Introduction: A Frustrated Prophet

The Babylonian Siege and the Misery of God's People 1:49

So, when the Chaldeans came into the land, the people fled. They went to what's called cities of fortification, cities that had walls. They went to escape. So, a city like Jerusalem, which was strong to an extent, became home for thousands and thousands of refugees.

They flooded its walls. They stayed in the city. Imagine your own home if you put 50 people into your house. Now, imagine you have 50 people in your house, and imagine that you must stay there for a year.

No one can come. No one can go. No food may enter. No water may enter.

How would you live? This is what faced the people of Jerusalem. There was little food. The water was what was coming from the heavens at the time that it came.

Disease sprouted up everywhere. Also in Scripture, we read that when folks died, they had no place to bury them. They threw them over the walls. They just rotted out in the fields outside the city.

This was a desperate time. If you don't have some understanding of what the fall of Jerusalem was like in 586 B.C., there's so much of the Old Testament prophets you'll never understand. In any case, Nebuchadnezzar came. He brought a world of hurt.

He brought a siege. He brought fire. He brought death.

The Sovereignty of God: Who Brought Nebuchadnezzar? 2:52

So here's the question for you this morning. Who brought Nebuchadnezzar? According to scripture, the answer is straightforward. God did.

God brought Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar's arrival at the gates of Jerusalem was not a cosmic accident. It was not a twist of fate. It was not an ironic circumstance, a horrible coincidence.

It was just the opposite. Nebuchadnezzar, for all the dread he brought, was raised up and purposed of God to this end. If you don't believe it, listen to God's own words in the matter. God says this.

I've made the earth, the man and the beast that are on the ground, by My great power, by My outstretched arm. I have given it to whom seemed proper to Me. And now I've given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, My servant. And the beast of the field I've also given to serve him.

So all nations shall serve him and his son and his son's son until the time of his land comes. What do you make of that? Let's just stand back for a moment. Nebuchadnezzar brought all manner of terrible, wicked things.

Nebuchadnezzar brought all manner of death, the like of which we can't understand or even relate to. Nebuchadnezzar brought all this, and yet God raised up Nebuchadnezzar. God brought Nebuchadnezzar to this end.

Reconciling a Good God with the Problem of Evil 4:02

What do you do with that? Most of us don't know what to do with it. Most of us don't know how to reconcile this. We know God is good, right?

You can shake your heads. God's good. We know He's just. We know He's loving.

We also know He's in charge. How do we reconcile a good and a loving God with a God who, in His sovereignty, not only allows events like this to happen, but a God who takes ownership of this and says, I raise up Nebuchadnezzar. I raise up kings. What do you do with this?

How do you reconcile this?

Habakkuk's Complaint: How Long, O Lord? 4:34

“O LORD, how long shall I cry, and You will not hear? Even cry out to You, “Violence!” And You will not save. Why do You show me iniquity, and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me; there is strife, and contention arises. Therefore the law is powerless, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore perverse judgment proceeds.”

— Habakkuk 1:2-4 (NKJV)

Well, if you have a problem reconciling it, you're not alone. Now, Habakkuk had a problem reconciling these sort of things. See, Habakkuk knew the attributes of God. Habakkuk was a prophet.

He was a prophet's prophet. He knew that God is good. He knew that God's in charge. He had good theology.

He had all the things that we would hope he would have. But because he knew God is good and because he knew God is in charge, at the same time, he didn't understand how a good, loving God who's in charge could be inactive and tolerate wickedness. He didn't get it. He didn't understand it.

He didn't understand in his age how God could allow His own people to descend into deeper and deeper depths of wickedness. And one day, Habakkuk, it's like his brain broke and he'd had enough. Habakkuk had had enough. One day he'd seen all the evil he could stomach.

This is before the great siege. He had seen all the evil he could stomach at this point. And he cries out to God and he says, how long? Dear God, how long?

I know You're there. I know Your arm hasn't grown short over the centuries. I know You didn't retire, go on vacation, anything like this. And I know You're good and just and loving, but what I can't understand is how You can tolerate this nonsense.

I can't tolerate it, and I'm not holy like you are. How in the world can You tolerate it? This is his question. He'd had enough.

He asked God, how long? If you would, look within me now, verses 1 through 4, and we're going to hear Habakkuk's cry, his emotional cry. Verse one, the burden which the prophet Habakkuk saw. Oh, Lord, how long shall I cry and You will not hear?

There's an accusation in this. Even cry out to You, violence, and You will not save. Why do You show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering, violence, are before me, the strife, contention arises.

Therefore, this is Habakkuk's understanding of the situation. Therefore, the law is powerless. Justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous.

Therefore, perverse judgment proceeds. Oh my, that is a strong complaint. Now, for what it's worth, and I think I've said this in the past, God's a grown up here. He can take our tough questions.

He can take our anxieties. Habakkuk was a godly man and he had some tough questions to ask of God. God didn't smite Habakkuk right there. God understood Habakkuk's heart.

But his question here is, again, filled with concern and frustration over what was going on.

The Life and Times of Habakkuk: Prophet of Judah 7:01

Now, again, we need to understand the substance of his complaint. Excuse me, in order to understand the substance, we need to understand a little bit about the life and times of Habakkuk. Well, once again, Habakkuk was a prophet around 600 BC in the southern kingdom of Judah. Now, we don't know a lot about Habakkuk.

We know that he was a prophet. We have reason to believe that he was a well-known prophet at the time. We know that he was contemporary of men like Jeremiah and Daniel and the like. For those of you who know your Bible history, you know that living in 600 BC, this was challenging.

It was dark. It was ominous. A couple centuries earlier, God's people had been divided into two kingdoms. He had the northern kingdom of what?

And the southern kingdom of? The northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Well, in 722 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel had been conquered, had been taken over by who? The Assyrians.

The Assyrians had taken out the northern kingdom of Israel, just as God's prophets had warned and said, watch out. Watch out if you keep doing what you're doing. God's going to bring the justice and He's going to use a people and a nation you don't like in order to be His rod of discipline.

So in 722, the northern kingdom had been taken out by the Assyrians. They had been run by a bunch of bad eggs. The kings of the north were a pretty rotten bunch. And so God had turned the north over to the Assyrians for a seasoned discipline.

With that said, the southern kingdom of Judah had had some good kings, but had had a number of bad kings as well. And the people's hearts were fickle. God's people have always been fickle over the centuries.

Manasseh's Wickedness and God's Warning of Calamity 8:30

I don't think much has changed. And in 687, 687 BC, a really wicked king, a guy named Manasseh, had come on the scene. And Manasseh did all manner of wickedness, far more than the fathers that preceded him. As scripture often says, he went on to set up idols.

He practiced witchcraft. He burned his own son alive. Manasseh was bad. He was a, he was a naughty fellow.

And during his reign, the wickedness of the people multiplied like exponentially. So Manasseh was a wicked king. He ruled a wicked people. And in God's time, God had seen enough.

And so we read these words back in 2 Kings 21, the Lord spoke by servants of prophets saying, because Manasseh, the king of Judah, has done these abominations, he has acted more wickedly than all the Amorites that were before him and has also made Judah sin with idols. Therefore, says the Lord God of Israel, behold, I am bringing such calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle.

This is speaking forward to what we were talking about earlier, the fall of Jerusalem in 586. But way back then, just about 100 years earlier, God said, behold, I bring such calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem, the measuring line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab.

I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish. I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it, and I will turn it upside down. When the God who once destroyed the whole world with a flood, when a God who did that, when the God who destroyed the whole world by a flood said, I'm going to bring something that when you hear of it, your ears will tingle.

That's no small thing. That is a fearsome, a fearsome concept, a fearsome notion. And yet, do the people respond? Well, no. Of course, there were seasons of up and down.

But by the time Habakkuk came on the scene, the people had found new depths to mine, new depths to plumb. The people were careless about matters of holiness and sinfulness. They were wicked. They practiced idolatry.

There was great violence in his age, which is what hurt the heart of Habakkuk. He looks around. He knows these are God's children. He knows they've been set aside, set apart.

They've been called of God. This is the nation of Israel, the city of Jerusalem. The temple's there. And for the love of Pete, he looks at the temple and he sees the people around the temple.

He sees the people in the community. They're living worse in some cases than the pagans. And that was the nature of his complaint. He says, God, I know You're there.

I know You haven't retired. So when are You going to deal with this?

Living in the Pregnant Pause Before Judgment 11:06

Habakkuk lived and ministered in this interval. God had promised He was bringing justice. Habakkuk lived in kind of the interval before the justice found its fulfillment, before Jerusalem would be wiped out like a dish. You know, when a tsunami comes, what's the warning sign that a tsunami is coming?

Right. The water, right, it draws out. I haven't been on the gulf long enough, but if I ever see the water draw a mile out in the deep, I'm going to drive inland. When the water goes out, there's a warning, the tsunami's coming.

It's almost like there's a pregnant pause. Habakkuk lived in the pregnant pause there. And so he says, oh Lord, how long? When are You going to deal with it?

When are You going to bring justice? Why do You show me iniquity? Why do You cause me to see trouble? Plundering and violence are before me.

Strife and contention arise. The law is powerless. Justice doesn't go forth. The wicked surround the righteous.

Perverse judgment proceeds. Now let's be clear. I don't believe Habakkuk wanted to see Judah wiped off the map. I don't think that's what he wanted at all.

I don't think he wasn't rooting for Jerusalem's destruction, but he was rooting for justice. He was rooting for righteousness. He did want to see these things restored unto the people.

Yearning for Righteousness in a Godless Age 12:22

Do you and I not have the heart of Habakkuk? Do we not pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV and say, oh my, do you not yearn for righteousness in our generation? I hope you do. When the text for this morning's sermon was posted online, someone made the comment, this looks just like today in terms of the wickedness and perverse judgment and the like.

I should hope we have the heart of Habakkuk. At the same time, we don't desire the destruction of the people. We simply desire that righteousness would rule the day, that the godless trajectory we're on would be changed. If we can see the godlessness of our own age, we can relate to the question, how long is it going to be this way?

God's Answer: Raising Up the Chaldeans 13:01

“Look among the nations and watch—be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you.”

— Habakkuk 1:5 (NKJV)

Well, let's look at verse 5 and see how God answers Habakkuk in his case. Verse 5, look among the nations and watch, be utterly astounded, for I will work a work in your days which you would not believe even if you were told it. You know, the first thing that's amazing about verse 5, about God's answer to Habakkuk, is that God answered Habakkuk at all.

There was grace in that. Habakkuk says, how long? God says, you just watch. Look among the nations and watch.

I will work a work in your days. In other words, not like 100 years off. He says, Habakkuk, it's coming. It's near.

It's even at the door. I will work a work in your days which you wouldn't believe even if it were told to you. Now Habakkuk's main question was when. He didn't know what God was going to do, and he certainly didn't want the answer that God gave.

We'll get to that in a minute. But his main question was when. And there was a lot of guys in scripture who, that was the main question. It might be dressed up in other words, but so often the question at the heart of men like Moses or Abraham.

As Moses was out tending his father-in-law's sheep for 40 years, I'm sure he asked when quite a bit. When, when, when are things going to change in my life? When am I going to be utilized for whatever purpose you have me set to? For Abraham the question was when.

When was a question of David. When was a question of all the godly prophets. When is a question we often have if we're being honest. We know God is good.

We've got that one locked away. And we know He's in charge. But a lot of times we don't understand when He's going to act to deal with some wickedness that we see in our own lives or in the world around us. When is a question God's saints have always had.

And Habakkuk, the variation he uses is the question, how long? And in verse five, again, God responds and says, it's coming. It's coming down the pike. Let's look at verses six through 11 as God expands on the when.

Verse six, for indeed, I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, which marches through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful. Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, more fierce than evening wolves.

Their chargers charge ahead. Their cavalry comes from afar. They fly as the eagle that hastens to eat. They all come for violence.

Their faces are set like the east wind. They gather captives like sand. They scoff at kings and princes are scorned by them. They deride every stronghold.

They heap up earthen mounds and they seize it. Then his mind changes and he transgresses. He commits offense, ascribing this power to his God. All right.

Verses one through four, the essence of Habakkuk's complaint is, God, You're sitting on Your hands. Things are getting bad. What are You going to get with the program? He's saying, God, You're sitting back.

You're abdicating Your responsibility to fulfill justice. Now, in verse six, God's answer is radically different. What Habakkuk wanted was, God, when are you going to come in and start to kind of change things up a little bit. In verse six, God says, Habakkuk, you better be sitting down.

In your ears, you're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you. And then He starts talking about the Chaldeans. Now that's not what Habakkuk was hoping to hear. And God goes at length and says, I'm raising up the Chaldeans.

And they are terrible. You've heard the tales of the Chaldeans. You know what they do. You know how they come against the nations that surround them.

Well, they're coming for My people. They're coming for My people.

The Holiness of God and His Reckoning with Sin 16:26

God refutes the idea that He's been indifferent to His people's sin. He tells Habakkuk this. He says, Habakkuk, a reckoning is coming. I'm not indifferent to sin.

God tells Habakkuk that even if that sin comes from His beloved sons and daughters, even if it comes from His people, He is not indifferent to it. He will deal with it. It should tell us something about the holiness of God that when man sins against the Holy God and those sins pile up to the heaven like a foul stench, that God, even though He loves sons and daughters, says something about His holiness that He deals with that sin.

And throughout history, the principal way He dealt with sin in the case of the Old Testament was He raised up foreign nations. Judges, the Chronicles, the Kings, foreign nations were regularly the instrument. It shouldn't have been a surprise, Habakkuk, if it was a surprise. It shouldn't have been a surprise that God would raise up a nation.

Because that's what He regularly did. God regularly raises up other nations to deal with His own people. And He refutes, He refutes the idea that He has been just sitting back. He says, it's not the case, Habakkuk.

You just wait. I am not going to be complicit to their sins. I'm not going to tolerate their sins. They have doubled down on their iniquity.

You're right, Habakkuk, they've been perverse. But because I'm just, and because I'm thrice holy God, I will deal with it. And again, Habakkuk, I'm sure at this point, his eyes were wide. He'd been asking for God to show up, so to speak.

And God said, justice delayed is not justice diverted. He says, I'm coming. And I've raised up one that you would not ask for. The sound you hear, Habakkuk, is the ocean waters pulling back.

But they're going to come flooding in. In Psalm 2, we read these words. Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us.

But He who sits in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall hold them in derision, then He shall speak to them in His wrath and distress them in His deep displeasure. Yet I have set My king on My holy hill of Zion.

The Duration of Evil and the Scales of Eternity 18:37

God permits, for reasons you and I, it's above our pay grade, God permits evil's existence. And He also permits its duration. But for how long? And that's the question.

Well, our problem is perspective. On the scales of eternity, the existence of sin and evil is a candle's flicker. On the scales of eternity, the wickedness that we look around and see, and the how long, and it seems like there's a pause before God acts, it's again, but a candle's flicker. We look at the evil that exists yesterday, the evil that exists today.

We wonder if God's going to get around to dealing with it. The way we kind of process it, it's like this. You ever been driving? You're just driving along and you're driving safe and you're priding yourself on how safe you're driving.

And then all of a sudden, right past you, a car goes screaming past you, weaving through lanes. And you say, I sure hope there's a cop ahead. I hope a cop gets that guy. But then what if, what if you look ahead and there's a cop?

And you say, aha, he's going to get what's coming to him. And then you kind of watch mirror to mirror to see what the cop's going to do. Is he going to come out? Is the lights going to come on?

And you keep driving and you're disappointed. Nothing happened. There was no justice. You say, oh my goodness, didn't he see that?

Didn't he see that guy? I'm going to report this. We have that kind of reaction. That's Habakkuk's reaction.

Habakkuk has seen every screaming car in the history of man, so to speak. Go buy him. God, come on now.

Justice Delayed Is Not Justice Averted 20:07

He viewed it as an abdication of justice. God continually reminds His people from one testament to the other testament, from one page to the other page, from the beginning to the end. He says, I am a just God and I will deal with every ounce, every drop of evil. But He says, I do it on My time.

And I have a reason for permitting and allowing what I permit and what I allow. And in the end, every bit of it will be used for My glory. Even Nebuchadnezzar was used for God's glory. There's other sermons we'll get to that talk about that.

In any case, God saw all the wickedness. He's seen all the wickedness of the world combined. And He's not threatened by it. The nations can rage.

God is not threatened. If we could only see how the story ends. If we could only see the triumph of righteousness that's coming. If we could only see the vindication of all the things you hope to be vindicated.

It will come. In His time. Justice delayed is not justice averted. In a sense, that was God's answer to Habakkuk.

But He says, when the justice comes, Habakkuk, it's going to take a different form than you're going to want. And My people are in for a difficult season. Now, that season would be difficult. It would be one of discipline.

The harshness of this, again, we can't even fully appreciate.

The Just Shall Live by Faith 21:32

But at the same time, right in the midst of the book of Habakkuk, and we'll get to it next week, We're going to read this statement, that in the midst of discipline, in the midst of justice being delivered, there were righteous men and women, folks like Habakkuk, and in the hour of persecution, in the hour of need, in the hour when the world seemed to be going to pot around, if we live long enough, it may go to pot around us too.

But in that moment, God has a message for His people. He says this, he says, the just shall live by faith. Even when you don't understand Habakkuk, even when you don't understand 1st Presbyterian, even when we don't get what's going on, we serve a God who is on the throne and His arm has not gone short.

I don't know what He's going to do tomorrow. I don't know what the future is going to bring, but I know this much. He's on the throne. And I know He is good, and I know He's loving, and I know that He'll use everything.

The things we perceive to be good, the things we perceive to be bad in the world around us, He will use everything for His purposes and for His glory. So how am I to live? By faith. It's not that I understand every twist that's coming.

Oh my goodness, Habakkuk didn't understand the twists that were coming. It doesn't matter who you're talking about, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Paul, John. They didn't all understand what was right around the bend. But they were called to faith.

They're called to know that God is good. He is in control. And if He says He loves His people, He loves His people. And He will bring about good ends from difficult means.

The Warning of Mount St. Helens: When, Not If 23:06

You know, in 1980, a volcano known as Mount St. Helens erupted. Some of us remember this. It spread ash for just hundreds and hundreds of miles. Those of you who were alive at the time remember this was kind of a big deal.

We lived in Colorado at the time, but we had relatives who lived out in the Pacific Northwest. And I remember one of the relatives. In order to kind of share just how big a deal it was for them locally, they sent a little baby food jar full of ash that had fallen in their yard.

They sent it that we might know, that we might relate to how big a deal this was, what had happened. Now, with that said, those of you who remember the history of Mount St. Helens might remember this. There was a guy. There was a guy.

His name was Harry Randall Truman. Harry Randall Truman. He lived on the side of Mount St. Helens. He lived right there on the side of the mountains.

Now, there have been warnings to Harry and to others that if you lived in the area, that the volcano was active and that it was likely to blow in the near future. Now, others heard the warnings and acted appropriately. They left the area to preserve their lives. They heard about the eruption that was coming and they went somewhere safe.

Harry did not. Harry Randall Truman, he heard the words of the scientists. He heard the pleas from his friends, relatives, neighbors, and the like. All of them telling him he needed to get out, and his response to them was, no. He says, you know, I've been here all my life.

I think I'd know if something was going to happen. He perceived he had some sixth sense that allowed him really to understand if there was a real danger. I've been around here a long time, he said. And besides, if anything does happen, you know, the area I'm in, he said, I'm in an area that's heavily timbered, and the volcano, the apex of it's a little ways away.

I'll be all right. Well, on May 18th, 1980, Mount St. Helens blew, and it took all of Harry Randall Truman with it. Harry lived on a powder keg, and it claimed his life. When is not the same thing as if.

You don't want to confuse, you don't want to confuse the when of an event's occurrence with if it's going to happen at all. This morning, if you're a sinner who is not yet trusted in a Savior, if you're a sinner who is not yet trusted in a Savior, is not yet trusted in Christ and His salvation, the issue is not if you're in danger.

The issue is not if you're in the fire's path. The issue is when it will reach you. This morning, if there's any nation that thinks it's outside the reach of God's arm, the issue is not if God is going to deal with it. The issue is when it's going to happen.

As individuals, as a nation, as a world, we're all on God's cosmic clock, so to speak. And so how long, oh Lord, is a question we do well to ask Him. But is our soul, is our world prepared for God's answer? Are we ready?

Let's pray.