Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
This week we're wrapping up our sermon series titled The Struggle is Real, where we've been
going through the Book of Habakkuk together.
And this week we find Habakkuk in a state of giving up.
There are no more crops blooming, there are no sheep in the pen, everything seems to be
going wrong, and there's nothing left.
So join us as Rob explains what does it mean to actually give up and what does that look
like?
The first of today's reading is from Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 17 to 19.
Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive
crop fails, and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen, and
no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength, he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables
me to tread on the heights, for the director of music on my stringed instruments.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
This is Ruth, not to be mistaken for Ruth of Lannach of course, but Ruth was the very
first pig that we ever owned when we were doing a bit of hobby farming back in the early,
well this was taken in the year 2013.
And we decided early on we wanted to raise pigs and so we bought Ruth.
Ruth was a black Berkshire pig and we decided we wanted to breed her and so what we did
is we borrowed a boar, if you will, but the breed of the boar that we borrowed was a Tamworth,
and I don't know if you know this, but Tamworth pigs are like red rusty coloured pigs, and
what you get when you cross a black Berkshire with a red Tamworth, well what you get is 13
piglets, 13 piglets that all look like little cheetahs, because they're all like mixed with
the black and the red and my goodness, I don't know if you know this, but pigs generally
only have like 12 or 14 teats.
So Ruth had her hands full, she had everything full for the first few months as these little
piglets over time grew from piglets into pigs and then from pigs into pork chops and that
was a really, really good year.
Was a really good year for us.
13 piglets.
And so what we decided the next year we said let's do it again and I don't know if Ruth
wanted to do it again or not, but we brought in the same boar and then we waited three
or four months and then sure enough right on time out came one, out came two, out came
three, out came four and that was it.
No more were coming and I couldn't understand it.
I was like wait, wait, there must be a problem here.
There must be a problem because last time there was 13 and now there's only four and
she's still lying down.
Maybe there's more in there.
I was getting nervous.
I was actually convinced that one of the, there was another piglet in there that was
like blocking the birth canal and other piglets couldn't get out and I wasn't about to call
a vet, you know, a little bit expensive.
So if you will, I took matters into my own hands.
Some of you are never going to take communion from me again after you hear this story, but
I clipped my fingernails.
I washed my hands.
I said Ruth, things are never going to be the same between us again, but I, and I went
up looking and I explored and I explored and you know what I found?
Absolutely nothing.
There was, there was no problem and there was just no more piglets, no more piglets
and so when I, you know, took my hand out and Ruth and I looked at each other and we
agreed we'd never do that again.
Then that year we raised a measly four piglets and I guess the lesson is, you know, some
years are really good years and other years are just not so good years.
That was the lesson we learned.
I could also tell you a story.
When we were on that same farm, one year we planted 200 tomato plants and not just ordinary
tomato plants, like the heirloom tomatoes, you know, the crazy ones, the black tomatoes,
the blue tomatoes, the tomatoes that are yellow and shaped like pears and man, oh man, it
was a bonanza.
We had a huge, huge harvest.
We were swimming in tomatoes.
We were eating them.
We were cooking them.
We were freezing them.
We were giving them away and of course the girls, we took the girls down to the farmer's
market and they were selling the tomatoes there.
I mean it was the hottest tomato stall in town, all the tomatoes we grew.
But I gotta tell you, that very same year we decided to plant wheat and we had about
25 acres and so I paid a guy to cultivate the whole field.
I paid for the wheat, of course, and then I paid for someone to come and plant all that
wheat.
I had a lot of money invested in this by the time it started to rain and rain was good
except for it kept raining and it kept raining.
And it kept raining and it kept raining and the ditches blocked up and the fields flooded
up and again, I don't know if you know this, but a wheat kernel can only survive two or
three days underwater before it rots and it will not germinate and that's what happened.
None of it grew.
It was a total loss.
But again, the lesson, the lesson, some years are really good years and other years you
lose everything.
Now for the past four weeks, this month of November, we've been looking at the writings
of the author Habakkuk and we've been asking the question, what do you do when you lose
everything?
Habakkuk has seen all sorts of loss and pain.
He has seen political corruption, religious hypocrisy.
He's seen rampant idolatry, violent injustice, the abuse of power.
He's seen it all, but it's not over yet because as we come to the very end of the book of
Habakkuk, we see that in the midst of all the other struggles that they were facing,
there was one more struggle that they still had to deal with and that was the struggle
of economic insecurity, economic struggles on top of it all.
What do you do when in the midst of all your suffering and all your problems and your sorrows,
you're feeling it in your pocketbook, you're feeling it in your wallet and you're feeling
it in your bank account as well?
Or to use Habakkuk's language, what do you do when the fig tree does not bud and there
are no grapes on the vines and the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food and there's
no sheep in the pens and there's no cattle in the stalls?
What he's describing here, my friends, is an economic crisis because you see figs and
grapes and olives and field crops, that was your most basic agricultural resources in
Israel's time and that was, yes, of course, it was food that you would eat but it was
also stuff that you would sell to get money, right?
And then as for the animals, the sheep and the cattle, those were your long-term investments.
It takes nine months for a cow to give birth to a calf and so when you were building your
herd, you know what you were doing, you were actually building your portfolio, right?
There was, of course, money in those days but really, your cash was in your crops and
your investments were in your land and your livestock, not RSPs, there were no pension
plans and so for farmers, there was a very, very thin line between economic stability
on the one hand and economic crisis.
You just never knew.
You never knew how it was going to go.
You planted your crops and you prayed and you waited.
You bred your animals and you prayed and you waited and you hoped that maybe months later,
often during a very small window of time, if everything went well, your harvest would
come in and the income would come in and it was only when the harvest was all in the barn
and it was only when the pigs, they didn't have pigs, of course, it was only when the
sheep and the cows were all in the stalls.
It was only then that you knew how much money you had made that year.
You could not count your chickens before they hatch because there are good years and there
are bad years.
Now, we are not farmers but a lot of us do get our income in a similar way.
You don't know necessarily how much you're going to make this year until the investments
come in, until the bonuses are handed out, until all the contracts are signed.
In the gig economy, you don't have one steady job where you get a paycheck every single
week.
You got a lot of short-term jobs.
You got a lot of freelance gigs that you're doing.
Uber drivers do not have a guaranteed income.
You know, freelancers, they don't really have a safety net.
And so some years you might have great years and other years could be really, really bad
years.
And Habakkuk here, he's describing a really, really bad year.
No figs, no grapes, no olives, no nothing.
It's like a depression.
Your portfolio is completely wiped out.
And when something like that happens, it affects everyone, not just you.
It affects your whole community.
And here's why.
Because when you don't have enough money for yourself, that's often the time in your life
that you stop giving away.
That's when you stop giving charitably to the synagogue or to the church or to the poor,
right?
We need it for ourselves.
And who suffers most in economic downturns?
It's the poor, right?
But that's often the time where we resist giving the most.
So economic hardship, like Habakkuk is describing here, it spells disaster, not just for individuals,
but for whole clans, whole families, whole communities.
And so the question I want to ask you this morning is what should our attitude be when
business dries up, when the recession hits, when the fig trees do not bud, when your wheat
field floods and you only get four piglets instead of 13?
Well, this is what most of us want to do.
We want to give up, right?
Studies show job loss, economic struggles, it erodes people's hope, it diminishes their
sense of self-worth.
A depression causes depression in people.
I mean, do you remember, for example, the book Job?
Do you remember when Job had an economic crisis?
He was a rich and wealthy man.
He had cattle and crops and camels and everything, but he lost it all one day, right?
The oxen one day were plowing, the donkeys were grazing, and then the Sabeans attacked
and made off with him.
And then the fire fell from heaven and burned up the sheep.
And the Chaldeans, by the way, the Chaldeans become the Babylonians that we're reading
about in Habakkuk.
The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and they swept down on the camels and made
off with them.
Look at that, all of Job's investments gone, just like that.
All of his bank accounts were now empty.
And Job wanted to give up.
He nearly gave up.
He scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery.
He sat on a pile of ashes.
Some translations say dung, the dung of the animals that he no longer had.
And his wife said, oh, Job, why don't you just curse God and die?
Thanks honey.
All his bank, you know, in other words, just give up, just give up.
And it doesn't look good for Habakkuk either in the end of the book of Habakkuk.
We read that just before our reading, his heart is pounding, his lips are quivering,
decay is creeping into his bones, his legs are trembling, and it looks like he's going
to give up.
And that's exactly what he does.
In the midst of his dark days, in the midst of his economic woes, Habakkuk gives up.
But not like you think.
Because there is more than one way to give up.
It turns out that Habakkuk doesn't give up in despair.
Instead, he gives up his praise.
He gives up his thanksgiving.
It seems absolutely crazy.
But look what he says.
Yeah, there's no figs and there's no olives and there's no wheat, sheep, cattle.
There's none of that.
Yet, he says, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.
I will be joyful in my Savior.
This is a very different kind of giving up.
Not giving up in defeat, but giving up praise to God, giving up thanksgiving to God, giving
up your whole life to God.
It's a different kind of giving up.
And if you're here today and you are going through, you know, dark days, if your fig
tree is not budding, if your finances are not flourishing, if you feel like giving up,
I want to encourage you, do it.
Give up.
But don't give up in despair.
Instead, give up like Habakkuk.
Give up your praise.
Give up your thanksgiving.
I know it makes no sense.
But in dark days, God encourages us to give up to him rather than give up on him.
Look, whether you got good times or bad times, whether you got the raise or you didn't get
the raise, whether you got 13 piglets or four piglets, don't give up on God.
Give up to God.
Give up your thanks.
Now, I want to show you how to do this, but I admit what I am about to share with you
this morning, these two ideas.
They make no sense from a worldly perspective.
No financial counselor or planner is going to advise you to do these things, but this
is God's economy we're talking about.
This is God's way, not the world's way.
So this is how you give up in a time of trial.
Ready?
Here's the first one.
When times are tough, give up your offerings to God.
Wait, wait, wait, Rob.
Wait.
When times are tough, I don't have much, so I stop giving.
I stop donating offerings.
I know.
But when Habakkuk says, I'm going to keep rejoicing, I'm going to keep thanking God,
I'm going to keep praising God, we need to know that for him, that also meant that he
was going to continue making offerings to God.
And here's why.
Because for Israel, thanksgiving and praise were always expressed through generous offerings.
Whenever you went to the temple, you went with a grain offering, you went with a sin
offering, you went with a peace offering, you went with a burnt offering, you went with
all these offerings.
A guilt offering was another one.
You went with your tithes, you went with your gifts.
They had a financial generosity which is part and parcel of how you gave praise and thanks
to God.
Right?
You gave up your gifts.
Right?
And that was true whether you found yourself in good financial times or in bad financial
times.
Either way, the Bible says give it up.
Give up.
Give up your offerings to God, give up your gifts to the temple, give up your donations
to support the poor.
You see, in the Old Testament, there was, this is a long reading, but anyway, in the
Old Testament, there was this thing they did that was called first fruits giving.
Can you guys just say that with me?
First fruits giving.
Which meant this.
People would actually give up the first part of their harvest to God.
They would give up the first piglets before they knew how many piglets there were going
to be in the herd.
They would give up the first few baskets of tomatoes before they knew how many tomatoes
there were going to be.
Right?
Even before they knew they were giving it up.
And so God says, you know, take some of the first fruits of all that you produce, put
them in a basket, go to the priest and say, here's the first fruits of the soil that you,
Lord, have given me.
Most of us would never think this way.
Most of us would say, no, Rob, you got it wrong.
What you do is you wait till you have all the harvest in.
You wait until you see how many tomatoes you have and how many piglets you have, how many
grapes, how many contracts, how many vats of olives, how many gigs.
And then at the end of the year, once it's all in and counted, and once you've subtracted
all your expenses, and after you buy what you need to live, then you take the surplus
and out of that surplus, you give something to God.
Right?
Gosh, wait until the harvest is in, Rob.
Right?
Then figure out what you're going to do.
That makes sense.
Right?
Especially in difficult times.
Right?
Not according to God.
God says, I want you to give your first fruits, bring the harvest in before you know how it's
going to go.
Oh my God, I don't know how big it's going to be.
I don't know how much you're going to make this.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Right?
Give me the first part.
You gave before you knew.
And I can see why, actually, God would say something like that.
Because think about it.
If you give the part of your harvest to God after all the bills are paid, then what you
end up giving God is the leftovers.
Right?
It's the part of your income that you can afford to give without it affecting you.
Right?
It's, you know, you can still do all the things you want to do, buy all the things you want
to buy, you know, go all the places you want to go, pay all your bills, live the life you
want to live, and then see if there's some surplus, and then say, God, I want to give
some of this to you.
God says, no.
I don't want you to give me your leftovers.
I want you to give me your firsts.
Even in difficult times, even in challenging times, give up.
Give up the first fruits.
It's crazy.
I know, this is absolutely crazy.
But folks, this is not just an important principle 2,500 years ago.
This is still an important principle we need to grasp hold of today.
And I wanted to show you why first fruits giving is still very, very important.
Here's three reasons.
First of all, when we practice this kind of giving, it allows us to become more trusting
in God's provision.
You know, if you give God what's just left at the end, there's no trust involved in that.
But by giving God the first part, it's kind of risky.
You kind of have to live by faith.
You're prioritizing God.
You're trusting God.
You know what you're doing?
You're kind of being like the author of the 23rd Psalm.
It says, the Lord is my shepherd.
He's going to look after me, and I will lack nothing.
So to give the first grapes, to give the first crops, to give the first part of my income
is and was a way of trusting God's provision.
God, you're a good shepherd.
I trust you.
I know you're going to look after me.
But the second reason why it's an important thing to practice as principle is that it
helps us realize all of God's goodness and grace in our lives.
It's a way of saying, God, all of this belongs to you anyways.
In the Old Testament, when you brought your first fruits offerings, you were actually
supposed to recite this line as you did it.
You were supposed to say this.
God brought us to this place.
God gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
And now I bring the first fruits of the soil and I give it to you.
Now this is not how most of us give.
Most of us give saying, I earned this with my own effort.
I worked really hard.
I got really smart.
I have lots of good skills and I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps.
And now here I've decided to give this.
No, no.
First fruitsgiving says it is only by God's grace.
Did you have any of this?
God, you have given me this land.
God, you've given me these skills.
God, you've given me this health.
You've given me the opportunities.
God, you have put me in a place.
You have opened doors that I never could have opened on my own.
It's only because of you that I have any of this in the first place.
That's what first fruitsgiving does.
Reminds us of God's grace in our life.
But here's a third reason why we need to practice this kind of first fruitsgiving.
And that is it enables us to provide for the poor.
God wants us to give up our offerings for the poor.
Because in Israel in those days a big part of that first fruitsgiving was designed to
provide for the poor and provide for the widows and to provide for the orphans and the foreigners.
In fact, right after you gave your gift, we read this that you shall give it to the Levite
and to the foreigner and to the fatherless and to the widow so that they may eat in your
towns and be satisfied.
Giving up your offerings, especially in difficult times, created this redistributive kind of
economy that helped balance the wealth in good years and bad years.
Oh, you had a bad year?
No problem.
I had a good year.
I'm giving it up.
Oh, I had a bad year.
Oh, I'm going to be okay because you are giving it up.
Giving up a resources was like giving up a safety net for your whole community.
But here's what I want to say.
That the biggest reason that we would ever give in this crazy way, give when times are
bad is because we're following the teachings of Jesus.
You see, Jesus once looked at a bunch of people that were going into the temple and they were
giving their gifts and putting them in the treasury and they're making a big deal about
it.
But that's not what caught his eye.
What caught his eye was a widow, a widow who walked in and threw into the offering
basket two little copper coins.
And he said, Hey, hey, hey, disciples, disciples, come over here.
He said, Hey, I tell you this woman, she has put in more than any of the others.
Why?
Because they all gave out of their wealth, but she out of her poverty put in everything,
all she had to live on.
Do you see what Jesus is teaching his disciples?
Do you see what he's teaching us?
We're his disciples in dark times, in difficult times.
Give up your offerings to God.
And in the early church surely did this.
In the New Testament, Paul was super impressed, for example, with this one church from Macedonia.
Why was he impressed?
It's because they gave up.
They gave up their offerings despite their poverty.
He writes this in the midst of a very severe trial.
You ever been in a very severe trial?
Listen to this, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up into rich
generosity.
That math makes no sense in our world.
How does overflowing joy plus extreme poverty well up into rich generosity?
They gave as much as they were able.
And in fact, they even gave beyond their ability in times of economic crisis.
They gave up.
They didn't give up hope.
They gave up their offerings.
Now you might say, well, why on earth?
How?
How could someone do this?
How do you get to a place where this is something you can actually do?
And the answer is actually easy because they knew that that's exactly what Jesus had done
for them.
Because Paul goes on, he says, you know, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though
he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor so that by his poverty, you might become
rich.
It's very common to hear people say, ah, you know, you can't be expected to give.
We can't expect people to give these days.
We're in tough times, tough times, right?
It feels like it's always tough times.
But when there's a knock at the door, when there's an opportunity to give, what are we
going to do?
Habakkuk models a different response.
Instead of giving up in despair, we give up in generosity.
Though the fig tree does not bud, though there's no sheep in the pen, I will rejoice in the
Lord.
I will be joyful in my Savior.
That's the first big piece I want to talk to you about today.
We give up our offerings to God.
But let me end with this.
There is another clear lesson from the book of Habakkuk about how we're supposed to give
up in life.
And it comes right at the very, very end.
And that is that Habakkuk gives up his worship to God.
You see, in difficult times, not only are we likely to hold on tightly to our resources,
but we may also be likely to restrain our worship.
I mean, after all, why should we worship this God who's not done anything for us?
You know, like Job, we could say, well, who's the Almighty?
Why should I serve him?
Right?
What is the profit of me praying and worshiping to this God?
Look at my life.
Look at all the things that have happened around me.
But again, that's not Habakkuk's response.
After three chapters of prayer and lament and complaint, he finds himself in this place
where he gives up, not gives up, but gives up his worship to God.
I will rejoice.
I will be joyful.
The word there means spin around in God, my Savior.
But I think the best part of this whole book is the very last line.
And a lot of people don't even read it.
In fact, some Bibles don't even include it because it's really more of a notation than
a line.
And when I saw this, it made everything click for me.
This is the final words in the Book of Habakkuk.
For the Director of Music on Stringed Instruments, or as another translation says, for congregational
use with a full orchestra.
Do you know what this means?
Just get this in your head.
That whole book we just read for the last four weeks, with all the ups and downs and
the highs and the lows and the complaints and the promises, it was a song.
What we just studied, it was a worship song.
It's supposed to be sung.
This is musical notation.
Habakkuk's not just a prophet.
He's a worship leader, which is telling us that even in dark times, you can find a song
of faith.
You can find a song of trust to God.
This whole book has been about giving up, not about giving up our hopes, not about giving
up our dreams, but giving up our praise, giving up our worship, lifting up our hands.
What a courageous act of worship.
Despite everything that's going on, he says, I'm still going to praise God.
You know, it is super, super easy to praise God when life is good and everything's going
well.
But the worship that you offer in seasons of pain and in seasons of uncertainty, that
is precious.
That is courageous.
It is defiant in a way.
You're declaring God is still worthy of my praise, even in the darkest of days.
But don't miss this.
If this whole thing that we just read is a song of worship, that means that something
is supposed to be sung together as a community.
We just sang two songs.
We're going to sing another three or four songs.
We sing them together.
So you don't sing a song like this solo, right?
You sing it together.
Here, Trinity, we lament together.
We process grief together.
We ask questions together and we find hope in Jesus together.
So Trinity, when the dark days come, when the fig tree does not bud and when the pens
are empty, will you give up?
Will you still give up your worship to God?
Will you still choose to sing despite it all?
Dark days come for nations and for individuals.
They could bring violence, injustice, and now as we've seen today, even economic challenges.
But when they do, give up.
Habakkuk says, give up.
Give up your offerings to God.
Free to put God first, trust Him, keep caring for the poor in the midst of dark days and
give up your worship to God.
Week by week, continue to gather with us as we sing courageous and defiant songs together.
We surrender to God and give our lives to Jesus.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you for listening to Trinity Sermons.
This week's sermon was recorded at Trinity Church Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario
on November 24th, 2024.