You can turn in your copy of the scriptures now to Habakkuk chapter one, Habakkuk chapter one. As I've mentioned before, Habakkuk is my favorite minor prophet. So I'm very excited to preach through Habakkuk. Now Habakkuk was writing in the time after the destruction of Nineveh, but before the fall of Judah. And so it's either in the end of righteous King Josiah's reign, or at the beginning of the reign of his son. And there's a revival that happened in Israel during the time of Josiah. And we can see here in Habakkuk that that revival has worn off. The people are more wicked than ever. Habakkuk sees it and it grieves him. And so he prays or complains. This is the word of the Lord. We're gonna be going through chapter two, verse one. The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear? Or cry to you violence and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me, strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, and so justice goes forth perverted. Look among the nations and see, wonder and be astounded, for I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome. Their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle, swift to devour. They all come for violence, all their faces forward. They gather captives like sand. At kings, they scoff, and at rulers, they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their God. Are you not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. You, who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook. He drags them out with his net. He gathers them in his dragnet so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet for by them he lives in luxury and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever? I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me. and what I will answer concerning my complaints. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's ask for his blessing on it as we go forward. Heavenly Father, you are king over all. You've given us Jesus, and Jesus speaks to us on your behalf through his word. We pray that he would speak, that though some of us, including myself, may be tired and worn out, we know your word is never worn out, but always fresh and gives us life. Lord, even in a hard word, we pray that it would be wounding to us, but wounding to heal, that we'd be built up and that you would refresh us by your spirit. that we'd be willing to repent of our sins and know that you are good in all of your ways and you never make mistakes. Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. When you're a kid, you don't understand everything. And one of the things you don't understand when you're a kid is why your parents sometimes make you go through painful yet necessary medical procedures. So my first experience with this as a parent was when Matthew was just a wee little lad of about two months old. Now Matthew had a tongue tie, which made nursing difficult and possibly could have effects on speech later on. And normally tongue ties are cut around the two week mark of an infant's life. But because this is military medicine at the time, the one person who could cut a tongue tie was out of pocket for about two months over the summer. And so we waited till Matthew was about two months old, a little past. But a two-month-old baby is a lot more aware than a two-week-old baby. And so that's enough for little baby Matthew, in this case, to be very, very afraid. And so the staff at this dental surgery place, they had trouble holding Matthew down, holding him still enough to cut the tongue tie. If you can't hold a kid down still for something like this, you could hurt them. And so I was asked to help and help I did. I held Matthew down with a firm, but immovable hand, which of course caused him to panic even more and even more screaming. It's heartbreaking, but I held him down and we got it cut. We had to do this a little bit again about a year later when Matthew got his first stitches and his head, I had to hold him down yet again. And if his eyes could have spoken to me in both of those instances, and they did speak to me, what his eyes told me is, why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this to me? The answer at each time and every time that it's necessary is, son, I love you, I have to do this. Son, I love you, I have to hold you down. I'm sorry, but that's the way it has to be. One day Matthew will understand. I think as he gets older he will. But children don't always have to understand the ways of their parents. They must simply learn to trust them. Now Habakkuk doesn't understand God's way of being a child of God as Habakkuk is. God is calling Habakkuk to trust him and us with Habakkuk. So the burden of our text this morning is that God knows what he is doing, even when we do not. God knows what he is doing, even when we do not. And there are three ways where we have no idea what God is doing, and we see that in Habakkuk. So God knows what he is doing, even when his justice is delayed, one. God knows what he is doing, even when his answer is astounding, two. And God knows what he is doing, even when the cure seems worse than the disease. God knows what he is doing, even when we do not. And as we jump in, we see that first, that God knows what he is doing even when his justice is delayed. And verse two, we see Habakkuk kind of feels like God is ignoring him. It says, Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help when you will not hear? Or cry to you violence and you will not save? The condition of the nation has gone back into the tubes. Violence is the name of the problem. And when things are going down in the tubes, good Christian people, believers, people of God, they pray. And so Habakkuk prays, but things don't change. So he prays and he prays, and eventually gets to a point where God has so decided not to answer directly, That like the psalmist and David in Psalm 13, he says, how long, O Lord, shall I cry for help? How long will you hide your face from me, David says in Psalm 13. Habakkuk's patience is broken, and so he vents. It's scary to have God not answer prayer, for him to be quiet when we're asking for an answer. We are afraid that perhaps like Saul, the night before he was killed, or the day before he was killed, when he prayed to God, God had determined judgment for him already at the hand of the Philistines, and God did not answer. We are afraid that that will be us. It's scary. And so Habakkuk feels like God is ignoring him, and it's hard. It causes great angst in his soul. And along with that, he also feels powerless in his own might to stop evil. He says, why do you make me see iniquity? Verse three. Why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me. Strife and contention arise. This is a question you might ask yourself. If Habakkuk had a TV, he would have asked himself, watching the news, Why are you making me look at this God? Why are you, why have you decided to make this the name of the call of the day? Why is this the soup of the day? Violence soup, if you will. Habakkuk is a bystander to a downward spiral in his country. And it hurts him. It's a train wreck where you can't take your eyes off of it. Perhaps it's in his own community. Perhaps, This is me speculating, perhaps he has some sort of bystander PTSD, where he's seen things in his own streets that he cannot unsee. Things that make your skin crawl, and there's no one to stop it. All these things are bubbling up in a way that cannot be undone. And it feels like evil has won the day. In verse four, he says, so the law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted. This is the call of Bonnie Tyler. Where have all the good men gone? Where are they? Well, the answer is, is there are some, but they are surrounded. How can the judge give a guilty verdict with a gun pointed at his family? How can the jury give a correct verdict with getting death threats in the mail? And even good people in those situations, the temptation to do wrong is so strong. that justice goes forth perverted. I mean, you think about it. Habakkuk, if he sees, if he calls out what he sees in his society, he is painting a target on his back, and he's next. And what good is he to him or his family if he's dead? How will he live to even pray another day if he's the next target? Proverbs 29.2 says, when the wicked rule, the land groans. We see Israel's groaning, this land of Israel through Habakkuk because justice delayed is justice denied. Now, as I talk up here, perhaps you're thinking in your own mind about our own country. Things are not the way they used to be. We used to be a country of laws and of a Christian worldview that informed those laws. And now it seems like with the Christian worldview slipping away, so is the law and order. where perhaps in a lot of places, violence, law breaking, is becoming the name of the game and the order of the day. And it makes us wonder, where is God? Why won't he answer? And perhaps if you, in response to those questions that are heavy questions, born by heavy hearts, you think, well, I know God exists. I know he has saved me, but then the second, Worst question, I think, set of questions sneaks in underneath. God is real, but does he care? Does he care about what's going on around me and around us? It's hard. And it's hard in Habakkuk's case here, because these are supposedly the covenant people of Israel. You read the prophets, you read in the historical narratives, the Old Testament, at the time in the generation or so before the exile, they were still doing the forms of worship. They were people who were prophets who were claiming to give God's word. But we see in Ezekiel in private, they are as wicked as ever. When God shows him the secret idol worship in Jerusalem, Ezekiel's skin crawls. It's rotting from the inside out. In our case, we have to first look, I think, we have to look first to ourselves. Maybe you're not in some sort of paramilitary group that's committing violent acts that are being shown on television or on social media. But how have I contributed? How have my sins, God, led us to this place? Surely we are not guiltless. Surely God sees all that we do and knows all that we think. How have I contributed? But then you think about how you have contributed, how your own sins have added to the pile. As Christians, you look to the suffering of Jesus Christ. We look to Jesus. As a father turned his back on the son, Jesus kind of sounds like Habakkuk when he prays, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I don't think you realize, even in that terrible moment, how wonderful it is that Jesus prayed that. If Jesus had never prayed that, cried out that on the cross, we would feel guilty when we feel that way. But know that your Savior knows how it feels. He knows Habakkuk's complaint. He knows our complaints. He knows what it's like to experience wrath more than we ever will. And as the disciples saw him cry that out, as they saw their Messiah bleeding out on the cross, They saw their kingdom hopes being dashed. James and John wanted to sit at Christ's left and right hand, and they were rebuked, but they thought the physical kingdom that we were hoping for, this restoration that was supposed to come, was dying before their eyes. But we see here as well, in Christ's death and in his resurrection, that in order for the plant to grow, the seed must die. That's what Paul tells us. In order for life to come, death must come first. And the death of Christ shows us that. So we don't know what God is doing in our society, but we also don't have to. We know that God works all things out for good. We know that he preserves his church. We know that he loves his people. That he will continue to be a church witness in the world until Jesus returns. No matter what the country is called, what society we live in, or our grandchildren, or 200 years from now live in, Christ will reign wherever the sun touches. He will reign over all of it. We don't know what's happening, but we don't have to. Jesus and God, they have reasons to delay justice, both in Habakkuk's time and for us. And even if it's not what we had hoped, we trust in the wisdom of the father. And especially if the Christ had, the fact the father turned his back on Christ, guarantees that Christ will never turn his back on you. God knows what he is doing even when we do not. even when his justice is delayed, and secondly, even when the answer is astounding. Move a bit more quickly through this one. So we see here, verses five through 11, that as Habakkuk prays, perhaps he's surprised God actually responds back directly. It's amazing. But verses five through 11 are an answer to his prayer and the negative. God says, no. In fact, judgment is coming. He uses a brutal instrument. We see that in verses five and six, particularly in six, we see these Chaldeans are a bitter and hasty nation who marched through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. Bitter and hasty. They are fast, powerful, and brutal. There will be no recovery for the kingdom of Judah, not in this time. It's going to be hard Habakkuk. Nebuchadnezzar is the biggest, baddest kid on the block. You've never seen anything like him and he's coming. And they're powerful. See it verses seven and eight. I don't have to read it to you here, but we see they're swift. They're compared to every kind of predatory animal that you could think of. They're like the new number one seed after they beat up the old number one seed in the league. They took out Nineveh and they're feeling good because Nineveh was the city to destroy. Once they destroyed it, they are legendary. They are the new big bad guy. They're rewriting the rules at it while they're at it. The rule of the day is that might makes right. Might makes right. Their power is their God. We see that in verses, we see that in verse 11. So they sweep like by like the wind and go on guilty men whose might is their God. Babylon had its own pantheon of gods that it worshiped, had its own system of worship, it had ziggurats. But God is just telling that Habakkuk, in reality, they worship those metal images, but their own might, their own strength, their own initiative and power is their God. I mean, think about it. Nebuchadnezzar had all these, again, all these deities to worship. But who does he build a statue of in Daniel 3? 90-foot golden statue. He builds one of himself. And he says, all peoples, all nations will bow down, or I'm going to throw them in a fiery furnace. In other words, I am God, and you're going to respect that. Nebuchadnezzar, these Babylonians, they're not the bumbling bullies that you'd see on TV in a TV show, you know, or just big dumb brutes who get in the way of the main characters and the main characters find a way to beat them every single time. No. Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, they are like 4.0 Rhodes scholars who are also division one athletes at the same time. They're big, they're bad, and they know it. They cannot be beaten. Israel will be destroyed. So God answers Habakkuk's prayer, but he answers it painfully, almost in such a way where maybe he regrets even praying in the first place. It's like when you complain to your parents or your kids complain to you and you say, if you don't stop complaining, I'm going to give you something to complain about. Now that's not what we see here. And in reality, Israel had a near terminal diagnosis. The land was so evil and filled with blood. God had promised at the end of Deuteronomy, if you live this way, if you depart from me, these are the things you can expect. And God fulfills his word. The instrument he uses, these Babylonians, are a hard life ending for many circumstance. If you think about it, if you have a deep medical problem, if you have a medical problem that's, you know, internal medicine, you know, deep, far inside, past your stomach, or even in your bones, you could say, you have to cut deep. And you have to cut deep through a lot of healthy tissue to get to it. So it is that God in our lives takes away sometimes lots of really good things, cuts through them to remove the root of the issue lying underneath. And also in reality, God's not gonna make a full end of Israel. He'll preserve his remnants even through exile, but he has to fix the idolatry problem. You shall have no other gods before me is the first commandment for a reason, but it is the commandment that leads to breaking all the other commandments if broken. Israel had an ideology problem deep within them. For 800 years, they had been in the land at this point. And for most of those 800 years, they lived unfaithfully to God and to his covenant. And God is finally stepping in to take care of business. It takes away a lot of really good things. The temple was good. Jerusalem was a city of the great king. How many innocent people, actually innocent people, died when Jerusalem was taken or throughout the land? Sometimes God takes away good things from us to fix a deeper problem. And it feels cruel when we don't know why he's doing it. But what's the alternative in this case? What if the doctor said, oh, that's a huge problem and we have to dig for that problem, but I don't wanna do it. That's just, it's too hard on you. It's gonna be too hard on you. Well, that's malpractice to have a diagnosis and refuse to do it or to, I mean, foolishness for us to refuse such an operation. God does not explain his ways, why he does what he does. But we, as his children, we are called to trust him after he answers our prayers in the negative. Even when it seems like he strips away everything good from us, things that were gracious gifts in the first place, we must still trust in the goodness of the Father. We must. We can look to Christ as we do it. But I think for Christ, as he was suffering, Isaiah 53 tells us that the suffering servant, as he suffers, he looks through his sufferings, he looks out and his soul is satisfied with the suffering, knowing that he is gonna bring sinners to righteousness, and that many will be accounted righteousness through his own suffering. We cannot suffer as Christ, but we know our suffering always has a good purpose attached to it, and Christ gives it meaning through his own. Jesus in the garden as he prayed, said, Father, if you, not my will, but yours be done, if you can take away this cup, please take it. If there's any other way to redeem these people in our infinite wisdom as God, if there's another way, but not my will, yours be done. Father answers, no, there's no other way. So Christ goes and redeems us. We must trust the Father's goodness as Jesus trusted, as he sweat drops of blood, because God knows what he's doing, even when we do not, even when his justice is delayed, and even when his answer is astounding, and finally, even when the cure seems worse than the disease. So in that case, we can still confess him as Lord when we get that negative answer. Habakkuk says, are you not from everlasting? Oh Lord, my God, my holy one, we shall not die. Oh Lord, you have ordained them as judgment and you, oh rock, have established them for a proof. Habakkuk hears God's answer and he says, okay, you're God and I'm not, I will trust you. It's an ultimate trust in the Lord. Habakkuk sees in that hard answer that God is eternal. in his being and in his purposes, and he's loving in his character, even when it doesn't seem like it, and he will work out all things for good. We talked about this a bit in Nahum, but this whole stream of events will eventually lead to Jesus and the appearance of the Messiah and of the kingdom of God. We will not die. Many will, but the people of Israel, the remnant will be preserved. But in the meantime, it may still seem unfair. Verse 13, Habakkuk says, you who are of pure eyes and to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? So he confesses his faith, but he still says, okay, God, I trust you, but when are you actually going to fix the original problem? We still, I still see this issue. I don't know how you're going to solve it. And this is, I'm having difficulty reconciling this God. You don't tolerate wickedness. You refuse to look on it favorably. What are you doing? And when will it, when will it be solved? We see it going from bad to worse. is this overkill. We deserve judgment as a people, God, sure, but isn't a worse nation, isn't this just gonna make the problem worse? I won't read it, but in verses 14 through 17, we see more of the same of what we saw earlier, but also this detail, historical detail of how the Babylonians treated captives. It was a bit brutal. They would take them and put They would put hooks in their mouths on a rope and march them off into exile. This was a known thing. It's actually how King Manasseh, the worst king of Judah, he was actually taken into exile that very way. And that led to his repentance. Habakkuk, all these Israelites know that. And Habakkuk uses that as an illustration to say, shall this go on forever? As it seems to. When will things look up? His attention, which in the promise and his faith and his promises and the fulfillment of it. It seems unfair. For most of my life, I was a, I was often in trouble growing up. I was definitely the problem child and not just because I was a middle child. I just liked to cause problems. But liking to cause problems, I also saw that in relation to the people I caused problems with, I seemed to always be picked out of a crowd for punishment. So if everyone was talking in class at an elementary school, the teacher would point at me and say, you stop talking or you're gonna have your, you're gonna have dollars pulled out of your little, little fake dollars pulled out of your pouch, whatever the punishment was. And then in high school, there was a situation where some kid was getting bullied. I was mainly a bystander. My dad corrected me. He's like, being a bystander means you're an accomplice. But I did not initiate it. I got in trouble for initiating it. How is that fair? And even at the academy, my entire unit could have been doing something wrong. And of course, I'm the one who gets called out. My whole life. I'm like, this is, you gotta be kidding me. But what I've learned through that, and I transmit to you, is that God cares far less about punishments being fairly meted out in this life. than he does about disciplining those he loves. What I learned is that God loved me a lot. God disciplines his sons. He wants them to share in his holiness through Jesus Christ. We should be worried for you and you should be worried for yourself if you're not receiving that discipline. God disciplines those he loves, even when it seems completely unfair, like it seems like complete overkill, that God knows what he's doing, even when we do not. And so Habakkuk waits with faithful expectation. In chapter two, verse one, he says, I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint. Habakkuk shows us a biblical pattern for prayer in hard times. Confession of faith in who God is. And in the middle, a complaint, fears, concerns for how God's working things out. And then waiting. Faith, fear, but wait. So Habakkuk waits for God. Waiting for God, faith in him is our first and our last Option it's uncomfortable, but it's a good place Psalm 135 through 6 says I wait for the Lord My soul waits and in his word I hope my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning more than watchmen for the morning So as we finish up here, I have to ask you who is your light? Who is your light as you wait? for the morning? Now, practically, well, you know the answer is Jesus, of course. That should be your answer, that you should strive to make that your answer. But practically, on the day-to-day, as you go through tough situations, practically, who is your light? In other words, where are you expecting deliverance to come from? Are you just gonna waiting for the weather to change? Is your hope in the change in the weather, which is relevant, very relevant where we are, Are we just waiting for people to get over things? Are we waiting for people not to be mad at us? Are we waiting for the circumstances to change? Is that our light? Or is our light the one who changes the circumstances, the controller? Circumstances will change here and there, to and fro, good and bad and back to good and back to bad again. Why not have our light be the God who never changes, who is always constant? And even so, in Psalm 139, David says this, he says, Though I walk in darkness, Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. When you are in the dark or you're walking through the darkness and getting darker, Jesus walks with you. God has not left you. He will neither leave you nor forsake you. It is like you are walking through a forest blindfolded, but he's not blindfolded. He is leading you. He will lead you. Do you trust Jesus to guide you through the valley of the shadow of death? We can't see past all that's going on around us, but God can. He does. He sees the end from the beginning. And as Jesus, one more time, for us was on the cross. He was smitten. He was stricken. He was afflicted. And at the very end of his time on the cross, he said, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. Jesus knew what the outcome was going to be. He knew that it was finished, but he also had his human flesh that was dying, didn't deserve to die. He was bearing the sins of all. But with all those things, he said, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. to walk through the darkness, but with a complete trust in God, is to say with Jesus, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. Do you see it? Do you see that God knows what he is doing, even when we do not? Though justice is delayed, the answer is astounding, and the cure seems worse than the disease. Do you believe this? Have you seen the light? Jesus is our light. Jesus is what God is doing, even when we didn't know what he was doing. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have preserved us, that you will continue to preserve us, that you show us Jesus, that you offer him to us. Lord, I pray that you would make us able and willing to accept He was soft in our hard hearts that there would be no corner of our lives where his light does not shine on it. That we would see the even larger societal movements and events and just inches away from certain death that you are making us into the image of your son. Give us Jesus, Lord, show us to him and whatever you need to take away and strip away for us to. See him better, I pray that you would do it. I pray that we would not be afraid to pray that prayer, as we often are. Lord, we trust you. We ask all these things in Jesus' name, amen.