Habakkuk No.2 God at work

Habakkuk in chapter 1. This remarkable little book tucked away in the final pages of the Old Testament has gold that is of highest quality, teaching that is mind-boggling, an honesty that is commendable and demands an apology for those who've not looked into its pages in any depth before. The oracle that Habakkuk, the prophet received, how long O Lord must I call for help but you do not listen or cry out to you violence but 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 which abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous so that justice is perverted.

Here is God's response. Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if it were told you. I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own.

They're feared and a dreaded people. They are a law to themselves and promote their own honor. Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk.

Their cavalry gallops headlong. Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like a vulture swooping to devour.

They all come bent on violence. Their hordes advance like a desert wind and gather prisoners like sand. They deride kings and scoff at rulers.

They laugh at all fortified cities. They build earthen ramps and capture them. Then they sweep past like the wind and go on.

Guilty men who believe that their own strength is their God. When I was a lad in Yorkshire, there were tram cars in those days. And I used to go from one end of the city to another to my school, historic school.

And sometimes as the trams made their way through the cobbled streets of Sheffield, occasionally they'd stop because, well, the road needed some attention or the track needed to be firmed up. And true to South Yorkshire, there'd be a half a dozen men, each with shovels. Generally, three would be engaged in prayer leaning on the shovel, whilst the other three fondly were trying to fulfill the prediction of the local town hall authority, which had put a warning notice 10 yards up the track, danger, men at work.

What you have here in a Habakkuk, my beloved brother and sister, is a warning notice, danger, God at work. And he doesn't lean on his shovel. One of the things about the works of God is that it can be an untidy work.

What took place after the death of our beloved Lord, three days later, when they put his bedraggled, blood-stained body in a tomb, created havoc in the garden. Resurrections are a nightmare for gardeners. I sometimes think as when going around Uffington Corner, it's not a place to be at the resurrection.

I mean, there's disturbance and the noise is going to be terrific. When God works, it's rarely a tidy work. It can be a puzzling work.

It can be a baffling work. But one thing is sure, when God works, it's good to consider what he's about. I'll come back to that in a moment.

I have a number of problems which I shared over the years with certain aspects of evangelicalism, to which I am committed in terms of being an evangelical Christian. I appreciate the stand that we take on the Bible. I do believe that this book is inspired.

I do believe that it is authoritative. I do believe that it is sufficient to make plain the way of salvation. But where I balk at some attitudes within evangelicalism is that this word must be read with a telescope between you and it.

So you consider it as a historical document, which indeed it is. Not realizing that the thing which makes the Bible differ from Josephus' War of the Jews or any of the Greek philosophical offerings is that the Bible is essentially up to date. The God who worked then is the God who worked now, and the principles that obtained then are the principles that are obtained now.

There is a church in South Africa, Johannesburg, where I've been, though I never preached, and its name is the Rima Church. Rima is an optional word from the Greek language for the term word. You could have logos, you could have rima.

Logos means the written word of God generally expressed. Rima means the application of that word to contemporary circumstances. The distinction is important.

When you read the word of God, you need to throw the telescope away and come to it close up. When you see God at work in centuries gone by, you recognize that this is an illustration of God at work now. If God was not at work now, then we would all be in great difficulty.

So, we come to Habakkuk, whose name in the Hebrew, as I translated it for you last week, also means wrestler. Jacob, prince with God, wrestled with God for a blessing. Habakkuk, prophet of God, wrestles with God for understanding.

Habakkuk is faced with a condition which puzzles him, so he backs off, and he sinks in a sea of woe. And God eventually lifts him high to a pinnacle from which the prophet looks down, and his woe is turned into a wow. And sometimes your first reaction when there is a disturbance at the handiwork of God is, woe.

But when you go high and you look down, and in the words of the Latins, you see it subspecia eternitatis, you see it from the point of view of eternity, then your woe becomes a wow, what God is about, what God is doing. Habakkuk spells out his problem. There is injustice on the one hand, and inactivity as far as God is concerned on the other.

And so, he waits for God to respond to his problems enunciated in the first four verses. And from the fifth to the eleventh, God does. The first thing that you have to lift out as God engages in his answer and directs his words to the prophet, is that God grants revelation without explanation.

Revelation without explanation. The apostasy that was in Habakkuk's time, and the divine inactivity in face of it, created some dilemma for the prophet. And he was saying, in effect, God do something about it.

Because the prophet had asked God, how long did he have to wait before God got up and somehow was involved in the situation? And God has to say to Habakkuk, one of the reasons why I was so quiet is this, that had I told you what I was going to do, you wouldn't have believed it. If I told you what I was going to do, you wouldn't like it. If I told you what I was going to do, you would want to adjust it, for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe.

The authorized versions got it more strongly. I am going to do a work. God works.

And the workings of God can sometimes be a puzzle. Take Abraham, Genesis 12. Abraham, get up from Ur of the Chaldees.

I'm going to move you into a land of which you know nothing. And Abraham says, why? I'm stable here in Ur. I've got my props.

I've got my friends. I've got my family. I've got all the support I need.

Why? God gave Abraham a revelation. He did not give Abraham an explanation. And the reason for that is that had he offered the letter, Abraham would have lived by logic and not by faith.

And you and I are called to live by faith and not by logic. We are told to live not in the flush of signs and wonders, but pledges and promises. Believing that what will be shall be because God has determined and within God's parameters we live our lives.

And when we don't understand, we still go on. Habakkuk, you won't believe what I'm going to do. You won't like it.

And you will want to tinker around with it. Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed. I have seen the people who I brought into the promised land.

I made a corridor through pagan tribes so they had safe conduct from Egypt into the promised land. I insulated them from their activities, but now my people have willingly, have deliberately, have continually absorbed the principles of those pagan nations. Therefore, I will bring one of those nations to lead my people out of this land.

You're right, God. I don't like it. I don't like the medium that you are employing to achieve your purposes.

And you know, my friend, that is often our reaction too. When God is at work, we don't understand, we don't believe, and we want to tinker around with it. But you see, God does not hold an interview when he decides to work.

He doesn't call a church meeting. He doesn't need to. He is the sovereign God, accountable to none.

And that is not frightening. It is comforting because within the absolute sovereignty of God are wrapped up his attributes of love and mercy and holiness and forgiveness. Habakkuk, I'm giving you revelation, but I'm not giving you explanation because you couldn't take it all in.

You can't quite understand it. Habakkuk, one day your comprehension will catch up with your compliance. And that's what God said to Abraham.

And when you get to the end or towards the end of the book of Hebrews, the epitaph is given about Abraham that he walked with God, he clung to the promises, and as a result, he pleased the Lord. He responded to revelation when there did not seem to be a great deal of explanation. There's something else, brothers and sisters, that you need to learn about this.

And that is God is sovereign even when there is no submission. The sovereignty of God is placed alongside submission which comes without realizing that the people involved are compliant with what God is wanting to do. What does sovereignty mean? Sovereignty means supreme, overwhelming, inscrutable control.

God has it, you don't have it. If God wants to bring the Babylonians in order to cleanse Judah, He has every right to do it, and He has all power. The Chaldeans or the Babylonians, those are twin terms for the same people, may not realize that they are involved in the purposes of God, but they are, for God works out His purposes whether we are compliant or not.

That is the God that I believe in, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. I have a verse which is fast becoming a life verse, Nahum 1 verse 3. It says in the authorized version, God has His way in the whirlwind. In the untidiness of the workings of God, He still is in complete control.

He does not deal capriciously. He has His way in the whirlwind. In the heart of a whirlwind there is a calm.

God comes with a measured fashion upon human situations, and He decrees and He achieves His will. There is sovereignty without submission, and when you get a hard-necked people like the Babylonians, you still find that they're caught up in the purposes of God. They become His workers, even though they are workers and do not know it, do not realize it.

I've been thinking a lot about the Scots of late. My mother-in-law was a Scot. At least she came from Scotland, her ancestors.

I once remember reading up the history of her clan, the Chisholm clan. I found that they were sort of brutal and bloodthirsty lot, and it wasn't the most sensitive thing for me, her son-in-law, to give her a little cameo of the history of the clan. When we found the ancient castle crumbling away at the back end of Inverness.

Strange people, the Scots. Men wear skirts, haggis and chips, their fond diet, and who else could evaluate the strains of bagpipes as being dulcet tones? Nothing in common, of course, with the Scots I'm jesting. And these people who come into perspective in this particular passage.

Lord, what are you going to do? I'm going to raise up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people. And here, Habakkuk has an inspiration greater than Rabbi Burns. As you can see the people and hear them, that ruthless, impetuous people, they sweep over the earth.

They're feared and dreaded. They're a law to themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk.

Their cavalry gallops headlong. Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like a vulture.

They swoop to devour. They all come bent on violence. Their hordes advance like a desert wind.

Nothing stops them. They're the Khmer Rouge of the Old Testament. They're the Viet Cong.

They are all that seems to be evil. Tell it not in Gath. They will not believe you in Ashkelon and in Jerusalem.

They will find it very difficult. I am going to do something in your day. I am raising up the Babylonians.

Who is this I? This is God bringing into the territory of his ancient people, those who will reprimand them, those who will humiliate them, those who will lead them into the exile that they have deserved because for so long they have been a disobedient and headstrong people. He says, God, they're my workers. I'm raising them up.

The Hebrew is graphic. It's the carpenter in his wood. It's the man in the lawnmower shop.

It's the engineer in the garage. This is what I'm going to do. This is deliberate.

I'm going to raise up a blood-stained, terrible army. Habakkuk says, I don't understand. God said, I knew you wouldn't.

Don't you see? That's why I didn't tell you. Habakkuk says, I've got a better idea. God says, I know you had.

That's why I didn't ask for your advice because I don't want it. Let me put up a couple of questions. Was Judas out of control? Our Lord had 12 disciples.

One was a dud, Judas, who betrayed him. Was Judas out of control? The Bible indicates, the gospel writers tell us that Jesus knew what was in the heart of Judas. That does not excuse Judas from what he did.

No more than the bestiality of the Viet Cong excuse them, or the Nazi war machine can be excused because God used their evil in the outworking of his ultimate purposes. Man is responsible for his actions. But God in great sovereignty can use that evil to bring about his perfect plan.

Here is Peter. Never went to college. Never trained in theology.

Unless, of course, you attribute the teaching he received from Jesus as being the greatest education that any man could have. But from time to time, Peter shows an immaturity that would exclude him from any office whatsoever. Jesus tells Peter and the rest of the disciples about the cross.

He's going to Jerusalem. I'm going to suffer. I'm going to die.

It's all there packed into the heart of Mark's gospel. And when Peter, who's just being complimented by Jesus in revealing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, when Peter responds to the next bit of revelation, he indicates he doesn't like it. Not the cross, Lord.

Not you, Lord. And Jesus, in effect, says, Peter, I didn't ask you for your opinion. I'm not giving you an explanation that will satisfy you.

I am doing the will of my Father. When my Father speaks, I act. God is at work.

It's untidy from your perspective. It's incomprehensible. But Peter, God is at work.

Get back into line, Peter. Brothers and sisters, God sometimes puts us back into line. It disturbs our comfort zones.

We say he's got it wrong. We want to tinker around with the engine. One of my favorite secular hymns is, Do It My Way.

You ask my wife. They are my workers. They are my workers and they don't know it.

Here is Peter in that sermon on the day of Pentecost as he addresses the crowd and he speaks about Jesus. Acts chapter 2 verse 22. He says that this man was so cruelly dealt with, but it was Almighty God who allowed him to go into the hands of the priests, the hands of the Romans, and butcher him, put him on the cross.

They are responsible at the human level, but overarching that responsibility is the sovereignty of God. It was mucky work. It was unfocused work.

It was disturbing work. I wouldn't want to see a man dealt with as Jesus was dealt with. I weep with the lepers when I see them.

I'm buckled when I see a kid who's sick and is not looked after by his parents or abandoned by his parents in Romania or what have you. To go up at the cross, you can keep it. For me, it's unfocused.

It's bloody. It's horrible. It's wretched.

But God was at work behind the cross bringing things to pass that would benefit humanity. God doesn't need my advice. God didn't need Habakkuk's advice.

The Lord Jesus didn't need Peter's advice. God sometimes gives you revelation and he doesn't give you explanation. And you come up close to his work, his word, and you chuck away the telescope because this isn't God acting 2,000 years ago.

This isn't God acting 2,800 years ago. This is God acting now, disturbing now, at work now, unfocused, unpalatable, unattractive. But God at work, and we bow before his sovereignty.

Explanations never develop faith. Obedience does. Here is explanation.

Here is revelation without explanation. Here is sovereignty without submission. These Chaldeans, these Babylonians, they believe that it's their strength, it's their might, it's their natural abilities that have made them the scour, the scourge of the ancient world.

They sweep past like the wind, they're unstoppable, guilty men. They erect a statue to their own strength, to their own infallibility, and give it time. The Babylonians will blow away.

God will laugh at them. He will have them in derision. He will mock them to scorn.

Their power is as the fine dust of the balances. God blows and they've gone. None of you, few of you know of the Chaldean Empire.

Few of you are aware of what the Babylonians got up to. Their days have gone, but God's glory remains. Their power was so minuscule, but God's power is omnipotent.

Sovereignty without submission. God will work without your submission or with it, but God will work. And so you come to the last thing I want to share.

The kingdom without and the kingdom within. There is a biblical philosophy of history. You see, let's express that a little less sophisticatedly.

There is a key to history. What is the key to history? Well, it's God. History, break the word up, is His story.

God at the beginning and God at the end. God creates Adam and Eve. There's bliss and then there are blisters.

There is triumph unless there is tragedy. The garden of Eden, they are evacuated from. They're expelled from.

And you read the whole sad tale of human story in the first part of the Bible. And then one day a man comes from God. Not the man whose name is John, but the man whose name is Jesus.

He dies on the cross. He makes an atonement for our sins. At midday in the day of God, which is just the way that the Lord sees the whole of a human story, Jesus Christ goes out and He dies.

And at the end of that day, He shall return in the power of an endless life. He shall set up His government in this world. History is moving to a purpose that God has pre-established.

And all that the prophet eventually comes to see, as he tells us in the 14th verse of the second chapter, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. God is working His purposes out. Eden shall be reborn only at a higher level.

There shall be purity in our world. There will be no more famine, no more disease. The ecological problem will no longer be a problem.

All will be harmony. All will be perfection. This is what God is moving men and women to in the story that He has already pre-written.

And therefore, He holds the key, you see, to history. He holds the key. And you understand the purposes of God when you come to this book, the Bible, which I repeat you don't read far off.

You read close up. Now, the kingdom of God which is to come already has its present manifestation. How? Well, in Old Testament times, the Jews, they were to epitomize the kingdom of God.

A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a society that's different. But they blew it. You know the story.

I mean, the opening verses of Habakkuk's first chapter are the ones that show the disgrace, the disgusting things that were happening. And these were supposed to be the people of God. They thought that election brought absolution.

It doesn't. He holds you to book in the way that you live. And if you continue without repentance, then you risk His wrath.

You risk the Chaldeans or the equivalent. You can't play with this God. He is sovereign.

And He controls history. Paul puts the Jewish nation in the dark. And he takes one example in Romans chapter 2. It's dramatic and spilling over to 3. And he said, Behold, you are a Jew.

Jew means praise. All right, let's have a look at what you've done. And he goes through the catalog of crimes, the catalog of sins.

And he shows that the Jews cannot claim Abraham as being their ancestor, as some sort of word, some magic, some mantra that means if they repeat it, their sins will be automatically forgiven. Rather, they have to kneel before the foot of the cross, as do Gentiles too. God calls men and women to book.

A nation reaps what it sows. A person reaps what he or she sows. When Jesus came, He came to preach the gospel of the kingdom.

And the church in many ways takes up all the Old Testament prophecies and promises given to Israel. And it becomes this international people of God. There is a sense in which the kingdom is to come.

There is a sense in which the kingdom is here. That's why we sang the Lord's Prayer, which concludes with the idea of God's kingdom coming here, Anna. So I bring you to the conclusion of what I wanted to share this morning.

God has been gracious because I thought my emotions would buckle and make preaching impossible. God is at work, disturbing work. He works in the world on a large canvas.

He works in the nation. On a small canvas. He works in a town.

He works in a church. He works with the individual. And when God is at work, it can seem untidy.

It can seem unfocused. It can seem as though He allows what is really illogical and incomprehensible to happen. But He doesn't.

Because you see, God doesn't need to give His explanation. He's always got the bits and pieces. He can arrange what's going to happen.

And within this church, sometimes God re-echoes what our Lord said to the disciples. What I do now, you don't know. But you will know.

There are times when God doesn't disclose everything. Jesus said to His disciples, there are things I have to teach you that you can't take now. But you will take them.

So where is the future of this church invested? In me? God forbid. What an idiotic choice. In our elders? With great respect, no.

The future of this church is invested in God Himself. Man go. He goes on.

Bat on his past. Isn't it interesting? I tell you before my maker, this series of sermons, and while I preached to you from Timothy, and what we're in at in terms of focusing on on a Sunday night, was worked out long before the events which have just transpired which have caused such an unexpected and painful turnabout in our lives. If you think this is not real, then nominate me for an Oscar.

But we're going forward because God is with us as a fellowship. The plans that He has, the plans that I've shared, that I will be here to realize, they're still His plans, and I'm still committed to them, and I'm still committed to you. But there will be others who will come, and they will lead, and you will see that God has got it all in control.

So to this end, I'm calling a day of prayer. Not one of the days of prayer where we scatter it with prayer with three sessions. On the 6th of May, we're going to pray throughout the day for our church, and blushingly, for its future, and for our elders, and for each one of us, for me and for Rowena.

We're going to pray. We're going to acknowledge once again, God is at work, and He will achieve His purposes in His way, because He is sovereign. Just pause and think for a moment or two.

Jesus Christ, when I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and poor contempt. On all my pride, forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, saving the death of Christ my God, all the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood. Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small.

Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. If I'd have advised God, I'd have told Him not to have done it. He didn't need my advice.

We accept what He has done. Let's sing, See from His Hand. How good is the God.

We'll praise Him for all that is past, and trust Him for all that's to come. I want the two of you brothers with strong voices, back that up.