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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.
God Knows What He Is Doing
Series Habakkuk
God knows what He is doing, even when we do not.
- Even when his justice is delayed.
- Even when his instrument is astounding.
- Even when the cure seems worse than the disease.
| Sermon ID | 722241857246325 |
| Duration | 35:55 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Habakkuk 1:1-2:1 |
| Language | English |
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