GOD'S FAITH
GOD’S FAITH
September 17, 2016, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
By vision, Habakkuk saw the “certain” day when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. (Hab. 2:14) He was assured his vision was certain and it will surely come to pass. Before that “certain” day, he saw what every man must see: “The righteous shall live by His (God’s) faith.” The word for “righteous” here means “just, to be right (in a moral sense).” The world/kosmos is sick because the whole creation is sick. It will take more than man’s faith in God to heal our nation or any other nation. It will take God’s faith in Himself in man. It will take the faith of God.
It will require more than the wisdom and strength of man to unravel this great human mess. It will require the faith and faithfulness of God. Our leaders will have to know the heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, His Son. As a nation, we must repent. Our sins must be washed away by His blood. We must exchange our filthy religious and political rags for the garments of His righteousness.
Rev. 19:7-8: “Let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.”
Faith is in Christ, and Christ is in you. Both the Hebrew and Greek words for “faith” mean that which is “certain.” Faith is a Fact! What America needs now is something “certain”---those rock-bottom values and spiritual absolutes upon which our nation was established. This kind of faith cannot be affected by the external, circumstantial appearance of the flesh realm. Habakkuk’s vision is certain; it will surely come to pass!
Hab. 2:3: “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.”
In our study of Habakkuk, this verse is where we left off on September 3, 2016. The promised Messiah was to be the Firstborn among many brethren. The vision would not disappoint, but will surely come to pass. Jesus Christ the promised Seed of the woman would come and be planted in the earth. He would be the true Vine, the Resurrection and the Life.
The Veil was rent from top to bottom. The law was finished. Grace and truth prevails. An age, an order, an era changed. That happened over 2000 years ago…historically, and literally. Our Savior died with violence to take away the first covenant, and then rose in triumph to forever establish the New Covenant.
These same covenantal principles are operative every time God changes an order, whether it is national or personal. The world and our nation are under a change-order from God. These are the active ingredients of every revival of Church history, every fresh outpouring of the Holy Ghost. These same truths apply to the progressive unfolding of the Christ nature in the life of the individual Christian.
Whenever man locks himself inside a time-space world, he blinds himself to the unsearchable riches of Christ. God created time, so He is larger than time. Jesus is Truth and Jesus is God the Son.
The New Covenant of Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 is the New Testament, pure and simple. He was the Sacrifice, once and for all. There won’t be another covenant, priesthood, or another anything. Jesus is better than Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and the angels. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. His death and resurrection changed the priesthood, the sacrifices, the temple worship and the order of the testaments permanently. His king-priest ministry after the order of Melchisedec is immutable.
The principles of that change which is the vision seen by Habakkuk take place whenever God moves in a fresh way among men. From Martin Luther to the present, God has been restoring all things.
We must move out of the Old Covenant realm of faith (Heb. 11) and into the New Covenant realm of faith (Heb. 12: 1-2). We must move out of basic, elementary faith into the faith authored by Jesus Christ, who was God manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16).
The Bible, the Word of God, is the answer for America. However, “First principles faith” alone will not move or heal this generation.
Heb. 6: 1-2: “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”
The foundational faith is faith “toward,” literally “upon” God (1 Pet. 5:7). It is essentially man-centered and need-oriented. It reveals God’s hand, what He can do for men in the name of Jesus. It is the “faith” message we know for:
- Regeneration (a new heart through a new birth) and justification (a new legal standing with God). Jn. 3:7:”Marvel not that I said unto you, you must be born again.”
- The circumcision of the heart in water baptism by immersion in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Col. 2: 11-12)
- The Pentecostal experience of the Holy Ghost baptism.
- The healing of man, physically and emotionally. (1 Pet. 2:24)
- The meeting of our personal financial needs. Phil. 4:19: “But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
These personal New Covenant blessings are wonderful and are ours to apprehend by faith. But it is going to take something greater than “elementary” faith to turn this nation back to God. Habakkuk’s prayer and vision lifted his eyes to something greater than his own personal needs. God’s purposes are generational. His plan worldwide. Its fullest outworked measure lies ahead, in the appointed time: the Feast of Tabernacles.
Don’t waste your time in the lower realms. Seek those things which are above (Col. 3:1). Station yourself until you see God. The vision is yet for the festival, not one day overdue.
Hab. 2:14: “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”
The Feast of Tabernacles is a date on the Jewish calendar. For the Christian, it is a fullness of time of the harvest of the earth and the knowledge of the glory of God covering the whole earth through His saints. Just as the Feast of Pentecost is the Holy Spirit and His glory being released through those who will receive Him; and the Passover Feast is the Lamb of God on the Cross. Both the Feast of Pentecost and the Passover Feast are poured out into our Temple. Can we not expect the glory of the Feast of Tabernacle to also be poured out into our Temple?
The Holy Spirit descended on the Day of Pentecost and Jesus Christ was crucified on Passover.
Habakkuk had gone to the watchtower to hear and ended up seeing the time of the Messiah and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Then with wonder, he looked off into the distance and beheld a time when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Lifted above his present dilemma, he bore witness to the faithfulness and justice of God in every aspect, even in Jehovah’s predetermined destruction of the antichrist at work in King Nebuchadnezzar and his armies. Though they served as the rod of His anger, the Chaldeans would be judged. God was about to bring the hammer down in five swift strokes upon the head of Babylon’s godless king.
God must deal with every enemy of His Kingdom. We can rest with Habakkuk as we hear how Jehovah will judge and remove the Chaldeans, stripping them of their pride and might.
Through the power of transcendent prayer, the prophet understood that the Creator interrupts the affairs of men.
God has begun a purging of America and the nations. God will intervene concerning the economy, immorality and violence. Every nation in the earth is reeling under the hammer of his hand. We are not going to carry our mess into His Kingdom. Yesterday the war again escalated in Syria. We are watching as the violence in the earth is purging out all evil. We are watching as the Psalm 83 war, the Isaiah 17 destruction of Damascus, and the Gog-Magog war all appear to be culminating into one war.
The Church will rise as the dust of true justice settles beneath God’s feet. The sword of the Lord came down five times upon the spirit of the Babylonian mindset, past, and present, as outlined in Habakkuk 2:5-20:
2:6-8: Woe to the ambitious and dishonest.
2:9-11: Woe to the proud and self-exalted.
2:12-13: Woe to the violent and shedders of blood.
2:15-17: Woe to the corrupt and debased.
2:18-19: Woe to the false worshipers and false gods.
The remainder of chapter 2 is a five-fold judgment upon Babylon. It is judgment upon the beast nature and the beast system. Habakkuk’s five woes describe sin and the sinner in America. These plagues have eaten away our moral fiber until this nation has become rapacious, unscrupulous, sanguinary, intemperate, and idolatrous.
Let us examine our hearts using the fives woes as a measuring stick. It is easy to recognize a Chaldean. In fact there’s a little bit of Babylon in all of us.
“Indeed wine betrays him; he is arrogant and never at rest. Because he is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied, he gathers to himself all the nations and takes captive all the peoples.”
Wine betrays him: Wine is treacherous. Drunkenness and debauchery is the common, anticipated weekend life style on every major college campus. Bacchus, the god of wine, is faithfully worshipped.
Who is arrogant: Companies, religious systems, political entities, the media, loom high all around us. But everything except the mountain of Jesus’ Kingdom is coming down in the Day of the Lord. The wind is blowing from the north, coming to remove everything that God did not tell us to do. The wicked will not mock the righteous much longer. The proud are going to fall.
Who is as death: We become what we worship. The realm of death is passing, not permanent; men who prefer such are hollow men, for the dead do not praise the Lord. Dead in trespasses and sins. The spirit of the Chaldean is an alien from the commonwealth of Israel, a stranger from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. He is a walking dead man, not yet buried.
Who cannot be satisfied: Because the Babylonian worships false gods, the things of this world, he has never had an experience with the One who is the Bread of Life and the Water of Life. All men were created to be worshipers, and true worship is the cry of the heart. The hunger and thirst of the inner man, the man of the Spirit, will never be satisfied with anything except reality.
Who gathers and heaps to himself: Babylonians are rapists and plunderers on the side. Nothing is unto the Lord or for the benefit of the people. Every thing revolves around the center of self. They worship things.
This is a man without God, life without Jesus.
Now that we have clearly identified the spirit of the Chaldean personality, we move on to discover the five things that God will purge out of us, out of our nation, out of the earth. Habakkuk saw the time when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord would cover the planet. When the fullness of His kingdom comes, there will be no more:
- Panhandling politics.
- Proud performances.
- Pernicious preying.
- Perverse partying.
- Phobic phantoms.
The Lord through the prophet begins to pronounce this taunting proverb, this public derision. The plundering Chaldean will be plundered. Ambitious schemes will be recompensed by shame. Sinful building will be repaid by destruction. The debaucher of nations will be debauched. The idolater will be forsaken by his idol.
Next week we will begin with No More Panhandling Politics by Thus Saith the Lord.
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church
Scripture from K.J.V. – I entered into the labors of Kelly Varner, Rest In The Day of Trouble. Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of Rev. Varner (1949-2009).