Good Morning,

An Elderly Lady Caught Four Men Trying to Steal Her Car

After she had completed her round of shopping, an older woman made her way to her car.
Elderly woman standing near a car in a parking garage | Photo: Shutterstock
When she got there, she found four males in the act of stealing her vehicle. She immediately let
her shopping bags fall to the ground as she brought out her handgun and threatened to shoot the
men if they didn’t retreat from her car.
The alarmed men made no hesitation as they fled from the crime scene without once looking
back.
The somewhat shaken lady then went on to pick her shopping bags from where they had fallen to
load them into the back of the car.
After that, she got into the driver’s seat and tried, for several minutes, to insert her key into the
ignition.
After many failed attempts, she suddenly realized why getting the key to fit into the ignition was
posing a problem.
It was for the same reason she had questioned why there was a football, a Frisbee, and two 12-
packs of beer in the front seat; this wasn’t her car.
The woman promptly got out of the car, and after a few minutes, she found her car, which was
parked four or five spaces along.
She loaded her bags into her car and drove to the nearest police station to report what had
transpired and her mistake.
The sergeant that took her report couldn’t stop laughing. When he stopped laughing long enough
to be coherent, he pointed to the other end of the counter.
At that counter were four men who had come in to report a carjacking incident which involved a
mad, older woman.
The men stated that the woman who had tried robbing them was white, less than five feet tall,
wore glasses, had curly white hair.
The suspect could also handle a large handgun like a pro.
Although no charges were filed, the moral of the story is if you are going to have a senior
moment, do your best to ensure it is memorable.
Now I’m not staking my reputation on the truthfulness of that story but it illustrates one of the
things about the book of Habakkuk. It’s a book that is sometimes misunderstood when you first
look at it. And I think that’s understandable because it has a strange name, (have you ever heard
of someone named Habakkuk? stuck near the end of the Old Testament so after you get past
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, there’s Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Jonah, and
Nahum, you’re just exhausted. Also it’s rather short, only three chapters and written in poetry,
and Hebrew poetry at that which has its own set of rules. So I can understand why it’s often

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overlooked.
But Habakkuk has a very important message, a message that we need to hear and apply to our
lives in 2024.
The title of the message is “God’s Side of the Tapestry” and the text is the
entire book of Habakkuk.
If you’re here today and you believe that your life has worked out perfectly,
every dream you’ve had has been fulfilled, every goal you’ve set has been
achieved, even overachieved, your family has turned out exactly as you
desired, you’ve never been sick a day in your life, and no one in your family
has ever been sick. If every one of your children is either a doctor, lawyer or
the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, and you’ve never had a disagreement
with your spouse (I actually had a lady say to me “I’ve never had a
disagreement with my husband”) and all of your life has been a proverbial
bed of roses, and if you think our culture and nation are at the pinnacle of
morality, that our legal system is always fair and untainted, that are politics
are free from greed, dishonesty and never duplicitous. And if you think that
everything is so good that it couldn’t possibly be better, I have 2 things to
say to you. 1) This sermon is not for you and 2) You should immediately
consult a mental health professional because you are seriously delusional.
On the other hand, if your life has not worked out exactly as you planned,
there have been goals that haven’t been achieved, you’ve had
disappointments, sorrow, sickness and things you’ve had difficulties, even
had one or two disagreements with your spouse, if while looking at our
nation and culture you see that it is characterized more and more by lust,
gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, pride rather than by chastity,
temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience and humility, if you see
sin more and more being normalized resulting in a declension of morality in
our culture, this sermon is for you.
Very little is know about Habakkuk except what we can discern from his
book. His name is mentioned only two times in scripture, once in Hab. 1:1
and the second time in Hab. 3:1. We can understand the time frame in
which he prophesied by his descriptions of the nations in his writing.
So let’s look at the book itself. The book of Habakkuk is unique among all of
the prophets. In every other prophetic book in the OT, the prophet receives a
word or a vision from the Lord which is directed toward either the leaders
and/or people of the nation of Israel or the leaders and/or people of a nation
around Israel. So the prophet spoke from the Lord to the people. It was a
one-way communication – God-people. However, Habakkuk spoke to the

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Lord from the people and it is a dialogue. Habakkuk asks God a question and
God answers him.
Let’s look at the content of the book.
I want to organize our thoughts around three basic ideas.
1) A Perplexing Problem 2) A Prophetic Prediction 3) A Psalm of Praise
Each of these ideas correspond roughly to chapters 1, 2, and 3. Chapter 1
offers us a perplexing problem, chapter 2 provides us with a prophetic
prediction and chapter 3 gives us a psalm of praise.
1) The perplexing problem.
Habakkuk’s first set of questions comes in like crashing waves. In verse 2 he
wonders how long he must wait for God’s help against violence. In verse 3 he
wants to know why he and
Yahweh must continue tolerating the problem of injustice, the difficulty of
wrongful suffering, the trouble of continuing destruction, the plague of
violence, the endless strife, never ceasing conflict.
And then in verse 4, these problems lead to four more:
The law is paralyzed, justice never prevails, the wicked hem in the
righteous; and because of these three, justice is perverted.
A paraphrase
“GOD, how long do I have to cry out for help before you listen?
How many times do I have to yell, “Help! Murder! Police!”
before you come to the rescue?
Why do you force me to look at evil, stare trouble in the face day after day?
Anarchy and violence break out, quarrels and fights all over the place.
Law and order fall to pieces. Justice is a joke.
The wicked have the righteous hamstrung and stand justice on its head.”
We can summarize Habakkuk’s complaint as “God, you’re supposed to be in
charge, you tell us you are just, righteous, and holy yet I look around and I
see injustice being perpetuated, sin becoming more and more prevalent and
it doesn’t seem as if you care. The law which you gave us is not being
followed and people who are guilty of all kinds of wrong doing are going free
while innocent people are made to suffer. How long must I call out to you,
cry to you asking for help, but you aren’t listening. Where are you, God?
Why do I have to look at things falling apart all around me while it doesn’t
appear as if you are doing anything, it doesn’t seem as if you care?
Each of these problems are addressed in parallel, Injustice leads to wrongful
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suffering. When either a guilty person goes free or an innocent person is
convicted, there is wrongful suffering. If a person who is guilty of murder is
allowed to go free, the family of the victim suffers wrongfully. Likewise when
an innocent person is incarcerated, there is wrongful suffering.
Why doesn’t Yahweh intervene in this life-denying dynamic? He “tolerates” it
(nabaṭ has the sense of “stand by and watch,” 1:3, 5, 13; 2:15).
The next two are opposite sides of the same coin, destruction and violence
wreak havoc on communities’ life-supporting infrastructures and
relationships. When riots break out, businesses, pharmacies, grocery stores
are destroyed and people are disenfranchised.
(Violence - (ḥamas)
The fifth and sixth terms are legal terms indicating the halls of justice in
Habakkuk’s day were constantly full of strife and conflict.
In 1:4 Habakkuk goes on to say that these six problems have led to four
situations that are even more terrible, again in pairs: “The law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails,” and “the wicked hem in the righteous, so that
justice is perverted.” In other words, the courts do not work any longer. Thus,
in a few brief words, Habakkuk describes a society full of crime, violence,
corruption, mock legal battles, and the defeat of the righteous. It is a ruined
society, and the prophet wants to know why Yahweh tolerates the flourishing
of such wickedness.
Habakkuk sees all of this and says “How long, Yahweh, are you going to
allow this to go on? How long are you going to ignore this wickedness in
your nation,
God answers him by saying “5 “Look at the nations and watch— and be
utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would
not believe, even if you were told.”
Now at this point I’m guessing that Habakkuk is pretty excited. Yahweh is
saying “Brace yourself for a shock. Something’s about to take place and
you’re going to find it hard to believe.”
When we focus on our present circumstances, we can easily become
discouraged because we live in a fallen world, a broken world filled with
broken people who harm and hurt people. It may not always be intentional
but it many times it is.
Now I stopped reading with verse 5 because I want to make a point. If we
stop there, it’s a pretty positive message.

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But it doesn’t stop there. God says He is raising up the Babylonians
(Chaldeans – same thing) to overrun and conquer Israel.
And we have a description of the Babylonians in the next 5 verses.
They are ruthless, they’ll steal your house and property, they are a law unto
themselves, when they come, they’re bent on violence. They are guilty men
who own strength is their god.
This causes Habakkuk to almost go into shock and he protests to God, in
essence saying “wait, God, aren’t you holy, your eyes too pure to look on
evil? If that’s the case, it seems pretty inconsistent for you to send someone
so wicked to straighten things out in our nation? It’s true we are wicked and
unjust, the law is paralyzed, it’s true that justice never prevails in our country
but how can you use a people who are more wicked than we are be your rod
of correction?
He closes his argument to God by saying “now that I’ve presented to you
how contradictory it is for you to send a nation more wicked than we are to
fix our problems. I’m going to climb up on this wall and see how you’re going
to answer me.
2) A Prophetic Prediction
At the beginning of chapter 2 we see God’s reply to Habakkuk’s 2 nd
complaint. And the answer he gives is the key to the entire book. In fact it’s
the key to living a victorious Christian life. The Lord is essence is saying,
“Habakkuk, you are only looking at things from your point of view, you’re
only seeing events as they are happening right now. Your perspective is
focused on you, but I want to show you what is really going on. I’m the
sovereign God who directs history, who directs the hearts of the leaders of
nations, and I’m going to tell you what is going to happen in the future. I
want you to write it down, in fact, write it out in letters so big that someone
who is running down the street or may be passing by and just glance at it will
see what it says. This is what you are to write: This is what is going to
happen when I decide the time is right, it will absolutely happen, it will not
prove false. You may think that it’s not going to happen because so much
time has passed, but trust me, that day will come.”
Then he offers a contrast – this wicked person, the one who is full of pride
and sinfulness, that person is destined for destruction but (and this is the
key) “the righteous person will live by his faithfulness”. In other words, we
don’t allow the circumstances around us to determine our allegiance. Indeed
it may look like everything around us is deteriorating and the systems of our

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culture and society are being destroyed, yet that is not what is determinative
for us. As the Apostle Paul wrote nearly 700 years later “So we are always of good courage
…for we walk by faith, not by sight.”
This is the key. Our situation does not have to determine our status.
Now to make sure Habakkuk understands that the future doesn’t stop with Babylon, that they
will pay for their sins, too, he pronounces 5 woes on the nations that will come later. What is a
woe? Well, it’s something that you don’t want pronounced on you. It’s not like “Woah, aren’t
you a mighty fine person (or nation) but it is a curse, a prediction of some very bad things that
are coming on the nation or nations that act in certain ways.
This brings us to chapter 3 which is
3) A Psalm of Praise
Habakkuk starts out in chapter 1 really questioning what God is doing. After
God rolls back the curtain on the future and tells him the way to walk is in
faith (faith is completely connected to faithfulness – one cannot claim to
have faith and be unfaithful), his attitude changes. He sits down with his
guitar and begins to sing a song. This song recounts the history of God’s
faithfulness in the past. How Yahweh has displayed His power, majesty and
might throughout the history of Israel
A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet. On shigionoth.
2
LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, LORD.
Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember
mercy.
3
God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.

He says, God I know I can trust you because you have proven throughout
history that you are trustworthy. Habakkuk then uses Teman and Mt. Paran
as portraits of God’s wisdom and power, and recounts throughout history
how God has demonstrated He was the one who provided direction,
protection and presence with them from the giving of the law to entering into
Canaan. And what God has done for His people, He will continue to do,

His glory covered the heavens

and his praise filled the earth.
And then he
Vs. 16
16
I heard and my heart pounded,
my lips quivered at the sound;

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decay crept into my bones,
and my legs trembled.
Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity
to come on the nation invading us.

He then begins to write and sing about how he has been transformed from a
defeated doubter to a person who trusts and praises God. This is what he
says:

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,
18
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
19
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.

Conclusion:
The title of this sermon is “God’s Side of the Tapestry”.
As we close, I know everyone who is here has been touched by the
brokenness because we live in a world that has been broken by sin. You’ve
had loss, heartache, disappointments, difficulties and hurts. None of us can
honestly say that our lives have been perfect, that everything has turned out
exactly as we planned. You’ve been hurt or mistreated by someone we
trusted, and Satan has been trying to discourage you by telling you that God
really isn’t in charge because if He was that thing or those things would not
have happened. But what God wants to tell you is “trust me because you
can’t see what I can see. You’re looking at the wrong side of the tapestry, so
by faith turn it over and trust me because I know what I’m doing.”
I want us to close by singing “God will make a way” and while we are
singing, if you are discouraged or struggling because of things that have
happened in your life, I’m inviting you to surrender it to Jesus. You’re
welcome to come down front to pray if you wish to but you can also just stay
where you are and vow to God that you are going to follow him.