Pastor Nate continues our study through the Bible in the book of Habakkuk.
[00:00:00] in the old sci-fi book, Dune. I don't know how many of you guys ever read that book. Maybe
[00:00:06] you watched the movie recently. There's a young boy named Paul Atreides. He's kind of
[00:00:12] the central figure. And there is an important scene where in his younger years he's called
[00:00:19] before this woman who's a witch who is part of a religious order that's overseeing the
[00:00:27] universe in the future. And she puts him through a test. She takes his right hand and she puts
[00:00:33] it inside of this box that mysteriously causes this intense pain while your hand is inside
[00:00:40] of it. And she's doing this as a test. She wants to see how he will respond when things hurt,
[00:00:48] how he will respond in times of difficulty because he will need to be a leader in the future who
[00:00:56] responds well to adversity. And young Paul, he at first responds by grimacing then he yells the
[00:01:05] pain is intense but eventually he just simply resolves. I'm going to keep my hand in the box until
[00:01:14] this test has passed. He becomes resolved to endure pain. At the end of the book of Habakkuk,
[00:01:25] we discover a prophet who has become resolved to endure pain. In the closing two verses or three
[00:01:34] verses of this book, the prophet sings this incredible song to God where he tells God, Lord if all
[00:01:43] the crops in Israel perish. If all the livestock and produce in Israel is demolished, if we experience
[00:01:55] cataclysmic events in our society no matter what happens, no matter what unfolds even if we are
[00:02:04] subjected to abject poverty, God I want you to know that I will find my joy in you. I will trust
[00:02:15] and rejoice in you as my God. It's a statement of incredible trust. It's a statement of incredible
[00:02:21] faith. Earlier in the book in chapter two, God will tell the prophet Habakkuk that the just or the
[00:02:27] righteous, they will live by faith and Habakkuk comes at the end of that book to that position or
[00:02:33] place of faith. But though that's how the book ends, it's definitely not how the book starts as we're
[00:02:41] going to see today. The book begins with a prophet who is confused at what God is doing or as he
[00:02:49] perceives it not doing. He questions God, he challenges God in a sense, he's interrogating God.
[00:02:58] God answers this man in this opening chapter in a profound and unexpected way. So what happened
[00:03:07] to this man, Habakkuk that brought him from arguing with God about God and God's inactivity to a
[00:03:15] place of saying God I trust you no matter what. I'm leaning on you no matter what. You are trust
[00:03:20] worthy no matter what. Well that's what the book of Habakkuk is about. It's a conversation between
[00:03:26] God's man, God's person, God's prophet and himself. And in the book God does not change. He is not
[00:03:35] shifted. He is unmoved but Habakkuk changes through this interaction with God. And by the end of
[00:03:43] the book comes to a place of extreme trust. Now it's progressive. It takes a while. There are stages that
[00:03:50] the prophet has to go through. And my prayer is that we would go through these same stages as well.
[00:03:57] I'm sure none of us here today could say or profess, I trust God no matter what just like Habakkuk
[00:04:06] said. No there's always an area of our lives where we need to trust God further. So my hope is
[00:04:13] that this book will help us see how we can trust the Lord even more. So because of this I'm calling
[00:04:19] this whole series or this study unreasonable reasonable trust. What I mean by that is that our trust
[00:04:27] is unreasonable in the sense that it's not based on what we can see but it is reasonable in that
[00:04:34] it is based on God and his gospel. And so it is unreasonable yet a reasonable trust in the Lord.
[00:04:45] Now before I read the first few verses some of you might be wondering how do you say this guy's name?
[00:04:51] I've been saying Habakkuk, some of you guys call him Habakkuk and I've heard other many other
[00:04:58] adventurous names in my years. And in my house there's a little bit of a disagreement about this.
[00:05:04] It's caused a little bit of a marital conflict. I'm a Habakkuk guy in Christina's a Habakkuk person.
[00:05:12] Now I have this little resource that's part of my study software. It's kind of like Bible names
[00:05:17] pronounced for dummies. And you just look up the name and you hit play and it tells you
[00:05:24] it reads out loud how to pronounce any given name. And I've used this resource over the years
[00:05:31] from time to time. And for the first time ever I discovered an entry that has two possibilities.
[00:05:39] Habakkuk and Habakkuk. So whatever you want to say, however you want to call him,
[00:05:43] I think we're all getting it wrong. Anyways we don't have enough flam in it.
[00:05:47] I'm pretty sure with the way we're saying his name. But let's read the beginning of his book.
[00:05:53] It starts with his song of discouragement. It says the oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.
[00:06:00] Oh Lord how long shall I cry for help? And you will not hear or cry to you violence
[00:06:07] and you will not save. Why do you make me see iniquity? And why do you idly look at wrong?
[00:06:15] Destruction and violence are before me strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed
[00:06:23] and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous so justice goes forth perverted.
[00:06:33] The book just begins like the blast of a cannon. I mean there's no real background you don't see
[00:06:39] anything that tells you the setting or the age or the time that he was ministering to in. But there
[00:06:46] are a few things that we can learn even from these opening verses about the background that Habakkuk
[00:06:53] was in. First of all, we can probably glean that he was a poetic man, a musical person. Because
[00:07:02] this opening salvo against God is actually written in song form, in poem form. And at the end of
[00:07:09] the book those suspicions that he's a poetic man are confirmed because he writes a song of praise
[00:07:16] to God in the last chapter and he uses this word in chapter 3 verse 1 he says accompanied to the
[00:07:23] Shiggyanath which we have no idea what it means but it probably means a specific rhythm of song
[00:07:33] that was sung. And then at the close of chapter 3 Habakkuk gives the directions to the choir master
[00:07:40] and says sing this song accompanied with stringed instruments. So this is an artistic poet,
[00:07:48] song writing man who is also a prophet and he puts these prophecies in song form. We also learned that
[00:07:56] this man had a burden, that's clear from just what he said to God but in the opening verses we
[00:08:01] also see that he saw an oracle. What this means that word oracle it means to be lifted up or something
[00:08:09] to be carried. Some Bible translations just call it a burden that this man had a burden, there was
[00:08:17] something that was revealed to him, something that he saw so you can sort of envision like a soldier
[00:08:23] carrying an 80 pound pack on their back. Every movement that they make is affected by the burden
[00:08:30] that they are carrying that was the prophet. He saw something that changed everything about his life.
[00:08:38] And another thing that we learn about him right off the bat is that he felt comfortable
[00:08:44] being incredibly honest with God. I mean, he wonders out loud how long he's going to have to pray.
[00:08:51] God how long am I going to have to pray about this? He wonders if God hears him. He's tired,
[00:08:57] he says in verse 2 of alerting God over and over again to violence without any response.
[00:09:04] He challenges God's wisdom. God, why do I have to see so much sin? And he's frustrated by things
[00:09:11] like destruction and violence and arguing and strife and contention all around him. He's just
[00:09:17] over it. I'm sick of all this drama he's saying to God. He even in verse 4 says to God the Bible is
[00:09:24] ineffective, the law is paralyzed. He tells God justice never happens and when it does happen
[00:09:32] it's perverted, it's a strange definition of justice. But this last little thing
[00:09:39] that we learn about the prophet actually tells us a lot about God. Here's God writing his word,
[00:09:47] preserving his word and he accepts this prayer in the pages of Holy Scripture. He's willing to
[00:09:56] have these challenges and this honesty thrown in his direction. Just as we can learn a little bit
[00:10:03] about the prophet from this opening paragraph, we can also I think learn a little bit about the
[00:10:10] situation that Habakkuk was actually in during that time. And the real clue is found in verse 4
[00:10:19] when he tells God that the law is paralyzed. The reason why that's a clue is because it helps us
[00:10:26] understand the target or the view that Habakkuk had, who he saw that discouraged him so much.
[00:10:34] You see when we read those opening verses some of you might have been nodding in agreement like
[00:10:39] oh yeah, you know this guy is seeing the same things that I'm seeing in my time and culture
[00:10:45] and society. He's seeing the same things that I've seen in the unbelieving world that I am living
[00:10:51] in but the fact that Habakkuk says to God the law is paralyzed is a clue. The Habakkuk is not
[00:10:59] concerned with the unbelieving world. He is looking inside the house of God and he has discouraged
[00:11:06] the very Bible that was meant to govern the lives of God's people had no authority. It was as if it
[00:11:12] was paralyzed among the people of God. Paralized when a body is dead it's not paralyzed. When
[00:11:25] it's alive yet some accident has occurred then it's paralyzed. It's like you see a paralyzed hand
[00:11:33] and you know what it's designed to do but because it's paralyzed it can't carry out its design.
[00:11:40] Habakkuk is saying to God, God your word is designed to produce certain things in the lives of your
[00:11:47] people but they through their actions have caused your word to be paralyzed. It's ineffective
[00:11:55] in their lives. Now the question that we should ask is is there anything from the historical books
[00:12:01] of the Old Testament that might give us a clue as to what season Habakkuk was in? In a few verses
[00:12:07] God is going to tell Habakkuk that pretty soon the Babylonians or the Caldians are coming so
[00:12:13] we know this is right before the time when King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians came into an
[00:12:19] invaded Israel. And right about that time there was a king named Josiah who arose onto the scene. He
[00:12:28] was a good king. One of the things that happened in Josiah's day was that they rediscovered the Bible.
[00:12:34] It had been kind of buried and neglected for so many years. And when they discovered it,
[00:12:39] Josiah instituted lead from the top down reforms for all of the people. He told them we have to
[00:12:45] start worshiping God. We have to start tithing to his temple. We got to start offering the sacrifices.
[00:12:51] This is his word for us. We need to obey and the people were about it. And the whole nation
[00:12:57] reformed itself almost overnight. And it seemed to be true and genuine, real until Josiah died.
[00:13:06] When Josiah died the people began to rebel against God again. And what became obvious was that a top
[00:13:15] down legislated you have to worship God form of leadership really didn't work among God's people.
[00:13:25] What was required was a bottom up from the personal heart of individual saying I want to be devoted
[00:13:34] to God. But that's not the age the Habakkuk was living in. And he's mourning over it. He's frustrated
[00:13:41] by it. So this is an important decision that we have to make about this book because the question is
[00:13:51] who was he saddened by? Who was he frustrated by? And I'm trying to build the case for you that he
[00:13:57] was frustrated by the people of Israel, the named people of God, the church of that era.
[00:14:05] The reason why that's so important is because it is very tempting, especially when you read those
[00:14:11] first four verses, to use the book of Habakkuk as a soap box against society's ills. And a lot of
[00:14:19] modern preachers have done so. But Habakkuk was initially discouraged by the ills of God's people.
[00:14:26] What was happening inside the church? I think to use Habakkuk to rail against the sin
[00:14:33] of the world is like being in the emergency room with a gunshot wound to your stomach,
[00:14:40] getting out of your bed going across the hall, reading your neighbor's chart, discovering that
[00:14:46] they have a sprained ankle and becoming intensely sad for their condition.
[00:14:56] You got to read your own charts. Recognize your own condition, see the plank in your own eye
[00:15:03] to borrow from Jesus. There's plenty to be sad about right there and Habakkuk had done that work.
[00:15:10] And I think we can relate to this guy. I realize that this is not a very happy first point that I'm
[00:15:19] trying to make here in this sermon, but in our age of church scandals, the prevalence of strange
[00:15:27] doctrines and just a general accepted acknowledgement that great swaths of Christians don't look any
[00:15:36] different from the world that they live in. Can't we relate a little bit to Habakkuk's spirit?
[00:15:44] It can feel like the world is paralyzed among God's people, like all the pornography,
[00:15:51] all the consumerism, all the self-expressionism, all the hyperindependence that makes us bounce around
[00:16:00] from place to place seems to keep the positive effects of the Bible from breaking into many people's
[00:16:08] lives. And Habakkuk saw it and he asked, how long? How long? How long do I need to see this?
[00:16:16] Now before I move on to read God's response, I'm happy to announce that someone better
[00:16:22] than Habakkuk eventually appeared. Habakkuk saw a lot and he said a lot, but when Jesus came,
[00:16:30] he saw more than Habakkuk saw and he did more than Habakkuk could ever do. When Jesus saw us,
[00:16:36] he saw bigger sins than Habakkuk could ever see. He saw that we were bound and enslaved in sin
[00:16:45] and captivity to it. And rather than run from it, Jesus ran to it. He didn't just bimonit like this man,
[00:16:53] but he solved it by going to the cross for us. So for that, we rejoice. But the book doesn't end
[00:17:00] right there in verse 4. God responds. The language changes in verse 5. It's very clear there's a new
[00:17:06] speaker talking to the prophet. So let's read it in verse 5 through 11. This is what God says.
[00:17:13] You know, remember Habakkuk's question? He's saying how long? How long do I have to watch this?
[00:17:18] Witness this, experience this. Notice what God says in response. He says, look among the nations
[00:17:24] and see. Wander and be astounded. For I'm doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.
[00:17:32] For behold, I'm raising up the caldians that bitter and hasty nation who marched through the breath
[00:17:38] of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome. Their justice and
[00:17:44] dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leperds, more fears than the evening
[00:17:51] wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle swift
[00:17:58] to devour. They all come for violence, all their faces forward. They gather captives like sand at
[00:18:05] kings. They scoff and it rulers. They laugh. They laugh at every fortress for they pile up the earth
[00:18:13] and take it. Then, verse 11, they sweep by like the wind and go on. Guilty men whose own might
[00:18:22] is their God. Now, this response from God probably startled Habakkuk in a couple of ways. First
[00:18:30] of all, it probably startled him that he got a response at all. In their day there were plenty of
[00:18:36] Jewish songs and hymns and prayers that just mourned the state or condition of things
[00:18:42] without any expectation that God was going to reply. But again, the bulk of his song said,
[00:18:49] God, you're not doing anything and God wanted Habakkuk to know that he was doing something.
[00:18:56] But that's what would have really surprised Habakkuk. That's why God said it's an astounding
[00:19:02] work in verse 5. He said, it's like if I tell you you won't even believe what I tell you.
[00:19:09] God predicted in verse 6 that in Habakkuk's lifetime, God was going to raise up the wicked and violent
[00:19:18] Caldien armies to invade and destroy Jerusalem, Judah or Israel. It acknowledged in verse 7 that these
[00:19:27] Caldien answered to nobody. There was no authority over them. They answered to no man. They were a
[00:19:33] law unto themselves. In verse 8, God said that they were speedy and ferocious and prideful when
[00:19:43] he compared them to leopards and wolves and horsemen. He compared the number of their captives
[00:19:50] to the sands of the sea. In verse 10, he detailed their response to kings or fortresses who tried
[00:19:58] to stop them. He said, they just laugh and overtake them. In verse 11, God said, they're like a
[00:20:05] hurricane that sweeps through and then they worship their own military might and power.
[00:20:13] Now I'm a kid from the 90s so forgive me for this next comparison but if Habakkuk's song was
[00:20:20] like a moody and depressing Nirvana track, God's song was like an aggressive and in your face
[00:20:28] rage against the machine track. I mean it just had so much force. It's hard to even believe
[00:20:35] that this is what God was up to. Habakkuk was mourning over sin but what you need to know is that
[00:20:43] God had been mourning over their sin for almost 500 years. He'd sent profit after profit.
[00:20:52] He'd felt all the things that Habakkuk had felt for centuries but it had finally gotten to the point
[00:21:00] where God needed to do one of his most radical works of judgment and discipline in order to purify
[00:21:07] his people. And what God said that he would do is that he would send the Caldience who eventually
[00:21:15] became the Babylonians that many of us know from the book of Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar,
[00:21:21] he sent them to destroy or invade Judah and bring them into captivity. And when they came they
[00:21:27] were merciless just like God predicted they would be. One example of their ruthless ways is found
[00:21:36] in the way that they took captive the final king in Jerusalem. A man named Zedekiah.
[00:21:42] When they finally captured Jerusalem and took Zedekiah, they brought his sons in front of him,
[00:21:47] the princes of Judah and they slay, they slaughtered, they killed all of his sons right in front of his
[00:21:54] eyes and then so that would be the final thing he'd seen. They plucked out his eyes and bound him
[00:22:00] and took him to a Babylonian prison. They were ruthless and this was God's directive saying,
[00:22:09] this is what it will take for me to get you to respond to me. And I don't want you to miss this but
[00:22:18] everything that God said is in the form of a song as well. It's also poetry.
[00:22:25] I think that's important because it helps us see that God, it's like he was there in heaven
[00:22:32] writing this song of judgment. He's not presented like a cold lawyer writing his decrees
[00:22:43] in paragraph form but like a jilted lover who's saying, I can't believe that it's come to this point.
[00:22:53] I can't believe that this is the move that I have to make. I can't believe that you're that hard
[00:22:59] hearted that you won't return to me in any other way. Now, this poem song is a shock. God would cure
[00:23:09] his people's disobedience by sending seemingly worse people to chase him them. The caldians would
[00:23:17] become God's scalpel to access the cancer deep within his people. And God is presenting himself
[00:23:26] here as the one who will do whatever it takes to get that job done. One of my favorite actors
[00:23:35] is Liam Neeson and in 2008 something happened to Liam Neeson's career. I don't know what happened but
[00:23:43] he starred in a movie in 2008 called Taken where someone kidnaps his adult daughter and then
[00:23:50] he's like an ex. I don't know, something. He's just got all these skills and so he goes on this
[00:23:56] rampage to rescue his daughter. And ever since that movie it's like every other movie that Liam
[00:24:02] Neeson is in, he's basically playing the same character. He's rescuing wives and girlfriends
[00:24:09] and daughters. And I think he's got someone with granddaughters, he's getting older and older so
[00:24:14] it's going to be like great granddaughters pretty soon. I mean, he's just doing whatever it takes.
[00:24:19] And the thing that I love about these common stories is that it's like this over the top man,
[00:24:26] this guy will do whatever it takes to reach and rescue the person he loves. I think that's the
[00:24:34] gospel. And I think that's what God is doing right here. He's saying this is what it's going to
[00:24:39] take. I know it sounds extreme but I've got to do this unbelievable work in order to bring you back
[00:24:44] to myself. In the last week we thought for a moment when we were in Proverbs chapter 3 about how
[00:24:49] God's ways are not our ways. And here we see this truth as Habakkuk and God's perspectives are
[00:24:58] placed in stark contrast. God's way of sending the caldians was high above Habakkuk's desire. I think
[00:25:06] all Habakkuk wanted was God we had a reform. We had a revival once before it didn't stick but
[00:25:11] give us another one. It'll stick. It'll last this time. God says no that's not the answer.
[00:25:17] He explains to Habakkuk what he's doing. And Habakkuk will in a moment express his confusion before
[00:25:23] God. When God is saying these things to Habakkuk, it's like a mathematical genius trying to explain
[00:25:30] advanced calculus to a little child who's just learned basic addition. Habakkuk is floored. He's
[00:25:37] like how can that be but of course God understands because of his vantage point but to Habakkuk,
[00:25:43] it doesn't add up. And I think a lot of times we're this way. We have our simple equations for
[00:25:51] figuring out or explaining the things things like the presence of evil or human suffering. We have
[00:25:57] questions about why evil flourishes. But we often approach these questions with the simple
[00:26:04] addition of what we think is good or what we think is bad. God however approaches these problems
[00:26:11] with the advanced calculus of the gospel, where he consumed on the cross the worst of all evils for
[00:26:20] us so that we could escape pain forever through belief in Jesus. But it's often hard for us to
[00:26:26] process God's way because we're like children and comparison to the wisdom of God. But I think
[00:26:35] of all people, we should be those as Christians who understand that this is what God can do. Resurrection
[00:26:42] is preceded by death. We know that. So perhaps God would allow death at times in order for his
[00:26:49] resurrecting work to take place in our lives. Jesus said in John chapter 15 that the Father will
[00:26:55] sometimes prune or even take away the branch so that more fruit can come. And when Peter wrote
[00:27:03] to a church that was being marginalized by their society, he comforted them by saying that God
[00:27:10] was using that society as his scalpel in their lives to sharpen his people. He said for its time
[00:27:19] 1 Peter 4 17, for judgment to begin at the house of God. So perhaps we might be shocked that God would
[00:27:28] choose to work in this way. Perhaps we can imagine God using the wicked schemes of our time or the
[00:27:36] wicked world views of our time or the wicked movements of our time to discipline and sharpen
[00:27:42] and improve his people. But why not? Why can't God do that? Why can't he shape us in
[00:27:51] and with those methods? Well, Habakkuk was shocked and he wanted to tell God how shocked he was.
[00:27:59] So let's read our last movement of our passage today in verse 12 to 17. He said to God,
[00:28:07] are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die, O Lord. You have ordained
[00:28:15] them as a judgment and you, O rock, have established them for reproof. You who are of pure
[00:28:21] eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traders and remain silent when
[00:28:28] the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? You make mankind like the fish of the sea,
[00:28:34] like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook. He drags them out
[00:28:41] with his net. He gathers them in his dragnet so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to
[00:28:49] his net and makes offerings to his dragnet for by them he lives in luxury and his food is rich.
[00:28:56] Is he then to keep on verse 17, emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?
[00:29:06] This statement that Habakkuk makes to God it does not sound at all like what he'll say at the end
[00:29:11] of the book. There's no, oh God I trust you even when there's no crops and no herds I trust you
[00:29:17] I rejoice in you. Habakkuk instead responds with this statement of disillusionment. You know he's
[00:29:24] ready to argue with God and when he makes his statements to God it's clear that he's struggling
[00:29:31] because he has all these beliefs deep inside that are now conflicted within him like for instance.
[00:29:38] He believed strongly that the Caldian people were ripe for God's judgment. He thought of them
[00:29:46] as the people that needed judgment not the people of Israel so that was a concept that he was wrestling
[00:29:53] with when God gave his answer or secondly he thought Israel us the people of God we are special. He
[00:30:02] said in verse 12, he said we shall not die. We are more righteous than them. He knew that they were
[00:30:11] gods called and chosen people. He knew that they were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
[00:30:16] until he struggled to think that God could treat them in that way and clearly Habakkuk believed
[00:30:23] that God was good. He said God you're perfect, you're from a holy dimension you're from eternity
[00:30:30] you can't even look at evil he said to God in verse 13.
[00:30:36] Perhaps all of these things that Habakkuk was bringing to God maybe you've been there as well
[00:30:44] where you're trying to reconcile different things that you know to be true about God from his word
[00:30:51] but you're wrestling with how to reconcile what you see with what you know about God.
[00:30:57] Maybe you've even done at times what Habakkuk did and you've tried to argue with God by appealing
[00:31:04] to facets of his character in nature. He's like God I read in your word that you are love.
[00:31:11] God is love, John said and so if that's who you are then you should do this and you spell it all
[00:31:18] out for God. This is exactly how you should act or God you're holy. Here's what's going on in our
[00:31:26] world today. Here's what people are saying and believing today. So if you are holy then this
[00:31:30] is what you should do and you spell it all out for God. This is exactly how you should behave.
[00:31:36] See it all seems so strange and excessive to Habakkuk and he has his theological arguments against God
[00:31:44] ready to go. How could God allow the sin of the caldians to go unchecked?
[00:31:51] So Habakkuk has shifted. He's no longer concerned with the sin in the camp but now the sin outside
[00:31:58] of the camp. Those wicked murders in his mind deserve more of God's judgment than the people of
[00:32:04] Israel did. Habakkuk felt that God's medicine was worse than the cure or the disease and the
[00:32:12] prophet would have preferred just to have one more revival, one more reform. And I think that
[00:32:18] Habakkuk in this moment he felt like a lot of us feel at times that when evil unfolds in our lives
[00:32:25] it's pointless. It's not good always bad. God had a specific plan for using the wickedness of
[00:32:33] the caldians and the life of his people. And that plan is difficult for us to accept or to imagine
[00:32:40] but listen to me just because we can't imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen
[00:32:48] doesn't mean that there can't be a reason. What we're doing is basic addition but God is busy
[00:32:56] doing advanced calculus. Tim Keller wrote it like this in his seminal book A Reason for God. He said
[00:33:02] if you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and
[00:33:09] suffering in the world then you have at the same moment a God great and transcendent enough
[00:33:17] to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can't know. Indeed you can't have it both
[00:33:27] ways. In other words he's saying if God is so big that he could push a button and stop it all
[00:33:33] then that means simultaneously he's smarter than all of us combined. Before a Christian what do we
[00:33:41] do? What do we run to? Well we of course run to the cross of Jesus Christ. It's the cross that shows us
[00:33:50] the love and the holiness of God, the justice and the mercy of God. It shows us that in God's estimation
[00:33:58] the way to eradicate evil dare I say the only way to eradicate evil is not by him putting the world
[00:34:07] on autopilot to do whatever he wants at any given moment but by going himself into our world
[00:34:15] and suffering the worst of all evils for us suffering and dying and rising from the dead. We have to
[00:34:23] remember this about God. Now Habakkuk was stressed out because the Caldeans were treating the nations
[00:34:31] people on earth like fishermen treat fish catching killing consuming but we have to remember that
[00:34:38] God is fishing too. God is also at work trying to rescue human beings so we have to run to the cross
[00:34:48] of fresh. No one little kids play tag there's usually like home base right you run around and then
[00:34:54] you get home and you're safe that's where the Christian runs during times of confusion times of
[00:35:01] chaos times that they don't understand we run to the cross of Christ. Now as I mentioned at the
[00:35:07] beginning of this teaching Habakkuk is not going to remain in the state of confusion forever. In fact
[00:35:12] in the first verse of chapter 2 he says I'm going to go up to my watch tower and I'm going to wait
[00:35:16] to see what God says when I'm corrected. All right so he kind of knows you ever pray to prayer like
[00:35:21] that where you're like I know I'm wrong about this one but I'm going to let God have it and then
[00:35:27] I'm going to be corrected that's what this prophet was going through and eventually he will get
[00:35:32] to the point where he trusts God implicitly. He goes through the process that many of us go through
[00:35:37] we present the problem to God. God then presents his promises to us we then praise him and out the other
[00:35:45] end comes this deeper trust in him. That trust is the goal but here's the thing we often get stuck on
[00:35:52] the problem. We often get stuck on the problem we get stuck in Habakkuk chapter 1 and we never get
[00:35:59] through to the end of chapter 3. We get stuck asking why is there evil in the world or why is there
[00:36:07] evil in the church? Why do people who claim to love God sometimes do horrible things? Why isn't
[00:36:12] there more love and devotion to God and His word among His people? Why do insidious ideologies
[00:36:20] and movements gain traction in our modern time? Why do people get sick without cause? Why can we
[00:36:26] shake ourselves from war and famine and disease? Why do innocent children suffer and die?
[00:36:33] With all these questions we can quickly get stuck on the problem rather than advancing
[00:36:39] to the kind of trust that can get us through this problem filled life, this problematic world into
[00:36:48] the kingdom without problems of any kind forever. It was hard for Habakkuk to believe this. It was
[00:36:55] hard for him to believe that they would suffer incredible defeat but it would actually be their great
[00:37:02] victory. Just as it might be hard for us to think when we look at the cross of Jesus,
[00:37:11] that that greatest of all defeats was actually the finest victory that God could ever win.
[00:37:20] But we must know that that is what God has done. In verse 5, God said to Habakkuk,
[00:37:27] I'm doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. I want to end today by pointing
[00:37:33] out that Paul the Apostle in the book of Acts when he preached the gospel in a Gentile city one day,
[00:37:40] he said these words. He quoted from Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 5 and he said, God is doing a work
[00:37:48] in your days that you would not believe if told. And then he followed up, not by telling them
[00:37:55] about the caldians but by telling them the gospel of Jesus Christ. A message of God's
[00:38:03] handling of sin that is so radical that it is hard to believe. But praise God that many of us have
[00:38:10] heard this gospel message and we have believed it. Amen.