Waiting. . pt2

Introduction

Last week:

God is ok with your questions.

While you have questions, God has answers.

God’s answers are bigger than your problems.

In your waiting God is already working.

Hab 1:1-4 - Habakkuk sees the injustice and evil in a nation that is falling away from God and walking away from his plan for them.

Habakkuk essentially asks:

God, don’t you hear? (2a) God, don’t you care? (2b) God, won’t you act? (3a) God, are you not powerful enough? (3b) God, doesn’t your Word mean anything? (4)

Hab 1:5-11 - God answers Habakkuk with a solution; however, probably not one the prophet expected or wants.

God tells Habakkuk that he knows, sees, and hears what is going on and he already has a plan in motion to deal with it.

God’s plan, however, is to use the more wicked nation of Babylon to punish faithless Judah.

Questions that Habakkuk wrestled with are the same we hope to answer today:

What do you do when God’s response to your prayer about your suffering is NOT to remove it?

Your body has not been right for what seems like a never-ending season.

God could change him or her and the relationship would be radically different, but instead things stay the same.

How do you respond when God leads you into more suffering?

The job goes from bad to worse.

You’re barely treading water and people are throwing buckets of water on you.

What do you do when God’s response seems more confusing than the problem itself?

You see how God could quite simply (in your mind) solve things, yet God seems more confusing.

How can our faith remain strong when it seems like evil is winning?

Habakkuk’s second complaint:

Habakkuk 1:12–2:1 (ESV)

12 Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.

Pray to the big God near you.

Look at how Habakkuk comes to God again and even in his confusion comes to God in faith.

Habakkuk’s first response is not to post his complaint on Facebook but to face God in prayer.

What you do with your problems says more about your character.

*Do you air your complaints or ‘prayer’ your complaints?*

“The [dialogic call-and-response] format of Habakkuk underscores a theology of prayer at work in the book. Prayer is the first and best reflex for negotiating pain in the life of faith. . . Prayer provides the vocabulary to voice pain.”

( Heath A. Thomas, Habakkuk, ed. J. Gordon McConville and Craig Bartholomew, The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 38–39.)

It is important to not only pray but to know to whom you pray.

Habakkuk understands that he is praying to the covenant God of Creation.

God of Creation

“Are you not from everlasting?”

“You have ordained” - God moves nations

God is the Judge of right and wrong

Rock / established - related words - what God says, goes

Habakkuk understands the bigness of God.

And he also understand the nearness of God.

God of Covenant

LORD = Yahweh = personal name of God.

my God, my Holy One?

When you pray, do you call on God like you would call a helpline or like you would call your father?

ILLUST - as a dad, part of my job description is to fix everything and anything

God is God of creation over all nations

God is God of covenant relating to a specific people for a specific purpose.

*God over all and God for you.

What problem do you have that God cannot deal with?

What problem do you have that God does NOT care about?

This truth means when you pray about your situation, you are expressing in a personal relationship with the almighty God of all Creation.

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Trust the person of God even if you don’t understand the plan of God.

13 You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

14 You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler.

15 He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad. 16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich. 17 Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?

If God is all-good and all-powerful why to bad things happen to good people?

If God is all-good (“of purer eyes”) and all-powerful (“you make mankind”) then why is evil allowed to prosper?

This is probably one of if not the most popular objection to the Christian faith.

A Barna poll asked, "If you could ask God only one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask?" The most common response was, "Why is there pain and suffering in the world?"

I love how the Bible does not shy away from difficult questions.

Habakkuk does not fully answer this question in his short book and we will not be able to fully answer the question in our time either, but I believe it is important we at least touch on this if, for no other reason than to allow for the following truths in this passage to be considered.

Three negative statements and one positive:

1. The question of evil is NOT unique to Christianity.

It is not as though the problem of suffering is only a problem for the Christian. Every worldview and religion must account for the existence of evil and suffering and how to deal with it.

Hindus - karma - consequences - accept it

Muslims - ease own suffering by helping others in theirs

Buddhists - attain Nirvana by denying suffering

Atheists - say suffering is simply a product of our existence.

Renowned scientist and leading atheist Richard Dawkins:

“DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”

“if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes…blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

Even here the atheist cheats. Cannot speak of evil in any meaningful way.

If there is no God who acts as our true north for our moral compass, then right and wrong is only determined by popular consensus.

If this is the case (as some argue) then they can not, in any real or meaningful way, discuss justice or social reform, or right or wrong.

ILLUST - Dad G and taking his atheist friend’s sandwich.

2. Evil and suffering are NOT the opposite of a loving God.

The Bible is not Star Wars. There is not a light side with an equally powerful dark side.

God and evil are not yin and yang. They are not equal but opposite forces.

Origin of evil is a mystery.

3. Evil and suffering are NOT equal to the Creator.

God will win. There is God . . . and everything else.

“The prophet can identify what has gone wrong in the world precisely because he knows of God, his order, and his justice instilled in the creation itself. For instance, Habakkuk clearly invokes God’s creation order (see the discussion on Hab 1:14) to frame his second complaint. Without the prophet’s understanding of a God who founds the world with a sense of justice or rightness to its working, it becomes difficult to understand why the prophet calls upon God to do something in accord with how he has established his creation. The goodness of the Creator God becomes the ground by which the prophet can raise his voice in prayer.”

Heath A. Thomas, Habakkuk, ed. J. Gordon McConville and Craig Bartholomew, The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 40.

Unlike any other worldview, Christianity stands alone in the fact that it holds a way to deal with suffering in a way that is not hopeless.

Only Christianity has a God who enters into the suffering to redeem it.

The cross does not remove suffering — it redeems it.

If you want to know how there can be a good God with all of the evil in the world, look at the cross!

(ILLUST - had I not gone through anxiety, I would not be nearly as close to God as I am)

In his prayer, Habakkuk makes a distinction between the character of God and the character of the Babylonians along with their god.

God is holy, good, and pure:

13 You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong,

Babylonians god is their power (16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; )

God is good:

We know that (“God is good __________ and all the time __________”) the character of God is good all the time:

1 Chronicles 16:34 (ESV)

34 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!

Psalm 25:8 (ESV)

8 Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

Mark 10:18 (ESV)

18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.

Psalm 119:68 (ESV)

68 You are good and do good; teach me your statutes.

If all this is true, then Habakkuk can:

Wait and watch with a focus of faith.

Habakkuk 2:1

1 I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

Habakkuk does two things:

Takes a stand (at a watchpost)

He waits

Productive waiting - military idea - once something happens there will be movement

Looks out

This is an active looking — a focus

What direction is he looking? Toward God

Psalm 121:1–2 ESV

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? 2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 46 (ESV)

1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, 3 though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah 4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. 5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. 6 The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. 7 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah 8 Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought desolations on the earth. 9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire. 10 “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” 11 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

Psalm 73 (ESV)

1 Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. 2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. 3 For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. 5 They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. 6 Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. 7 Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. 8 They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. 9 They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. 10 Therefore his people turn back to them, and find no fault in them. 11 And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” 12 Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. 13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. 14 For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. 15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children. 16 But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, 17 until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end. 18 Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. 19 How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! 20 Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. 21 When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, 22 I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. 23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. 28 But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.

*PRAY*