Habakkuk 1

Discussion Questions

1. If you could ask God one question, what would it be?
2. Have you ever doubted or been surprised by God’s methods and timing? How have you dealt with this surprise, uncertainty or doubt?

Transcript

So glad you’ve joined us today. We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. We have extra copies. If you would like a copy, raise your hand up real high. This is going to be real helpful to have it in front of you, so keep your hand up high and that way you can take a look at the Scriptures as we walk through the first chapter of the book of Habakkuk. And special thanks for joining us, those who joined us online last week are from Plano, Texas, any Texans here? Texan. Okay, it’s all right. Good. It’s fine. Spring Hill, Kansas. Spring Hill, Tennessee. Okay. Nashville, Tennessee. That should be a gimme. Pleasant Garden, North Carolina and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. There you go. So glad to have those folks, as well as folks from around the world, actually in a lot of different countries. But we wanted to focus in and thank those who live here in the U.S. with us for dialing in and worshiping with us.

So, we’ll study today, Chapter 1. We’re going to call it “Wondering and Wrestling.” And I don’t know if you’ve wondered. Pastor Matt just led us through that great profession of faith, talked about some of the big questions, maybe you asked some of the big questions as well. If you were allowed to ask God just one question, what would it be? I’d encourage you to choose carefully, if you did have that opportunity in a special kind of way to do that. And I would, of course, argue that we do have the opportunity to ask all kinds of questions. We’ll look at that a little bit here from Habakkuk, Chapter 1. I want to read the entire chapter in just a moment. Let me pray first:

Grant, each of us, O Lord our God, a mind to know You, a heart to seek You, wisdom to find You, conduct that is pleasing to You, faithful perseverance in waiting for You and the hope of finally embracing You. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.

Hey, I’ll do a little bit of intro and a little bit of historical context in just a minute. Let’s read the text first. We’ll approach it this way on this particular Sunday. So, Habakkuk, let’s say go to the division between the Old Testament and the New Testament and just turn back a few pages to the left if you haven’t found it and you should be able to find it pretty quickly.

“The oracle,” some of your translations will say “the burden” and both work. The burden. “The oracle, which Habakkuk the prophet saw.” I know some of you might say, is it pronounced Habakkuk or is it Habakkuk? Some Hebrew scholars say it’s Habakkuk. I don’t know what his nickname would be at that point. Habby? Kook? What do you call him? I don’t know. We don’t know much about him. That’s what’s amazing. We just know this. It’s almost like we’re getting to read his personal journal, but we know that he received this burden, this oracle, from God and that he’s a prophet. All of that’s just in the first verse, but in reading Habakkuk you’ll see that he’s also a philosopher and a poet. So, if you’re wired that way, if you think prophetically, if you think in some sort of philosophical way or if you’re wired as a songwriter or a poetry writer or whatever, man, you’re going to love Habakkuk. This is a great book for you.

Here is what he saw as he describes it. Verse two: “How long, O Lord, will I call for help and Thou wilt not hear? I cry to Thee, ‘Violence!’ Yet Thou dost not save. Why dost Thou make me see iniquity, and cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me; strife exists and contention arises.” Verse three has six different words describing stress, trauma, tension. This is not an intellectual question alone, it’s an existential question as well. It has intellectual aspects to it, but it’s really born out of experience. He’s living in this question.

“Therefore,” verse four, “The law is ignored and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted.” Verse four is basically saying that justice is prevented and perverted, and he’s talking about Judah, his own homeland. He’s not pointing the finger at somebody else. He’s a prophet serving Judah. And so, he’s asking God about why all this is happening and why his own country, his own nation is so riddled with violence and destruction and anger and strife and contention and all of that. Sure, sounds familiar in some ways, doesn’t it? Maybe like a timeless problem with humanity perhaps. God answers in verse five. It’s not apparent to us all in the text. It’s not like Habakkuk wrote and then God said, but the tenses of the verbs and the way it’s structured as you read it, you can tell that this is someone else speaking. The someone else is the One whom Habakkuk has addressed his questions to.

So, Yahweh says, “Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days – you would not believe if you were told.” And so, Yahweh’s God replies to Habakkuk in the present tense, “I am doing something in your days. I’m doing something even right now. And you wouldn’t believe it if you were told.” God’s methods sometimes stymie us, don’t they? We wouldn’t believe He would do it that way. We can’t believe he would choose that method to do it or that timing to do it. Maybe you’ve felt that as well. And Habakkuk is feeling the same thing we feel. God goes on, “For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans.” Some of your translations might say “the Babylonians,” that’s the same people essentially. “That fierce impetuous people who march throughout the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs. They are dreaded and feared. Their justice and authority originate with themselves.” In other words, they’re morally relative in every single way. They think they have the final word on what’s right and what’s wrong. Sounds familiar?

“Their horses are swifter than leopards and keener than wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping, their horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle swooping down to devour. All of them come for violence. Their hoard of faces moves forward. They collect captives like sand. They mock at kings, and rulers are a laughing matter to them. They laugh at every fortress, and heap up rubble to capture it. Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on.” And basically, he’s saying their military might is unrivaled in this moment. And then God says this, and you have to underline the next two lines, last bit of verse 11. “But,” and that usually means there’s going to be in spite of all of that, here’s a contrast. “But they will be held guilty, they whose strength is their [little] god.” And they had all kinds of false gods in Babylon.

Marduk was their probably their lead god, if you will. But every statue of Marduk had eyes but could not see. Feet but could not walk. Hands but could not do anything. A mouth but could not speak. In other words, Marduk was made by human hands. Marduk was not the god that made human hands. Big difference. And God says, “They will be held guilty” even though He’s raising them up. Verse 12, Habakkuk replies. “Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. Thou, O Lord, hast appointed them to judge; and Thou, O Rock, hast established them to correct.” He’s thinking about his own people, and he’s blown away by the fact that God is raising up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, to come and judge – on behalf of God to judge Judah. And Habakkuk is saying, “You are from everlasting.” He’s reminding himself about who God is.

And by the way, anytime you have a question about anything, especially about God, it’s really great to push reset on who you think God is, because what you believe about God is the most important thing about you, and it impacts everything else in your life. And so, he does. He pushes reset. “You’re the everlasting one. Well Lord, my God, my holy one. We will not die.” In other words, we’re safe ultimately in Your hands because You’re the everlasting one. You have the power of life and death. You’ve appointed them to judge, oh rock, you’ve established them to correct. And he’s a prophet. He understands that prophets typically spoke on behalf of God to the people. But it’s fascinating to me that in Habakkuk, he’s not actually speaking on behalf of God to the people. He’s engaged in a conversation with God. And that’s why I almost think this is a prophet’s journal. It’s his own journal of his conversations with God and how God replied. And it’s fascinating.

The third chapter is almost in complete poetry form. It’s almost a song if you will. So, if you’re a songwriter, you’ll really love to see what this 3,500-plus-year-old song is about. But he reminds himself of who God is and that God has appointed them to judge and established them to correct. Verse 13, “Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor.” And then three whys. “Why do You look with favor on those who deal treacherously?” You see, in his prayer life, just like your prayer life, just like my prayer life, he kind of flips back and forth in what he’s thinking about. But how could You possibly look with favor on them? I do the same thing with those who deal treacherously.

“Why art Thou silent when the wicked swallowed up those more righteous than they? Why hast Thou made men like the fish of the sea, like creeping things without a ruler over them? The Chaldeans bring all of them up with a hook.” They’re captives in other words. They “drag them away with their net” and they were known to do that. They were such violent and vicious terrorists, would literally drag away a line of the brightest and best of a country back to Babylon with hooks in their mouths on a long chain. Think of how painful! Or in their nose, think of how painful that would be! “Drag them away with their net, and gather them together in their fishing net. Therefore, they rejoice and are glad.” In other words, they’re dancing in their victory. They think they’ve got it made. “Therefore they offer a sacrifice to their net.” They worship their technology. “They burn incense to their fishing net; because through these things their catch is large, and their food is plentiful.” Are we worshiping our technology? You think all the answers are there?

I find a lot of answers in our technology. I mean I’m carrying in my vest pocket right here, more information than is in all of the libraries of the entire world up until like the year 2007. I got it all right here. You do too, probably. Do we worship that? Do we worship our airplanes? Do we worship all of that? Isn’t it interesting how fragile we are because of this last little glitch in software that ran throughout the world just a day ago and all of a sudden, we’re all going “duh!” And it shut down airports, it shut down hospitals, shut down a lot of things because of one little thing. We don’t know how fragile we are.

Verse 17: “Will they therefore empty their net and continually slay nations without sparing?” Are they just going to be unbridled? Is their violent march throughout the world never going to come to an end? And I love verse 1 of Chapter 2, and that’s where I will stop today in reading. Habakkuk says, “I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart.” He’s going to go up into a little tower on the city wall there, a little prayer tower for himself. “I will keep watch to see what He,” meaning Yahweh, “Will speak to me, and how I may reply when I am reproved.” And I’ll stop there in terms of reading the text.

What an awesome book this is. I’m just so excited. This past May, Kim and I went up to DC to visit my mom up there. While we were there, we visited the East Wing National Gallery of Art. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there. It’s an amazing place. They have just rooms and rooms and rooms of displays and different shows, if you want to call them that. And we toured an art show called Woven Histories, and it featured a series of weavings and tapestries from across generations and continents. And I know that most of you who know me know that that would be something that would attract me a lot. But just to be fair to Kim, we did watch a football game later and then we went out for a big steak.

But as we walked from one room to the other and looked at all these intricate pieces, these tapestries that hung, at one point, we both stopped and kind of stepped behind and looked behind one of them. And standing behind it, it looked completely different. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but from the back all you can see is tangled threads, frayed knots and seemingly a chaotic mess. There’s no real image back there at all. And it would probably make little to no sense to us because it’s so random, devoid of recognizable design. And you wonder what in the world was in the mind of the weaver? Could the weaver see what was behind it or was the weaver who was on the other side and working on it, if you were in the weaver’s studio, what would they be looking at? And you if you’re on the backside of it?

Well, the prophet/philosopher/poet, Habakkuk, lived in a tumultuous time in the Southern Kingdom of Judah and he was looking at the back of the tapestry. He observed all the tangled threads of wickedness, idolatry, injustice, violence and suffering that was in his own land of Judah. The people that were supposed to be the people of God were perpetrating all of this. And he, as a prophet of God, was puzzled by it all. Why God had not spoken, why God had not judged them and intervened in some way? And as he cried out to God, he found himself questioning God’s silence. I don’t know if you noticed that or not, but that’s in the first four verses. He found himself questioning God’s apparent inaction. “How long, O Lord?” And you may have questioned God’s timing and God’s silence before.

He questioned God’s methods, and perhaps even God’s sovereignty at one point. And then he has to rehearse, as he comes back around in verse 12 to where he’s reminding himself in his prayer after God has spoken verses 5 through 11, he reminds himself of the sovereignty of God. And he asks again more questions though. And he reminds himself though to trust God. Let’s call God the Grand Weaver at this point. In other words, God is on the front side of the tapestry, and He knows exactly what He’s doing and what He’s weaving as He stitches. We’re often looking at the back side of the tapestry. We don’t really see what God is doing. Such was the time in which Habakkuk lived. You can see it up on the screen there, probably in the last few decades of the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

Several things have happened in the world over in that time, 612 BC. Babylon has overrun the Assyrian capital, which was Nineveh, in 612. And Assyria in its day and age seemed like the dominant world power. Some of you remember when we studied the book of Jonah, and he was sent by God to Nineveh to preach, and there was a great revival that broke out, or at least a great repentance that broke out. Well, it didn’t last all that long. And at 612, as I say, Babylonians came and overran Assyria. Then at 609, there’s another battle that’s to the north, but it’s Egypt against Judah and King Josiah, who was a good king in Judah, and he is killed at the Battle of Megiddo there in 609. In 605, there’s the battle of Carchemish. And now you’ve got to understand all of Israel and Judah is just this tiny little country. It’s about the size of New Jersey, state of New Jersey.

And it just keeps getting overrun by all of these other kingdoms, whether you’re talking about Egypt from the south or whether you’re talking about Assyrians from the north or the Babylonians coming from the north and the east. But the battle of Carchemish is sort of like the battle of bands. There’s like this massive collision of armies. And it’s at that battle that Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, finally sort of polishes off what was left of Assyria and routes Egypt. And on the way back, he marches past and through Jerusalem and literally begins the first deportation, which culminates all the way down into 856, 857 right in there, and probably bridged the last part of 857 into 856. But he finally destroys Jerusalem, destroys the temple.

But after the battle of Carchemish, 605, he’s dragging away some of the brightest and best of Babylon, probably when he took Daniel and his three buddies away that we read about in Daniel: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But that deportation begins and so the whole time, decades and decades, violence, terrorism all around. I mean you just have to put yourself in that place to really understand how difficult things were. Imagine the fear and the anxiety. Imagine the injustices from within as your own people are desperate to survive and yet also from without as these other empires are rolling right over top of Israel. And Israel becomes a vassal state of Babylon from 605 on. And if it’s Jehoiakim, Habakkuk doesn’t tell us which king was king, but my guess is it’s Jehoiakim who would’ve been one of the sons of Josiah and his original name was Eliakim.

But because these other kings are running over top of them, they do things like they put their own king in place from among them and they rename them, which is a sign of saying, “I own you and I own everything that you think is yours.” Change their name. And so, he’s the king and wickedness is unbridled in Judah. Habakkuk’s contemporaries were probably prophets, Jeremiah and Zephaniah. And when you study the Old Testament prophets as we’ve been doing, you begin to see they lived in rather extreme times, and God called them to take some extreme steps to get their point across to a nation that had grown hard of hearing spiritually.

An example is Isaiah: He was told to make a point by taking off his clothes and walking around in the buff preaching the naked truth, as it were, about the sins of Egypt. And Hosea was told to marry a prostitute to illustrate the unfaithfulness of Israel toward God. Ezekiel was told to chop off his hair, throw it in the fire, and then lay on his side for over 1,000 days and also to eat cow manure. And this was all just illustrating the unfaithfulness of Israel and Judah before the God who loves them so much, the God who rescued them from Egypt so many years ago. I’m really glad that you guys listened so well. I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, and I work for a nonprofit organization as we’ve said before, and so I won’t be doing that and I hate the taste of cow manure, so pay close attention.

All of that said the prophetic ministry was a very difficult one. These prophets were told to do these radical things by God, and it did illustrate some amazing points. We’ll look at the three chapters of Habakkuk this way today, “Wondering and Wrestling.” Next week, “Watching and Waiting.” The week after, “Worshiping and Witnessing.” And I think that really does describe the way Habakkuk intended us to read his book. First of all, and I’ll just give you three things from Chapter 1 here today, Habakkuk asked real questions about the Lord, about God, about Yahweh. And I appreciate that. I think it’s important for us to know that. There are a whole lot of gods down through the history of humanity that you could point to and say, “What?” But if you dared question them at all, they would send lightning bolts down on you. I mean the fear thing is just massive.

Now, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord leads to life that you may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil. The fear of the Lord is a good thing, the respect and awe kind of fear. But across the pages of the Bible, the God of the Bible makes clear that He doesn’t want you to be afraid of Him. He wants you to run to Him. We sang it earlier, didn’t we? He’s strong, but He’s also kind. He’s waiting for you to turn to Him. He’s eager for you to return home to Him. And Habakkuk with his very real questions, in his very real situation, is asking “How long, O Lord?” There it is in verse 2. “Why? Where are You, God? How long before You send help? Why don’t You do something? Why don’t You seem to answer our prayer? Don’t You care about what’s going on in this country?” he says. “Don’t you care about what’s going on in our culture?” we say.

These were not merely intellectual inquiries. These were existential realities for Habakkuk and for us as well. The Scriptures remind us that wondering and wrestling with God is not unique to our own era or experience. And I think that’s important for us to note. See, sometimes we get this sort of elitist view of our own slice of space/time history. We think, oh my goodness, everything is headed for the cliff. This is the worst. And actually, it’s not that way at all, and that’s why it’s important for us to study history. We need to gain a perspective that’s bigger than our own slice of the pie. We need to be realistic about our own slice of time, but we also need to know about other eras so that we can learn more about what has happened, what’s gone wrong with humanity and what God has chosen to do about it.

Habakkuk would’ve known and sung some of the old Jewish songs that predated him, songs like this one from Psalm 18:6. “In my distress,” David the Psalmist wrote, “I called upon the Lord, I cried to my God for help. He heard my voice out of His temple. My cry for help came before Him into His ears.” And here he’s anthropomorphizing God saying God has ears. Does God have ears? I haven’t got a clue that He has physical ears. I just know we were created in His image. He’s not created in our image, but that doesn’t prevent Him, whether He’s got physical ears or not doesn’t prevent Him from being able to hear. He created our mouths that speak and sing and cry out for mercy. He can hear us. There’s no question that He can do everything we can do.

King David may or may not have known that this next song I want to post up here would’ve been sung by his greater son, Jesus. Psalm 22, as Jesus hung from the cross and said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Now listen folks, if King David can ask questions of God, if Habakkuk can ask questions of God, and if Jesus Himself, the Son of God, from the cross can ask that same kind of question, then I ask you, why is it that you couldn’t?

There’s some people I’ve talked to before, many folks I’ve talked to, who think it might be sacrilegious to ask a question of God. And I’m just telling you that’s not the case. Habakkuk, Jesus, myself, you, John the Baptist had questions. “Are you one or should we look for somebody else?” He sent his disciples to Jesus from his jail cell, John the Baptist did to ask those questions of Jesus. “Are you really the one?” And he knew him intimately. He was the one that said, he pointed him out and said, “That’s the Messiah” and John the Baptist sitting in prison, his circumstances evidently changed his perspective a little and it does happen to us.

And so, he asked those questions, “Are you really the one?” And what did Jesus do? Did Jesus throw a lightning bolt at John the Baptist in the prison cell for asking that? No. He said to John’s disciples, “Go tell him what you see. The deaf hear, the blind see, the lame can walk.” And he connected all those predicted miracles that Messiah would perform. He connected all of that to Jesus’ own ministry. And John the Baptist’s disciples went back to John the Baptist’s prison cell and reminded him, “John, you got it right, buddy, you didn’t miss. And yes, while your journey on this Earth is coming to a close, you did not fail. You were faithful.”

Beautiful, beautiful story as you think about whether or not God is approachable. And Psalm… I won’t put these up on the screen, but I’ll just quickly tell you. Psalm 13:1 begins just like Habakkuk 1 verse 2. “How long, O Lord?” Psalm 13:1 says, “Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” And Psalm 89:46, “How long, O Lord, will you hide yourself forever? Will your wrath burn like fire?” This person, the writer of Psalm 89 is wondering how long God’s going to continue to mete out wrath on them. Well, I appreciate the honesty of those God inspired to write these ancient scriptures and that God wanted us to know we weren’t alone in asking questions like this. I’m grateful God has written curiosity into the software of your soul and into the software of my soul as well.

Mortimer Adler was the editor of what’s called The Great Books of the Western World, and he said this. “A mind not agitated by good questions cannot possibly appreciate the significance of even the best answers. It’s easy enough to teach the answers parrotwise.” That is as if you’ll just parrot it back and just memorize it. “But to develop actively inquisitive minds alive with real questions, profound questions, that is another story.” I think he’s right. He’s a brilliant philosopher, I’ve read a bunch of his books. A book called Truth in Religion is really, really excellent; it was the first book I read by Mortimer Adler. He came to faith later in life as a brilliant, brilliant philosopher of our own time, died in I think 2000, 2001.

Another guy you might’ve heard of, I’ll read the quote first, he says, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity. Don’t stop to marvel.” Albert Einstein.

Listen, if you don’t have any questions about the infinite God, it’s probably not the infinite God you’re thinking about. Do I need to say that again? If you have no questions at all about the infinite God, it’s probably not the infinite God you’re thinking about. We are finite creatures attempting to understand an infinite creature, an infinite being, an infinite whose “ways are higher than our ways, whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts,” as the prophet Isaiah said in Chapter 55. And so, by definition, we will not fully comprehend the infinite. Now that never in any way, shape or form prevents the infinite from revealing some things about Himself to us finite creatures. Do you get it? Do you see what I’m saying?

If the infinite chooses to break in, if the infinite chooses to speak, if the infinite sends prophets, gives them oracles, burdens, and utterances for us to read later we can know with some level of confidence that God the infinite has spoken to us. This is what we call divine revelation. It’s not human discovery. And that’s really what’s different about the Christian faith. We are dependent on divine revelation. It’s not up to you or me to figure out who God is. He’s told us who He is. He hasn’t left the burden on us to figure that out.

And so, when we read these ancient scriptures, these timeless truths that have been preserved for us over the years that we can have with confidence, this thought that God has spoken and continues to speak through His Word. Now you don’t have to believe me. You can deny all of that. You can deny the existence of God if you want to. That’s one of the great things about the biblical worldview is that God has created us, and He’s created us with a capacity to know Him, but we can also rebel against that capacity to know Him. We can reject God, and you can do that if you want to, but I guarantee you one thing: the haunting will never subside. He is after you. He’s coming for you. He wants you. And He’s placed within each and every one of us a holy longing and a holy curiosity as Einstein said. And look, I don’t even know that Einstein ever came to faith at all, but even Einstein, brilliant mind that he was, even not believing in God in that way, still could see there was this haunting inside of him, all of us, this curiosity.

Secondly, Habakkuk had real questions about the Lord, and he brought those questions directly to the Lord. Don’t go to works of fiction, to movies, don’t go to our culture and its self-obsession to try and figure out who God is. Don’t get your theology from Hollywood. Get your nose in a book, get your eyes in a book and put your knees on the floor. Lift up the empty hands of faith and listen for the word of the Lord. The God of the Word will speak to you through the Word of God. And by the way, don’t just drink all the Kool-Aid here either. I hope you don’t just download or just simply try and do a Dropbox thing with whatever we say up there. Hope you actually think about what we say. Hope you actually go and read the Scriptures.

We post, by the way, on the QR code early, the notes and quotes and some questions to each and every sermon. We want you to be thinking people of faith. So, be like the Bereans in the New Testament, the Book of Acts. Search the Scriptures to see if what the bozo upfront said is true. Don’t just drink the Kool-Aid like that. You’ve got to have someone to turn to and that’s the Lord Himself. The aforementioned Albert Einstein, I may have told this story before, forgive me if you’ve heard it. I love telling it. A long, long time ago, the legend, this is probably legendary story, but it’s great, was that he was coming over to the States to do a series of this one lecture. He was going from university to university to do it. He had a chauffeur that drove him all around.

This chauffeur heard this same talk by Einstein 15 times, and Einstein was growing weary of giving the same lecture. They pulled into one particular university and as they were pulling into the parking lot, the story is that Einstein said, “I’m so tired of giving this lecture.” And his chauffeur said, “Well, Dr. Einstein, if you haven’t sent a PR kit to this particular university and they don’t know what you look like, I’ve heard this lecture enough, I think I could give this lecture.” And so, they changed clothes in the car according to the legend. And the chauffeur went in and gave the lecture word for word. It was awesome. And Einstein just sat behind him right there in the chauffeur’s outfit.

And so, the chauffeur’s up there giving this lecture, he finishes, he steps away from the pulpit and the provost from the school steps up and goes, “And now we’ll take questions.” And he starts sweating bullets, of course. And so, this one particular clever student up in the bleachers there, who prided in himself in stumping the speaker, asked this one really, really big hard question. And the chauffeur’s standing there and just for a minute is almost stumped and stymied. He doesn’t know what to do and all of a sudden it comes to him, he steps up to the microphone and he goes, “Young man, how dare you, in front of all your friends, in this august university, in front of your professors, ask such a simple question? So simple, as a matter of fact, I’m going to have my chauffeur answer it.” Whereupon the supposed chauffeur does.

You’ve got to have somebody to turn to. Who will you turn to with your questions? Who will you turn to with the questions you can’t answer and maybe that we can’t answer? I know who I turn to. I seek to persuade you; you should run to Him. You should seek His face, His heart, His mind, on literally everything. I think it’s really important. When we are feeling the despair of the world around us, whether we’re like Habakkuk and there’s all this violence, it could literally come in his case, that violence could literally overwhelm his little neighborhood, his little part of Judah, wherever it was he lived. It’s not like we’re relatively safe here. It doesn’t mean there isn’t violence in our world. There is but we’re relatively safe. A lot of what we think is war is for us, push button on a screen.

But those guys, no, no. You faced a swordsman, you faced someone with a bow and arrow, you faced someone with a short sword, a knife that was going to cut you open, and that’s how tough it was for him. And so, he turns with his questions to the Lord. And if we want to keep from drowning in despair over what’s going on in our world as well, I suggest we do the same. Let your why, why or how long, whatever your questions are, let all of those questions lead you to a who. And that who is the God of the Bible. He’s the one that made you. He’s the one that designed us. He knows how society works best. He knows how marriage works best. He knows how relationships between brothers works best. He knows how relationships between sisters works best. He knows how relationships between parents and children works best.

Turn to Him. Turn to the designer. Step from behind the tapestry to around in front and speak to the grand weaver and allow Him to talk to you, to show you the way He is and what He wishes, what He sees, what He desires. “Your father knows what you need before you ask him,” John Stott says. “He’s neither ignorant so that we need to instruct Him nor hesitant so that we need to persuade Him. He is our father, a father who loves His children and knows all about their needs.” I love the Lord for that.

Thirdly, and finally, Habakkuk had real questions about the Lord. He brought his questions directly to the Lord. Thirdly, “He watched and waited and trusted the Lord.” That’s verse one of Chapter 2, and I think that’s important to read it again. “I will stand on my guard post, station myself on the rampart. I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me and how I may reply when I am reproved.” Notice he’s mixing his senses there. “I will watch to hear.” So that’s awesome. He is going to employ every one of his physical senses. He’s going to be somewhere; he’s going to isolate himself from all of the crazy in the world and get in his prayer tower. He is going to watch; he is going to listen, and he intends to hear from the Lord. He’s opening himself up.

“God, speak to me, whatever You will say, and I’ll ponder then how I can reply, how I’ll respond to You.” Are we in that? Is that the posture we have? Is that the posture you have? I pray it’s the posture we have as a church. And I love this about the God of the Bible. The Bible teaches us that the vision of God includes the ultimate restoration of all things, and every day of linear time draws closer to that day. In spite of the chaos of last week, in spite of the crazy of the next few months, He is still God. He’s still in charge of every outcome. And so, we turn to Him, and we trust Him no matter what happens. Like Habakkuk, we stand in the tower, we watch, we wait to see what the Lord will do.

We often question in difficult times what we felt with certainty to be true in the peaceful flourishing times. We often question in the darkness what we knew to be true in the light. Like Habakkuk, things seemed off to him, and they do to us sometimes. Why is that? Where do we get the sense of off-ness? If there’s no God, there’s really no basis for you to say something’s off. If there’s no God, there’s no basis for you to actually say there’s injustice in the world. It’s just preference at that point. If there’s no God, then all of the immaterial things go away. Hope, courage, love, honor.

So, in a naturalistic, atheistic viewpoint, there’s no hope. What I would say to you who are believers is, just because we can’t figure out what God is up to, what God’s plans and His purposes might be at any given moment, doesn’t mean God is inactive, incapable or indifferent. While we wait upon the Lord, the Holy Spirit offers strength for the weak, rest for the weary, comfort for the broken-hearted and hope to those who are crushed in spirit. Are you glad about that? Say amen. Amen.

Know this, God is not unaware. God is not uncaring. God is not uninterested or indifferent to what you may be going through or what I’m going through. Habakkuk’s story points us forward to Jesus and the Gospel where the ultimate act of God’s inscrutable-yet-redemptive plan leads Jesus to the cross. And He says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” That’s mind-blowing. He says, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” as God the Father turns His back on the Son who’s taken on the sin of the world. And God cannot be looking at that sin. He must separate Himself from it.

But Jesus takes it all on. How horrific was that? I can’t even imagine. I can’t even imagine how horrific it was for Jesus just to take my sin, much less the sin of this whole room and everybody watching online and everybody who’s ever lived, on Himself. How must that have felt? And three days later, Jesus rises again. So, we turn to Him. He’s the one we trust and hope in. He’s the one that we will go up to and to our prayer tower and we will listen. We will watch. We will wait.

Jonah learned from the belly of a fish. Habakkuk seems to have learned from this prayer tower. I guess we get to choose where we’re going to learn from. But the question is, will we learn? Are we learning? Are we looking to Him? Not just learning details, but running to Him? He’s strong and kind, running to Him because He actually wants us. He wants you. He wants me. And if you’re old enough to have seen The Wizard of Oz, this is not the dreaded and feared Wizard of Oz with everybody’s quaking out here. And then all of a sudden, Toto pulls the curtain back. It’s not just some guy pushing buttons and all that sort of thing.

This is almighty God. He changes hearts. He can change your heart. He can change my heart. He’s eager to forgive you for your sin. He’s eager to forgive me for my sin. He’s eager for us to come and rest in His arms no matter how stressed we may be, He offers us rest as we wait upon Him. “The call to wait on the Lord is an invitation to trust and to hope. It entails that one day, even if today is not that day, He will make all things right. In times of waiting, as we seek God in prayer. We must learn to listen to Him as well as talk to Him, to shut out the clatter and quietly wait as He unfolds to us His person, purposes, promises and plan.”

Let’s go before the Lord: Thank You, Father, for Habakkuk, our older brother. Thank you for preserving this journal of his, the honesty of it, the humility of it. Just the fact that he asked questions and took them directly to you, Lord, that is such a wonderful example for us. And he, foreshadowing the way Jesus would welcome honest questions. I think about the Lord Jesus and all of those that He scolded were the people who were willful unbelievers, but the honest doubters He welcomed. And so, Lord, we have questions. We bring them to You, each and every one of us. And we purpose like Habakkuk to wait on You, to hear from You, to watch and see how You would have us move, respond, turn to You, lay something down, surrender something, offer an apology, begin to do something that we have not been doing that You wanted us to do. Lord, speak to Your people. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen and amen.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs:

“Rock Of Ages“ by Thomas Hastings and Augustus Montague Toplady
“He Is“ by David Crowder, Hank Bentley, and Jeff Pardo
“Jesus Strong And Kind“ by Colin Buchanan, Jonny Robinson, Michael Farren, and Rich Thompson
“I Will Wait For You“ by Jordan Kauflin, Keith Getty, Matthew Merker, and Stuart Townend
“Doxology” by Thomas Ken & Louis Bourgeois

All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call to Worship: Your Testimonies Forever

Leader: Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven.
People: Your faithfulness continues throughout all generations;

Leader: You established the earth, and it stands.
People: They stand this day according to Your ordinances, For all things are Your servants.

Leader: How sweet are Your words to my taste!
People: Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Leader: Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
People: I have inherited Your testimonies forever, For they are the joy of my heart. Amen! Amen! Amen!

Psalm 119:89-91, 103, 105, 112 (NASB)

Confession: What is God?

Leader: What is God?
People: God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Leader: Are there more Gods than one?
People: There is but one only, the living and true God.

Leader: How many persons are there in the Godhead?
People: There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, Questions 4, 5, 6

Classic Prayer: John Chrysostom, 347-407 AD

Lord God, of might inconceivable, of glory incomprehensible, of mercy immeasurable, of benignity ineffable; do Thou, O Master, look down upon us in Thy tender love, and show forth, towards us and those who pray with us, Thy rich mercies and compassions.