Sometimes when we find ourselves in a tight spot, a difficult situation, a place where we really don’t want to be – the question we ask is How Long O Lord, How Long? Have you ever asked God that question when you’re doing it tough?

 

How Long and Why?

Have you ever been in a place; a tight spot; a difficult spot? Things aren’t going right; things just aren’t fair; it’s ugly; it’s painful; it’s uncomfortable and you think to yourself, “God, what is going on here? What are You doing? Why are You letting this happen? Why is this so unfair?”

Chances are we have all been in that place, sometimes it seems like God lets things go on forever; things that just aren’t right; things that are so unfair and it’s easy to start thinking, “Well, God why are You letting this go on? I mean, You could step in any time and act – You can end this injustice, You can end this pain. You can do whatever You like. I come and ask You day after day – I pour my heart out to You. You’re supposed to be God – a God of love and justice, aren’t You? Isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t that who you are?”

Today, we are kicking off a series called, “How Long O Lord, How Long?”. Something we are going to be talking about over the next few weeks, “How Long O Lord, How Long?”. Think back to your past – you to yours, me to mine. We think back to times where injustice has plagued our lives. For me, it was a time of deep betrayal and it seemed to me at the time that those who betrayed me came out on top.

It was a time in my life when I went to God, often through tears and in deep pain and ask Him those two questions: “Why?” and “How long?”. What about you? What do you see in your past, maybe even in your present? Maybe even, as you look forward to the future, such as it is, what do you see that causes you to ask those questions – “God, why … why and how long?”

I’m always so conscience when I sit here and share these things with you – well, you might be listening to this programme in a place that’s safe, perhaps uncomfortable, perhaps not where you would like to be right now, but in the scheme of things, safe and the next person … that person could literally be in an incredibly dangerous place, in a refugee camp, where children are dying of Aids; in a jungle fleeing from soldiers or rebels in a village. Should I stay, should I go?

See, for every person who is sitting today listening to this programme in a relatively wealthy, relatively safe comfort of a middle class home in a country like Australia or England or the U.S. – for every one of those there are thousands, tens of thousands listening to this programme in their places of poverty, injustice, war and oppression. That’s the reality. So when we talk about those questions, “Why?” and “how long?” for many, many people listening today, these are questions which are matters of life and death.

That’s why these are such important questions and that’s why we are going on a journey these next few weeks on the programme; a journey to discover what God is up to when we ask questions of Him because when we are in that place where we cry out, “God, why and how long?” when we are in that place, we feel incredibly alone but it turns out, we’re not.

I want to introduce you today to a man called Habakkuk. He’s an Old Testament prophet. Okay, it might be a weird name – let’s get used to it – Habakkuk. He was exactly … exactly in this place. In fact, we are going to be looking at the discussing that he had with God from that very place today, this week and the next few weeks on the programme.

And as I have sat and read this conversation – this ping-pong match between Habakkuk and God – I have been really amazed … amazed at two things. Firstly, how Habakkuk learned and grew and found himself in a completely different frame of mind as a result of his discussion with God. And secondly, how amazing God’s plans were! How big, how sweeping, how surprising God’s plans were compared to Habakkuk’s narrow, human perspective.

Today, I want to share with you just … just the cry of Habakkuk’s heart. This is just one man crying out to God. Have a listen – if you’ve got a Bible, grab it. Open it up at Habakkuk, towards the end of the Old Testament, chapter 1 – we’re looking at verses 1 to 4:

The Oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous – therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

 “The oracle that Habakkuk saw”, literally means “the burden”, “the load” on his heart. Habakkuk came to God with a heavy heart. That’s what this short book towards the end of the Old Testament is – Habakkuk pouring out the burden of his heart to God. What’s the burden? ‘Well God, You haven’t been answering my prayer. How long will I cry out to You for help? Where are you? What are you doing? Look at what’s going on around here! I’ve been telling You about this violence; crying out to You and You don’t do a thing!’

There’s wrongdoing and trouble and destruction and violence and strife and contention – this is all the stuff that’s going on in the Nation of Israel back when Habakkuk is writing in the late 7th century BC. God’s chosen people are doing all this stuff and the one thing that is meant to prevent it – God’s Law, or God’s system of justice – even that Law has become slack and blunted. The unrighteous people outnumber the righteous – they surround them. There’s no justice – judgement is perverted.

It’s pretty bad stuff! It’s hard to imagine a less desirable combination of circumstances than wrongdoing and trouble and destruction and violence and strife and contention and on top of that … on top of everything, injustice.

Now we are going to have a look at how God deals with this; how He answers Habakkuk’s questions next, but right now I just want to rest a moment in Habakkuk’s burden; the burden of this man’s heart; the cry of his soul to God. It’s easy to imagine that when we front up to God we have to put on our Sunday best and make sure that we have our act together and be strong and confident and a man or woman of great faith. But here it is in the Old Testament, in the Bible, one of God’s prophets crying out from his despair to God; sharing with God the deepest burdens of his heart.

“Look God, look what’s going on here amongst Your people! How long, O Lord, how long will You let this go on? And why are You allowing this to happen?” And as we are going to see today and the next few weeks on the programme, the cry of this man’s heart opened him up to a journey of discovery with God.

He didn’t necessarily discover the things he wanted to discover. God is not going to dance to our tune, but by the end of it all, Habakkuk was a changed man; a profoundly changed man; a man singing God’s praises, even thought none of the circumstances around him had changed at all. It happened because he poured his heart out to God and then dared to listen to what God had to say.

I wonder … I wonder if there’s not something in that for you and for me!

 

Just You Wait

Every generation looks at their parents and wonders, “Why do they do that?” Do you remember as a kid, you’d want to have fun and play but your parents had different plans – maybe it was time to set the table or to do the homework or to go inside and have a bath. Seems that parents think so differently and act so differently to children and often when you are a child, it just doesn’t make sense.

When you are a child it seems that your parents, well, they’re there to stop us from having fun. And then … then your kid brother does something to you – pokes you in the eye or something so you whack him back and all they see is you hitting him back and you get punished instead of that little brat kid brother of yours.

You’re with me right? When we look at things through the eyes of a child, they look so different from how they appear through the eyes of the parent and it’s not until we do the growing up that we figure it out. In fact, when we’ve become parents ourselves, we can look back on some of those things our parents did – the kind of things that offended us when we were kids – and we can see exactly why they did what they did. It all makes sense now – when we grow up and understand where they were coming from.

Habakkuk had this problem as we saw earlier – it is hard to imagine a less desirable set of circumstances than wrongdoing, trouble, destruction, violence, strife, contention and injustice. But what God had to say may shock you – it certainly shocked poor old Habakkuk and yet there is something really important in this for you and me, here and now. Have a listen to what God’s response was to Habakkuk’s complaint. You can pick it up in Habakkuk chapter 1, verses 5 to 11:

‘Look at the nations, and see!’ says God. ‘Be astonished! Be astounded!
For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if I told you.
For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.’

In other words, God is going to unleash the Chaldeans, the Babylonians. He might have well said to Habakkuk, “Hitler’s Third Reich,” that was the effect of it. Now, have a look how God goes on to describe them, beginning in verse 7 of chapter 1:

Dread and fearsome they are; their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.
Their horses are swifter than leopards, more menacing than wolves at dusk; their horses charge.

Their horsemen come from far away; they fly like an eagle swift to devour.
They all come for violence, with faces pressing forward; they gather captives like sand.
At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport.

They laugh at every fortress, and heap up the earth to take it.
Then they sweep by like the wind; they transgress and become guilty; their own might is their god!

Now, admittedly, things amongst God’s own chosen people were pretty ugly – they were! And interestingly, God has no dispute with anything that Habakkuk has to say about God’s own people. God doesn’t turn around to Habakkuk and say, “Well, no Habakkuk, you know, you are being a bit hard; you’re being a bit emotional. Pull yourself together man.” No, clearly God agrees with Habakkuk. That’s great; God sees the injustices even more clearly that Habakkuk does. But look at how He responds:

‘Be astonished! Be astounded. You’re not going to believe this for I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own’.

God is promising a holocaust. I don’t use that word lightly – I use it very deliberately. The Chaldeans had risen rapidly to become the dominate world power and God promises to use them as a sweeping arm of judgement against His own people because of the strife and injustice and violence being perpetrated by them.

Now would you expect God to do that? No? Me neither! See, I would expect Him to step in and slap the bad guys across the wrist – even deal with them severely and then to bring peace and rest. You’ll notice that I rather conveniently number myself amongst the righteous rather than amongst the unrighteous. I suspect we all do.

What Habakkuk discovers here is that God’s thoughts aren’t his thoughts; God’s ways aren’t his ways. This loving God promises a horrific judgement – dread and fearsome and horses swifter that leopards and eagles that devour and … it’s awful. You know something? There is something in this for you and me. We are the little people … we are the people who so often are impacted by forces of injustice and oppression that seem overwhelmingly greater than anything we can ever deal with. That’s what was happening for Habakkuk.

And when we are in the middle of that mess, suffering the pain of injustice, it feels as though not even God can do anything. Well, it is time to think again because God is an awesome and mighty God and He hates injustice and violence and unrighteousness and oppression – He hates that more than you and I could ever do and that’s why this God of infinite love is also a God of judgement.

For a long time that never made sense to me – but the fact that He loves us so much … so much, is the reason that His judgement against those who rebel against Him and harm those whom He loves, is the reason that His judgement is so awful.

Whatever injustice is going on in this world, whatever violence, oppression, evil; whatever it is, wherever it is, however it’s being perpetrated, it will not go unpunished by God; God sees it, He aches for those who are being impacted by it and one day He will absolutely bring His unique brand of justice and righteousness and holiness to bear on it. He will!

 

Hang on a Minute

You know something? There is this one thing about God I wish I could change – just one thing. I wish I could make Him see things my way – not every day, just once in a while. You know, when I am in a difficult situation I have a plan of how to get out of it and my plan is always a good one.

I draw a straight line from where I am to where I want to be, the most direct route; the quickest path from A to B and my plan is for me to travel that path in the blink of an eye. It’s a pretty good plan, don’t you think? I mean, hey, it doesn’t get any better than that, but can I tell you how rarely, how very rarely it happens that way.

It seems to me that God’s plan is always this convoluted journey, over hill and dale; through deserts and storms and one step forward and three steps back and … God’s plan is so rarely my plan; God’s way is so rarely my way and hopefully, you gathered by now that I am being just a little tongue in cheek about myself. But wouldn’t it be nice if just now and then, God’s plans were like ours – just now and then – from A to B by the shortest possible path.

Now Habakkuk has been crying out to God about violence and injustice in his land amongst God’s chosen people – he’s crying out, unloading the burden of his heart, finally God answers him but Habakkuk definitely doesn’t get the answer he was looking for. Well, needless to say, old Habakkuk here – he’s got a bit of a problem.

He is bawling his eyes out before God and instead of God giving him what he wanted – the shortest, most convenient route from A to B – God promises something completely different – so shocking, so fearsome that the first thing that God says is designed to cushion the blow of what’s about to come next:

‘Look at the nations and see! Be astounded! Be astonished! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told’.

And so Habakkuk responds to God with his concerns. Have a listen to what he has to say to God when this stunning plan of a holocaust on God’s people, through the Chaldeans is set out by God. This is … this is what Habakkuk says:

‘Are you not from of old my Lord my God, my Holy One?
You shall not die.
O Lord, you have marked them for judgement;
and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.
Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, you cannot look on wrongdoing;
Why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?’

In other words Habakkuk is saying, “Just … just … just hang on a minute God, I just want to remind You of something: You’re God, remember? You’re the holy One, You’re holy, that’s spelt, “H.O.L.Y”, which means You can’t use the Chaldeans, You’ve marked them for judgement and punishment because they’re not Your chosen people. Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil; You can’t let these evil people bring greater evil upon Your own people. You can’t let these treacherous Chaldeans swallow us up. You just can’t stand by and let that happen, no, no, no, no, this is not a very good plan here God. It … it’s nice that you agree with me that something has got to be done but just hang on here and let’s sit down and talk about this and rethink this plan of Yours.” That’s what old Habakkuk is saying.

And he goes on to drive his point home with God, beginning in Habakkuk chapter 1, verse 14. He says:

You have made people like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler.
The enemy brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net,
he gathers them in his seine; and he rejoices and exults.
Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his seine;
for by them his portion is lavish, and his food is rich.
Is he then going to keep on emptying his net, and destroying nations without mercy

“This is going to be upon your head, God,” Habakkuk’s saying, “You have made us people like the fish of the sea and like crawling things with no ruler. We’re supposed to be Your people, made in Your image, and then You scoop us up in a net and just destroy us. What kind of a plan is that, God? We are Your chosen people, remember?”

Of course that’s what ends up happening, a few years later – exactly that happens. The Chaldeans come and destroy Jerusalem and take God’s people into captivity; into slavery for seventy years in Babylon.

Let me ask you – what do you make of this? This God who is supposed to be a God of love and of mercy – wreaking this awful, awesome judgement on His very own people, who, yes, have turned their backs on Him – yes, they’re doing violent, horrible, unjust, contentious things, absolutely, but this … this God?

What do you make of this sort of God? Because this is the very sort of God that the Bible is teaching about – not some nice little tame lamb but a ferocious lion, about to tear His people down and bring them low. What do you make of this God?

Well, I have to tell you up front, I was kind of with Habakkuk here. I think Habakkuk has a point, don’t you?

Well, next week on the programme we are going to look at God’s response and one of the interesting things is how Habakkuk grows over this time of conversation with God. But there’s a point here that can’t be dressed up. I can’t sweep it under the carpet for you, even though you’d like me to and that point is this: God is sovereign and mighty and powerful and He does what He decides to do. I can’t tell you why He does things the way He does. Why He doesn’t fly us from point A to point B in a soft air-conditioned first class comfort each time but He doesn’t. And we can either fight that or we can go with that.

Next week, we are going to see how Habakkuk turns around and comes to understand what God is on about here. And I am really looking forward to sharing Habakkuk’s journey with you of these next few weeks – a journey of growth in peace and understanding as he talks with God – this God who reveals who He is and what His plans are, even though they’re not the plans of men. They’re not Habakkuk’s plans and those plans, whether we like it or not – more often than not, look nothing like the plans we have.

I love the fact that Habakkuk was able to come and unburden his soul before God. That God spoke to him of an awesome, mighty judgement and that God then takes Habakkuk on a journey and a dialogue which grows this man to the point where nothing has changed in the circumstances and yet the praise of God is on his lips.

I’ve got to tell you, God wants to do that with you and with me.

“God, why … why and how long?”

I’m always so conscience when I sit here and share these things with you – well, you might be listening to this programme in a place that’s safe, perhaps uncomfortable, perhaps not where you would like to be right now, but in the scheme of things, safe and the next person … that person could literally be in an incredibly dangerous place, in a refugee camp, where children are dying of Aids; in a jungle fleeing from soldiers or rebels in a village. Should I stay, should I go?

See, for every person who is sitting today listening to this programme in a relatively wealthy, relatively safe comfort of a middle class home in a country like Australia or England or the U.S. – for every one of those there are thousands, tens of thousands listening to this programme in their places of poverty, injustice, war and oppression. That’s the reality. So when we talk about those questions ‘Why and how long?” for many, many people listening today, these are questions which are matters of life and death.

That’s why these are such important questions and that’s why we are going on a journey these next few weeks on the programme; a journey to discover what God is up to when we ask questions of Him because when we are in that place where we cry out, “God, why and how long?” when we are in that place, we feel incredibly alone but it turns out, we’re not.

I want to introduce you today to a man called Habakkuk. He’s an Old Testament prophet. Okay, it might be a weird name – let’s get used to it – Habakkuk. He was exactly … exactly in this place. In fact, we are going to be looking at the discussing that he had with God from that very place today, this week and the next few weeks on the programme.

And as I have sat and read this conversation – this ping-pong match between Habakkuk and God – I have been really amazed … amazed at two things. Firstly, how Habakkuk learned and grew and found himself in a completely different frame of mind as a result of his discussion with God. And secondly, how amazing God’s plans were! How big, how sweeping, how surprising God’s plans were compared to Habakkuk’s narrow, human perspective.

Today, I want to share with you just … just the cry of Habakkuk’s heart. This is just one man crying out to God. Have a listen – if you’ve got a Bible, grab it. Open it up at Habakkuk, towards the end of the Old Testament, chapter 1 – we’re looking at verses 1 to 4:

The Oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous – therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

 “The oracle that Habakkuk saw”, literally means “the burden”, “the load” on his heart. Habakkuk came to God with a heavy heart. That’s what this short book towards the end of the Old Testament is – Habakkuk pouring out the burden of his heart to God. What’s the burden? “Well God, You haven’t been answering my prayer. How long will I cry out to You for help? Where are you? What are you doing? Look at what’s going on around here! I’ve been telling You about this violence; crying out to You and You don’t do a thing!”

There’s wrongdoing and trouble and destruction and violence and strife and contention – this is all the stuff that’s going on in the Nation of Israel back when Habakkuk is writing in the late 7th century BC. God’s chosen people are doing all this stuff and the one thing that is meant to prevent it – God’s Law, or God’s system of justice – even that Law has become slack and blunted. The unrighteous people outnumber the righteous – they surround them. There’s no justice – judgement is perverted.

It’s pretty bad stuff! It’s hard to imagine a less desirable combination of circumstances than wrongdoing and trouble and destruction and violence and strife and contention and on top of that … on top of everything, injustice.

Now we are going to have a look at how God deals with this; how He answers Habakkuk’s questions next, but right now I just want to rest a moment in Habakkuk’s burden; the burden of this man’s heart; the cry of his soul to God. It’s easy to imagine that when we front up to God we have to put on our Sunday best and make sure that we have our act together and be strong and confident and a man or woman of great faith. But here it is in the Old Testament, in the Bible, one of God’s prophets crying out from his despair to God; sharing with God the deepest burdens of his heart.

“Look God, look what’s going on here amongst Your people! How long, O Lord, how long will You let this go on? And why are You allowing this to happen?” And as we are going to see today and the next few weeks on the programme, the cry of this man’s heart opened him up to a journey of discovery with God.

He didn’t necessarily discover the things he wanted to discover. God is not going to dance to our tune, but by the end of it all, Habakkuk was a changed man; a profoundly changed man; a man singing God’s praises, even thought none of the circumstances around him had changed at all. It happened because he poured his heart out to God and then dared to listen to what God had to say.

I wonder … I wonder if there’s not something in that for you and for me!

So have you ever been crying out to God during a difficult time in your life and you pray and pray and pray and … nothing. Dead silence from above. So you think to yourself, “When Will God Finally Show up?”

 

Turning Point

Well, I don’t know if you had the chance to join me on the program last week, but we were looking at one of the most common problems of all in this series.  Why God doesn’t always show up when we want Him to, and when He does, why He doesn’t do things the way we planned and the way we wanted.  I think we have all been in that place, so that’s why I’ve called this series, “How Long O Lord, How Long?”

And we took at this dilemma through the eyes of the prophet Habakkuk.  Here’s how it unfolds.  There’s a terrible injustice going on amongst God’s people.  In fact it’s hard to imagine a less desirable combination of circumstances. The wrong doing and trouble, destruction and violence, strife and contention and on top of all that, injustice.  This is what Habakkuk says in chapter 1 beginning at verse 2:

O Lord how long shall I cry for your help and you will not listen.  Or cry to you, ‘Violence!’ and you will not save.

So God answers poor old Habakkuk, but he promises a solution that Habakkuk just doesn’t want. A literal holocaust, one that actually went on the happen in 586-587 BC.  He answers Habakkuk by saying this:  (I’m reading from Chapter 1 verse 5 and 6)

God says, ‘Look at the nations and see, be astonished and see. For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told.  For I’m rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce, and impetuous nation who march through the breadth of the earth and seize dwellings not their own.’

Great! Brilliant! Thanks God, so now what? Well, I’ll tell you, so now what. Habakkuk does what any self-respecting Old Testament prophet would do.  He does what you or I would do.  He says to God,

‘What, are you nuts? Are you for real?  Do you know what you’re saying?  You are God and we’re your chosen people and these filthy unrighteous Chaldeans, you can’t possibly use them against us because you’re a holy God and we’re your people and that’s it.  You can’t do it.  We have to rethink this’.  You can read about it for yourself in Habakkuk chapter 1 verses 12–17.

Old Habakkuk really gets stuck into God.  And why wouldn’t he?  My hunch is your or I would have a pretty similar reaction.  All this violence already going on and God’s solution is to promise a holocaust?  Well, thank you God.  But as I said last time we were together, and I want to unpack this a whole bunch more today.

There are two things that really strike you about this story. The first is that God is a sovereign God.  He decides, He does it His way and that’s it.  And secondly, is that Habakkuk chats with this awesome, mighty, loving God, it starts to change Him.  It changes Him in ways that maybe he wouldn’t have expected.

Think about it.  We all go through this. We’re in a tight spot, we ask God to fly us out of there in air-conditioned, first class comfort, like now, the quickest way from point A to point B. So often, most often, He just doesn’t do it that way.  And so we start thrashing around and kicking around and screaming and saying, God do you realise what you are doing. Here.  Maybe you need some help with this.  Maybe you need my counsel, my advice, my opinion.  But derr!

But after Habakkuk had his dummy spit, something extraordinary takes place.  Have a listen to what Habakkuk has to say to himself and then to God after the big dummy spit we looked at last week.  Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 1:

I will stand at my watch-post and station myself on the rampart.  I will keep watch to hear what He will say to me and what He will answer concerning my complaint.

See so often after a dummy spit we go off in a huff, in pride, in arrogance, but that’s not what’s happening here.  Something’s changing in Habakkuk’s heart. He’s poured out his burdens to God; he’s listened to God’s response.  It doesn’t seem right this whole holocaust thing, it just doesn’t. So he tells, God right to his face, tells Him in no uncertain terms what he thinks of God’s plan to send the Chaldeans to wipe out God’s very own people.

But then he makes an important decision.  He decides to go up   to his watch post up on the rampart, up on the top of the city walls, up high above the day-to-day pressures and carry-on.
When we get up there and watch and wait expectantly to see what God has to say about my complaint. You know what, it’s a good thing that he was open and honest with God.  It’s a good thing that his heart is starting to turn and to be open to receive what God has to say.

And the moment he gets into that place at his watch post on the rampart, he keeps watching and waiting on God, look at what happens.  I’m reading from chapter 2 beginning at verse 2:

Then the Lord answered me and said, write the vision, make it plain on tables, so that a runner may read it.  For there is still a vision for the appointed time.  It speaks of the end, its does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not delay.  Look at the proud.  Their spirit isn’t right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

Moreover, wealth is treacherous.  The arrogant do not endure.  They open their throats as wide as Sheol, like death, they never have enough. They gather all the nations for themselves and collect all the peoples as their own.

What’s God saying here to Habakkuk? I’ve got a vision, I’ve got a plan, write it down.  Now it’s going to happen.  It may take a little while.  It’s going to happen just at the right time.  Trust me.

Now God says to Habakkuk, have a look around.  Look at the proud.  Their spirit is not right in them.  But the righteous, they live by faith.  And all those people who trust in wealth, well it’s treacherous arrogance won’t endure, their time is coming.

God’s saying to Habakkuk: trust me child, I see the iniquity, I see the injustice, I see the arrogance, I see the wealthy who don’t look after the poor. I see the unjust judges. I see it all and I have a plan.  And that plan is coming.  Wait for it wait for it, trust in me, just wait for it. I know what I’m doing.

We’re going to look more at this coming judgement later in the program.  But right now, do you see the change that‘s happening here in Habakkuk. His heart’s open.  He’s ready to receive God’s word He’s ready to drink it in.  Even if God’s answer is  isn’t what he’d expected or planned for or hoped for, God’s answer comes from the God of love and the God of justice. God’s answer is about the big picture. God’s answer is God’s answer and for Habakkuk it’s time just to drink it in.

I don’t know where you are or what you’re going through right now, but let me encourage you to take your complaint to God. Whatever injustice, whatever unfairness, whatever dilemma that God doesn’t seem to have dealt with or righted, (How Long O God?) take it to Him and wait for His response.  Wait expecting Him to answer because He will.  Just at the right time, He will. And when He does, it may not be quite the thing that you were hoping for or expecting. And like Habakkuk you may have something to say to God about that.

Let me encourage you to truly, truly and honestly pour your heart unto the Lord your God and when you’re done, when you are spent, when you have taken our complaint to Him get up into the watch tower on the rampart, get up there and wait for His response. Be ready to hear from Him in His word during prayer, as you see His hand in the things that are unfolding around you in your life.  Because when we wait on the Lord, He will answer us.  He will show up.  He honours us when we honour Him, by sharing with Him, like Habakkuk, the deepest burdens of our heart.

 

The Time Will Surely Come

Maybe I’m showing my age here, but I’m old enough to remember back to the 1970’s hit song from Frank Sinatra On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. It was one of those iconic hits and it’s such a meaningful song on so many levels:

On a clear day rise and look around you
and you’ll see who you are.
On a clear day how it will astound you
that the glow of your being outshines every star.

Of course, life doesn’t always feels like that, because it’s not always a clear day.  So often life is foggy and stormy and we can’t see very far. The cares of this world, the cares of today, the worries about tomorrow mean that instead of being able to see forever, our eyes are downcast.  We’ve stopped dreaming, we’ve stopped hoping.  We’re just surviving.  Sound familiar?  It should because that’s how most people live their lives, sad to say.

And I guess that’s what we’ve been looking at this last couple of weeks on the program, seeing the world through the words of the Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk.  This man, who all around him saw injustice and violence and pain amongst God’s very own people. And so he goes to God and effectively says to God, Lord, what so you think you’re up to.  Why are you letting these things happen, how long O Lord, how long will you let these things go on? And in response God blows away the fog and the smog and God makes it a clear day.

Now I’m an optimist, really I am.  I’m someone who is always dreaming about the future. Hoping and believing, it’s the way I’ve been wired. There are of course down sides to my personality type, we all have those. But this is one of my upsides: believing God for His best in my life, believing that God is going to do mighty things in me and through me.

But, even with that sort of wiring inside, there are some days where the cares of today and the worries about tomorrow weigh me down. There are, we all have those, some more than others. Me, pretty rare, I’m not used to living like that. So when those days do come they’re pretty hard for me to cope with.

It’s so easy to look around at all the injustices.  You know one of the things God had to help me get through was how money is distributed across the church. There’s a church not far away from where I live it has fewer 10 members yet it sits on a piece of land with a large car park that very conservatively is valued at $15,000,000, probably much more.  I’ve looked at that over the years and I’ve thought what a waste.

And yet here at the ministry of Christianityworks we reach millions of people each and yet if only we could afford one or two extra staff to lighten the load on a very small overworked team. Now this is not a pride thing. I look at those two it feels like an injustice.  God, how can you let this go on?  See, it’s the same with many of the radio stations that broadcast our programs around the world, they’re doing it so tough financially, yet the church around the world wastes so much money on assets it doesn’t fully utilise.

And I, like Habakkuk, I went to God and said, “Why do you let this happen, How long O God will you let it go on?” You see that’s our narrow human perspective. The injustice of our circumstances can get us down. I’m just being really honest here. I’m sharing with you from the realities from my own life, because we all have those realities. I don’t want you to think that I live in some safe, cloistered environment.  Life is life. You have those realities, I have those realities and sometimes they feel so unjust.

That’s exactly how Habakkuk felt when He went to God and said O Lord, how long shall I cry for your help and you will not listen.  Or I cry to you, “Violence!” and you will not save. And so God comes along and clears the air.

The problem is, we get a pretty distorted view of things from down here among the fog and smog.  We lose sight of the big picture. Before the break we saw how after pouring the burden of his heart out to God, Habakkuk finally finds himself in a position where he can actually listen to God.

He says, I will stand at my watch-post I will station myself on the rampart, I will keep watch to see what He will say to me and what He will answer concerning my complaint. I’m ready now to hear what you have to say God. And listen to what God says to him.  Habakkuk chapter 2 and verse 5:

The Lord answered me and said, write the vision, make it plain on the tablets so that a runner may read it for there is still a vision for the appointed time that speaks of the end and it does not lie. If it seems to tarry wait for it, it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud. Their spirit isn’t right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

Moreover wealth is treacherous the arrogant do not endure, they open their throats wide as Sheol, like death they never have enough, they gather all the nations for themselves and collect all the peoples as their own.

See God says, this is a vision, write it down. There is an appointed time. It’s true, it’s important it might seem to tarry but it will come. What God is saying here is: listen up, this is really important and then God speaks the vision.  He paints the picture clear as a bell He tells Habakkuk, and you and me and anyone else who’s prepared to listen, the way things really are. It’s a vision that goes from here clear to eternity because on a clear day you can see forever.

God says, look at the proud. Their spirit is not right in them but the righteous live by faith. See the proud, the arrogant, the powerful, the beautiful people, they always seem to be winning.  The big, the successful, they seem to have so much. But listen to what God says, their spirit is not right within them. The very essence of who they are is puffed up and distorted and crooked. That’s the reality, that’s what God sees, that’s the way it really is despite outward appearances.

On the outside they might seem confident and successful and happy but on the inside they can’t lie straight in bed at night. That’s the truth and that’s the opposite end of the spectrum, the complete opposite of the righteous because the righteous are the ones who live by their faith. Those who have a right standing before God because they’ve humbled themselves and accepted their own inner poverty and distortion and so they’ve put their faith in Jesus Christ whom God sent.

Those live by faith, a deep, steadfast belief in the God who sees things so clearly. God almost asks a rhetorical question here. Which one would you rather be, which life would you rather have. It’s a clear day. You can see forever. Which life would you rather have: the proud or the righteous?

And then He goes on to say, moreover wealth is treacherous. The wealthy do not endure. They open their throats as wide as Sheol, like death they never have enough, they gather all the nations for themselves and collect all the peoples as their own. The wealth they have is so fickle. We’re going to have a deeper look at that next week on the program.

Wealth is fleeting. It all looks great but when a financial crisis hits all those who appeared to be so wealthy and so successful can come crashing down. Their greed will bring them undone. Stand back and watch. That’s exactly what always happens. See to Habakkuk it all seems so unfair because the proud and the wealthy and the arrogant seem to be winning. That’s his complaint to God. But God calls it the way it really is. On the inside He’s saying they’re  already dead.

In the long run, those who seem to be winning in their pride and their wealth and their arrogance today in the long run they will lose.

In the meantime, He’s saying to Habakkuk and you and me, let your faith in Me be steadfast, rock solid, in your thoughts and deeds, and your actions and dreams, be steadfast because that’s actually what’s going to give you life today, tomorrow and for all eternity. On a clear day you can see forever.

 

For You and for Me

I wonder how often you‘ve felt the way Habakkuk does? The sense that life’s not fair. Funny how when we’re going through tough times in just one part of our lives it feels as though the whole thing’s a mess. It isn’t really, it just feels that way.  And so what happens is, we get a view of things that completely distorted.

God means for these difficult times to be times where He prunes us of the things in our lives that shouldn’t be there, so that new growth can come. And the thing that follows the new growth is fruit. The fruit of the spirit Galatians chapter 5 verse 22:

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.

The truth be known, for many of us, me included, they’re not things that come particularly naturally, they only come when God prunes off the dead wood. And I don’t know about you, but I never particularly enjoy the pruning phase.  Who does? What tree or vine sees the gardener coming with the secateurs, “O goody, he’s going to cut off a whole bunch of my branches, this will be fun, I’m really looking forward to that”. But unless the tree and the vine are pruned they grow all these useless branches that  become gnarled and woody and hard and they stop bearing fruit.

We need to get that revelation today. Everybody goes through injustices, violence, pain, hurts, losses, things that just aren’t fair in life. We all go through those things.  And our natural human instinct is to protect ourselves, to remove the source of pain and discomfort. So we cry out, “God how long are you going to let this happen?” And God’s answer is “When I’m done, in My time.”

And this God, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, He doesn’t do His work according to my schedule or your schedule, He does it according to His. Have a listen to what James writes in the New Testament.  It’s something that by and large we would rather not hear, but it’s something we have to hear, because this is what God’s up to during the tough times in our lives. James chapter 1 verses 2-4:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have it’s full effect so that you may be mature and complete and lacking in nothing.

It may be that you and I hear that and we say that’s fine, I get the theory, but down here in this mess that I’m in, in my life, I can’t make sense of it. I can’t figure out which way is up or which way is out. I can’t figure out what God’s doing and what He’s trying to achieve and how I should respond. I don’t have the wisdom, I don’t have the experience. That’s OK too. Because God has that base covered. In the very next verse in the book of James, this is what he says:

If any of you is lacking in wisdom ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and it will be given to you. But ask in faith, don’t doubt, for the one who doubts is like the waves of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind, for the doubter being double minded is unstable in every way and must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 

And just to make the point that God’s ways aren’t our ways and God’s thoughts aren’t our thoughts. James goes on to write:

Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up and the rich in being brought low because the rich will disappear like the flowers of the field.

In other words, go with what God’s doing, rejoice in your suffering because God is doing a mighty thing.  “How long O God, how long?” Is that your question? The answer is this, in God’s time, when He’s ready, when He’s done. In the mean time He has a plan. Get on with it.  Rejoice in that, Rest in Him trust in this mighty and sovereign God because He loves you. That’s it. That’s the plan.

Sometimes wicked people seem to get away with … well, blue murder. Sometimes, they even seem to get blessed, while you and I might be doing the right thing and suffering for it. Why does God allow that? What is going on?

The Woes of the Wicked

I don’t know how you are feeling today but me, I’m excited about the fact that we are together again this week. It’s a real joy and a privilege for me to be able to share this time with you because God wants to join hands with us – with you and with me – to get about His business of using us – imperfect as we may be – to share His powerful, compelling, wonderful, awesome love with the next guy. And that’s something I believe that we are going to be encouraged to do in our time together today.

Over the last couple of weeks on the programme we have been sharing the journey of a man by the name of Habakkuk, an Old Testament prophet. I know, it’s a bit of a funny name but he wrote one of the smaller books, right towards the end of the Old Testament and it’s called, not surprisingly, ‘Habakkuk’. And the whole thing about this book is that this man has a complaint against God. He is seeing some terrible things happening amongst the tribe of Judah; the Southern tribe of Israel; God’s chosen people – injustices, violence, justice being perverted and he pours his heart out to God – he has a real burden.

If you have a Bible, open it up – towards the end of the Old Testament – Habakkuk chapter 1, beginning at verse 2:

‘O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous – therefore judgement comes forth perverted.’

And we saw last week how honestly he challenged God – not in some disrespectful way but crying out to his God. I love how real it is! You can read it for yourself in the Old Testament Book of Habakkuk, chapter 1 verse 1; through to chapter 2, verse 5. And yet God opens Habakkuk’s heart to hear from Him, to the point where God gives him a vision and tells him to write it down.

Now my hunch is, that the things that Habakkuk was feeling and thinking and saying to God are pretty much the same as the things that we feel and think and want to say to God sometimes too because the world seems so unfair. We see companies going broke, share holders losing their investments, yet corporate executives taking obscenely large salary payouts – tens of millions – while the small share holders suffer.

We see people in power; leaders who should be caring for their people, instead they’re looking after themselves. We see children dying of starvation and disease while those in the wealthy West spend more each week on cat and dog food than we do on helping the poor and needy. We see injustices happening all around us and wonder, “How long, O Lord, how long? Why do You let these things go on, why? What sort of a God are You anyway?”

We talked about those things last week. This week we are going to see how Habakkuk responds to God because some amazing things happen in the Book of Habakkuk. God speaks and it powerfully changes Habakkuk’s heart and mind. My hunch is, as we listen to God speaking this week on the programme, God’s going to do exactly the same for you and me.

Part of the vision that God gave Habakkuk was about what would happen to the wicked. We see the wicked and they seem to be winning but have a look at what God has to say about the wicked – His perspective; His take. It begins in Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 6:

Will not all of them taunt him with ridicule and scorn, saying,
‘Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion.
How long must this go on?’
Will not your debtors suddenly arise?
Will they not wake up and make you tremble?
Then you will become their victim.
Because you have plundered many nations, the peoples who are left will plunder you. For you have shed men’s blood; you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain,to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin!
You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your own life.
The stones of the wall will cry out and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.’

It’s amazing how accurately and powerfully God’s Word of a few thousand years ago is able to speak into the circumstances of today. It was interesting recently during the financial crisis that the world economy has been going through, we’ve watched how the apparently, rich and powerful have fallen. These men who built their wealth on debt and on creditors and a pack of cards – they looked mighty and powerful from the outside but inside, there was nothing there. They had big houses and shiny, expensive cars and servants.

Do you know that as real estate prices plummeted in the city where I live, the part of the market that lost the most ground, were the multi, multi-million dollar mansions overlooking the water?

Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin.

Listen to me! So many people in this world are living below the poverty line – so many. So many are struggling to make ends meet and what makes it worse is to see the wealth of the people who run the economic systems that keep the many in poverty, while the few grow wealthy.

So many people struggling! God, how can You let that happen? How can You let this injustice go on? The wealth of the wicked; their comfort; their luxury, they drive past us in their motorcars – makes things so much worse. Now please, don’t get me wrong – all who are wealthy aren’t wicked. Some of the wealthiest people I know are the greatest givers into God’s work, in fact, without some of those people, you and I wouldn’t be sharing this time together at the moment.

But you know what I am talking about – the pain and the distress of the wealth of the wicked in the face of the misery of the many. But listen to me – God has heard your cry and His judgement has already fallen. One day… one day His justice will be done. He will not allow the wicked to go unpunished – He will not – because He is a God of infinite love and infinite justice.

Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain, to set his nest on high to escape the clutches of ruin. You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your own life. The stones of the wall will cry out and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.

We see what’s happening now; we see how unfair the world is with so few having so much of the wealth and so many going hungry and starving and it looks so unjust but you and I can rely on God’s justice to deal with those who oppress and harm. And in the meantime … in the meantime the most powerful thing that you and I can do is to pray for our enemies. To pray that God will change their hearts and show them mercy because God, ultimately, one day, will judge the wicked. One day you will have to stand before God and give account and I will have to stand before God and give account, one day He will judge and one day justice will be done.

 

Alas to Those Who Shed Blood

Now it doesn’t matter who we are or where we live, we’ve all felt that sense of injustice that Habakkuk was taking before God. And so today I want to share one of the things that God had to say to Habakkuk and to you and to me, in response to this burden that Habakkuk laid at God’s feet.

It’s about the wicked people in the world; the ones who seem to be winning today; the ones, well, the ones whose wickedness seems to be rewarded in our day rather than being punished. We look at these people, from wherever it is we sit; we look and we wonder, ‘What sort of God is it that can let this go on? Well, here it is….here it is from God’s own Word through the prophet Habakkuk. I’m beginning at Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 12:

Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!
Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people’s labour is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbour, pouring it in from the wineskin till they are drunk,
so that he can gaze on their naked bodies.

You will be filled with shame instead of glory. Now it is your turn! Drink and be exposed!
The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory.
The violence that you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, and your destruction of animals will terrify you.
For you have shed man’s blood, You have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.

Listen to what God’s saying again:

Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes his town by crime.

You see why on the surface at least, this is a difficult message to share. How does this work everywhere and for everyone; for the wealthy and the poor; for the free and the oppressed? But let me tell you something: whenever I feel this I remember once preparing a programme all about the fear of God and thinking to myself, “Man, who wants to hear about the fear of God in this world today?” and yet within a few days of that programme going to air, I received an email from a leader of a group of rebel fighters in Africa.

For his safety I won’t tell you exactly where – and he told me how this programme on the “Fear of God” changed his life – how he had been killing people for thirteen years, but on that day, in that room, when he received the Word of God, he decided to lay down his gun. I heard from him just recently – he has had to flee the land where he fought because those around him weren’t incredibly pleased with his decision to accept Jesus and to lay down his gun. He is living as a refugee in another country now.

There’s power in God’s Word and let me say this plainly, directly, simply and lovingly:

Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes his town by crime,

if that’s you then today you can turn away from that bloodshed and crime. Today like that rebel fighter you can lay down your gun, you can turn away from the wrong that you have been doing.

Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbour, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk so that he can gaze on their naked bodies.

If that is you then you can turn away from that evil right now. Maybe it’s not easy – maybe there is a cost and a price to pay but if you don’t turn, listen to what God’s Word says:

You will be filled with shame instead of glory.
Now it is your turn! Drink and be exposed!
The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory.
The violence that you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, and your destruction of animals will terrify you.
For you have shed man’s blood, You have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.

Perhaps we are together for such a time as this … a time where God is calling someone, maybe you, to turn away from the evil that you are doing and perhaps it’s not you that’s perpetrating the evil – perhaps you’re someone who is being harmed by someone who is being harmed by bloodshed and violence and exploitation. Perhaps you are someone who is being hurt by someone else who is dominating you, treating you unfairly – perhaps you are aching under unfair treatment and pain and suffering.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever it is that you are going through, please…. please listen to God’s Word today. Jesus Christ is the Son of God – God sent Him to show us what God Himself is like – loving, powerful, gracious and yet just. God sent Him to die on that cross for you and me – to pay once and for all for our sin.

God sent Him to rise again and to ascend into heaven to give you and me a new eternal life that starts right now; the moment that we turn away from our evil ways and give our lives over to Him. This kindness is meant to lead us to do that; to turn away from evil and to honour God. If we do, we have eternal life – if we don’t, we have eternal judgement. The choice… the choice belongs to each one of us.

Father God, I have heard your Word today and it has cut deep into my heart. I’m sorry for all the things I have done wrong. Please forgive me. I turn away from all my evil ways and Jesus, from this moment forward, You are the Lord of my life – You and You alone. Please fill me with Your Holy Spirit. Please, give me this new life in Jesus name. And I pray for all those who are doing evil in this world. I pray that You would reach out to them, touch them with Your love and Your grace. I pray Your mercy upon them. I pray You would change them with the same love that has changed me. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

 

What Use is an Idol?

When you and I stand back, I mean we take a big step backwards, away from our day-to-day lives and look at this world and the way the human race is living and behaving, well, some of it’s pretty crazy. If we were some intelligent life form that just kind of lobbed in from another planet, without any of the preconceptions that our life here on earth has given us and we looked at the human race, what would we see? What would we think?

A world with finite resources in the ground that we use at an ever-increasing rate to damage the fragile environment on which the whole human race depends. A race that is able to produce more than enough food to feed everybody but one where the few are obese and the many are starving. A world where there is plenty of room for everyone but where forty to fifty wars are raging at any one time. And a world where a few countries have enough weapons pointed at one another to destroy every living thing on the planet a thousand times over but whose leaders regularly sit down together over lobster and champagne at global economic summits.

It doesn’t matter who we are, what we believe, what our politics are, it’s a crazy world we live in. But you have to ask yourself, “Why is it so?” We’re not stupid, by and large, so why do we do such stupid things? And then…..then we carry on as though there is nothing wrong – we carry on as though it’s all okay, until some guy cries out, “Excuse me, but I think the Emperor has got no clothes!”

That’s exactly what Habakkuk did! Everyone around him was living life as though everything was fine; as though there was nothing wrong but Habakkuk saw what was really going on and his heart ached out so he cries out to God, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for Your help and you will not listen?” And over the course of this short Book in the Old Testament, God gives Habakkuk God’s perspective on what’s going on. That’s what we were looking at earlier.

God makes sense of all the evil stuff people are doing by saying there will be judgement. But as God wraps up telling Habakkuk and you and me about the judgement that will befall those who are wicked and who oppress people and who cause bloodshed. He kind of oddly inserts a small passage about “idols” – “idolatry” – you know, bowing down and worshipping idols. Have a listen to it because my hunch is that it is really important. It kind of explains some of the stupidity that is going on. Have a listen, beginning at Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 18:

What use is an idol once its maker has shaped it – a cast image, a teacher of lies?
Its maker trusts in what has been made, though the product is only an idol that cannot speak!
Alas for you who say to the wood, “Wake up!” to the silent stone, ‘Rouse yourself!’
Can it teach?
See, it is gold and silver plated, and there is no breath in it at all.
But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!

Now, as I’ve said, it’s kind of weird. God’s just been talking about how He is going to punish the wicked – even though they seem to be winning now – it’s only temporary. God is a just God and He will judge them. And that’s a good thing! For anyone who’s oppressed or suffering now, we need to know that God is going to set it right one day. But why is this thing about idolatry here at this point? What’s it got to do with anything? Well, God gives us a hint a bit earlier in chapter 2 of Habakkuk – we looked at it earlier. Have a listen – chapter 2 verses 12 and 14:

Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime.

Verse 14:

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

This is what God is talking about here. See, all we see at the moment is the reality of the fact that so many wicked people seem to be going, well, unpunished; even rewarded; even doing well but the great reality; the great unseen reality is this: the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. As sure as God made little green apples, the reality of God is as great as the reality of the great and mighty oceans that cover the earth.

We live in our cities and towns – we live inland – we ignore the ocean – we pretend it’s not there and it’s the same with God. We live here on earth and we ignore Him; we pretend He’s not there. We put our faith in money and wealth, in power, gain, comfort… all those things that cause us to abuse our positions of privilege – all of those things that one day, God’s judgement will crash down on like a tsunami. And you see, it’s this rejection of God – that’s why all these bad, mad, crazy, evil things are going on because instead of worshipping God people are worshipping idols.

Now in some parts of the world we don’t make physical idols so much, wealth is our idol – position, reputation, comfort… those things are our idol. But listen to what God’s saying to us today: whatever our idol is, whether it’s a physical thing that we bow down to – and I have to tell you, many people in many parts of the world do that. There are countless people listening to this programme today who worship physical idols or, whether the things we’re worshipping in the wealthy West, like wealth, an idol is an idol and it’s completely useless. You can’t worship God and an idol – you just can’t. God made that clear in the first and second Commandments. Listen to this: Exodus chapter 20, verses 2 to 5. God says:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth below, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.

And so whatever idol you or I happen to be worshipping, physical or otherwise, as long as we do that, evil will come upon us. And so instead of sacrificing our lives to God, doing away with our evil ways; loving God and loving others as we love ourselves, so long as we worship idols, we will continue to live in our evil ways. But God… God is totally different to our idols.

The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him. (Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 20)

You see God isn’t some dead, useless thing, He’s alive, He’s the great reality, He’s the powerful God who created the whole universe. The call of God to each one of us today is to turn away from those other things that we worship and to worship Him alone because Jesus alone should be the Lord of our lives.

We cry out, “How long, O Lord, how long?” and yet we don’t invite Him into our lives! What do we expect?

Sometimes we cry out to God and cry out and cry out from amidst desperate circumstances – and all we see, all we feel, is the pain we’re going through. What we forget, is at the end of the day, God has a celebration – one mighty celebration planned.

The Prayer of a Prophet

It’s great to be with you again this week on the programme. You know, I have been so enjoying getting into God’s Word through this Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk. I know it’s kind of a weird name and it’s easy to think, “What does some stuffy old prophet have to do with my life today?”

But as you’ll know if you have joined me over these last few weeks, Habakkuk cried out to God about the injustice that was going on amongst His people, God’s people – the violence, the evil – and old Habakkuk cries out to God, “Why do you let this go on and how long … how long O God, how long?”

Sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it? And yet as Habakkuk has his conversation with God and God explains what’s going on, Habakkuk gets a completely different perspective. All of a sudden he sees what God sees – that none of this wickedness is going to go unpunished – that one day … one day, either the wicked who are oppressing us and hurting us with all their injustices today, one day either they will turn from their wickedness and receive God’s forgiveness through Jesus or they will be judged and they will be punished. And this is the truth that changes Habakkuk’s heart.

This fresh new perspective completely and radically changes Habakkuk. The circumstances themselves don’t change, as we read this Old Testament Book – what changes is Habakkuk because he has heard God speak and what God said makes sense. See, Habakkuk starts off his conversation with God with these words and we have looked at them a few times now over the last few weeks. If you have a Bible, open it up at this Old Testament Book, Habakkuk chapter 1. I’m reading from verses 2 to 4:

O Lord, how long shall I cry out for help and you will not listen? Or cry to you, ‘Violence’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous – therefore judgement becomes perverted.

That’s how he starts off, but now … now look at how he finishes. We are going to go to Habakkuk chapter 3 today – the prayer of the prophet. There is something in this for all of us – for you and for me. It’s written in picture language – Hebrews of old loved picture language. Listen how Habakkuk takes God’s Words and paints a picture with them. Have a look at the picture that he’s painting – Habakkuk chapter 3, beginning at verse 2:

O Lord, I have heard of your renown, and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work. In our own time revive it; in our own time make it known; in wrath may you remember mercy. God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. The brightness was like the sun; rays came forth from his hand, where his power lay hidden. Before him went pestilence, and plague followed close behind. He stopped and shook the earth; he looked and made the nations tremble.

The eternal mountains were shattered; along his ancient pathways the everlasting hills sank low. I saw the tents of Cushan under affliction; the tent-curtains of the land of Midian trembled. Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord? Or your anger against the rivers, or your rage against the sea, when you drove your horses, your chariots to victory? You brandished your naked bow, sated were the arrows at your command. You split the earth with rivers.  

The mountains saw you, and writhed; a torrent of water swept by; the deep gave forth its voice. The sun raised high its hands; the moon stood still in its exalted place, at the light of your arrows speeding by, at the gleam of your flashing spear. In fury you trod the earth, in anger you trampled the nations. You came forth to save your people, to save your anointed. You crushed the head of the wicked house, laying it bear from the foundation to the roof.   You pierced with his own arrows the head of his warriors, who came like a whirlwind to scatter us, gloating as if ready to devour the poor who were in hiding. You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the mighty waters.

Now, how did you go seeing the picture that is being painted here, like poetry? Habakkuk looks at the heavens and the earth and the mountains and the sky and the history of Israel; the things that have happened; the things that they see every day and all of a sudden, he’s looking at them with a fresh set of eyes; he’s seeing God’s hands in everything. He is looking at them afresh and going, “Wow! Look, all along God’s been in this place and I just didn’t realise it.” And his spirit soars up to meet God.

Let’s look at just a couple of verses here – chapter 3, verse 2:

Lord, I have heard of your renown, I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work. In our own time revive it; in our own time make it known; in wrath may you remember mercy.

“Hang on a minute,” Habakkuk is saying to God, “I get it now. I’ve heard; I remember – You’re coming – a God of judgement and of mercy.” Remember here the context is that God is going to judge His whole Nation and yet Habakkuk sees God’s glory and His purpose in all of that. He remembers the God of old:

His glory covered the heavens, the earth was full of his praise. The brightness was like the sun; rays came forth from his hands where his power was hidden. Before him went pestilence and plague followed behind. He stopped and shook the earth; he looked and made the nations tremble. The eternal mountains were shattered; along his ancient pathways the everlasting hills sank low.

The whole of creation, Habakkuk is realising, is subject to the power of God – everything that happens – everything that goes on. “I was looking at it the wrong way,” Habakkuk’s saying, “now … now I get it; now I see it.” Habakkuk gets a completely different perspective on all this rubbish that’s going on in the Nation of Israel.

I wonder whether that isn’t what God wants us to get, when like Habakkuk, we’re crying, “How long O God, how long?” Every day we see injustices through our own eyes, just like Habakkuk. And what we see sometimes is doom and gloom and violence and injustice and we carry heavy burdens, just like Habakkuk but when we chat with God, He gives us a whole new perspective.

All of a sudden when we see this whole calamitous world through His eyes; His Spirit opens our eyes and shines a light in our hearts and all of a sudden, when there was misery and gloom and questioning on our lips, God replaces that by putting His praise on our lips – our spirit sores up to meet His Spirit. All of a sudden, we meet Him because we realise He is the mighty and sovereign and all-powerful, all-loving God.

Can I tell you something … something from my own bittersweet experience? The darker the night is, the brighter His light shines but because we are human, the bigger the problems and injustices and pains of this world are, the smaller our God seems. We lose sight of God – we see things from our tiny human vantage point and with Habakkuk, it’s time to discover something: our King reigns.

This mighty God, this wonderful God, this loving God in our darkest hour, He hasn’t forsaken us. This God is still mighty, still wonderful, still loving, even in our darkest hour He is still awesome and still powerful and even more than that, He’s right here with us. That’s what the Spirit of God spoke to Habakkuk. That’s what the Spirit of God is speaking right now to anyone who will listen and that is what puts His praise on our lips.

Trust and Joy

Now as we draw towards the end of this Book of Habakkuk, what we discover is that God’s saved the very best till last. Now, I’d love to tell you that this was my idea that we put it in the last programme but if I did that I’d be lying. It’s very definitely God’s idea. Like a good movie or a good book, you get to the end and it all comes together and you go, “WOW, WOW!” Well, that’s what today’s about – it’s the WOW day and if that doesn’t make you stick around with me over the next twenty minutes or so, I don’t know what will.

Now we have all seen it, we’ve all experienced it – Habakkuk’s cry to God about the wickedness and the evil and the injustice going on around him and he says, “How long, O God, how long?” – the impact of other people’s evil ways on our lives. We have all experienced injustice – sometimes it happens on the National scale; sometimes it happens just at a personal level and when it does we have that same cry that Habakkuk had toward God: ‘How long O Lord, how long?

We want to know why and how long but God … God so often has a different way. It’s the way that He shared with Habakkuk when this man of God poured out the burden of his heart to God – Habakkuk cries out to God and God answers him with a vision … a vision of the punishment that will come upon the wicked; a vision of the power of God over every wicked man and every wicked deed.

Have a listen to Habakkuk chapter 2, verses 12 and 14:

Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed, and establishes a town by crime! For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

As we saw earlier it is this vision of God’s righteous judgement; God’s justice that completely changes Habakkuk’s perspective. He goes from being a man who sees things from the bottom up; from a human viewpoint, to being a man who sees things from the top down; from God’s viewpoint.

And you know the more we listen to God; the more we spend time understanding how God sees things, the more we allow His Word to become a part of who we are and how we think and how we behave, the more we experience the thing that Habakkuk received from God.

It’s the thing we discover in the last few verses at the end of this short Book, Habakkuk. It’s what comes after finally … finally Habakkuk gets it – he sees the glory and the power of God. He praises God from the midst of the injustice and the violence and then the impact … then the thing that happened deep within him. Have a listen with me because this is the thing that God wants you and me to get today. He wants us to experience this. It begins in Habakkuk chapter 3, beginning at verse 16. Habakkuk writes:

I hear and I tremble within; my lips quiver at the sound. Rottenness enters into my bones, and my steps tremble beneath me. I wait quietly for the day of calamity to come upon the people who attack us. 

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me to tread upon the heights.

This is such a beautiful picture of a man who discovered the peace and the joy and the power of God in the midst of the violence and the wickedness and injustice. A man who was such a blessing to me in my early Christian walk was a quiet man called Steve. Now Steve was no great preacher but he had such a wonderful heart for God and he lived that out as a chaplain amongst the elderly and I tell you, he was just the right man for that job.

But I remember him preaching once at our little church all those years ago and he said something that stuck with me ever since. He said this: he said, “Peace is trusting in the sovereignty of God.” Let me say that again: “Peace is trusting in the sovereignty of God” and that’s exactly what’s happened here for Habakkuk.

Have another listen:

I hear, and I tremble within; my lips quiver at the sound.  Rottenness enters into my bones, and my steps tremble beneath me. I will wait quietly for the day of calamity to come on the people who attack us.

This man has the fear of God in him – he trembles, his lips quiver, he knows the decay, the rottenness in his own bones, his steps tremble – this is the fear of the Lord. But look at the impact of that right fear – ‘I will wait quietly for the day of calamity to come upon the people who attack us.’ ‘I will wait quietly’ because what I know is that God’s going to act; He’s going to judge those who are doing evil; He’s going to judge His people, Israel and it will be a day of calamity.

And can I tell you? That day came just a few years later. God’s people turned against Him – God used the Chaldeans (the Babylonians), He had Jerusalem destroyed, the temple destroyed and God’s own people were led into captivity for seventy years in Babylon.

What a terrible cycle of events? What a calamity this mighty God was going to bring on His people? But the only men who saw it coming were a handful of God’s prophets. Habakkuk was one of them and he was able to wait quietly for this day of calamity. Habakkuk had peace, “even though the fig tree doesn’t blossom, there’s no fruit on the vines, the produce of the olive tree fails, there’s no food in the fields, the flocks cut off from the fold, there’s no herd in the stalls. Yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.”

I read something that someone else wrote about this Book, Habakkuk which kind of sums it all up in a nutshell. Have a listen: ‘The underlying theme of this Book, Habakkuk, can be summarised as follows: a mature faith trusts humbly but persistently in God’s design for establishing righteousness on the earth.’

And you know something? That’s the power of the change that Habakkuk experienced when he spoke with God and heard the Word of God amidst the calamity. He humbly accepted God’s way. He trusted in the sovereign will of God and there in that place of humility, he found peace and he found joy, “Yet will I rejoice in the Lord.” (Habakkuk 3:18) “I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and he makes me tread upon the heights.”

Even though everything else around him was failing, the Spirit of God enable this man to trust God, to rejoice in God, to rise up – God became his strength – God gave him the feet like the deer, God made him to tread upon the heights and that, my friend, that is what God would have for you and me – amidst all the calamities that life hurls at us as we receive His Word.

In Due Season

So as we head into the home-straight in this journey with Habakkuk – this four-week series that I’ve called, “How Long O Lord, How Long?” has it been a blessing to you? Well, it has for me! Probably one of the things that you don’t think about is that I get to spend a whole bunch of time in God’s Word preparing these programmes and that’s an awesome thing because it’s God’s Word that changes us – it’s like food. We wouldn’t think of going day after day after day without food unless we absolutely had to; unless we had no choice in the matter.

And yet so often, people who believe in Jesus go day after day after day after day without feasting on the Bread of Life; the Word of God; Jesus Himself. And they wonder why they feel empty inside; they wonder why they feel weak and helpless because that’s what happens when you go without food – physical food or spiritual food.

And what God’s been doing in me as I have spent time pouring of this very short Book of Habakkuk – just a few pages – is making me strong; He’s been feeding me with His Word and making His perspective; His heavenly view, my perspective; my view. That’s what it’s all about – seeing things through the eyes of the One who sees everything.

I want to finish off this series with a word for those who are still sitting there, thinking to themselves ‘Well, I’ve heard everything this guy said; I’ve heard everything he’s read from the Bible; from God’s Word. I’ve heard it all but deep down in my heart I’m still wondering how long, O God, how long?

That question can be a persistent, nagging thing that seems not to want to go away because there is some injustice or some hurt or some violence or some … some trial that seems to go on and on and on and on and for some reason God just doesn’t do anything about it.

And so I just feel I need to speak one more thing into that place if that’s where you happen to be right now. It comes from Peter the Apostle. It was written centuries after Habakkuk. Jesus has been, died, raised again and ascended into heaven and Peter is writing to the persecuted church in the first century AD.

Man, were they being persecuted! They were going through stuff like being tarred and feathered and set alight and tortured because of their faith. How must those people have been wondering, ‘How long O God, how long?’

This is what I love about God’s Word the Bible – it’s written for real people in real situations, going through real stuff. Here it is – the Letter from Peter – First Peter chapter 5, beginning at verse 6. It says:

Humble yourselves therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves – keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.

Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in the world are all undergoing the same kinds of sufferings. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.

“Humble yourselves under the mighty … mighty hand of God and he will exalt you in due time.”In what time? In your time? In my time? No, no, in His time – in due time. That’s why you and I can cast all our anxiety on Him because He cares for us. Because He will restore, support, strengthen, and establish us. And yes, the enemy, the devil, is waiting, is prowling like a roaring lion waiting to devour someone; waiting for someone to lose heart; waiting for someone to give up. But resist him – just hang in there with Jesus. Don’t give up!

You and I, we aren’t the only ones that are suffering here. Lots of people are suffering but “after you have suffered for a little while,” writes Peter in chapter 5, verse 10, “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will (now listen to this) … will himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you.”

Don’t you love that? After we’ve suffered for a little while, this amazing God of all grace, who has this eternal plan that He has called us to, and listen to how Peter emphasises this, this God who has called us to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore and support and strengthen and establish.

Come on; is that good news or what? God Himself will restore and support and strengthen and establish us and today, this very moment, He’s doing just that. His eternal plan is rolling on and you and I, we can rest in His sovereign grace, just like Habakkuk.

And when we do that … when we open our heart to His Word which is so powerful, so mighty, so eternal that it will stand forever – when we open our hearts to His Word, His Spirit will bring healing to our hearts – His Spirit will bring joy and peace to our hearts. His Spirit will put His praises on our lips. His Spirit will enable us to say what Habakkuk said:

Even though the fig tree doesn’t blossom and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and he makes me tread upon the heights.

Hallelujah, thank You Jesus.