03 The Righteous Will Live by Faith: Trusting God’s Justice (Habakkuk 2:1-20)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the third talk in a series on the Old Testament book of Habakkuk. Today we're going to study Habakkuk chapter 2. The lecture notes are on the link below this podcast. Lecture notes are the handout I would give you if this were an in-person talk. You can also find those lecture notes by going directly to wednesdayintheword.com slash Habakkuk 3. Habakkuk is spelled H A B A K K U K. Thanks for listening. We're continuing in our study of the book of Habakkuk today. Just to review a little bit, Habakkuk is one of the books of the Minor Prophets, and Minor refers to the length of the book, not its importance. This book was most likely recorded and written about 300 years after Solomon, about a hundred years approximately after the fall of the Northern Kingdom, a few years after King Josiah was killed in battle, and probably about ten to thirty years before the southern kingdom will fall. Habakkuk was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah, probably during the reign of the King Joakim, and when he got this vision, which is unique in that it's a dialogue between the prophet and God, Habakkuk's world is in tremendous geopolitical turmoil. The nation of Judah is spiraling downward into evil and rebellion, the king is oppressing his people, and the nation is a vassal state of the Babylonians, who are also called the Chaldeans, and the Babylonians are proving to be more evil than the Assyrians, who were the previous overlords over the nation. So the nation is corrupt and turning away from God, and Habakkuk seeks the Lord and says, How long will this go on? How long are you going to let this continue? When will you rescue your people? So Habakkuk speaks to two of the most fundamental questions of faith. How can a loving God let evil continue? And why believe if I'm not exempt from the tragedies of life? Well, we've looked at Habakkuk's first request or his first complaint, where he turns to God, he complains about the injustice and evil of Jehoiakim's rule, and he asks, How long will God let it continue? And just to briefly remind you of the historical context, under the last king, Josiah, the nation experienced something of a renaissance. They turned away from idols, they turned back to the Lord, they reinstituted the Mosaic law, and they rid the government of corrupt judges and leaders. But now that's a thing of the past. The current king, Jehoiakim, is turning back the clock, so to speak. He is undoing all the gains made by his father, and he's turning the nation back into chaos, corruption, and idolatry. So Habakkuk seeks the Lord and basically asks, Why do you make me see this? Why are you putting us through this kind of iniquity and wickedness? I don't understand how this is a good thing. We had all these reforms under the last king, we were moving in the right direction, and now we've lost it all. Then we looked at the Lord's first response. The Lord assured Habakkuk that this would not go on forever, evil is going to be judged, and his people will not continue in rebellion forever. You remember that Moses had warned them that if they rebelled against God once they got in the promised land, they would lose the land and be scattered among the nations. And that has already happened to the Northern Kingdom. And God basically says the day is coming for the southern kingdom to have the same fate. God is going to discipline his rebellious people. But God also tells Abacak that he is going to act in a surprising way. He is sending the Chaldeans to judge his people, and Chaldeans is another name for the Babylonians. So just as God disciplined the northern kingdom years earlier when the Assyrians conquered them and took them into exile, now the Babylonians are coming and they will conquer the southern kingdom of Judah and take her people into exile. And the Lord describes the fierce and overwhelming military might of the Babylonians, with the bookend that they know no God other than themselves. They are a fierce and vicious people, and they think they are autonomous, beholden to no God. Well then we looked at Habakkuk's second complaint. God answers him, and Habakkuk responds with obvious confusion. His question now becomes, how can you let such an evil people have victory over your people? Aren't they even worse than your own people? How can you let the Babylonians, this godless nation, a nation who ignores you, a nation who doesn't even know your name and thinks they themselves are God instead? How can you let them continually slay nations? And especially how can you let them conquer your own people? And that's the essential question of the book. How can you bring a judgment like this with people like these on your people? Yet despite all his confusion, Habakkuk affirms his trust in God. In chapter two, one he says, I will stand on my guardpost and station myself on the rampart, and I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me and how I may reply when I am reproved. So Habakkuk turns back to God and asks, Okay, why the Babylonians? And then says, basically, despite how confused I am, despite the coming chaos and the horrors of the Chaldean Empire bearing down upon us, I will seek my God. I will stand on my watchtower, I will trust him, and I will wait for him to answer. That's a pretty powerful statement of faith if you stop to think about it. From Habakkuk's point of view, a much better answer would have been something like I God am sending you another king like Josiah. I will send a new king who will take over the throne, and this new king will trust God, and he will be like Josiah, he will be like David, and he will turn the people back to God. From Habakkuk's human point of view, that would be a much better message. That would be great news, but that wasn't the news. God's answer was, I am sending this truly horrible and vicious military force, and they are going to come through and destroy everything in their path. And in the face of what could only be a gut-riching answer, Habakkuk says, Okay, why them? I'm gonna stand here and wait for you to answer. I trust you. And we talked about that as the first lesson of the book. We may not know why God's plan is what it is. We might not understand his plan. His plan may not look anything at all like our plan, but he is still God. His promises still stand, he will not forsake his people, and he does not lose control. We can trust him no matter what. So today we're gonna finish chapter two and we're going to look at God's second response. This is in chapter two, verses two through twenty. And here the Lord assures Habakkuk that the wicked are going to receive their just judgment at the appointed time. Even when such wickedness is an instrument of God's discipline, it will still be judged. So let's start with chapter two, verses two and three. And the Lord answered me, Write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so that he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end, it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not delay. So God begins by saying, Write this down, giving you a vision, write it down, and that vision becomes the book that we're reading today. But instead of writing it on a typical scroll of parchment, God instructs Habakkuk to record this vision on a tablet, probably a stone or fired clay tablet. Now a tablet is a form that is relatively permanent. Stone tablets are much more likely to survive a fire, destruction, and the chaos of warfare. So that raises the question, why write it on a tablet? I think God wants it to last. God wants the Chaldeans to find these tablets. When they swoop through the city of Jerusalem and level the temple, these stone tablets will survive and they will find them. And then they have a chance to see that they are just a tool in God's hands. Remember, these people think their justice and authority originate with themselves, that was chapter one seven, and they offer a sacrifice to their own nets when they catch fish, that was one hundred sixteen, rather than to the Lord. They think they are self sufficient, they think they're autonomous, but when they find these tablets predicting and describing their actions before their actions even happen, they will have a chance to see that they are tools of the Almighty God. They are not a power or a law unto themselves. They have victory because God gives it to them. They have military might because God is using them for his own purposes. There's one more confusing phrase in here, this last phrase in chapter two, so he may run who reads it. There's some debate over the point of this phrase. Some people understand it to mean write it large enough, write it in great big letters so that even a person who's running by can read it. So the idea there is put it on a tablet and make the letter so big that it can be seen at a glance even by someone running by. Another view is the one who reads it may turn and run to the truth. That is, he may see these tablets, realize the truth, and then turn from his former course and run toward God. That is also a possible interpretation. I tend to lean toward that one, the second one, but I really don't know enough about Hebrew to make a definitive decision. And then verse three, for still the vision awaits its appointed time, it hastens to the end, it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not delay. So God assures Habakkuk, this vision is still in the future, but it's coming, it's awaiting its appointed time. And here the Lord is assuring him, wickedness will always be judged, evil will not go unpunished forever. The Lord may delay his response to give us time to repent, but his patience will not last forever. One day he will come in judgment. Now Habakkuk is writing this approximately ten to thirty years before the events described in this vision will take place. The Lord assures Habakkuk the wicked will be punished. It hastens toward its goal, it will not fail. Judgment will surely come, it won't be late. These events will happen exactly when God decrees that they happen. You can count on it. And then in the rest of the chapter, God kind of puts himself on the line. He describes in some detail whose coming. His prediction is not fuzzy or vague. It is a fairly detailed and accurate description of the Chaldeans as we know them from history. Let's look at 2.4 and 5, and 2 4 is one of the most frequently quoted verses in the New Testament. 2 4 says, Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. That's the English standard. The New American Standard Version says, Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith. So who's the proud one whose soul is puffed up and is not right? Well, in the immediate context, it's the Chaldeans. They are perhaps the most fitting description of the proud. Just reread chapter one. The key feature of someone who's proud is that he thinks he's God, and we saw this in one seven and one eleven. Their justice and authority originate with themselves, and one eleven they whose strength is their God. So the proud one is the one who fails to acknowledge the God of heaven and earth, the creator and author of the universe, and instead thinks he is a law unto himself. God tells Habakkuk that the soul of the proud one is not right within him. He has a big problem, something needs to change, all is not well with his soul. I think what he's referring to here is that he is a sinner in the hands of a just and angry God, and his soul is not right. He has not solved the problem of his sin before a holy God. Despite how autonomous the proud one believes himself to be, a day is coming when he will face judgment and he will be found guilty. But in contrast, the righteous will live by faith. Now let's talk about who the righteous are. In biblical terms, the question am I righteous can have at least three different meanings depending on the context. And it's important to understand these different meanings. If we assume that the righteous or righteousness means only one thing in all contexts, then we will consistently miss the point of several passages. And some passages will seem to contradict each other. And also we can make the Bible say too much or too little about saving faith. So here they are. When I ask the question, Am I righteous, or who are the righteous? I can be asking the question, Am I forgiven before God or am I condemned? A synonym for this is justification. Am I justified before God or not? So our sin is not just an unfortunate tragedy. It's wrong, it's criminally wrong. We have broken God's laws and we stand condemned and guilty. Like all lawbreakers, we owe a debt to justice that must be paid. Because we are not good, we justly and rightly fall under the condemnation of our just and holy God. Well, the good news of the gospel is that God created a way to pay our debt to justice through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We sinful people can be right with God because Jesus took the penalty we deserved on Himself and He died in our place. So in that sense, the righteous are those who have had their sins forgiven. Now in English, when we talk about this, we often use the word justification or the justified. Our relationship with God is now in the right because our sins and our debt to justice have been forgiven because of what Jesus did for us. So one meaning of righteousness is am I forgiven? Am I justified? A second meaning of righteousness we could be talking about is am I holy? Am I morally perfect or am I morally corrupt? Am I holy or am I sinful? In this sense, a righteous person is anyone who is right with God by virtue of having a perfect moral character. And Jesus Christ is the only human being who has ever earned the favor of God because of his moral character. None of the rest of us are righteous in this sense of being holy. We are sinners. We could say we are not holy, but we are justified. We are righteous sinners in that sense because we are justified sinners and born again sinners, but we are not holy sinners. Being made holy is something that is in our future. We long for it now, we hope for it now precisely because we don't have it. Being completely freed from sin is very much a future hope. So the children of God are still morally weak and sinful, but we are justified in that our sins have been forgiven. So when we're talking about am I righteous or who are the righteous, we can be talking about the justified, we can be talking about the holy, or here's the last meaning, we could be talking about the question, does my heart respond to the truths of God? Am I spiritually blind or not? Am I hard hearted or am I open to the truths of God? The opposite of this would be the wicked, and this is the kind of usage we see in places like the Psalms, which contrast the way of the wicked with the way of the righteous. And I think that's the meaning we see here in Habakkuk. The way of the proud one is being contrasted with the way of the righteous. The question in view is having a spirit that is in the right. We have repented, we are truly contrite and humble about our sinfulness, we have turned to God for grace and mercy. So the proud one, his soul is not right, he does not acknowledge God, he rejects God, he thinks he is God. In contrast, the righteous person, instead of mocking God or being hostile to him, is open to God's truth. He longs to know God, he wants to be holy like God is holy. He is counting on God to forgive him and save him. He has heard and embraced the gospel in a life-changing way. So in that sense, the righteous are those whose hearts are rightly oriented toward God. They are people of faith, or they we might say they are born again. Here in two four we learn the righteous will live by his faith, and there's the stark contrast. The proud are contrasted with the righteous or the faithful. The one whose soul is not right is contrasted with the one whose soul is right. And what makes the difference between those two groups of people? Faith. The one whose soul is right will find life because he is has faith. He will acknowledge God, he will humble himself before God, and he will cast himself on God's mercy and grace. So the Lord is contrasting these two kinds of people. One group believes they are the be all and end all, they think they are self-sufficient and in control of their own destiny, they think they are masters of their fate and they acknowledge no God. The other group waits on God and trusts God. They realize that everything comes from his hand, and they live by a deep, abiding trust that God is King, Lord, Master, Savior, author, and creator of the universe, and that group will find life. Now let's bring in verse five. So two four and five, Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith. Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man so that he does not stay at home. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol, and he is like death, never satisfied. He also gathers to himself all nations and collects to himself all peoples. Now there's some debate about whether the word wine was in the original Hebrew text or is a corruption, and I'm not going to get into that debate. I'm just going to assume that it should be in the text, and if it is, then I think the sense is something like this wine is treacherous. For those who are addicted to it, it does not bring strength and life, but it leads to ruin. So just as wine betrays those addicted to it, so the Chaldeans will be betrayed by their conquests. Like a drunkard who thinks wine makes him strong, but in reality it's ruining him, the arrogant Chaldeans think that they are building an empire through all their conquests, but their nation will fall. They leave home and conquer nation after nation with this fierce appetite that they have. Is never satisfied. Like death, they just keep wanting more, conquering every nation in their path, and they think they are building an empire that will bring them security and prosperity, but the day is coming when God will judge them. They think if they gather enough other nations under their reign, they will be a superpower and no one can topple them, but woe to them, God will judge them and they will fall. So verse five, I think, is a prelude to the series of five woes that we will see in the rest of the chapter. Each woe consists of three verses. Verse five sets up the woes and forms this contrast with verse four. Unlike the faithful, the righteous man who will find life, the arrogant Chaldeans will not endure, they will be judged and condemned, and here are the woes against them. And the rest of chapter two is this series of woes to the Chaldeans. So let me just review before we get into those where we are. Habakkuk began asking, Why would God let evil go on so long among his people? And God answered, It's not going to go on forever, I'm sending the Chaldeans or the Babylonians to discipline my people. Then Habakkuk's question turned to, okay, God, how can you use a people more wicked than your own people as instruments of your discipline and judgment? And now here in these woes, God is assuring Habakkuk that the wicked Babylonians will also be judged. They aren't getting away with anything. So let's look at six through eight. This is the first woe, and the Chaldeans are judged for looting many nations. Will not all of these take up a taunt song against him, even mockery and insinuations against him? And woe to him who increases what is not his, for how long and makes himself rich with loans, will not your creditors rise up suddenly, and those who collect from you awaken? Indeed you will become plunder for them. Because you have looted many nations, all the remainder of the peoples will loot you, because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the town and all its inhabitants. This taunt song that begins in verse six seems to be from those who were conquered. So the oppressor, the Chaldeans, think they are rulers of all, but the very people they have conquered are going to rise up and taunt them with the futility of their endeavors. So the very people they conquered now pronounce their woes. The Chaldean oppressors who keep conquering yet another nation are compared to someone who is continually borrowing money and borrowing money and borrowing money until all hope of repayment is gone. Eventually the borrower ends up in prison under a mountain of debt and everything is taken away from him. The Chaldean oppressors destroy human life like a borrower continually borrowing money, and like the borrower, their debt will come back to bite them. They will face judgment and they will be found utterly guilty. So God is coming in judgment one day to judge them and they will be found guilty, and they will be looted by other nations just like they looted others. The second woe is in verses nine through eleven, and here the Chaldeans are judged for taking from others to provide for their own security. Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to put his nest on high and to be delivered from the hand of calamity. You have devised a shameful thing for your house by cutting off many peoples, so you are sinning against yourself. Surely the stone will cry out from the wall and the rafter will answer it from the framework. So the Caldean oppressors stole from others, looted other nations, and gained their wealth through evil means. Then they seek to protect themselves and their wealth by building their city on high ground, building a great giant walled city that looks and appears to be an impregnable fortress or palace. So they build their fortress through evil gain by looting and enslaving others and eventually their fortress will fall. The very walls and stonework of the fortress itself is a judgment to them. The only security is in trusting the Lord. And as we see in history, the Babylonians looted Nineveh to bring down the Assyrian Empire, and eventually Nineveh's fate was their own. The city of Babylon fell and was taken by Cyrus in five hundred thirty nine BC. The third woe is in verses twelve through fourteen, and here the Chaldeans are judged for being bloodthirsty and violent. Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with violence. Is it not indeed from the Lord of hosts that peoples toil for fire and nations grow weary for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So the oppressors have built their giant walled city and gained their empire by bloodshed, brutality, and slave labor. They think they are safe and secure in their high city, having vanquished all their neighboring states, but when God comes in judgment all that effort will be for nothing, the city will fall, and their empire will be no more. By contrast, the Lord will reign forever and ever. Nations come and nations go, evil dictators rise and evil dictators fall. Earthly kingdoms rise to glory and then fall to dust, but the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, his rule and his reign is going to last forever. The fifth woe is in fifteen through seventeen, and it judges the Chaldeans for oppressing and inflicting violence and bloodshed on their neighbors. Woe to you who make your neighbors drink, who mix in your venom even to make them drunk, so as to look on their nakedness, you will be filled with disgrace rather than honor. Now you yourselves drink and expose your own nakedness. The cup in the Lord's right hand will come around to you, and utter disgrace will come upon your glory, for the violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, and the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them, because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the town and all its inhabitants. The cup is often used as a metaphor for one's lot or one's fortune, we see that in the Psalms in several places. Here it seems to indicate the brutal lot forced on the slaves by their captives. The life of the slave is pictured as a poisoned cup that the Chaldeans are forcing them to drink. So the oppressors take captives and they force this brutal life of slavery and oppression upon them, gloating over their humiliation and robbing them of respect and dignity. But God says, Woe to you, because as you have treated these slaves, so you will be treated, as they compelled their captives to metaphorically drink from a poisoned cup of slavery, so they will be in turn compelled to metaphorically drink a cup of God's wrath, and they in turn will be humiliated. And then the fifth and final woe in verses eighteen through twenty judges the Chaldeans for chasing idols. What prophet is the idol when its maker has carved it, or an image, a teacher of falsehood? For its maker trusts in his own handiwork when he fashions speechless idols. Woe to him who says to a piece of wood, awake, to a mute stone, arise, and that is your teacher. Behold it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all inside it. But the Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him. Now remember chapter one described the Chaldeans as a nation who think there is no God other than themselves, and this woe exposes the folly of idolatry. How ludicrous is it to fashion our own idols, whether it's our nets or ourselves or a statue, it's foolish to take something that can't speak, can't act, can't move, something that has no brain or soul in it, and we worship it. To treat something we've made with our own hands as a god is like following a teacher of lies. The idol is just an empty object. A living being who sleeps can be woken up, but no amount of shouting is going to wake a block of wood or a piece of silver. But in contrast to these speechless, mindless idols, the Lord is in his holy temple. He reigns and he rules. He's the one who controls history, he's the one who makes and breaks kings, he gives victory and comfort and ultimately justice. You may not be able to see him or hold him in your hand like a gold statue, but he is the one who lives and breathes and rules. Let the earth be silent before him. There's no excuses, there's no justification, there's no pleading or explaining. So what then are we to make of that answer? Habakkuk says, But isn't the cure kind of worse than the disease? Will you really let the wicked Chaldeans trample all over your people? So Habakkuk first asked why God would let evil go on so long among his own chosen people, but when God said he's sending the Babylonians, Habakkuk's question became, How can God use a people more wicked than his own as instruments of discipline and judgment? So in one thirteen he asked, Why do you look with favor on those who deal treacherously? Why are you silent when the wicked swallow up the those more righteous than they? God answers, they're going to be judged. Justice and righteousness will prevail. So the practical answer to Habakkuk's question is trust God, even when it looks like evil is winning, because the wicked will always receive their just due. I think we can learn four things from chapter two. First, sin always has consequences. Read through scripture and you'll find that to be true. No one ever sins and gets away with it scot free. There are always consequences of some kind. Now, of course, many, many times God forgives the sin, and many, many times God redeems the sin in that He brings a good purpose out of it. He gives the suffering a purpose that is ultimately worth it. Sometimes that's really hard to see from our vantage point and it's hard to understand. And we may not see how God brings good from the tragedies in this life until the next life. But Scripture teaches us that suffering is not wasted, it's not pointless, and it's not capricious. God always has a plan and a purpose and a point. He is redeeming the situation to bring something good out of it. And we see that even here. As terrible and horrible as the suffering under the Babylonians is going to be, especially when they level Jerusalem, God had a plan and a purpose for it. He has a purpose for his people and he has a purpose for the Babylonians. So sin always has consequences. Evil and wickedness is always judged. No one gets away with it. Judgment always comes in some form. There are always consequences. Now God does forgive sin and God does redeem sin. God can bring good out of even the most horrible sin and tragedy. But sin and evil and wickedness always has consequences. Second, God is at liberty to do what he wants to do in the way he wants to do it and in the time he wants to do it. Remember in chapter one, the Lord warned Habakkuk, what I'm doing is going to surprise you. I'm going to do something that you can't even imagine. I'm bringing the Chaldeans to judge my people. And I think part of what that teaches us is that God can and often does act in ways that we will not understand and maybe contrary to what we think ought to happen. We think God should do things in a way that seems reasonable to us, that will make our lives pleasant, easy, and cause us little grief. I don't know about you, but my way usually involves minimal pain and minimal discomfort and minimal suffering. But God has a bigger plan in mind. He is not a tame lion. He's not a big sugar daddy in the sky who's there to jump to our will when we pray the right prayer. He has his own plans and purposes, and he will act in the way that he thinks is best, and that is not always what we think is best. He acts, he judges, and he uses whatever means suits his plans and his purposes best. We're going to be surprised. He's going to act in ways we never imagined. And some ways we may not understand now and we may not understand till the next age. But like Habakkuk, we stand and watch to see how he will act. It may look in the short term like evil is winning, but God's judgment is surely coming. God has a plan and a purpose, and he has told us that the day will come when He will set right every wrong, evil will be judged and vanquished, and death will be no more. And that brings us to the third point, and that is God will bring justice. True, the Lord acts in ways that surprise us and confuse us, but he is not careless about what is right or true or just. His righteousness, his goodness, and his justice are at the core of his character. He acts in ways that may appear to us with our limited knowledge to be unfair or unkind or unjust, but it's our understanding that's flawed. We don't know enough about the big picture to see and understand all that God is doing. When life is full of bad surprises, it's not a blemish on God's character. Injustice, tragedies, they're part and parcel of living in a fallen world. Life is not fair, bad things happen, but God is still acting in history and he is acting in a way that will ultimately bring justice and goodness, and he will make things right. But he's going to do it in his way and in his time. Fourth, and finally, I want to spend a little bit more time on this idea of the righteous will live by faith. The righteous will find life because of their faith. And this speaks to the question of why believe if I'm not exempt from the tragedies of life. The proud one will be judged and will be found guilty, but the righteous will find life, eternal life in the kingdom of God. That puts the tragedies and sufferings of this world into perspective. We're complaining because life is hard, life is unfair, because we have to suffer through little disappointments and big tragedies, loss, or even the chaos of war. But God says the righteous shall find life by faith. That's a subtle reminder that this suffering is taking us someplace we very much want to go. This life is not all there is. This life is just the prologue. To give you an analogy, there's a sense in which this life is like waiting in the lobby for the doors to open so that we can go into the theater and see the show. The real show has not yet begun. We are waiting for the curtain to go up. We're waiting for the real show to begin. Now there are important things to do in the lobby. We have to sort out our tickets and check our coats and maybe get some snacks. But this lobby stuff is not why we came. We came to see the show. Well, the show in my metaphor is life in the kingdom of heaven. The real deal, the thing that will truly satisfy us is when God sends his Messiah again to vanquish death, decay, and corruption once and for all, to free us completely from our sins and to grant us life in his kingdom. That's the hope of the gospel. That's the pearl of great price. That's the thing we believers have our hearts set on. The Apostle Paul says the sufferings we experience now aren't even worthy to be compared to the glorious life we will find in the kingdom of heaven. So why believe if I'm not exempt from all that suffering and all the tragedies of life? Because those tragedies mature my faith. Those tragedies teach me to trust God, and if I have faith, then I will find life in the kingdom of God, and nothing is more important or more valuable than that. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, a podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You can hear all the episodes in this series on my website, as well as find many other Bible study resources there. That is at wednesdayintheword.com. There's no charge, no spam, and no ads. It's all free to help you improve your study skills and understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe to the mailing list, subscribe to the podcast, and leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician, Reggie Coates. You can listen to all of his music and find his TVs at heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.