Text:\u00a0 Habakkuk 1: 1-3; 2: 1-4<\/p>\n
Are you like me?\u00a0 I like everything to fit, to line up.\u00a0 I want everything to make sense.\u00a0 And when it doesn\u2019t it bothers me. In most cases, it\u2019s not such a big deal.\u00a0 Like when I try to assemble a gas grill and the pieces don\u2019t fit.\u00a0 I can deal with that.<\/p>\n
But other times, it is a big deal.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen families suffer one trouble on top of another.\u00a0 Not troubles they brought on themselves but injury and disease and loss of income.\u00a0 At times I find myself thinking, praying. These are your people Lord.\u00a0 Why?<\/i> It doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/i><\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve ever felt like that, you\u2019re not alone.\u00a0 Today we hear God\u2019s own prophet call out to him with the same complaint.\u00a0 And how does the Lord answer him?\u00a0 Not with a detailed explanation.\u00a0 Here\u2019s why.<\/i>\u00a0 Instead our God speaks a promise and a call, a call to faith, to trust him and his promises when nothing makes sense.<\/p>\n
There Habakkuk found a peace and a joy that lifted him above all the question marks this life confronts us with.\u00a0 So this is where God\u2019s prophet takes us this morning.\u00a0 What we might call:<\/p>\n
THE BELIEVER\u2019S STRUGGLE
\n<\/b>I. Lord, I don\u2019t understand!
\nII. Live by faith, the Lord answers.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lord I don\u2019t understand what seems to be!<\/b>\u00a0 I look around and I see injustice.\u00a0 I see government officials who peddle their influence to the elites.\u00a0 I see religious leaders who take advantage of the weak and vulnerable.\u00a0 I see wrong doers; some terrible wrong doers escape justice and in some cases thrive.\u00a0 I see believers, your own people ridiculed.\u00a0 I see their values trashed and rejected.\u00a0 I see destruction and violence.\u00a0 And no one is spared.\u00a0 Women, children, the old and weak. And there is strife and conflict, even in the home.<\/p>\n
Oh, did you think I was describing things today?\u00a0 This is what God\u2019s prophet saw in his own day.\u00a0 His people, God\u2019s 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.\u00a0 He cut it to pieces and burned it in defiance of God, his Word and his prophet.<\/p>\n
Habakkuk could not understand.\u00a0 He could not understand like us at times why the Lord would allow such things to go on.\u00a0 2\u00a0<\/sup>How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, \u201cViolence!\u201d but you do not save? 3\u00a0<\/sup>Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing<\/span>? That\u2019s how things seemed to be.\u00a0 I feel the same way at times.\u00a0 Do you? Lord, I don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 <\/b><\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just what seems to be that confuses.\u00a0 It\u2019s also how the Lord works.\u00a0 For what did the Lord tell Habakkuk he was going to do.\u00a0 Judge his people who stubbornly refused to repent.\u00a0 Judge his people who had enjoyed such blessings, but had turned away.\u00a0 And this Habakkuk DID understand.<\/p>\n But what confused God\u2019s prophet was this \u2013 how God was going to carry out his judgment.\u00a0 Who the Lord was going to use.\u00a0 Listen to how God describes them.\u00a0 6 <\/sup>I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, \u20267 <\/sup>They are a feared and dreaded people; they are a law to themselves \u2026guilty people, whose own strength is their god.\u201d<\/span> (1:6-11)<\/p>\n This really confused Habakkuk.\u00a0\u00a0 Lord I don\u2019t understand how you work.<\/b>\u00a0 And you know, as we survey the world we live in, it\u2019s hard not to think the same.\u00a0 For we know, God is not absent from the things we see. We see the progress of evil and unbelief in our land.\u00a0 I don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n But Habakkuk had an even greater concern.\u00a0 You see all of God\u2019s prophets had this hope.\u00a0 They believed this promise.\u00a0 God would send his Messiah, the Christ.\u00a0 He would send a great King from David\u2019s bloodline.\u00a0 And this King would establish an everlasting kingdom.\u00a0 But how could this be, Habakkuk must have wondered.\u00a0 If you sweep this people into exile.\u00a0 If you cut off the line of King David.\u00a0 If you destroy this kingdom, then what?\u00a0 Lord. I don\u2019t understand.<\/i>\u00a0 I don\u2019t understand how you work.<\/p>\n And this has been the same for believers of all times.\u00a0 \u2013 The Believer\u2019s struggle<\/b>. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Think of those believers described in Hebrews 11: 36, 37:\u00a0 36 <\/sup>Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 <\/sup>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\u2014 38 <\/sup>the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground<\/span>. And this is not just\u00a0 ancient Church history.\u00a0 Would someone help me hold up this map?\u00a0 Do you see these countries in ____________.\u00a0 If you lived in one of those countries you would be in danger for calling Jesus your Lord and Savior.\u00a0 You\u2019d be in danger for coming to a place like this.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t understand.\u00a0 These are your people.\u00a0 I don\u2019t<\/i> understand how you work in this world.\u00a0 And Lord at times, I don\u2019t understand how you work in my life.<\/i><\/p>\n How does the Lord answer us?\u00a0 Well first of all realize.\u00a0 Our Creator owes us no explanation.\u00a0 And who are we to think he does.\u00a0 He is the Lord and we are nothing more than what Jesus teaches us to say.\u00a0 We are his unworthy servants.<\/i><\/p>\n The Lord deals with us in another way.\u00a0 Not with explanations that we probably couldn\u2019t understand anyway.\u00a0 Rather he comes to us with his promises.\u00a0 And this encouragement.\u00a0 Live by faith.\u00a0 Live by faith, says the Lord. <\/b><\/p>\n Habakkuk was anxious for the Lord\u2019s answer.\u00a0 I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me<\/span>\u2026 2\u00a0<\/sup>Then the Lord replied: \u201cWrite down the revelation \u20263\u00a0<\/sup>For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false<\/span>.\u00a0 There\u2019s the Lord\u2019s answer.\u00a0 No explanation.\u00a0 Rather a promise.\u00a0 And that promise was this.\u00a0 Babylon\u2019s day would come.\u00a0 The Lord would use them like a tool for his purpose and then he would bring that arrogant, evil empire down.<\/p>\n But is that what the prophet saw?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He saw something much different than what the Lord promised.\u00a0 Often, so do we.\u00a0 As I watched my mother suffer with Alzheimer\u2019s.\u00a0 As we lost a child to miscarriage, as I go to a Christian home where I find so much pain and sadness.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the point.\u00a0 As God\u2019s people we do not live by what we see or feel.\u00a0 Instead as the Lord told his prophet here.\u00a0 The righteous will live by his faith.<\/span><\/p>\n Habakkuk learned that lesson well. A lesson for all of us who struggle.\u00a0 He trusted God\u2019s promise.\u00a0 He trusted that his people would one day return to their land.\u00a0 And he trusted that another King would come, a Son of David, the Messiah, the Christ.\u00a0 And he would be different.\u00a0 He would be so much greater than those kings they had known.\u00a0 He would be Immanuel, God with us, who would save his people and be their king forever.<\/p>\n That King has come hasn\u2019t he.\u00a0 \u00a0He left his throne in heaven to come and set us free.\u00a0 For you and I were prisoners. We were prisoners of a power far worse, far more deadly than ruthless Babylon.\u00a0 We were prisoners of our sin, of our own terrible guilt before God.\u00a0 We were prisoners who sat in a dark prison of death with no escape or hope of release.<\/p>\n But our King has set us free.\u00a0 He threw open those doors that barred us from God\u2019s family.\u00a0 He brought us out.\u00a0 He brought us out into the warm healing rays of forgiveness and life.\u00a0 And how?\u00a0 Again we might say.\u00a0 Lord I don\u2019t understand!? For even the angels marvel at what the Lord has done.<\/p>\n Imagine we stood at the foot of Jesus\u2019 cross.\u00a0 You had followed him.\u00a0 You saw his miracles, his power as the Son of God to command the raging wind and waves to be still.\u00a0 You saw his great love, his tears for the hurting, his love for the lost.\u00a0 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\u2019ve never seen.\u00a0 He hangs there before you, the promised Christ, the King of kings.\u00a0 It makes no sense what you are seeing.<\/p>\n Yet by that cross, our God and King did a marvelous thing.\u00a0 He gave himself.\u00a0 He gave himself that you might live as God\u2019s child.\u00a0 He gave himself that you might live forever by faith, by faith in him.\u00a0 For that is God\u2019s promise and invitation to all:\u00a0 The righteous will live by his faith.<\/span><\/p>\n Well now this same King who died for you, lives. He lives and he reigns.\u00a0 For what has he told us?\u00a0 All authority in heaven and on earth has been given\u00a0 to me.<\/span>\u00a0 And yes, we might wonder.\u00a0 We do at times.\u00a0 How can this be?\u00a0 Yet somehow, some way he makes all things work for our good. \u00a0That\u2019s his promise.\u00a0 And here in this same word, he invites us to live by faith in that promise.<\/p>\n For then you will find what the prophet found.\u00a0 A peace and joy like no other.\u00a0 A peace and joy that belongs to those who live by faith in the Lord.\u00a0 Listen to his words:\u00a0 17 <\/sup>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 <\/sup>yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.<\/span> \u00a0(3:17,18)<\/p>\n May God the Holy Spirit give each of us that victory of faith as we struggle.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text:\u00a0 Habakkuk 1: 1-3; 2: 1-4 Are you like me?\u00a0 I like everything to fit, to line up.\u00a0 I want everything to make sense.\u00a0 And when it doesn\u2019t it bothers me. In most cases, it\u2019s not such a big deal.\u00a0 Like when I try to assemble a gas grill and the pieces don\u2019t fit.\u00a0 I can deal with that. 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