Habakkuk PART 1 - God... Are You Listening? 06-05-2018

Habakkuk PART 1 - "God... Are You Listening?" Scholars suggest that Habakkuk was likely prophesying early in the reign of King Jehoiakim (sometime after 600 B.C). Jehoiakim was a puppet king, He was still a son of Josiah but was placed on the throne in Judah by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt. Unfortunately, unlike Josiah, Jehoiakin, allowed the kingdom to fall away from the worship of God and back into pagan religion. He’s best known as an incompetent king who allowed Judah to crumble morally and physically while building for himself a lavish palace. (Read about in Jeremiah 22:13-19). His reign was filled with internal corruption and all kinds of evil. There’s no doubt that there would have been many good, Godly people who found themselves in a tough spot during Jehoiakin's reign. How should they respond to the lack of justice, the increasing immorality and ongoing wickedness surrounding them? How should they respond to the evil and injustice surrounding them and indeed within their own kingdom? I hope you see that this problem is very relevant to Christians today. The truth is that all of us will have to deal with trouble, in some form or another, during our time in this world. God doesn’t promise us a wealthy, prosperous, easy, comfortable journey on this earth. His promise is that we will arrive safely at our destination. But throughout history, God’s people have had to struggle with the reality that this life isn’t always smooth sailing. 1:2 “How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?” In his circumstances, Habakkuk calls out “How long?” The Hebrew wording here is very strong, Habakkuk is openly accusing God of not acting or saving his people. It’s OK to not understand God… Isaiah 29:16 reminds us that we are just like clay pots, with a very limited ability to truly understand or question our creator about how he put us together. But do we have the right to question God in the things we don’t understand? Note that: Habakkuk’s cry is one of faith, he is trying to understand the character and work of God, not condemning God with critical judgement, but to discern God’s intentions. I believe that God wants thoughtful Christians. Christians who ponder and consider the eternal questions. In Isaiah 1:18 God sends the invitation: ‘Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord’. But it can’t be just an intellectual process. When we read the soul cry of men like Habakkuk, like Job and King David in the scriptures, we see that God is not deaf to our questions, because these questions come coupled with cries of distress and honest emotion. God is a personal and caring Father. He is genuinely concerned about our hopes, fears, questions and deepest emotions. 1:5 “Look at the nations and watch – and be utterly amazed” The Hebrew here is plural not singular, suggesting that it’s not just Habakkuk who will get to see what God would do, but all believers with the desire to see. The verbal stem when God tells them to ‘watch’ is hiphil, which means to give a careful, sustained and favourable contemplation. In other words, to take some time to look and watch and think about the world in the right way. The Lord then tells his people to “wonder” or “be utterly amazed”. The word can literally be translated “stunned”. The reason the people would be stunned and utterly amazed is because (v6) God is indeed going to act. Habakkuk's question was: “God are you doing anything” God’s answer is essentially: “Yes! Watch this.” Never be lulled into the idea that God is aloof and disconnected with the goings on of this world. He is deeply and intimately concerned in the worlds affairs and the affairs of those who live in it. By His sovereignty, God rules over every nation throughout all time. God explains that He was going to allow the Babylonians to invade Judah. This would fulfil part of His plan to deal justice on the evil that was being done there. Disciplining His people in order to draw them back to Himself. 1:12-17 Habakkuk’s second complaint So, Habakkuk complains again! Habakkuk’s problem in this second complaint is very similar to a common complaint in modern times. How can a good God, condone suffering and evil in the world? This is one of the most challenging… stunning… aspects of Gods sovereign rule over the earth. That the sovereign God, creator of the universe allowing people free will. C.s. Lewis – Mere Christianity “God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free. Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.” God gives us complete control over our own choices and yet is still able to fulfil His own purposes and plans. All the evil in the world, the realities of sickness, and death are all corruptions of God’s original plan and order for the world. It wasn’t meant to be like this. But it is like this because of the free will of man. It was our sin, that caused this. Even so, God hasn’t left us to suffer in our mistakes. He will accomplish His restorative plan – even amid the evil caused by sin. He can even turn a person’s evil purposes into good, and painful circumstances to save families. I can’t always understand how this works. Sometimes how God works is way above and beyond what I can grasp. Job put it well as He was struggling with these same problems: Job 26:14 – “These are just the beginning of all that he does, merely a whisper of his power. Who, then, can comprehend the thunder of his power?” 2:1 “I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts” Throughout the first chapter, Habakkuk has wrestled in prayer with God regarding his problems. First, He wrestled in prayer about the reality of evil and corruption in the world. Second, He wrestled in prayer about how God, the God who Habakkuk knows is good, could tolerate such evil. Too often when we have an issue – we talk to our spouses, complain to our friends, we question our doctors, read lots of articles on google and finally share a clever video on social media which expresses our exasperation over the issue in question. Habakkuk goes to the source of truth itself and lays bear his soul. Habakkuk sets a great example to us as believers. To start the conversation with the one person who truly has the ability to do something about our circumstances. To share our hearts with the one person who we can trust completely, to do what is right. To lay our fears at the feet of the one person who we know will bring us home safely. The bible is full of moments when God’s people close the doors of their prayer closets, climb into the lap of their heavenly father, and cry out to a prayer-answering God. Psalm 3 is a beautiful example. Now, I don’t believe that God leaves prayers unanswered. I believe that He responds to every prayer of the believer. When someone claims that God didn’t answer their prayers, they probably mean that God didn’t answer in the way they desired or expected. So it is here with Habakkuk. God has answered his prayer. But the answer wasn’t what he was looking for. So now, this man with nothing else to cling to but his faith in the goodness of God, sets himself to wait and see what God will do in expectation that the Lords answer will help him to answer his own questions. 2:1 The Sentinel In the Hebrew here, the second line essentially says the same thing as the first line. This arrangement is called a chiasmus and its purpose is to highlight the fact that Habakkuk is waiting diligently upon the Lord. Metaphor Some understand this verse as a metaphor expressing Habakkuk’s watchfulness and preparation to receive God’s word. In this way the ‘watch-tower’ is a place in the mind, where we withdraw ourselves from the world and wait upon the Lord. Literal On the other hand, its quite possible that Habakkuk literally went to the cities defensive siege-work tower to look and see if God really would answer him by bringing the Babylonians against Judah. The Babylonians were known to use the siege tactic in to overcome cities. What better place to watch what God would do then from the top of the city wall? Too often people use the excuse that they no longer believe in God because he fails to act in the tragic situations we see around our world. What we learn from books like Habakkuk, is that God is not some genie who grants us wishes. He is a sovereign Lord who will accomplish His Will, in His way, in His time. Does that make Him deaf to our prayers? Of course not. It means that we need to learn to be patient in our faith and wait on the Lord. (Psalm 27:14; 37:34; Prov. 20:22). Some believers are so afraid of annoying God, that they don’t share their hearts with him. He already knows your heart! God knows what our questions are. The best thing to do is to talk with Him about them. If you come away with nothing else from this morning’s message I want you to understand this: YOU CAN STILL BE A DEEPLY COMMITTED BELIEVER AND EXPRESS QUESTIONS AND FAITH SIMULTANEOUSLY. The book of Ecclesiastes shows us that humans can ask questions and seek to understand how God works in our world (Ecc. 3:16-4:16). But It also teaches that there comes a time when we should ‘go to the house of God’ with a receptive attitude and just listen, because it is a serious thing to lecture God on how he ought to work, and we shouldn’t be impulsive or hasty to do it. (Ecc. 5:1). When we get down to brass tacks, we need to understand our position in the universe in relation to God. He is in heaven, we aren’t. He sits enthroned over the universe, we don’t. As C.S. Lewis famously wrote in the Chronicles of Narnia referring to Aslan, the figure who symbolizes God, as ‘not a tame lion’. He acts in ways that we don’t fully understand or appreciate. But that doesn’t make him any less in control, or any less good. So to sum up. Feel free to bear your soul to the Lord. Feel encouraged to ask him the big questions. But even in the questions, remember that the Lord is God. He is in charge and well all things are said and done. We need to trust Him. So how did God answer Habakkuk? We’ll that’s a sermon for another time.