Living by Faith When You Don't Like God's Plan.

True story…once upon a time I knew of a church that experienced a few seasons of turmoil for various reasons…one of those reasons was the reality that some within the church were grumblers who just could not be pleased no matter what was going on…they made life very difficult for their pastor…at his wits end, the pastor addressed the situation from the pulpit and declared that God’s people ought to pray He would remove the individuals from the church that were troublesome.

Prayer is a very powerful tool. The Scripture tells us that the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes many things…sometimes I think we forget just how powerful prayer can be…

After the impassioned plea of the pastor for God’s people to pray for a very specific thing, something happened that you would not believe even though you were told…within 2 weeks of that request, the pastor’s wife was ushered into glory!

Now I don’t know if that was God’s specific answer to their prayer, but I share that with you to ask you a very important question as we start our study this morning...

What do you do when you’ve prayed to God and you don’t like the answer you’ve received?

You interviewed for a new job, but they found someone more qualified.

You asked God for healing, but the doctor says the treatment/surgery didn’t work.

You moved across the country to take a new job, but it didn’t work out, and now you are unemployed—again.

You have your dreams, you make your plans, you sincerely seek to do God’s will, you pray to the Lord, and when the answer comes, it’s not what you wanted...What do you do when you don’t like God’s plan?

We all know that we should pray “Your will be done,” and most of us do, but it still shocks us when we discover that what WE thought was a good plan was not God’s plan…and then God’s plan seems a bit harder than you expected.

That’s where we find Habakkuk…God answered his questions and he doesn’t like the answer he received.

Habakkuk was troubled by the chaos that resulted because of the sinfulness of God’s people.

He couldn’t reconcile how God can be God and allow all that to happen…then when God told him what He was going to do, it created an even deeper problem for Habakkuk.

We are in week 3 of this wonderful book…we’ve titled this series…Trusting God in the Midst of Chaos…Learning to live by faith especially when life is hard...

This morning we find ourselves in Habakkuk 1:12-2:1.

What do you do when God’s plan is hard and you don’t like it...when your plans and God’s plans don’t coincide?

Main Point: Live by Faith Even When You Don’t Like God’s Plan.

A week’s worth of chaos has happened since last Sunday so let’s refresh our memory a little...

The first 4 verses we studied revealed the chaos in Habakkuk’s life that prompted him to ask God some hard questions…he was troubled because after godly King Josiah died, the people of the southern tribes went back to their evil ways…

So he asks – “how long are you going to let go, Lord?”

…it’s not right that people who call upon your name should be able to live this way and get away with it…

Life this side of heaven is hard, filled with hard questions that need Divine answers.

Remember the key verse…Habakkuk 2:4““Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous will live by his faith.”

The believer who lives by faith seeks the mind and heart of God to answer those perplexing questions.

Last Week — The believer who lives by faith, understands that the Sovereignty of God ought to amaze us.

…sometimes God allows or even brings about the chaotic and hard circumstances to discipline us...other times to get our attention before the discipline comes...

or maybe it is simply so we have a greater view of our God!

He said, I am going to allow the Babylonians to come down and judge my people… Judah is about to experience some severe discipline...

Just like God disciplined His people in the northern kingdom of Israel by allowing the Assyrians to defeat them in 722 BC…now, He’s going to allow the Babylonians to completely defeat the southern kingdom of Judah in 586…

This conversation recorded in chapter 1 would have taken place between 612 & 605 B.C (read Jeremiah)

This was prophecy for them and history for us!

God was in no way obligated to answer his questions, but it is interesting how often He peels back some elements of His plan and lets us see glimpses of His ways…and some of those answers are absolutely shocking…

Remember Isaiah 55:8–9 ““For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

God’s plan was to use the wicked Babylonians to discipline His people.

Now, after Habakkuk caught his breath, and thought about what God told him, it caused a little more trouble for Habakkuk which led him to ask more questions...

I would propose to you that what we find in this text will provide us with great insight of how we can live by faith when God’s way seems illogical and not to our liking…

How can we live by faith when we don’t like God’s plan?

Let’s look for 3 steps to take when God’s plan is hard...

First step...

Get a Grip on Your Theology (12)

Habakkuk 1:12 “Are You not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge; And You, O Rock, have established them to correct.”

This is an important first piece of the puzzle…the edge pieces if you will…

I don’t know how you put puzzles together, but when you start with all the edge pieces, you now have a framework for all the other pieces to fit in…your theology provides the framework for how you view life and what happens around you...

What elements of his theology were important at this moment in his life?

He goes after the character of God…he tapped into what he knew was true about God.

God is Eternal

Are You not from everlasting...

The fact that God was going to use the wicked, cruel Babylonians would have been unbelievable to Him…but he reminded himself of who it was that was doing the talking…

God is eternal means He is outside the influence of history, he was here before this all started and will still be here when it ends...

This was not God’s first rodeo…

and Habakkuk was very wise to factor that into His thinking… and it would be good for us to filter this into ours…God saw the events shaping your life and the world of 2024 before He created the earth...

Isaiah 45:21 (NASB95)

“Declare and set forth your case; Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from of old? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, A righteous God and a Savior; There is none except Me.

Isaiah 46:10 (NASB95)

Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;

We can look around at all the chaos happening in the world and take comfort in knowing that God saw it coming, He was there before it started and He will still be there when it ends…He is eternal.

God is Self-Existent

O LORD…Yahweh…Jehovah

anytime you see the word “Lord” in all capital letters, it is a translation of the Hebrew word YAHWEH, or Jehovah…

that is the way God introduced Himself – I am that I am…

the all encompassing, all sufficient God…and that name came to be associated especially with His willingness to make promises with people, and His ability to faithfully keep them…

Habakkuk knew how ruthless the Babylonians were…but he also knew all the covenants and promises that God had made to His people…and though He had no idea how all of that could come together…He was confident that God did and possessed the power to make it happen…God was not dependent on anyone or anything to accomplish what needed to be done…He alone has that power.

another important emphasis is that…

God is Personal.

My (used twice)

Habakkuk was a man who walked with God…and the personal nature of that relationship secured him in the midst of his chaos...

Habakkuk is looking for anything that is stable and trustworthy that he can grab onto…so he grabs on to the reality that God is his own strong and mighty help in times of trouble and distress.

When we cry out to God in our confusion and despair, it not like going into the BMV which I find to be one of the most impersonal businesses that exist today… they have all your personal information right in front of them and they don’t know you from Adam, then when you leave, they have no recollection of who you are or what you need and when you go there, you used to have to draw a number, “now serving number 5 and your number is 500...” now you have to sign in and wait to be called to the window and you hope you are going to get the one who is pleasant and having a good day… I don’t know about your experience there, but it seems I always seem to find the person who just drank a gallon of straight lemon juice and sat down on a nail!

God is not sitting up in heaven behind a desk looking at your information on a computer screen where you are waiting for Him to call your name and He doesn’t forget about you when you leave.

All of us are fully known by God and fully cared for by Him…we can come to Him at anytime because we belong to Him…we are His and He is ours!

We need to develop the mental discipline of asking ourselves “What do I know about the person and work of God that I can remind myself of right now before I go any further in this struggle?”

2 Corinthians 10:5 “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,”

God is Holy.

my Holy One

God is completely set apart from His creation, He is perfectly pure in every aspect of His being, He is absolutely righteous in all He does…He is completely separated from sin, injustice, and unrighteousness.

God is in no way responsible for the evil perpetrated by men…He is simply powerful enough and sovereign over those people that He uses that for our good and His glory!

So when you’re struggling to make sense of what God is doing, remember EVERYTHING He does is impacted by holiness…it will always be right, and pure!

God is Stable & Reliable

Habakkuk 1:12 “Are You not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge; And You, O Rock, have established them to correct.”

Rock — first used in Deut 32:4 to indicate the God’s stability and security...

When life gets hard you cling to your anchor...

Psalm 18:2 “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

Psalm 40:1–3 “I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in the Lord.”

God is Sovereign Over All People

God established the Babylonian nation for a purpose…to discipline God’s people.

God is all powerful and completely sovereign over all things…nothing happens in this world and in your life without God’s knowledge…he can even raise up nations who do not recognize Him as God to do His will.

The God who created out of nothing is powerful enough to stop the chaos, but in His sovereign plan He sees fit not to…there is no one who escapes His power, and no one who escapes His sovereign design

Habakkuk didn’t stop there – he didn’t just think about the character of God – he connected the dots…

God is Faithful

We will not die.

Babylon could easily have annihilated tiny Judah, but Habakkuk was confident this would not happen because his omnipotent God would not allow it.

although the coming judgment was deserved, Habakkuk knew that God would keep his covenant promises to his people that they would never be totally destroyed.

This goes back to the Abrahamic covenant and to the Davidic covenant…God continually reminded his people of these covenants...

Is God a God who goes back on His promises or does He keep everyone of the them?

1 Corinthians 10:13 (NASB95)

No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.

When the chaos leaves you struggling because of what you do not know, take a few moments and remind yourself of what you DO know!

The question is not “do you believe in God?”. The question is what kind of God do you believe in?

What has God revealed to you about Himself…trust that…rest in that...

No need to start from ground zero…you’re already anchored in the Rock…now you just need to climb up on the truths that you already know and survey this situation from a more God-involved and God-centered perspective…

Let me encourage you that when God’s plan seems hard to go back to our study on worship and to remember what happens when you are being filled by Spirit…you start singing theologically sound music…where the lyrics are more important than the tune…that speaks truth to your heart and the heart of those around you...

Let me also encourage you towards greater faithfulness to be in church where you are surrounded by people who are experiencing chaos right along with you…we need to lean on each other while we lean on God.

Don’t Quit When God’s Plan is Hard (13-17).

Habakkuk’s faith in a Holy God is challenged by the reality of God’s choice of Babylon as an instrument of punishment.

Let’s be honest here…we’ve all been there…

If you and I were having this conversation with God, and God told us He was going to allow our life to get extremely hard...we would probably be at the point of frustration, tempted to throw our hands in the air and say “this is too hard for me to understand, so just forget about it.”…and then we walk away continually frustrated not knowing what to think or do...

“God what you are doing doesn’t make sense to me...”

“God I know you are good all the time, that you love me, but I’m so confused by ______________.

Sometimes the chaos overwhelms us and instead of allowing it to stretch our faith we shrink back…we curl up in the proverbial fetal position and give up...

That was not what Habakkuk did…after he anchored his heart and mind into his theology, he was left with more questions… Habakkuk truly wants to go deeper in his understanding of God and how He works...Some things just don’t measure up and he’s searching...

That’s an important element to living by faith…remember your sanctification is a process…it’ a marathon, not a sprint...

It is a marathon process of learning truth, applying truth, learning more truth, applying more truth…it is progressive…and we never arrive at total perfection until we see Jesus face to face.

God doesn’t back the “dump truck of truth” upon us and lets it rip hoping we don’t drown under the weight of it all...

He’s given us all we need for life and godliness, but in the chaos of life, we still need God-ordained wisdom to know how to weed through that chaos and apply all that truth we need at that moment.

Remember James 1:5 “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

So Habakkuk needs some wisdom…so instead of shrinking back, he continues to engage with God even further with more questions.

His questions provide us with a backdrop to two elements of God’s plan we have to wrestle with that makes it difficult to accept...

Sometimes God’s plan just doesn’t seem fair.

Habakkuk 1:13–16 “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, And You can not look on wickedness with favor. Why do You look with favor On those who deal treacherously? Why are You silent when the wicked swallow up Those more righteous than they? Why have You 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, Drag them away with their net, And gather them together in their fishing net. Therefore they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they offer a sacrifice to their net and burn incense to their fishing net; Because through these things their catch is large, And their food is plentiful.”

How can you use those who are more sinful to discipline those who are more righteous?

If God is sovereign (which He is) and holy (which He is) and cannot tolerate evil (which is also true) then why do those who mock Him seem to get all the breaks…have all the power…have all the wealth…

If nothing happens apart from God’s will, then God your will just seems a bit unfair!

In verses 14-16, Habakkuk uses an extended metaphor to describe how unfair it seems to him...it seems unfair for God to allow a military powerhouse, with strong leadership, who worship their own strength, who enjoy taking people captive, to come into Judah who has no leadership, possess no military strength, no protection, and carry them off as spoils of war!

We are just like fish and other marine creatures that are very populous and easy to catch...

They are the fishermen…they pose a global threat not just to Judah, but to all humanity...

There is no escaping their nets and they rejoice in all the people they have taken captive…they worship their own success...

Habakkuk has no problem acknowledging that God’s people need to be judged – what he doesn’t get is how God could use the Babylonians, who were completely unrighteous to be the instruments of judgment to those who are at least somewhat righteous...

God that just doesn’t seem fair…I know Judah is bad, but they’re not as bad as the Babylonians...God it just doesn’t seem fair that the wicked get to prosper while your people have to suffer...

God how is that fair?

Let’s pause for just a moment and ask ourselves if we really want God’s plan to be fair across the board...

see if we want God to be fair in his treatment of people who rebel against Him as the only sovereign God, then where would we fit in that picture...

What we need is to remember what God told Moses in Exodus 33:19

Exodus 33:19 (NASB95)

And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.”

God reiterates that through the Apostle Paul in Romans 9:14-26…encourage you to read that portion of Scripture on your own, but I want to highlight a couple of verses there...

Romans 9:15 (NASB95)

For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

Romans 9:20–21 (NASB95)

On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

Romans 9:26 (NASB95)

“And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.”

Do you realize that if God was going to be fair across the board, then none of us should be called “sons of the living God”…but God chose to show mercy and grace on you…on me…if we really want to talk about something being unfair, then let’s consider what happened to Jesus!

In light of all that, we can live by faith and accept the hardness of God’s plan when it seems unfair because we recognize God is a God of mercy and grace and He abundantly poured it out on us!

Sometimes the end seems to never come.

Habakkuk 1:17 “Will they therefore empty their net And continually slay nations without sparing?”

Are you going to allow them to continue to sin while you judge others for their sin?

Habakkuk is struggling because it seems to him their day of reckoning will never come!

He wonders if God will ever put a stop to the godless Babylonians…remember what we said last week…the day is coming when every knee will bow…that includes the people of 2024 and beyond who never acknowledge the God of Heaven as the only Sovereign God...

From a “personal chaos” perspective, whatever that “chaos” looks like for you right now, you can rest in knowing it will end.

You can also rest knowing God’s plan has purpose…to perfect you, to confirm you, to strengthen you, to establish you.

Remember 1 Peter 5 10

1 Peter 5:10 (NASB95)

After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.

Wait Patiently, Firmly Expecting God Understands your Situation Better than You.

Habakkuk 2:1 - I will stand on my guard post And station myself on the rampart; And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me, And how I may reply when I am reproved.

The way Habakkuk structured the first part of this verse provides us with an emphatic declaration of his next move…the second line essentially says the same thing as the first...

I will stand on my guard post…I will station myself on the rampart…

The rampart = tower = was the place one would be stationed to warn of invasion…All Habakkuk could do at this point was wait for God to answer and work His plan...

Look at the last part of that verse again…I do find it comical what he’s saying…

“God, I’m going to stand here and wait for your answer and I’m going to try and think of what I want to say to you when you tell me how dumb I was not to trust You”

If you’ve got to spank me, spank me…I’m going to get reproved, I know it…

you can do anything you want to me to God, I deserve it, go ahead and reprove me and I’ll figure out what to say back to you.

There are times when we can and ought to legitimately bring our petitions and lack of understanding to God…but we also need to remember who God is...

Let me remind you of Eccles 5:1-2

Ecclesiastes 5:1–2 NASB95

Guard your steps as you go to the house of God and draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they do not know they are doing evil. Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God. For God is in heaven and you are on the earth; therefore let your words be few.

In closing, what I am about to say next is going to be hard for many of you to hear because you want to be in control…I want to speak the truth in love to your hearts this morning...

Lesson for Life — You Don’t Need to Know Everything about God’s plan. You Just Need to Trust Him.

There is a part in all of us that believes we are entitled to know every detail of God’s plan…some struggle more with this because of their need to feel like they are in control...

What all of us need right now is to come to grips with the reality that there are some parts of God’s plan we will never know and understand…it requires us to live by faith.

Deuteronomy 29:29 (NASB95)

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.

A favorite verse for many is...Proverbs 3:5–6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.”

Wrap up!