Heavenly Father, we are so thankful
for your continuous mercy towards us and your grace towards us
every day. We are so undeserving, but yet by the purpose of your
will and because it pleased you, you've saved we who believe in
Christ Jesus our Lord. And we pray that you would give
Brother Norm the words to speak, that he would utter the unsearchable
riches of you, Lord Jesus. and that we who are Your people,
we who are saved and redeemed, that we might rejoice and be
in awe of how great You are, God, and how great our Savior
is. And we love You and praise You,
and we pray that You, Lord Jesus, would receive all the glory and
all the honor and all the praise. In Jesus' name, Amen. Good morning. It's a delight
to be with you. I've had more fun than a human
should have. Just enjoyed it so much to be
with your pastor, meet you folks, and put faces on names that we've
heard of. And I've known of the church
here for a long time, but it's nice to be here and meet you
folks. And had the pleasure of meeting Brother Bird down at
Crossville, Tennessee. We sat across the table from
each other. I didn't know him and he didn't
know me, but we introduced each other like we're supposed to
and we had good fellowship and enjoyed that. And then I met
your pastor about ten years ago, as he said. I have been accustomed
in our church for about the last 25 years of going through books,
books of the Bible. Starting at the beginning, go
through the book, find another book, and pray that I'm being
led of the Holy Spirit to do that. There are several reasons
for doing that. When I moved to the Dalles, it's
a small work, small group of people, and I got a job teaching
school. And teaching school and pastoring
is two full-time jobs put into one. And so I needed some way
of being able to deal with preaching, and the Lord just let me go to
a book, and you'll always know where you are. You won't have
to wonder what's going to happen next Sunday, or next Wednesday,
or next Sunday night. Second thing that I found out
about that was if I heard something about somebody, I didn't start
making up a message about them. You know, it prevented me from
getting involved in stuff that I didn't need to get involved
with. I just preached the gospel. Now, sometimes it smacked people
right in the face that I didn't even know it did. But I wasn't
intending to do that. That was not my goal. My goal
was to go through the Word of God. And Brother Henry Mahan,
who brought me the gospel, shared with me, he says, God's people
just want to know what the Bible says. That's what they want to
know. And they do their own study,
but they want to know from the pulpit what the Bible says. What
the Bible says about God. What the Bible says about Christ.
What the Bible says about sin. What the Bible says about heaven.
What the Bible says about our daily walk. They want to know
what the Bible says about those things. And they don't want men's
inventions brought to the pulpit. So, God being my helper, that's
what I've wanted to do, and we've been in the Dalles almost 30
years now, and I look back and we've covered a lot of books
of the Bible, and it's been a blessing to me. But do you think I can
remember all that stuff? I have to go over it again. It's
just constant going over. We are people that forget so
easily, and that's why we're called on to remember. Remember
the things of God. Remember the Word of God and
go over it. About 25 years ago, I brought a message from the
book of Luke. We were in the book of Luke, and I was wrapping
it up. And I ran into a passage I'd like to read before we go
any further. And that's in the 24th chapter
of the book of Luke. After the resurrection of the Lord Jesus
Christ, you remember the account of the two on the road to Emmaus.
Now, I have no interest in my entire life of ever going over
to the unholy land. the Holy Land, whatever they
want to call it. I don't want to go over there. I can see from
the Scriptures. And my friends, if you can't
see from the Scriptures and enjoy from the Scriptures what God
said about places and people and things, you wouldn't believe
anymore if you were standing on the plot. Abraham told that man, he said,
if your brothers will not believe Moses and the prophets, they'll
not believe the one rose from the dead. And that's all our
brothers had to preach from the apostles, the Lord Jesus, the
Apostle Paul, all they ever preached was from the Old Testament. So
I was here in the book of Luke, wrapping up, and in verse 25
of chapter 24, it says, And then he said unto them, O fools, and
slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
And when I read that, you know, so often preachers run these
two on the road to Emmaus down because they didn't believe God. I am convinced that the Lord
Jesus Christ is sharing with these two on the road to Emmaus
that you will never get this by study, but it's by revelation.
He's not putting them down so much as to illustrate the point
to us that we'll never comprehend or understand the Word of God
without Christ being revealed to us. The Bible is a revelation,
and if it isn't revealed to us, we'll not see it. And when we
see it, we'll rejoice, and if you've got that much from the
Word of God, it's been by revelation, and thank God for it. We got,
that's a whole lot more than we had. So he goes on, ought
not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his
glory? And beginning at Moses and the prophets, and all the
prophets, he expounded into them and all the scriptures the things
concerning himself. And my comment at that moment
was, wouldn't it have been grand to be there? Wow. When our Savior revealed himself
in all the Old Testament scriptures. That night, I went to bed. About
midnight, I woke up. And I said, we have it. We have
all of that. It's the Old Testament. And it
was then and there I started going to the Old Testament for
most of my messages. Christ in the Old Testament.
Now, would you turn with me to the book of, I hope I'm pronouncing
it correctly. It may be correct in Oregon,
but it may not be correct in Michigan. Habakkuk or Habakkuk, however
you want to pronounce it. We've been going through the
book of Habakkuk or Habakkuk about a year. I wanted to go,
I just felt led to go through the book of Habakkuk. I'm convinced
that if we had only the book of Habakkuk, we better find the
gospel there. I read about a fellow that was taking Bibles into Russia.
One of his entire shipments was captured by the Russian government,
and they, not wanting to waste it, turned it into toilet paper.
And these people found that they were having this toilet paper
in the stores, and the Bible, they had not taken the time to
lift the print off. And they were buying these rolls
of toilet paper so they could take them to church and read
them. You know, how precious it is. How precious it is. So
if we only had the Book of Obadiah, We only had the book of Habakkuk.
We're going to find the gospel there. We're going to find Christ
there. And that's what the prophets used, John and James and Peter
and Paul and Christ. That's all they had when they
were preaching Christ. If the Ethiopian eunuch had been
reading the book of Habakkuk instead of the book of Isaiah,
Philip would have started at the same place and preached unto
him Jesus. Wouldn't matter which book it
was out of. The Little Book of Habakkuk. And I wish I could do the whole first
chapter, but I can't. And Brother Wayne pointed out
the clock is on the back wall. No, he didn't. I asked him, is
there a clock so I can keep time? And it's there, and it's keeping
him moving. But in Habakkuk chapter 1, verse 1, and I'm convinced,
brothers and sisters in Christ, if we lived in the day of Habakkuk, and if we love God, and we love
Christ, and we love the gospel, we'd been looking this guy up.
because he knew something. Just a man out of all men knew
something about God because God had revealed it to him, and we'd
want to hear this man. Because all the other prophets
were false prophets. There's one man that knew something
about God, and he's given this book, the book of Habakkuk, to
share with us. And it says, the burden which
Habakkuk the prophet did see This book, like most books of
the prophets, if you look it up in a commentary, they're going
to tell you that this man is foretelling things for the future.
And usually, it's way down. Now all the prophets of the Old
Testament shared things that were going to come in the future.
They shared the virgin birth of Christ, That was a future
event, and we deep, we love it. They shared where he was going
to be born. They shared when he was going
to be born. They shared the conditions of when he would be born. They
shared future events to them. But it had to do with Christ,
and if we carry it much further than that, we're going to be
out in left field. And we need to come back to Christ
and say, what is he saying about Christ? Now Habakkuk here, it
shares with us a couple of things about Habakkuk the prophet. In
the book of Revelation, it tells us that Christ is prophecy. He's the reason for prophecy.
He is the end of prophecy. He's the fulfillment of prophecy.
So if we look at the book of Habakkuk as a prophet, we're
going to see Jesus Christ as what he is prophesying about
or telling or foretelling about. He that believeth on the Son
of God hath this witness in himself. He that believeth not God hath
made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave
of his Son. And the record that God gave
of his Son is found in the book of Habakkuk. This passage, this
one verse of scripture, shares with us three words that I'd
like to look at this morning in the time I have left. Number
one, burden. Number two, prophet. And number
three, did see. The burden which Habakkuk, the
prophet, did see. Now this word prophet, this prophecy
is called a burden or something took up or carried. Being what
a prophet received from the Lord and went to the people, he preached
it. Now, he was given something from
God, and it was a burden to carry to the people. Now, I was talking
to Brother Henry Mahan one time, or maybe I wrote him a letter,
and I said, you know, the pastorate and preparing message is not
work. It's labor. But it's not work. And Habakkuk could admit with
us, too, this morning, that what he had, this burden that he had,
it was a labor, but it was not work. God gave it to him, and
God gave him the message, and he didn't have to create it.
That's the problem I had in religion. I had to create it. When Christ
saved me, I quit creating it because he gives it to us. And
it may be just a small, insignificant passage of scripture, but whatever
he gives us, that's what we needed at that moment. And this burden
is the same word that we find with regard to the sons of Kohath. Now, the sons of Kohath had a
very special part of dealing with the moving or setting up
of the tabernacle. That tabernacle was such that
it could be moved, and I don't know how often they did it. But
it was built so that they could move it. And it was moved from
time to time. And there was responsibility
given to certain people to do certain things about the moving
of the tabernacle. And the sons of Kohath had the
responsibility of carrying some of those very special parts that
were inside the tabernacle. And you know, when they lifted
up that mercy seed on their shoulders and began to carry it, It was
labor, but not work. It was their burden to carry.
And if those people that carried that burden knew anything about
Christ, they knew that this is not work. This is labor, but
this is not work. It was their burden. And that's
the same word that was given to Habakkuk about this book.
It's the burden. I have a responsibility to take
something to this specific people. I've never known of a pastor
that didn't have a responsibility to a specific people. We preach Christ and Him crucified,
and we send out a general call, but God has some specific people
He intends to hear that message. Wherever we go, there's only
one reason for a church here in Almonte. There's some sheep
here. There's some saved sheep, and
we trust there's still some lost sheep that God will bring in. Might be our family, might be
our children, might be our grandchildren, might be our brothers, our sisters,
mothers or fathers. But we trust, we believe, there's
some lost sheep here. There's found sheep, and they
need the same food that we dispense to the lost sheep, but God's
the only one that can apply that. So we have a burden. God's people
have a burden. They have a burden. That burden
is Christ. Nothing else. There is no other burden placed
upon the people of God except Christ and Him crucified, because
He is the only one who can effectually call out His people. So this
burden. Paul said, In 1 Corinthians 9,
for necessity is laid upon me. Necessity is laid upon me. Paul had a burden. It was given
to him by God, just like everybody else. The Apostle Paul would
be the first one to say, I'm not a special Christian. In fact,
he said, I'm the least. I'm the least of believers, I'm
the least of apostles, and besides that, I am the chiefest of sinners.
He never bragged on himself, he always bragged on Christ.
He always put himself in the least. We always find, as we
go through the scriptures and as we get older, we find out
that God continually gets bigger with us and we continually get
smaller with us. God's glory is greater than we
thought, God's purpose is greater than we thought, even to the
very insignificant little things that happen, God has moved them
in such a way that they will accomplish His eternal purpose.
We don't understand it, but we're just thankful for God for it.
He moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. That's the
burden that God's people have, declaring that God. That Savior,
that Lord, it's necessity. Now, this word prophet, holy
men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. That's
how we got the Bible. Holy men of God spake as they
were moved by the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul, in writing
the book of 1st and 2nd Corinthians, had the same thing given to him
as Habakkuk did. Brother Wayne and I were talking
this morning. We're all chosen at the same time Paul was chosen. Wow! In the company of Peter,
James, Noah, Abel. God chose the people all at the
same time. We're in great company. It's
called a great cloud of witness. And they're all saying, Worthy
is the Lamb that was slain to receive glory and honor and praise. This prophet, holy men of God,
spake as they were moved. I had a real issue with God for
a little while. I was 30, 36, 35 years old when
I heard the gospel. I'd been in a fake religious
ministry, pastoring, for 15 years when I heard the gospel. And
I was just wrangling with God, why didn't you save me sooner?
The waste, the lies I told on you. The waste of my time. And then, as this prophet Habakkuk
was called exactly at the right time, I was driven over to the
Book of Galatians and the Apostle Paul, he said, in the fullness
of time. When it was the right time. In
the fullness of time, he came. Christ came. In the fullness
of time, the Holy Spirit appeared unto Saul on the road to Damascus. He had a lot of years of waste
in that Jewish religion. A lot of people died as a result
of him. And yet, in the right appointed
time, God saved him. So you know what? I had peace
now. It was at the right time. Thank God it was at a time. At
a time, and it turned out to be the right time. Now this last
word I want to look at for just a few moments, did see. To see
or to perceive, to see or to behold. This word is used 51
times in 47 verses in the Old Testament. And in the Hebrews,
this word, and please forgive me, I don't pronounce Hebrew
words or Greek words because I don't know how. I thought at
one time in religion I was going to learn Greek and Hebrew and
learn how to read it. And I have great pride in doing
this, and I bought the books. And guess what? I didn't. I couldn't. And I won't. I know a little
Hebrew, and he has a bread store in the Dalles. I don't know the word, but I
know this. And I'm thankful to the men that God touched to give
us books that we can look up some of these words and say,
oh, wow. That's what that is. This word
is principally poetical. It's not with these eyes. It's
metaphorically. It's spiritually. To see. Turn with me to Psalm 27 and
verse 4. Would you do that please? Psalm 27 and verse 4. One thing, Psalm 27 verse 4,
one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after,
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my
life. Now this next two words, to behold, is the same word we
found over in the book of Habakkuk, did see. To behold the beauty
of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. To behold, this is
the gift of God to the church, and this is the prayer of the
church, is to behold Christ. It's the gift of God for us to
be able to do that, but it's the prayer of the church that
we get to do that. Lord, show me more. Not more eschatology,
not more prophecy, but show me Christ. That's what Habakkuk
was going to show the people. Now, there were a lot of incidents
going on. Assyria was about to come in and overwhelm Israel
at that time. A lot of problems. And you know,
in the midst of that problems, Habakkuk is led to write these
words that the Apostle Paul was used to write three different
times in the New Testament. The just shall live by faith. Habakkuk chapter 2. The just
shall live by faith. That's what Habakkuk was used
to write. And he got to see some things. To behold. What does
it mean to behold the beauty of the Lord? To see Him in His
glory. To see Him as King. To see Him
as Lord. Capital L. Capital O. Capital R. Capital D. When we
run into that in the Old Testament, and the translators did us a
favor, when you run into those capital letters, you're running
into Jehovah. Oh, that's what it is to be able
to see the beauty of the Lord. That's what Habakkuk was given.
He was given something, he was able to see something, and it
was able to see Christ, and he was going to share Christ with
those people. The saints of old reviewed the Old Testament ordinances
by faith and not by sight. We're going to be looking at
a chapter or two in the book of Leviticus during the next
session and tonight. I am convinced, I believe as
we read the book of Hebrews, the people that observed those
offerings, they no more had faith in those offerings than you and
I have in the cup or the broken bread when we observe the communion
service. And if you hold something in
that that is more than it has ever been scriptural, then you
are not depending on Christ alone. And if those people in the Old
Testament were depending on these sacrifices as part of their redemptive
work, they did not have Christ. It's Christ alone or nothing. So we do. As the prophet here,
looking at the beauty of the Lord, beholding the beauty of
the Lord, in 1 Corinthians, we walk by faith and not by sight.
That was one of the things that the world found fault with the
early church. We can't see your God. And they'd
say, you're right. Well, we're used to having this
idol here, I know. The Jews had a brazen serpent
and worshipped it. Golden calf, worshipped it. They
had to have something visible, and that's what the world has
to have, is something visible. And the church, we have the invisible. It's walking by faith and not
by sight. It's not depending on pictures
or diagrams or objects. We worship God as a spirit, and
they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And
to the world, I don't know how you can do that. And we say,
I understand that. Been there. Now, I just trust
Christ. How do you do that? Well, I just
trust Christ. He that hath the Son hath life,
and he that hath not the Son hath not life. That's just the
way it is. So there's nothing efficacious
in any of the Old Testament ordinances, only pictorial views of the gospel,
of salvation, of substitution, of the Savior, and creation in
the book of Genesis shares with us much more than just creation.
It shares with us a mighty God that can create, and also that
if there's going to be a creation in us, it must be of God, and
we're not a participant in it. Adam and Eve's covering is more
than just a sheepskin. It pictures our righteousness.
Abel's offering is more than just a lamb. It pictures Christ.
The ark is more than just a wooden boat. It is a picture of our
Savior and our safety in Him. Abraham and Sarah and Hagar are
more than just Old Testament characters. The Apostle Paul
says, I show you a picture. If you're under Hagar, you obey
the law. If you're under Sarah, you're
a free person. The Passover, the Red Sea, Mount
Sinai, the tabernacle, the high priest, Joshua, Elijah, David,
and the temple, all of those things are pictures of our glorious
Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the burden which Habakkuk,
the prophet, did behold, did see, did have, and it's passed
on to us by grace to get to see These glorious, glorious pictures,
and then to see our Savior. And we don't build stone pictures
of it. We don't build pictures. By faith. We walk by faith and not by sight. Mother Wayne.