? If you're saved and you have nothing on this earth, you're still saved. And I can still just be thankful that I'm saved and I have the Holy Ghost and the Lord will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. You know what? When Jesus Christ was on the cross, there wasn't much to live for at that moment from a physical perspective. In fact, he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He's thinking like, this is rough. I mean, he's nailed to a cross. He's bearing the sins of the entire world. Do you know what? He can still bless the Lord. And he still has hope in his salvation because he's going to go to hell for three days and three nights, but he's coming back. And he's like, I know that you're not going to leave me in hell. And we, too, should have the same attitude. We should have the same thought process of saying, you know what? I know judgment's coming because I read Revelation. And just as much as John 3.16 is true, Revelation's true, too. And even though that horrible judgment may come in America, it may come in my lifetime. I'm still going to praise the Lord. I'm still going to bless the Lord. I'm not going to turn away from God. I'm not going to stop serving God just because evil might happen. I mean, didn't we just get the worst picture painted for as possible? No food, no hope, just complete destruction. I mean, it can't get much worse than that. So if we go through the great tribulation, we should still be faithful and say, you know what? I'm going to rejoice in my salvation. I'm still going to praise the Lord. And it helps us because I guarantee most of us will probably never even have this bad of a day. You're never going to have, you don't even have Job's day. You're never going to have what Habakkuk is talking about, probably. But even if you did, you're still supposed to have the right attitude. But that should help you when tomorrow, when Starbucks gets your order wrong, that you can still praise God, you know? When the weather is not exactly what you wanted, when it rains, you know, or whatever, you can still be like, I'll praise the Lord when you get a flat tire. I mean, the problems that we have today are so minuscule in comparison to what the Bible is painting, and yet we're still supposed to be thankful and rejoicing and praising God. So what's the one thing we can learn from Habakkuk? You know what? Judgment's coming. Don't worry about that. And no matter what judgment happens, we're supposed to just stay faithful to the Lord and rejoice in the Lord and know that we have our salvation, and the rest doesn't matter. Let the Lord take care of it. And from eternity's perspective, we won't be disappointed in the Lord's judgment. We won't think, like, why? I don't get it. When he finally hears about God's judgment, it scares, you know, to death, literally. I mean, he's just like, turns into a pool of noodle of nothing. I was like, my bones are rotten-ness, right? He's like a scaredy-cat. He wanted to hear about the judgment, but if you think about the first chapter, he said, look, even if I told you, you wouldn't even believe it. He's like, even if I told you the judgment I'm bringing, you wouldn't even understand it. You wouldn't even quite get it. And you know what? We'll never know what that's like, because we're not going to see people literally eating their own children and having all these horrible diseases and the bloodshed and the murder. I mean, probably never going to see something like that. And you probably couldn't truly appreciate it until you saw it. But we may see some evil in our lives, and we need to be willing to still be a faithful Christian, even unto death. Let's close in prayer. Thank you so much, Father, for the book of Habakkuk. I pray that we would take out the practical applications today that we would notice that even though our world today is very wicked, it's very dark, there's a lot of evil that's going on, people don't seem to be punished right now, that your judgment is coming. And even though your judgment is coming, and even though hard times and evil may even befall us, we may have to experience persecution and severe affliction, that we may have to see horrible things happen to this world, that we wouldn't lose sight of your salvation, we wouldn't lose sight of your grace. And I pray that you just give us mercy as we go through hard times, that you would deliver us from the evil, and that we wouldn't have to be tempted with things that aren't necessary. But no matter what we're tempted with, that we'd have the faith in our heart to continually bless the name of the Lord. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let's go to our last song, 166. 166, I will praise Him. And then right after the service we have a baptism. So we've got to go around the building, but we've got a baptism, and it's going to be a refreshing baptism, all right? Or He's going to walk in newness of spirit, all right? Newness of life, right? I will praise Him, 166, there on the verse. I will praise Him. At my feet in ashes lay. I will praise Him. I will praise Him. Praise the Lamb for sinners slain. Give Him glory, all ye people, for His blood can wash away each stain. Then God's fire upon the altar, of my heart was set aflame. I shall never cease to praise Him. Glory, glory to His name. I will praise Him. I will praise Him. Praise the Lamb for sinners slain. Give Him glory, all ye people, for His blood can wash away each stain. Blessed be the name of Jesus. I'm so glad He took me in. He's forgiven my transgressions. He has cleansed my heart from sin. I will praise Him. I will praise Him. Praise the Lamb for sinners slain. Give Him glory, all ye people, for His blood can wash away each stain. Glory, glory to the Father. Glory, glory to the Son. Glory, glory to the Spirit. Glory to the three in one. I will praise Him. I will praise Him. Praise the Lamb for sinners slain. Give Him glory, all ye people, for His blood can wash away each stain. Good singing, you are dismissed. Please join us for baptism in the back. .