How Long?

How long will these restrictions last? Are you getting as tired of them as I am? Are you getting as tired of simply watching church online, rather than being with your brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you tired of the line ups just to get into a store to buy groceries? Are you sick and tired of not being able to see your loved ones?

I know I am. We all are crying out, “How long, O Lord?”

But it is not just these coronavirus restrictions. It is the violence, the racism, the peaceful protests taken over by willfully violent and evil people who damage property and steal. It is the wars and rumours of wars. It is the attack on the most vulnerable, the pressure to commit murder to end an unwanted pregnancy. It is the utter lack of valuing human life that we see in the world, where people would rather buy a luxury vehicle rather than help a homeless person.

It is the fact that the whole earth is groaning as in labour. Wracked with pain, from pollution, from mismanagement, from willful waste. We all are crying out, “How long, O Lord? Will this torment never end?”

And so, today we find ourselves resonating with the prophet Habakkuk. He also cried out to the Lord, “How Long, how long shall I cry out and you will not hear?”

You see, Habakkuk lived in a time such as this. He served the people of Judah during the reign of King Josiah’s wicked son Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim did not follow in the footsteps of his father, who had brought many reforms to Judah—calling the people of Israel to turn away from their false gods and to worship the one true God, and keep his commandments. Rather he was a terrible piece of work. He was guilty of murder, incest, violence, adultery, idolatry, and more. He was thoroughly wicked, and makes leaders like Hitler and Stalin look kind in comparison.

Under his rule, true worship didn’t occur. People were encouraged to do whatever they thought was best. The laments raised in Habakkuk’s prayer harken back to the days of Noah, when all the thoughts of all the people were only violent all the time.

We are not immune to violence, are we? Not only do we see it in the T.V. shows and movies we watch at home, we see it, daily, it seems, in the news. It seems like the whole world is one big, seething act of rebellion and violence.

Out of all of what Habakkuk is witnessing—everywhere he turns he sees more violence, more destruction, more iniquity, more strife and contention. He sees that the very law, God’s law, which was given to govern society, to guard the hearts and the lives of all Israel, and not only the Israelites, but the foreigners as well—the aliens within their gates, God’s law is ignored.

God’s law was given to shine as a beacon of justice and righteousness in a violent world. Under God’s law, people thrive. There is but one race, the human race, and even though God chose the people of Israel, they were never meant to be isolated and protectionist. They were to share the truth of God to the world. They were to share God’s laws. They were to be a blessing, bringing the truth about the one True God to everyone.

But here, in Habakkuk’s day, in the year 605 B.C. the law itself is impotent, paralyzed. There is justice, no righteousness. The wicked surround the righteous and they have no power. So the wicked do whatever they want to do, and they get away with it.

Seeing this, the prophet Habakkuk, pours out his burden his total lament for his nation to God. That’s what the word oracle means. It means a weight, a burden, a deep, heartfelt concern. Picture a man, who looks out upon his beloved country, and sees that the Assyrians have occupied the northern kingdom of Israel, exiling many of the people there, and who are ruling with total wickedness.

Seeing the threat from Assryia to the north, and Egypt to the south, he cries out to God, “How long? How long will I cry out and you won’t hear? Why do you make me see iniquity, why do you idly look at wrong?”

You can hear Habakkuk’s breaking heart. He desperately wants to see justice in his land. He desperately wants to see people returned to something like what they’d enjoyed under king Josiah. So why isn’t God getting rid of Jehoiakim? Why isn’t he replacing him with someone better, a king like David? Is the Lord deaf? Why doesn’t the Lord do what he had promised to do?

This is where this book in the Bible is quite different from other prophetic books. Usually, the prophets addressed the kings and the leaders, the elders and the priests, calling them out for their wickedness.

Habakkuk doesn’t call out Jehoiakim, like Jeremiah did. He calls out God! He addresses God. He rightly identifies God as the one who is in control of the universe. He knows God knows what is going on. He is simply wondering, how long, how long must he put up with such violence? How long must he suffer? How long must he wait? How long must wickedness and injustice rule?

Then, surprisingly, God answers Habakkuk directly. God looks down and sees and hears him. God knows his heart. God knows what is going on. God knew this would happen. God knew, way, way back hundreds of years earlier, what he would do.

So God shares his plan with Habakkuk.

In Deuteronomy 28, God foretold of a time in the future when Israel would turn from him, no longer serving the Lord their God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things—the very blessings of God became their idol, their gods. They worshipped the gifts, not the giver. They were covetousness, and wicked.

Because of this God said in verse 49, “The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand”. This nation will “besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land...” (v. 52).

Look again at verses 6-11, God is raising up a nation, a nation that has already destroyed Nineveh and has scored a victory against the Egyptians. A nation that at that moment, in 605, was hardly a threat, hardly a whisper, but by 586 would completely overrun Judah, laying siege to all their fortified cities, piling up dirt from outside, so that they could ride up a ramp and take it captive. They would ride in and utterly destroy everything in their path.

At the time that the Lord spoke these words to Habakkuk, no one gave one whit of thought to the Babylonians. They were a nothing, a no body, no threat to anyone. But in a few short years, God would unite these ragged bands, and make them into the most powerful, most fearsome warrior nation anyone had seen.

Poor Habakkuk, there he prays, his heart, truly breaking for his people, for the wickedness in the people, and the wickedness of the leaders. How can anything get any worse?

Did you not think that? In this crazy covid time, how can things get worse? How about a wicked cop who snuffs out a life of an image bearer of God, for whatever reason, who cared nothing for the living, breathing human being pinned helplessly underneath him. And the violent and wicked response to this man’s death? Who could have seen that?

Here we are, and like Habakkuk, we wonder, how long? How long will all this wickedness last? And so, we cry out to God also! “How long, O Lord? How long?”

But here’s the thing. We lack perspective. We see things from close up. We cannot possibly see what God sees. Like Habakkuk, we have our perspective, and it is bad. But God sees so much more.

God saw the evil and the wickedness. God saw the reforms Josiah made, but which clearly didn’t last. God saw that the hearts of is people were false. And so, God put into action, the plan he’d had all along. He would rise up a wicked and terrible nation to punish and discipline his people.

He planned it. Next week, we’ll ask some very good questions, like why? And why these wicked people? God’s plan was to draw his people back to him. To bring them to him. To cause them to repent, after all their glorious things all the things they had loved and trusted and treasured were stripped away, and all they were left with was God. So that their hearts would be turned back to the truth, and to God.

That’s his plan.

That’s what God is doing.

Now is the time to examine our hearts. Now is the time to evaluate, not only ourselves, but our church, our congregation, Maranatha. Are we serving God, or ourselves? We must honestly ask the Holy Spirit to search us. We must honestly seek the answers.

May I share something that breaks my heart? A chaplain at the Lethbridge jail has been sharing about prisoners who are coming to the Lord in prison! Isn’t that fantastic?

This is what breaks my heart: the prisoners who come to Christ in prison are very aware that there is no church for them once they get out of jail. No church in Lethbridge will have them. No church will let them in. Churches in Lethbridge look like country clubs. We serve the elite. We should look like recovery centres for sin addicts. “Hi, my name is Paul and I’m a sinner.”

This morning, we celebrated communion. Communion. We celebrated that, in Christ, we are made right with God. All our sins are forgiven. We are no longer prisoners to sin and slaves to shame and wickedness. We are right with God, because Jesus, an innocent, perfect, fully human, fully God, gave up his life as an atonement, a sacrifice for your sin, for my sin. Because of that, God the Father looks at him, and remembers that our sins are gone, as far as the east is from the west.

Can we extend that communion to others? To others in this church, to others outside the church—to released prisoners? To the homeless, to the addict, to the recovering person? By God’s grace we can.

We can because the church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord; she is his new creation by water and the Word. From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride; with his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.

Jesus died for you, for me, for all. We have to share it. Especially now, we have to share Jesus. The world is crying out for answers, we must tell the world. Amen.