Text: Habakkuk 1: 1-3; 2: 1-4
Are you like me? I like everything to fit, to line up. I want everything to make sense. And when it doesn’t it bothers me. In most cases, it’s not such a big deal. Like when I try to assemble a gas grill and the pieces don’t fit. I can deal with that.
But other times, it is a big deal. I’ve seen families suffer one trouble on top of another. Not troubles they brought on themselves but injury and disease and loss of income. At times I find myself thinking, praying. These are your people Lord. Why? It doesn’t make sense.
If you’ve ever felt like that, you’re not alone. Today we hear God’s own prophet call out to him with the same complaint. And how does the Lord answer him? Not with a detailed explanation. Here’s why. Instead our God speaks a promise and a call, a call to faith, to trust him and his promises when nothing makes sense.
There Habakkuk found a peace and a joy that lifted him above all the question marks this life confronts us with. So this is where God’s prophet takes us this morning. What we might call:
THE BELIEVER’S STRUGGLE
I. Lord, I don’t understand!
II. Live by faith, the Lord answers.
Lord I don’t understand what seems to be! I look around and I see injustice. I see government officials who peddle their influence to the elites. I see religious leaders who take advantage of the weak and vulnerable. I see wrong doers; some terrible wrong doers escape justice and in some cases thrive. I see believers, your own people ridiculed. I see their values trashed and rejected. I see destruction and violence. And no one is spared. Women, children, the old and weak. And there is strife and conflict, even in the home.
Oh, did you think I was describing things today? This is what God’s prophet saw in his own day. His people, God’s covenant people, were sinking deeper and deeper into sin and unbelief under a king, Jehoiakim, who was evil through and through. This was the king who took the first scroll that Jeremiah had made. He cut it to pieces and burned it in defiance of God, his Word and his prophet.
Habakkuk could not understand. He could not understand like us at times why the Lord would allow such things to go on. 2 How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? 3 Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? That’s how things seemed to be. I feel the same way at times. Do you? Lord, I don’t understand.
But it’s not just what seems to be that confuses. It’s also how the Lord works. For what did the Lord tell Habakkuk he was going to do. Judge his people who stubbornly refused to repent. Judge his people who had enjoyed such blessings, but had turned away. And this Habakkuk DID understand.
But what confused God’s prophet was this – how God was going to carry out his judgment. Who the Lord was going to use. Listen to how God describes them. 6 I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, …7 They are a feared and dreaded people; they are a law to themselves …guilty people, whose own strength is their god.” (1:6-11)
This really confused Habakkuk. Lord I don’t understand how you work. And you know, as we survey the world we live in, it’s hard not to think the same. For we know, God is not absent from the things we see. We see the progress of evil and unbelief in our land. I don’t understand.
But Habakkuk had an even greater concern. You see all of God’s prophets had this hope. They believed this promise. God would send his Messiah, the Christ. He would send a great King from David’s bloodline. And this King would establish an everlasting kingdom. But how could this be, Habakkuk must have wondered. If you sweep this people into exile. If you cut off the line of King David. If you destroy this kingdom, then what? Lord. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you work.
And this has been the same for believers of all times. – The Believer’s struggle. Think of those believers described in Hebrews 11: 36, 37: 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. And this is not just ancient Church history. Would someone help me hold up this map? Do you see these countries in ____________. If you lived in one of those countries you would be in danger for calling Jesus your Lord and Savior. You’d be in danger for coming to a place like this.
Well when I hear such things, when I read the stories of what our brothers and sisters suffer in other lands, part of me says, Lord I don’t understand. These are your people. I don’t understand how you work in this world. And Lord at times, I don’t understand how you work in my life.
How does the Lord answer us? Well first of all realize. Our Creator owes us no explanation. And who are we to think he does. He is the Lord and we are nothing more than what Jesus teaches us to say. We are his unworthy servants.
The Lord deals with us in another way. Not with explanations that we probably couldn’t understand anyway. Rather he comes to us with his promises. And this encouragement. Live by faith. Live by faith, says the Lord.
Habakkuk was anxious for the Lord’s answer. I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me… 2 Then the Lord replied: “Write down the revelation …3 For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. There’s the Lord’s answer. No explanation. Rather a promise. And that promise was this. Babylon’s day would come. The Lord would use them like a tool for his purpose and then he would bring that arrogant, evil empire down.
But is that what the prophet saw? Did his eyes give him any reason to believe that would be true? No, what he saw was proud Babylon ready to pounce on his land like so many others. He saw something much different than what the Lord promised. Often, so do we. As I watched my mother suffer with Alzheimer’s. As we lost a child to miscarriage, as I go to a Christian home where I find so much pain and sadness.
But here’s the point. As God’s people we do not live by what we see or feel. Instead as the Lord told his prophet here. The righteous will live by his faith.
Habakkuk learned that lesson well. A lesson for all of us who struggle. He trusted God’s promise. He trusted that his people would one day return to their land. And he trusted that another King would come, a Son of David, the Messiah, the Christ. And he would be different. He would be so much greater than those kings they had known. He would be Immanuel, God with us, who would save his people and be their king forever.
That King has come hasn’t he. He left his throne in heaven to come and set us free. For you and I were prisoners. We were prisoners of a power far worse, far more deadly than ruthless Babylon. We were prisoners of our sin, of our own terrible guilt before God. We were prisoners who sat in a dark prison of death with no escape or hope of release.
But our King has set us free. He threw open those doors that barred us from God’s family. He brought us out. He brought us out into the warm healing rays of forgiveness and life. And how? Again we might say. Lord I don’t understand!? For even the angels marvel at what the Lord has done.
Imagine we stood at the foot of Jesus’ cross. You had followed him. You saw his miracles, his power as the Son of God to command the raging wind and waves to be still. You saw his great love, his tears for the hurting, his love for the lost. And now you stand there before a cross, an ugly instrument of death and he hangs there. He hangs there suffering a shame and grief you’ve never seen. He hangs there before you, the promised Christ, the King of kings. It makes no sense what you are seeing.
Yet by that cross, our God and King did a marvelous thing. He gave himself. He gave himself that you might live as God’s child. He gave himself that you might live forever by faith, by faith in him. For that is God’s promise and invitation to all: The righteous will live by his faith.
Well now this same King who died for you, lives. He lives and he reigns. For what has he told us? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And yes, we might wonder. We do at times. How can this be? Yet somehow, some way he makes all things work for our good. That’s his promise. And here in this same word, he invites us to live by faith in that promise.
For then you will find what the prophet found. A peace and joy like no other. A peace and joy that belongs to those who live by faith in the Lord. Listen to his words: 17 Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. (3:17,18)
May God the Holy Spirit give each of us that victory of faith as we struggle. Amen.