Today is the 18th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today.

As we gather around our roaring global campfire and get all snuggled up and get warm and find our space and take the next step forward together.

It is a brand new shiny sparkly week. And this is the 4th Sunday. In the season of Advent, one week from today is Christmas Day.

Wow. But here we are. And moving through the season of Advent, where we have allowed our hearts to

consider the arrival of the Savior in the world and consider our longing for his return.

And so Advent, we talked about it all along the way as calendars and Advent wreaths with candles in them.

So you may be lighting the 4th Advent candle this week at church or maybe you have an Advent wreath at home that you light each Sunday and just focus your heart and remind yourself what's going on.

This is the love candle that will be lighting today the 4th candle.

Allowing us to focus this week as we move right to Christmas love, the profound unspeakable, unknowable, and I don't mean we can't know God's love, but His love is vastly beyond what we can comprehend.

We focus our hearts on the love that it took, the love that was displayed for us as God became flesh and dwelt among us.

And so this is where we find ourselves in the season of Advent. And in our journey through the Scriptures this year, we have come to yet another book.

We will read it in its entirety today. It is the 8th of 12 minor prophets and it is called Habakkuk.

And we don't know practically anything about who Habakkuk was. Maybe less than any other biblical writer, but we don't know much about Habakkuk.

There are some traditions. There's a Hebrew tradition that speaks of Habakkuk being the Shunamaite woman's son, the little boy who was resurrected through the prophet Alayshah.

And we found that story in the book of 2 Kings. There's another tradition found in the apocryphal book, Bell and the Dragon, and that displays Habakkuk ministering to Daniel while leasing the lions den.

But these are traditions. And you don't know anything else though, you look to the traditions and so these are some of the traditions most scholars especially with the Bell and the Dragon and Habakkuk being in Daniel and lions den believe that's how legends are made.

But those are some of the traditions around who Habakkuk was. There are many verses in the book of Habakkuk that will sound familiar. There's one in particular, but the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God.

That should sound familiar because that's something the Apocryphal Paul said a lot. And we find this in the book of Hebrews as well because the righteous will live by faith. That's like a core Christian doctrine.

So we see where what Paul and some of the other writers are referring back to Habakkuk for the language. Because the language is poetic, maybe lyrical even, especially the very end of Habakkuk seems like it's a hymn or a song to be sung.

There are scholars who have observed this and wonder if Habakkuk might have actually been a temple musician. But again, we don't know with certainty.

But what we'll see is Habakkuk having a conversation with God that moves from doubt to worship. Habakkuk will begin by saying out loud what is happening in the world and it will sound familiar.

And he wants to understand why God is indifferent, like why he seems to allow any evil a human being can come up with and allow it to happen like God wasn't even paying attention.

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