Habakkuk No.1 God are you listening

The reading this morning is from the book of Habakkuk, verses 1 to 4. And having read these, we'll move on to verses 12 and 13. The oracle that Habakkuk, the prophet, received. Habakkuk's complaint.

How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, violence, that you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me. There is strife and conflict abounds. Therefore, the law is paralyzed and justice never prevails.

The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted. We move on to verse 12, Habakkuk's second complaint. O Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die.

O Lord, you have appointed them to execute judgment. O rock, you have ordained them to punish. Your eyes are too pure to look on evil.

You cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? May the Lord bless the reading of his word. Amen.

Thank you, Joe, who not only has helped us in our Alpha courses, but we have our own courses that we have written in Bible instruction, and we're taking groups into that curriculum, and Joe is helping us with others to teach. And if you're interested in Bible study at a conversational level, then have a word with him. Thank God for the dozens, if not hundreds of people who've been through the tabernacle course down the years and look forward to representing it in the immediate future.

Let's pray again. Father, we thank you for your word. Speak to our hearts, inform our minds, cause our wills to buckle, and will you be sovereign over our lives, the life of this church? We thank you for Eileen Horder.

We praise you for a lady who fought a good fight, who kept the faith and finished the course. What a great day to enter into heaven. We thank you for every memory and for the eloquent sermon that she preached.

A lady who suffered, but was able to say, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Help us to be worthy of her memory, and even more, help us to be worthy of the shed blood of the broken body of our beloved Savior.

Amen. Well, we commence this new series of studies from the book of Habakkuk, and I've deliberately worked on and had handed out this morning the sort of material that we use in our pastoral groups, which you've no need to turn to directly, but you might like to slip them in your Bible, and those of you who never go to a pastoral group meeting, well, this is the sort of thing that we go through, and this is what you're missing, actually, and although the pastoral group meeting's not for a little while, I've put the date there, this will serve as a reminder, and if you're not part of the TAB family in terms of being a member, that doesn't matter. We realize that the kingdom of God extends beyond the membership of Worthing Tabernacle.

If you'd like to be involved in a group, then have a word with the folk in the welcome desk, and if they can't supply you name and address immediately, they'll take your own details and will contact you through the office, and also I've slipped in on the reverse side, because being a Yorkshireman, I like to use paper to the best advantage possible. I've given you an outline of the sort of material that I want to share as I seek to respond to the promptings of the Spirit this morning. Habakkuk.

Well, I guess you immediately run into a little bit of controversy, because how do you pronounce it? Is it Habakkuk or Habakkuk, as Campbell Morgan used to pronounce it? I think the only thing you can be sure of is that Habakkuk is not a relative of Derek Cook, and that's the only attempt of humour you'll be glad to know that I shall try today. Doubtless, Eric will come at least with that commodity later this evening. It's a long jump, isn't it, from being a worrier to being a worshipper.

My credentials for the former are impeccable, but to shift from worry to worship, from mourning to dancing, from perplexity to a sense of feeling confident that God is in control, well, I guess that's what Habakkuk represents in terms of his own person, and therefore he opens out a vista for you and for me to move along the track down which he went, to have the same sort of feelings that he went through, and to appreciate that the doubts and the questions that you have as mortals in the end of the 20th century were also enshrined in the experience of people who lived hundreds of years before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was a cremation yesterday. Glad I wasn't at it, but I followed the course of the man who was cremated for some years, Pol Pot, the killing fields.

Two million people probably died as a result of that man's influence during your lifetime. We're talking about recent days, and sometimes when I've been out in Southeast Asia, and particularly in the Cambodian theatre, I've asked myself, how long, Lord? Why didn't you intervene? A little beautiful baby placed on mum's tummy, and mother cannot respond to the baby for an epileptic fit, knocked out some of her brain cells during the process of birth. Why? Why? Why? Eight o'clock or so last night, at Salvington Lodge, on my own, I was there with a beloved friend, who was obviously about to enter into God's immediate presence, who had been part of our family here, for whom an uncontrolled disease of creeping paralysis had taken its full course, and her life was to be terminated.

And yet, there last night, with my Bible open and, metaphorically, my hand on my heart, I felt such a sweet sense of God's presence, as she slipped away, and bowed my knee before the sovereign throne of God. Prayers I'd offered, we'd offered, were not answered in the way that we wanted them to be answered. And there are questions which we ask when confronted with personal and national tragedy.

Forgive the emotion, but I'm not made out of concrete. Have a cook was no less a man in terms of emotional reaction. In his day, it was not Pol Pot, it was the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar, and that pagan crew which had just crippled Egypt and seemed relentlessly to move down the corridor of power in the Middle East, taking all before them.

And they'll soon be up against the holy walls of Jerusalem's celebrated city. And have a cook is a friend. Have a cook, he's there at the same time as Jeremiah in terms of ministry.

His name means wrestle or embrace, and in one sense, he was well entitled for this is what you find him doing. He's a veritable Jacob, almost a reproduction in terms of his spiritual concerns, and he wrestles with the Lord. And in those opening verses, the wrestling match is very severe.

Three chapters spin their course before the wrestler becomes a worshiper, and the perplexed prophet has a sense of peace and joie de vivre. You see the reason why I want you to read the Bible and bring your Bibles along. Because, you see, it's the Bible who speaks to this sort of situation.

It's the Bible that helps us to interpret Eileen Horder and her passing. It's the Bible that makes sense even of some of the pastoral tragedies that we represent here in terms of God's strange, mysterious providences. And so, brothers and sisters, I have pleasure in introducing many of you to Habakkuk, maybe for the first time, in chapters where you'll find him wondering and worrying, and the second chapter where he mounts a high place and weights and says he's not going to shift until God makes his position clear.

And then in the third chapter, you find that he is a worshiper and a witnesser and enjoys a sense of the presence of God, who though the outward circumstances have not changed, causes the prophet to have his feet like the feet of a deer in enabling him to go on to the heights. This is the man that we're going to be looking at in terms of what he had to say, the personality that he was, and the ministry that he left during these two or three or four weeks. God, are you listening? How long, O Lord? How long must I ask you for help? A few days ago, I passed the birthplace of Thomas Carlyle, the great Scottish divine and great man.

Carlyle said this, I have this problem with God. He says it's his delays. I have problems with Connock South, sometimes British Airways, but I understand Carlyle, the delays of God.

I can jump from Carlyle to Luther and perhaps a name more well-known to some of us down here. Luther said to God, send me pestilence, send me sword. Give me physical reverses, but do not be silent from me.

O God, do not be silent. Well, we need to look at the question that Habakkuk raises. When confronted with a political situation and the national condition, he says, how long? The question examined, as we look at it, begs what I've called an inversion.

What do I mean? Well, you see, here is Habakkuk saying to God, how long? And one might think that he was the first man ever to say that, but that's not the case. You see, the fact of the matter is, in terms of biblical theology, God asks that question of man before man ever asks it of God. And I'm not being clever with words.

I'm setting up a theological framework, and if you bypass this, you'll never understand the message. We often start with ourselves, whereas the Bible always starts with the doctrine of God. You cannot understand Calvary unless, first of all, you come to the person of God and see what was being achieved at the cross.

Now, you can't here start with Habakkuk. It's not he who first asks the question, how long? Why is it that you seem to be so distant, so removed from the situation? God got in on the act of asking questions well before Habakkuk's day. He sent Moses on his behalf to speak to Pharaoh and said, how long? How long before you let these Israelites, these Hebrew slaves, go? And can you believe it, brothers and sisters, when you get into Exodus and into Leviticus, you find that that same question is being asked directly of the Hebrews by the God of the Hebrews.

How long? How long do you take my commandments and try to break them into little pieces and toss them over your shoulder? How long do you involve yourself in your sinfulness? How long? How long? How long? The fact of the matter is that when God asks this question time and time again and there is no response, God can make himself appear to be distant from the scene. Get on with it yourself then. Get on with it yourself.

When you invert the question, you begin to see the nature of the problem. If the nation doesn't want God, if the individual doesn't want God, alright says God, have the fulfillment of your desire. And that means the equivalent of the Chaldeans.

It also means the breakup of your society. Now, you've got to understand Habakkuk at this point or else you'll completely cause his message to be misunderstood in your evaluation. You see, Habakkuk is not just concerned with the fact that outside of Judah there is an alien force.

Habakkuk is concerned that within Judah there is a breakdown of society in his day. How long, O Lord, must I call for help that you do not listen or cry out to you violence that you do not save? He's concerned in using this terminology with what is actually happening in Jerusalem itself. And the word cry really carries with it the connotation of screech, scream.

Spurgeon once preached a sermon on how to listen to sermons. Now, I'll probably never convince you of the truth of this, but I am sincere. I love to hear other people preach.

I love sermons. I have not a very good memory in certain areas, but I am remarkably gifted with a recall of sermons. I can hear sermons, remember sermons that I had preached when I was a student.

There's a way in which when a sermon is preached, you are to respond in your heart to what is being shared. And Spurgeon taught his congregation how to listen to sermons. Now, leave that aside.

We need to be taught how to read our newspapers. You say you're joking. No, I'm not.

I don't know whether it's a tabloid that you take or one of the quality papers, or maybe you don't read papers or write the media. You see, what is happening here when God says to… when Habakkuk says to the Lord, how long? He is given a review of all that is happening in his society, and as a result of that, he screams. And when you read your papers, when you listen to the media, and you read your papers and you listen to the media as a Christian, there surely must come time when you screech.

There's a book that's been written called The Silent Scream. It's actually a book that was so entitled because of the reaction, as David Alton painted it just a few weeks ago in the tab, of the perfectly formed little child in its mother's womb, who is not going to be allowed the grace of life, and the life is terminated by the insertion of some surgical instrument, and that unborn but perfectly formed little human being reacts. A silent scream.

Habakkuk looks at his society, reads the papers, switches on the television or the radio, so to speak, and what he sees, what he reads causes a screech, and so he comes back to the Lord. Alan Redpath has had a remarkable ministry, and on one occasion he was preaching on Jeremiah, and one of the verses which speaks of the broken systems, and how God got up in the morning and wailed over Israel, and Redpath was daring enough to say, you can hear the sobbing God's voice, and what you've got here is a sobbing Habakkuk's voice as he sees the circumstances that confront him in the nation, and he says to God, how long? How long are you going to allow this? How long are you going to allow in our society today those things which are so opposite to what you want and what your word declares? You see, this is what I mean that you've got to understand Habakkuk correctly. He's not just asking that God will stop the pagan Chaldeans from invading the land.

That may be part of the prayer agenda, but more particular is this, that God would do something in that nation. How long must I call for help? How long must I cry out to you? And the reaction of God is what I have called a forced response, and in these verses there is the monitoring of that response. Look at verse three.

In the opening verses, he's told us about the burden that he has and how he comes to the Lord, but what he picks up from God is not a vocal reaction, but rather the Lord making him have a look even more carefully as to the nature of society. Why do you make me look at injustice? Five wrongs in Hebrew society are tabulated – destruction, violence, strife, conflict. Do you remember Barbara Castle, that red-haired lady of Harold Wilson's day? You know, when Steve was putting all the questions up to the kids, I was thinking, how dated I am.

What's my favorite radio program? Dick Barton. Do you remember? Snowy and Jock. Can I tell you, these kids of the modern decade, they've got nothing to compare with that.

Well, what about this, this in place of strife? You see, that was Barbara's suggestion to Harold as to how to cope with the trade unions, and there was good stuff in it, because though I think she's an atheist, I still feel she's a good woman. But Barbara wasn't able to deliver it. You see, that's the problem.

You analyze your society, you tabulate what is wrong, and then you try sociologically or politically to fix it. I mean, God help them in Northern Ireland, I really do mean that. God help them in Northern Ireland.

I can't remember a time from being knee-high to a grasshopper, to the height that I'm at and the age that I'm at, when there has been peace in Northern Ireland. How long, O Lord? And God sends a prophet to have another look at what is wrong. It's a forced response monitoring that he has to engage in.

And the fact of the matter is, as I've touched on before, the problem that confronted Habakkuk is caused by the same conditions and carelessness as you find in our day. You see, there have been epochs in British history when we had a God-sent opportunity to get things back into a biblical order. The late King George brought the nation together.

The churches were thronged. During the Second World War, when everything looked bleak and the Nazi machine was relentlessly pushing its way towards the coast, having taken over France. And we prayed, and remarkably God intervened, and we won the peace.

But then we lost it. We could have readjusted our society. We really could.

And I could give you several other examples of this. We didn't do it. We said, in effect, no, Lord, get lost.

Excuse the colloquial expression, but really this is it. It's the language of the street. It's the language of the public house.

It's the language of those who never seem to recognize that behind creation is this awesome God. And when God has said to a nation, how long? And he fades off into the distance, or seemingly so, it is possible for someone like Habakkuk or the modern Habakkuks to get up, and they see the scene, they read the papers, they listen to the media, and there's a scream from their own hearts, Lord, how long? The reason why God does not react in the way that we would like is because sin does bring its own consequences. And God will not play around with an individual or with a nation.

And you can reap the fruit of what you have sown individually, nationally, or as a world order. What Habakkuk will tell you today, we moderns, is that our world is in an uncontrollable spin, and the only force, the only power that there is that can bring things to right is God. I asked young Nick, who came into my office early hours of this morning, and helped me with one or two jobs.

He's going off to Fiddleworth, and I said, what are you preaching on? And he said, I'm preaching on prayer. And then you remember, I told you that one of my favorite songs, although it's not in our hymn book, was what these ladies were playing, Sweet Hour of Prayer. Why do older friends in Scotland still talk about what happened in the Northern Hebrides? Because in the 1950s, there was a revival that came about as a result of people praying.

And a whole community, or communities, were changed. Somebody has told me, or several people, many people have told me that the time is well known because of its biblical emphasis. And if that is accurate, then praise be to God.

But equally an emphasis must be an emphasis on our prayer. Because you see, this world order, this national situation, this local problem, this difficulty that I personally represent as a bundle of contradictions, that can only be resolved through God responding to our prayers, for individuals to be changed, for families to be changed, for a town to be changed, for a county to be changed, for a nation to be changed. That's why they had prayer meetings in New York State for years, and then the revival came in America in the 19th century.

That's why in Wesley's day, people were praying that somehow God would turn this country back to himself, and to stop the forces that brought about a revolution in France from crossing the channel, and just engulfing Britain in an outrageous, bloody, internal conflict. Read the secular historians. They'll tell you that what saved England, what saved the United Kingdom when France was virtually ablaze, was the ministry of Whitefield and Wesley.

And that was born on the sea of prayer. People screeched before the Lord, God had his abacus. Carest thou not that we perish? That's the cry of the disciples to the Lord Jesus, as Brother Eric will tell us this evening.

It was imperative for them that the captain came on board. And what we want to know, and what Habakkuk required in his day, is the felt sense of the presence of God. Come on board.

Care about us, Lord. How long before you'll come and adjust our society, and bring things back to order? This is what we're asking for. Now, the answers, of course, didn't come easily to Habakkuk.

They don't come easily to me. I'm agnostic in certain areas. I do not understand God's providential dealings, but I believe.

Incidentally, that is not an illogical position. I cannot tell you why God allows certain things to happen, but I still believe that He is God, and that my puny reason bows before His sovereignty. And though there was emotion in my heart, I tell you the truth.

I did kneel last night by a bed of a beloved woman, and I acknowledged God's sovereignty in all that happened. And from the biblical framework, I have peace, and I'm content, for life itself is fleeting on the scale of eternity. And a beloved sister has gone into the presence of the Lord.

So, you see, when you're confronted with difficulties of the distancing of God as a result of sin, you still, as a believer, must have your anchor points. And this, if we can encroach upon the territory I'll invade next week, is the reason why I've dropped you down in those notes to verses 12 and 13. Confronted with difficulty, there is a temptation to give up.

I was on the end of a national, international call on Friday, a person giving up, I'm going to give up. Why? My brother's got cancer. I'm going to give up.

Why? You don't know the difficulties in our home. I don't completely, though I do know in part. And my response was giving up to do what? Where's a wider framework? What is there that will make sense outside the fact that God is? And this is the first anchor point that Habakkuk reaffirms.

Oh Lord, verse 12, are you not from everlasting? And this is not some impersonal theological statement, let alone some philosophical proposition. He wraps it in language of ownership. My God, my holy one, oh Lord, oh rock.

I'm one of these very strange people who's never doubted the existence of God. Quite frankly, I think people who doubt the existence of God are daft. That God is has never been a problem.

Incidentally, most of the theological books that circulate in Africa and Asia that are imported from the West, they may as well dump them in the sea. From the viewpoint of the Western, you have to prove what to the African is obvious, that God is. He's not asking if God is, he's asking who God is.

And Habakkuk says you are from vanishing point to vanishing point, you are eternal, my God, my holy one. I've always embraced the concept that God is. I, and I think in his grace, I've always known.

My God, my holy one, even when I cannot understand all that this strange being I love and worship allows. So, he puts the anchor point in God is, and what's more, he firms up with another one. God is holy.

Your eyes are too pure to look on evil. You cannot tolerate wrong. Not today, not next week, not next month, maybe not next year, or even next decade, but God, there will come a time when you will vindicate your name.

How long, oh Lord, how long, how long, cry the saints from under the throne if you can understand that metaphorical language in the book of Revelation, as they have some semblance of knowledge as to what is happening on this earth. How long before you justify yourself? They're not praying for mercy. They are praying for the honor of God, and that's where some of the evangelicals go wrong.

Our God is not a soft-soaked individual, a sort of candifloss personality with no substance to him. He is a holy God, compassionate, yes, gracious, yes, but essentially, fundamentally, as a key to understanding his nature, he is a holy God. And so, Habakkuk comes to this God, and he says, Lord, I don't understand what you allow.

I don't even understand the instruments that you use and the circumstances in which your sovereignty is fleshed out, but God, you are my God. You are the Holy One. And what is more, Lord, we will not die.

You have appointed them to execute judgment. You have ordained them to punishment. But Lord, you and I, we go on forever.

You see, when you're a Christian, you're taken not into the family of God alone. You're taken into the very, would you misunderstand this, into the very nature of God. You become partaker of the divine nature.

You are indestructible. Eileen lives on. I pray God he'll heal Hannah.

I'd run up Cicero Ring barefoot to achieve that if it were possible, but I speak like a fool. Whatever God allows, I can interpret it against the framework of eternity. He is God everlasting.

While God shall be, I shall be. His love in times past forbids me to think. He'd leave me at last in trouble to sink.

Habakkuk eventually moves to the high tower, and he waits for the Lord, and something of the sovereign dealings of God are fleshed in front of him. And ere long, by the time you get into the third chapter, Habakkuk is appreciating this, that God is in supreme control. He can still dance in his circumstances, which are not radically changed during his lifetime.

He can still have peace. No longer is he wallowing in a sea of perplexity. He's taken everything back to the anchor points, and he knows sooner or later God will vindicate himself.

He will establish his honor in Jerusalem. He will establish his authority over this world. He has pledged his son to do that, and do it he will.

But in the meantime, there is a corrective that is possible to excuse an individual and this God, even though your family don't get in on this, or this town doesn't get in on this, or this nation doesn't get in on it. You can be right with God. You can know his mercy.

You can know his forgiveness. You can say in the midst of your circumstances, my God, my Holy One, you are from everlasting. You are my Lord.

You are my rock. You are the God and Father of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, but you forgive me my sins and grant me absolution through his precious blood.

Therefore, I come before your presence, and I have peace and joy in my heart, even when I fail to understand the minutiae of your sovereign dealings in society. Let's listen to a couple of songs, one of which I think we're going to be involved in singing. And at some appropriate point in that singing, we'll deliver bread and wine to you, which we offer you not because you're a member of the tab, but because your name is known by Jesus Christ, and you accept him as your Lord and your sovereign.

Can you join in the refrain of this song written by Graham Kendrick? I think he knew well that verse in Hebrews which says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. I think you can identify with these words as well. For the joys and for the sorrows, the best and worst of times.

For this moment, for tomorrow, for all that lies behind, fears that crowd around me, for the failure of my plans, for the dreams of all I hope to be, the truth of what I am. For this, I have Jesus, for this, I have Jesus, for this, I have Jesus, I have Jesus. For the tears that flow in secret, in the broken times, for the moments of elation, of the troubled mind, for all the disappointments, for the sting of all your regrets, for all my prayers and longings that seem unanswered yet, for this, I have Jesus, for this, I have Jesus, for this, I have Jesus, I have Jesus.

For the weakness of my body, the burdens of each day, for the nights of doubt and worry, when sleep has led away, needing reassurance and the will to start again, for a steely-eyed endurance, the strength to fight and win, for this, I have Jesus, for this, I have Jesus, I have Jesus. For this, I have Jesus, for this, I have Jesus, for this, I have Jesus, I have Jesus. I have Jesus.

173 in the supplement. Your mercy flows upon us like a river, your mercy stands unshakable and true. Your mercy stands unshakable and true.

Most holy heart, of all the things I've given, we turn and lift a fervent prayer to you, hear our cry, O Lord, be merciful, your endless grace, remember our sin. O Lord, your church looks great, the standing firm in sorrow, is lean and still, the private revival of church, that we again may honor, our King, our Master and our Lord. O Lord, be merciful to us now.