I have the blessing of now preaching this morning my second sermon on the Old Testament book of Habakkuk. No, that is not a strange sound that comes out of your throat when you cough. That is the name of one of God's Old Testament prophets. He is one of the 12 minor prophets, not minor like the minor leagues in baseball, minor simply because his book is shorter. And he lived before the exile of the southern kingdom of Israel. If you remember, he's a prophet, so he's an ordained teacher of God's people, and he asked the Lord some stunning questions, some powerful questions, some painful questions. And the Lord responded by telling him, I am at work, in a pretty terrible way, but God was at work. This book is broken up into three different chapters. The first two chapters is God's dialogue with Habakkuk, and the last chapter is his prayer of response. So if you will, please open your Bibles to Habakkuk chapter one as we come to the Lord's word this morning. This reading shows Habakkuk's second round of questions to the Lord. Habakkuk chapter one, we're gonna start in verse 12. And go to the first verse of chapter 2. Hear now the words of God. Are you not from everlasting? O Lord my God, my Holy One, we shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them, that is the Babylonians, 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 on 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, that is the Babylonians, 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 forever 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 complaint. This is the word of God. Please pray with me. Oh, heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, if you were to stay silent in the heavens, we would know nothing of you. But we thank you that you have not remained silent, but you have spoken for us to hear. And Lord, please open our eyes, help us to behold wonderful things out of your law. Lord, so often we can look at the words in these pages and have dead hearts and unmoving minds. And I pray that you would open our eyes, give us hearts to understand and ears to hear your word this morning. And may your spirit preach through me a far better sermon than anything I could ever say. I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. As I said at the beginning of this service, I love the Christmas season. There's many reasons I love the Christmas season. But here's kind of a nerdy reason why I love the Christmas season. I love the Christmas season because it viscerally portrays the difference between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross. These are terms dubbed by Martin Luther at the beginning of the Reformation. A theology of glory and a theology of the cross. Two different ways at looking at the world. Here's what I mean. A theology of glory says this, our God is glorious and great and majestic, so let's look for him in those things. Let's look for God where there is power, or where there is wisdom, or where there is strength, or where there is might. That's what a theology of glory says, that God is this way, so he must work this way. However, a theology of the cross says something very different. A theology of the cross says God is glorious, but he has chosen to reveal himself in completely opposite ways. Completely opposite ways. Just think about how this plays out in the Christmas story with me. God himself came to earth, not as a conquering king, not as the greatest man that anyone could ever have imagined, but he came as a humble baby. The king of kings, the most majestic being there ever was, was born in a cattle stall. The richest of monarchs came into the poorest of situations possible. The one whose praises were sung on and on and on by the angels of heaven was greeted on this earth by an entourage of shepherds. As we heard that quartet lovely singing, Thou who was rich beyond all splendor, all for love's sake became poor. Thrones for a manger did surrender. Sapphire paved courts for stable floor. Thou who was rich beyond all measure, all for love's sake became poor. This is how God works in our world. He does not work through a theology of glory. He works through a theology of the cross. God manifests his wonder and his ways and his work through seemingly impossible means. And the last sermon that I preached, I touched on that fact, that God is at work in crazy and sometimes unimaginable ways. And this sermon, I want us all to focus on what does it look like to trust that God is at work? It's one thing to say in our hearts that the Lord is sovereign. and in control. It's another thing to wake up the next day and keep believing that. It's another thing to hold to that in your prayers on the hard mornings or on the hard days. And this is the situation where Habakkuk was in. Habakkuk, like a pastor, brought a question to the Lord and got an answer that he wasn't expecting. And now he's responding on behalf of all the people. And there is so much for us to learn from his response. So much for us to learn. Because the things that were written in former days were written for your instruction. That through the encouragement and the patience of the scriptures, we might have hope. So how should you and I go about trusting that God is at work? Three things, three lessons from this passage. Determined faith. Difficult questions and diligent patience. Just to let you know, I'm gonna spend way more time on the first two than on the last one, so don't get worried. Determined faith, difficult questions, and diligent patience. Let's look at Habakkuk's determined faith right here in verses 12 through the first part of 13. Let me read it again. Notice how Habakkuk begins his questioning of God. He says, are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them, that is the Babylonians who God said would come and invade, 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. We're gonna stop right there, right in the middle of the sentence, but this is important, we're gonna stop right there. Because I want all of you to deeply ponder the lengths at which Habakkuk reminds his soul of who God is before he asks a single question. Before he lets a single question escape his lips. He has one of the most beautiful theologies of God. in these few sentences. And I wanna really drill in on this because the rest of this sermon will mean nothing if we can't get this point. Unless we are convinced that God is who he says he is, asking him questions will only be blasphemy. We cannot come into the presence of the king until we understand who that king is. But then once we understand who that king is, we can freely come into his presence. So what are the truths that Habakkuk says here about the Lord before his questions? We're going to walk through each one of these. First of all, he affirms that God is eternal. Look at what he says. He says, you are from everlasting. He's basically saying, God, there was never a time when you didn't exist. And for him personally, he's about to hear, he just heard, that his people, God's people, Israel, was about to get destroyed and taken into captivity by a wicked nation. And so the first thing that he reminds himself is, the Lord, you've kept watch on us for hundreds of years. We are taught from a young age to respect those who are older than us. And that's a wise thing, we should, because those who are older than us naturally have more wisdom. How much more should we respect the age, if you will, of God? The prophet Daniel calls him the ancient of days. And so before coming with a question, Habakkuk gets on his knees and admits that, Lord, you're eternal, I'm not. Look at what he says next. He's not just eternal, but he affirms that God is personal. He calls him Lord, and this capital L, capital O-R-D, Lord right here, is the covenant name of God. Yahweh, Jehovah. And he says that he's not just a God, he's my God. I say this all the time in a lot of my prayers. I thank the Lord that he's not just our creator, but he's our redeemer. God created everybody, but he didn't redeem everybody. So Habakkuk is affirming in his heart that, Lord, you are my God, you are mine. This would be like in your prayers on a hard day. Imagine a hard day that you've had recently. This would be like instead of beginning your prayer with the question, beginning your prayer with, dear God, thank you for sending Jesus Christ to die for my sins. That's what Habakkuk's doing right here. Look at what he says next. He also affirms that God is completely set apart and blameless. He says that he is holy, holy, holy. We just sang that. It's the only attribute of God that is repeated three times in a row in the entire Bible. And this is actually how the Lord's prayer begins as well, right? Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name. There is a beauty to reminding ourselves of God's holiness. Why? Why would Habakkuk be asking, telling himself this? Because think of Habakkuk's situation. He just heard that the Lord was about to bring about a terribly difficult and seemingly disastrous string of events. And yet, he's reminding himself in his mind that although the world seems messy, the Lord remains pure. Although this world is muddy, God is unstained. And that's what he's reminding himself of right here. I've been doing a lot of work on my house in this past year and a half. Just whenever I get the chance, I pop in some seminary lectures and I do some work. I'll tell you one thing that I've learned. I have learned the difference between an amateur and a professional. Let's just say that, myself being the amateur. Because sometimes I watch people who really know what they're doing when it comes to painting or say mudding and taping a wall. And the difference between a me and a them is they can do it way quicker, way more efficiently, and make way less of a mess. That's often the line that separates the amateur from the professional. They know how to do it well, and they know how to do it cleanly in a lot of ways. Our God is a professional at bringing beauty out of ashes. Our God is a professional at bringing the gospel out of ugly situations. And that's what Habakkuk is reminding himself right here. Not only that, he reminds himself that God sustains his people. Look what he says. He says, we shall not die. We shall not die. He's affirming in his heart that no matter what could possibly happen to the people of Israel, God will never abandon his church. Never. As long As the heavens and the earth remain, there will be a church on this earth to worship God. In the year 410 AD, the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, a northern barbarian tribe, and Rome was completely destroyed, and the economic and political fallout from that event was gigantic. But an interesting thing happened. After Rome was sacked, all of the non-believers, all of the pagans in Rome, who did they blame? The Christians. They thought to themselves, we've been worshiping our pagan gods for hundreds of years and then all of a sudden, our empire becomes Christian and then we fall apart. It's a pretty difficult question. And thankfully, the theologian Augustine, in one of his greatest works called The City of God, he reminds God's people that things can fall apart on this earth. The city of Rome can fall. You know, all these different nations can fall apart. Even America could fall apart, but the church of God will never fall. God will always sustain his people. We live for a heavenly city to come. And that is what Habakkuk is reminding himself right here. Next, he admits that God disciplines his people. Look at what he says. He says, Lord, you have ordained them for a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. And this is the same truth that the author of Hebrews teaches in Hebrews 12. He says, the Lord disciplines those whom he loves. What does this mean? Why is he saying this? In effect, Habakkuk is looking at the Lord, and he's acknowledging This terrible thing that's about to happen is just. Lord, I might disagree with it. It might not be the path that I have chosen, but you are just to do so. You are not treating us unfairly. How powerful would that be to put something in your own prayers? Our church has gone through a lot of hardships lately. I keep up with our prayer list, and sometimes I'm moved to tears by the things that I see on there that I'm praying for. But I can tell you one thing, God's people throughout history have always been those people who look at the Lord through their tears and say, you have never treated me as my sins deserve. Even in this harsh circumstance, your mercy is being made known. And that's what Habakkuk is saying here. One last attribute that Habakkuk points out, he points out that God hates evil. He is reminding himself that God hates evil. He says, you who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong. I think the Children's Catechism sums this up super well. I don't know if any of you have learned this. The Children's Catechism asks this question. Is God displeased with those who do not love and obey him? The answer is God is angry with the wicked every day. Every day. Why is Habakkuk reminding himself this? He is reminding himself this because he's about to be put through a situation where it seems like God is just kind of winking at evil and letting it happen. All of God's people in Old Testament Israel were about to get taken up, uprooted, and put somewhere else, and their land destroyed. And Habakkuk is saying in his soul, God, you hate evil, even though it looks like you're fine with it right now. Psalm 5 verse 4 says something very similar. It says, for you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. You hate evildoers. Just because God does not immediately respond with justice does not mean that he's soft on justice. It's important that we walk through all of these things, because this is essential to Habakkuk's prayer. There is an incredible theology of God right here in these few lines. Habakkuk, in a way, is diligently, he's pastoring his own heart. He's preaching to himself. He's reminding himself of God's character before he even mentions his question. Let me talk about that for a little bit more. What does it mean to preach to your heart, as it were, like Habakkuk is doing here? What it means is preaching to your heart the very attributes of God that connect most with your trials. Preaching to your heart the attributes of God that connect the most with your trials. Here's what I mean. Kids, I see a lot of kids in this room. Listen up real quick. Have you ever had a moment where someone was mean to you? Said some unkind words to you and it really stuck with you? Perhaps it just kind of stuck in your mind and it just made you sad for the rest of the week? Those are the moments where you need to preach in your heart the fact that Jesus loves you. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. God will never leave nor forsake you. You can use the attributes of God as a medicine for your soul in many ways. Or think of another instance. Perhaps the Lord has taken away from you someone that you love dearly. Maybe before their time, maybe in a surprise. Those are the moments where you need to preach to yourself, God, you are the master of life and of death, and I trust in you. So we see Habakkuk here being not only a wonderful pastor for his own heart, but also for his people, because he's rehearsing the very attributes of God that they would be most prone to start distrusting. And in fact, we see the very gospel here in these verses. The very gospel. How? Because these verses teach us that God is everlasting. He is eternal. And not only that, but he's holy and he's perfect. And he created a people that rebelled against him. And that's something that you and I do in our hearts every day. And how did God respond to that? Think of it, the Lord could not just wink at what we did. He couldn't just act like it never happened and keep going because he's God. He would cease to be God if he did nothing. But also notice what Habakkuk says. He says, we shall not die. God also wants to preserve for himself a people. And so what does he do? He passes over sins for thousands of years knowing that he himself would one day pay for them. that whoever believes in the work of his son Jesus, who became a man, should never perish, but dwell in everlasting life with him. Do not forget this Christmas season, that the Christmas season is not just about the baby Jesus. This Christmas season is about the baby Jesus who had to become a man, and who had to die, and who had to rise again for your sins. That is what's wonderful about the Christmas season, is the Lord did that which he did not have to do, which was save for himself a people. So we need to begin with determined faith. As I said, way more time on the first two points than the last one, so don't worry. Begin with determined faith. Let us learn from Habakkuk here, because so often in our trouble, we can come to God and lash out in our prayers. and speak to him as if he were beneath us, and that is not what Habakkuk's doing. So now let's look at his difficult questions. Let's look at the difficult questions that Habakkuk asks, starting halfway through verse 13. He says to God, why do you idly look at traitors? And why do you remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? Asking questions of God is no sin. Asking questions of God with a vindictive heart is a sin. And we learned the difference here with Habakkuk. at where Makari and I go to seminary up in RTS, one of our professors created a flowchart for the students. And the name of the flowchart is, should I ask the professor a question? And the flowchart goes through all the different things. It says, did you do the reading? No, don't ask a question. Did you listen to the lecture? No, don't ask the question. Is it a dumb question? Don't ask the question. Did the professor already mention the question? Don't ask the question. Is it even a question? Sometimes students at seminary just kind of like sit there and pontificate their own lecture in response to the lecture and it makes no sense. It's this big flow chart and basically what it's trying to say is don't ask dumb questions. And in some ways as Christians, we do need to learn from Habakkuk here. He is God and we're not. Yes, he's welcoming us to ask questions like Jesus said, ask and you will receive, knock and the door will be opened, seek and you will find. The Lord welcomes us, but we need to remember that he is the Lord. So let's look at the difficult questions. Asking is no sin, but asking wrongly is a sin. Why do you idly look at traitors? Habakkuk is asking God, why are the wicked given some success for a time? Why do you give them a long leash to do what they want? Why is evil not snipped right at the beginning that it starts? And is this not the grand problem of evil? I don't know about you, but when I was in college, there were a lot of people I talked to who wrestled with this question. The question of how could a good, all-powerful God make the world that we live in today? That's a difficult question. A lot of people were burdened with that, and surely you've heard it before. Why would a good God let his people feel so distressed? You can feel the tension here. The prophet Jeremiah asks a very similar question in Jeremiah chapter 12. He says this. He says, righteous are you, O Lord, when I complain to you, yet I would plead my case before you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive? This is a hard question. Let's keep walking through exactly what Habakkuk means by this question. So first of all, he's asking, Lord, why are you letting this happen? And then he starts kind of painting this metaphorical picture of how he thinks this is gonna go. Look at verse 14. He says, you, speaking to God, you make all mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. So he's liking all the people of earth to a great ocean and we're just fish. Let's see how he continues this picture. Then he says in verse 15, he, speaking of the Babylonians, 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. The picture that he's painting here is kind of like that moment in Finding Nemo. You remember that moment in Finding Nemo when all the fish band together and they all say swim down and they break the net, right? It's just hordes of fish in this gigantic net. Habakkuk's saying, those hordes of fish, that's me and my people. Why are you making the Babylonians the ones with the net? Why would you do this? And not only that, look at the end of verse 15. Look how the Babylonians will respond. It says, he rejoices and is glad. This evil empire is not just given success, but then they give glory to themselves for it. They start worshiping the very things that gave them success. It was said by the ancient historian Plutarch that when Alexander the Great heard from a philosopher that there are more worlds beyond this one, his first response was, I haven't even conquered this world. The heart of man is never satisfied. And Habakkuk is saying that these Babylonians, they will just keep going and going and going and taking nation after nation after nation, and we know from history that that's what happened. God gave them success. So before I deal more with this question, let me draw a few lessons from this for us, of how not to be like these Babylonians. First of all, let us learn a lesson on how not to view other people, how not to view other people. People are people made in the image of God. They're not a means to an end. They're not just a means towards wealth or success. Look at the language of how the Babylonians treat their enemies. The idea is they're a fisherman and he's treating all the other men like fish. Takes no thought about killing them. He drags them away. To the Babylonians, all other people on this earth are simply pawns in their great chess game of success and wealth. That's not how we're meant to view other people on this planet. But also, we need to recognize, unlike the Babylonians, that any success God gives us is from his hand. It's a gift from him. It's not something we did for ourselves. Remember how the Lord handles the prideful heart. He says, pride comes before a fall, before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Which leads us to Habakkuk's last question. Look at verse 17. Is he, Babylon, to keep on emptying his net forever and mercilessly killing nations forever? He's basically saying, God, will this never stop? And remember, this is the same cry that God's people had in Egypt for 400 years. This is the same cry that Israel had for 400 years before the Messiah came, and in so many ways, This is the cry of our hearts as we wait for Jesus to come back as well. I'm not gonna answer that question this morning. Because I'm not gonna preach through the rest of the book this morning, and I don't think you want me to. But I'm gonna tell you something more important. What's more important than the question, the answer to the problem of evil, is the God that you bring the problem to. What's more important than getting a detailed bullet point list from God of like, oh, here's all of the reasons why I do what I do. What's more important than that is coming before the God of the universe on your knees and saying, I give this question to you in trust. Like Habakkuk does. One of the greatest things that you can do as a Christian, especially those of you who are older, is be willing to show other people in life That you both love the Lord, you trust Him dearly, and have a ton of unanswered questions. A ton of unanswered questions. And whenever I've gotten together with the saints in this church, it's been really edifying, because that's usually what I hear. I love the Lord, He is my Savior, He has done so much good for me, and yet here are the things in life that I don't really have an answer for. And yet I love Him still. That's what Habakkuk's doing right here. I'm only 25, everyone reminds me that I'm still really young, but I can tell you one thing, in every single stage of my life, I can say both of those. God has been so good to me, he has loved me, he has saved me, and there are tons of questions that I have that have no answers. And there's something in that tension right there that grows the faith of a Christian. Remember when Abraham wrestled with God? Remember when Abraham strove with the Lord and says, I will not let you go until you bless me. That right there is the trial of faith of a Christian. Holding onto the Lord, knowing that he is good, and knowing that he blesses those who strive with him. So determine faith, difficult questions, but also diligent patience. It's a lot shorter, I promise. Notice how Habakkuk ends, he says, I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself in the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint. Following World War II, an interesting thing happened in the Pacific theater of the war. As the announcement that the Japanese had surrendered spread throughout the Pacific Islands, there were a number of soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army who thought it was a hoax and refused to surrender. They're kind of dubbed by historians the Japanese holdouts. Interestingly, there was one man who held out longer than most of them. His name was Hiroo Onoda. And he stayed in the jungles of Indonesia until 1974. almost 30 years after the war had ended, because he refused to believe that the fight was over. It actually took the Japanese government finding his commanding officer, going to Hiru, and then the commanding officer ordered him to cease fighting. And only in that moment did he surrender. Now regardless of how hopeless his cause was, regardless of how much you might disagree with him, we have to admire his patience and his diligence. He was given a command and he refused to deviate from that command no matter what came, in some ways. And as Christians, we see this is how Habakkuk is setting himself up with God. He's saying, I have remembered your character, I have asked my questions, and then I will continue to be faithful as I need to be faithful until you visit me. Habakkuk says here that he will plant himself upon his watch post and on his tower. I don't think this is meant to be taken literally, because he's a prophet, he's not a guard standing on, say, the walls of Jerusalem. But I do think metaphorically, he's trying to say, I am going to enclose myself in the stronghold of faith. And there I shall stay, and nothing will move me. Until you, Lord, answer me. And incredibly, as we'll find in the rest of the book, God did answer him. God did answer Habakkuk. So we find an incredible example from Habakkuk here of trusting that the Lord is at work. So I wanna ask you this morning, what do you need to bring before the Lord? What worry, burden, sorrow, or battle with sin have you been trying to handle by yourself? that perhaps you need to come and lay at his feet this morning. No doubt this world is filled with troubles. The question is, do we bring them to our God? And as one other question, which one of these three things do you struggle with? Perhaps you do ask the Lord your questions and you are struggling to be patient, but do you begin with his character? Perhaps you love the Lord's character and you're fighting to be patient, but you never feel free enough to ask Him questions. Or perhaps you remember who the Lord is and you ask Him questions, but you struggle with patience. Go to school on Habakkuk. Remember this passage. Let it be your guide. And as we prepare to respond, let us remember that God will answer all of our questions one day. The song we're going to close with speaks not only of Jesus's first coming, but also his second coming. Joy to the world. Sin will end. We will see God. All the things we hold by faith will one day become sight. Let us trust that this morning, that God is at work. Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you for the wonderful examples of faith that you give us, especially through the prophet Habakkuk. Lord, as we deal with the struggles of this life, maybe even of this Christmas season, let us be devoted to you, remembering your character, coming to you with our difficult questions, but being firm and patient through it all. We thank you for Christ. And Lord, we long to see him return and come again. I pray this all in his name. Amen.