Habakkuk No.3 God, you are making a mistake

And here is a man in the Old Testament whose name, a strange name, Habakkuk, has got a problem. A problem that, in essence, you've probably shared yourself, but never expressed it in such a way. This problem is how can God abide evil in the world, and sometimes use evil for his good, at least for the purposes of the kingdom.

So in Habakkuk in chapter 1 and verse 12, you find a man arguing with God, and I like Habakkuk because I've often done that, though not with his eloquence, and alas, not with his spirituality. But God, he discovers, is a God who controls the universe, a fearsome and an awesome God. He does bid little children to come to him, but he will bring to book those who have lived their lives to the disadvantage of others.

Pol Pot did not get away with it, neither did Hitler. Neither, incidentally, will you or I. For this God, although he's a loving and compassionate God, you can run to him like a little child or run to his mum or his dad, he's also to be feared. Because if you're not in a right relationship, then to be in his company is actually unpleasant.

In fact, no one will go to hell without wanting to be there. You say, that's a staggering statement, it's a profound statement, it's a biblical statement. You could not be in the presence of God and not know your sins forgiven and be comfortable with this God.

It's the Lord Jesus who is the access to the Father, it's the Lord Jesus who gives us the assurance that when we stand in Father's presence, we can be comfortable and intimate with Father as a little child. Because our sins have been dealt with, and unless your sins are dealt with, you are in trouble, individually, our town as a whole, our nation, our world. So let's talk more of that in a little while.

Here is Habakkuk, a man who's got a complaint. Verse 12, Habakkuk 1, O Lord, O Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die. O Lord, you have appointed them a sinful barbaric army.

You have appointed them to execute judgment. O rock, my stability. You have ordained them to punish.

Your eyes are too pure to look on evil. You cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate these, the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up more those more righteous than themselves? You have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler.

The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them in his net, he gathers them up in his dragnet, and so he rejoices in his glad, therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet. For by his net he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food. Is he to keep on emptying his net, destroying nations without mercy? I will stand on my watch, on my watchtower.

I will station myself on the ramparts, the highest place in the city. I will look to see what God will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint. Look at the optional translation at the end of that verse.

I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer he will give me when he rebukes me for being so impertinent. More of that in a moment. Let's just jump to another hymn.

I'm having the luxury of choosing all the hymns I love this morning. If you don't like it, it's tough. Number 11, before Jehovah's awful throne, ye nations bow with sacred joy.

Isaac Watts penned this one, John Wesley also had his hand in it. When we get to the last verse, including the instrumentalists, we'll stand and we'll sing unaccompanied as we admit to the sovereignty of God. I have done some outlines and they were rather late for one or two reasons this morning.

If stewards, you didn't get around to give them to all the congregation, then please do so during the singing of this, the opening verses of this hymn. I think some of our musicians don't have them. That's number, what did I say, 11, supplement coming up on the overhead, last verse, unaccompanied.

Let's stand. Ye nations, bow with sacred joy. His law, our God, our God.

And crown Him as the Word of life. And as eternity, my love. Burn as a rock, my truth shall stand.

When rolling years shall cease to move. And father in that confidence, we go on, on into the next stages of our lives, on into the fulfillment of your plan, this side of eternity. We thank you that ours is a God of honor, a God with glorious attributes, not impersonal, but one who comes up close, a judge, but also a compassionate father, one who does not deal lightly with sin as though it was of no importance at all, but one who allowed his own son to shed his precious blood to deal with the problem of our transgression.

Father we thank you that you have the world in your hands. You are the God of the past and the God of the present and the God of the future. The passing of the years does not age you.

You stand forever supreme, the eternally existing God, the one who never changes. We thank you that we have been fashioned in your image, given a capacity to have intercourse with you, given an ability to develop a saintliness that brings pleasure to yourself. Forgive us that opportunities have often been squandered and the road down which you directed us to go we have not taken.

Forgive us our many trespasses, but enable us to take the stock of the years that lie ahead within your grace and to invest them in your service so that when we come to stand before the bank of heaven we may find that our great God pays good interest for the faithfulness of his children this side of eternity. I accept our thanks for who you are, for what you have done. In your unmerited favor you have touched us and we are eternally grateful.

Speak to us now from your holy and inspired word, in the name of Jesus our Saviour, Amen. Just sit down. So I told you last Sunday about the problems in my home city of Sheffield, when as a lad I saw the sign, Men at Work, and discovered it wasn't quite as stark a warning as it should have been because sometimes when men at work, well, not as much is done as was anticipated.

But when God is at work, we said, things do get moving and problems sometimes arise because from the point of view of the human scale God is an untidy worker, he disturbs. One of the first sermons I ever preached here was on the divine eagle, how God disturbs the nest as an eagle disturbs the nest of her young in order to coax the young eaglet to fly. The philosophy of divine disturbance is part of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

That's what makes the Christian life so very interesting. It's never boring. Anything is libelous in this world, it's that comment that church is boring.

If church is boring then you've got the wrong church. You haven't got what God intended the church to be. Jesus says he's come to bring us life and life everlasting, he's come to set us free and to serve the Lord Jesus is a life of joy, it's a life of challenge, it's a life of tears, it's a life of laughter.

All these ingredients are part and parcel of what should be your experience because you belong to God through faith in Jesus Christ. Well Habakkuk, now he's a man who was not only inflicted with a very awkward name, he's also a man who lived at the wrong time. I always think that Jimmy Carter had he lived at the right time in the presidency he would have probably been one of the greatest presidents the United States ever had but he hit the tarmac when the Americans had problems in Iran with hostages and well the rest of the story you know.

And of course Ralph Carter had the difficulty of trying to work that out and it was a very very great problem for him. Why do I say that? Well you see because these events of the present are actually reflected in the past. I mean Habakkuk hits the tarmac politically at a very very difficult time in Hebrew history.

Israel has been split into two, there's Judah and that's separated from the rest of Israel like Scotland is separated from England and just down in the south a hundred miles or so is Egypt and Egypt is in problems because there's a group of people the Chaldeans who've just about ransacked Egypt and is taking this this army is taking the whole world or seemingly so. There are it would be wrong to say of the Chaldeans of the Babylonians to whom Habakkuk makes reference here that they were a primitive barbaric people. Well certainly they were barbaric but not primitive if you went to Babylon which obviously was their headquarters like London is to England or the United Kingdom.

Far from seeing a little Dorp as they call it in South Africa an unsophisticated group of mud huts you found a city that could have taken seven chariots side by side racing on its walls, you'd find buildings that were would do justice to anything here in Worthing in fact they put most buildings in Worthing to shame, hanging gardens, natural and man-made rivers and lakes. But the military clout of the Babylonians was well it became a household word. I was brought up on the day when the Nazi war machine brought terror to your heart.

Well so it was as far as the Chaldeans were concerned and these Chaldeans or Babylonians are saying the same thing. They were knocking almost at the doors of Jerusalem. Now Jerusalem what is that? Well it's the holy city, capital of Israel today as it was then, a city in which God had put great interest and made a lot of investment and the idea that though things were going wrong in Jerusalem that God was sorted out by bringing the Chaldeans.

Well it would be like the Pope inviting Pol Pot to sort it out the Vatican and that's not a very good illustration but it's the best I can do off the cuff. I mean so Habakkuk he knows that things are wrong in his country, I mean he said that in the opening verses, Lord there's violence here, there's depravity here, things are happening in Jerusalem in my land I don't like, now sort it out. God doesn't do anything, he doesn't say anything, that's the annoying thing about God, just when you want him to say something he doesn't, when you don't want your wife to say something she does.

And Habakkuk takes God's silence as being sort of an indication of his insularity and when God does speak Habakkuk says I don't like what you had to say and God said well the reason I didn't tell you was because I knew you wouldn't like what I had to say, in fact to Habakkuk it's often the case with preachers that they don't want what I want to say, it's often the case with congregations, they don't want to hear what I have to say so when I tell you I knew you wouldn't like it, when you heard it you want to tinker around with it and you're not to do that because what I say goes, because God doesn't run the world by committee, he doesn't. So Habakkuk says, oh God says to Habakkuk in the fifth verse look at the nations and watch be utterly amazed I'm going to do something in your days which you would not believe even if I told you, it's almost humorous here isn't it? I mean I want to write a book one day if I live long enough to write all the books that I'd like to but I'd like to write a book on the chuckles of God, see I think that God gets mad and he shows his anger towards people and there's a fearful wrath about God but you can balance that with a chuckle because God does chuckle over his children, I mean don't you chuckle when a little girl comes into the room and she's got her mother's shoes on and she's been up in the bedroom and she's sprayed herself with chanel or chanel or whatever you call it, seven, nine, you name it and I once bought my wife a bottle of that and I shook it in boots and the top came off and it's an interesting experience for the rest of my shopping actually. I mean don't you think that God chuckles as a mother chuckles when the child does something absurd and here is God and he knows Habakkuk, Habakkuk's one with God in terms of his affinity, he loves the Lord despite the problems that he has with what God allows.

So maybe there's a little chuckle as God tells him well I knew that if I'd told you before you wouldn't have accepted it, you'd tinker around with it and you're doing that so I was right and you were wrong and Habakkuk that's generally the case, in fact it's always the case. So God tells Habakkuk what he's going to do, he's going to sort out Jerusalem by using an unholy people, God finds, Habakkuk finds that difficult as I find the purposes of God difficult in my life sometimes, God only knows. So Habakkuk starts to have a little go back at God, oh Lord are you not from everlasting my God, my holy one, oh what do you do when you're faced with the unacceptable work of the Lord? I mean cast it in terms of, well we mentioned our dear friend Hilary Pryor, I loved Hilary, one of the best friends I ever had, I didn't want her to die, cancer hit her, laid in her late forties, early fifties, everything to live for, what do you do when you're facing that sort of thing, you know, you've prayed your socks off and what you've wanted has not occurred, you have to stick with what you know.

My brother and I when we were in Sheffield we'd often go out to South Derbyshire, sorry North Derbyshire, and we'd play on the hills and go down to the brooks and the villages and crossing the brooks was always very interesting because you could get yourself absolutely wet through. The art was to jump from one stone to another, so you jumped onto your certainty. Similarly as far as Havocook's concerned he's got a problem so what does he do, he jumps onto his certainties, what is he certain about, well he's certain about the character of God.

And so as I say in my notes which you can go through this afternoon if you've got the time and the inclination, the character of God is set down by Havocook who's a good theologian, he gives a sort of composite picture of what God is like, what he can be sure of, Lord I don't understand what you're doing but this I know about you, what do you know about God, Havocook, that makes him different from anyone else, well number one, he is eternal. That means that he's someone who has existed forever, Lord are you not from everlasting, now I'm not from everlasting, my sermons sometimes seem as though they are but I'm not. God before the continents were, before the world was, before the universe was, you were there, Lord I go to the other end of the spectrum when my life is no more in terms of my physical existence on this earth, when this world is no more, if I can posit such a time then you will still be.

So it's over against the everlastingness quote-unquote of God that Havocook is to work out his problem and it does reduce things in terms of their importance when you come at it like this. God is eternal, he never changes, God is faithful, we will not die says Havocook and he's speaking about this relationship he has with God because he's linked with God eternally then Havocook though mere mortal he is will not die, he understands that, Jesus tells us this far more clearly, Jesus says I am the resurrection of the life, he that believeth on me though he were dead yet shall he live. I tell you, you don't know the number of times I've taken that verse and cracked it open at the crematorium in front of some of the dignitaries of our time and said you men, you women, you who've served in office in Worthing, you've got such good minds, you're business people, you're successful people but do you understand this? That the phenomenon of life is that when a person is linked to God through faith in Jesus Christ he shall continue to live after he is dead and that is the most important preparatory point that you have to address and so many don't.

By God we will not die, I know your faithfulness Lord, that's another stepping stone that Havocook puts up. So, pastorally what do I do when I'm confronted with situations I can't resolve because often I can't. Then I go back to what I believe in terms of the fidelity of God, the everlasting nature of God and sometimes I'll dip into the 17th and 18th century hymns because I know them more than Graham Kendrick's hymns, though I love Kendrick and his stuff.

His love in times past forbids me to think, he'd leave me at last in trouble to sink, each bold Ebenezer, remember Ebenezer, the address that Tony Ford gave us earlier on this year, each bold Ebenezer, each bold recall of answer to prayer I hold in review confirms his good pleasure to see me right through. You see, Havocook at this moment is talking to himself, he's setting up the step stones, in fact he's not setting them up, he's using those stepping stones, oh Lord you are my rock, you are the stabilizing factor in my life, oh Lord you're sovereign, you've appointed people to judgment as well as you've appointed people to eternal life, oh Lord you're pure, you're impeccable, your eyes are too pure to look on evil. You see, he's convinced, setting up the stepping stones, here's Abraham, he has another problem before Havocook in this area, I mean is God going to demolish Sodom and Gomorrah, not that Abraham would have too much trouble with the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah and there he got demised, but he's got family there, he's got relatives, wife, kids, surely Lord you're not going to destroy the righteous with the unrighteous.

And he comes to a realization that God, the moral judge of the universe will always do that which is correct, now have you got that in your mind? The moral judge of the universe will always do what is right, now remember he's from everlasting to everlasting so he's got an advantage over you, the possibility is that his intellect is greater than yours, I speak with a degree of cynicism and loving humour, but you see you've got to couch it in this language because sometimes we mortals, we elevate ourselves to the Trinity, we make the Trinity into a quartet, we believe that God is dependent upon us. I mean the most absurd illustration you get of this in the New Testament which must have got the chuckle of Jesus is Peter Acts 11 or 13, it's in the notes. The Lord Jesus wants Peter to communicate the gospel to the Gentiles and Peter's a Jew and you know what Jews are like in terms of Gentiles, at least they were in those days, you know the Gentiles are not to be recipients of this good news, it's exclusively Jewish, Peter's a nationalist.

And so God unfurls the blanket and in the blanket there are unclean animals and insects and Jews are not permitted to have them, I mean a Jew does not generally have salivate when he's offered a pork chop and he hears God and he says, go ahead and eat and Peter says no, not so Lord, which is really quite stupid, how can you say that God is Lord and argue with him that what he tells you to do is actually not right. Peter offering God the benefits of his intelligence, Peter, Habakkuk, Abraham, Tony Sargent, put your own name in, be honest, we're all in this category, there are times when we try and tell God that our way is the best way and God says no. And I tell you the only way to approach the difficulties in life is by putting them into the context of God knows more than I know and this is what I can say about this God, this is his character, this is his portraiture, this is the God that I serve and when I don't understand him I'll trust him, when I can't comprehend what he's doing I will still act on his revelation for he does not always give an explanation for the things that he is about, not so.

You have to admit to that, it's in the Old Testament, it's in the New Testament, it's the story of the lives of so many of you people. Alright says Habakkuk, I've set up, Lord I've got you embarrassed, you're my Lord, you're my God, I mean this man is not impudent, Habakkuk, not at all, he hasn't distanced himself from God in his personal relationship, he refers to him as my God and my Holy One, fully respectful. It is not wrong for you to bring your doubts to the Lord, it is always wrong for you to bring your disrespect.

You are to honour this God all the days of your life. But Lord there's still this problem of these ruthless, I nearly said charismatics, Chaldeans, dearie me, these ruthless people, I mean how do you understand that you're not going to let, God is allowing those who are more righteous than they to be swallowed up by the Chaldeans. Lord these are brutal men, the wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks.

It's become a thing to wear earrings these days, I haven't had too much inclination down that track myself, probably because I was always put off by the practice of the Assyrians and if it goes as far as that then it's not going to be a very acceptable experience for anybody. I mean the Assyrians like the Babylonians would actually put fish hooks through their noses and then they would attach lines to the hooks and they would bring people along. Well as far as I'm concerned I back off that sort of thing, I don't want to run the risk.

But this is what the Chaldeans were like you see, they hooked people literally and they were pulling people out from the various nations. This is, if you please, this is ethnic cleansing in biblical times, for there is no modern sin which does not have its antecedents in the past. And God is bringing these brutal people into Judah, into Jerusalem and His folk are going to suffer as a result of their barbaric practices.

Lord you who allowed the Red Sea to consume the Egyptians, you are allowing the Babylonians to consume your people. The devil is ruthless in what he can bring men and women to do. Bosnia and Serbia or if you want something more up to date, what about the trials in Central Africa at the moment? You see that the problem is, as I said to you last week, people read the Bible with a telescope, you're never to read the Bible with a telescope, you can only read the Bible up front, what happened then is happening now.

You check what happened in Rwanda, we're talking about just a few years ago. If what happened in Central Africa was happening in London, then international forces would have moved immediately. But you see you're white, they're black, you have some political clout, they don't have any and as a result there was genocide in Africa and we did nothing and God seemingly did nothing.

The Lord allows Satan to have his sway sometimes in history and doesn't intervene. You see but as far as the Jewish people were concerned, actually what had happened was that God allowed them to do what they had chosen. You see what you have here is the Pharaoh principle.

Now you think that the Pharaoh principle just applied to Egypt, I'll explain this in just a moment for those of you who can't grasp what I mean. The Pharaoh principle, a man whose heart was hardened because he'd already hardened it. I mean Pharaoh was one of the most difficult people that Moses ever had to deal with and Pharaoh who was privy to the will of the Lord decided that he wouldn't accept God's will.

Alright says God to Pharaoh, what you have decided will now be set in concrete. Now the Pharaoh principle applies to the Jews. You see there are some evangelicals who believe the Jews can do no wrong, that is ridiculous.

The whole of the Old Testament, the New Testament was against that stupid conclusion. The Jews are indictable, the Jews are accountable to God as Gentiles are accountable to God. It's not disrespect to the Jewish nation, it's just a clear exposition of Scripture.

This is what Habakkuk says, Lord bring them in, sort something out in Jerusalem and God says well I'm going to do it but Habakkuk says well don't use them to do it but still do it and God says well I'm going to use who I choose. But you see the fact of the matter is what God allowed was what the Jews had already determined and because they had determined it God was not going to intervene and as a nation they are carted out from the land that they had been given because we are accountable today as they were accountable then. That's why I say you can't play fast and loose with this God.

You see any sort of candy floss theology of God's salvation and forgiveness is really without substance. This God is to be loved, you can embrace him as you embrace your own father but there are certain things that have to be set in order for that and that is your obedience to him and your confession of your sin and your acceptance of his mercy. None of these things were these ancient Jews prepared to accept therefore they were getting what they had asked for.

God who had swallowed up the Egyptians because of their pride would swallow up the Jews and take them away into Babylon. These people seem to be utterly helpless didn't they? I mean this is what Habakkuk has to say, Lord you're silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves. That's the last part of the thirteenth verse.

Lord they're so helpless they're like fish that have been caught by the fishermen. You know I have a thing about animal suffering and pain as you've gathered which I don't believe is an emotionally foul thing. I mean I don't believe that it's just come out of my emotions.

I believe that the Bible teaches us that we should be honorable in our dealings with one another and also with the realm of nature. And I sometimes thought about fish when they're being caught you know a big shoal of fish have been brought in and they're these fish that are in the bottom of the ship and the bottom of the boat and sometimes the fishermen will come along and wear their boots they'll just tread on the fish. Now I don't want to get socially sentimental but they are sentient creatures.

And whatever you think of the ethics of this and I'm not commenting on that just at the moment I'm using this as an illustration. But that's the picture that Habakkuk has at this point. Lord these Chaldeans as they were they are bringing Jews into their nets.

They keep trawling the waters of Judah. They keep emptying the net so there will be nothing left as they've relentlessly done with their war machine to shift the metaphor so they are now going to do in Jerusalem and you do nothing about it at all. These people are so helpless says Habakkuk.

But he doesn't say they're sinless. You see his problem is not that God is going to judge and condemn sin his difficulty is the method that God is using. My friend I want to make it very clear God does condemn sin.

He condemns your sin. He really does. He could not be a God of integrity if he dealt lightly with your sin.

And there are things that you have to do to ensure that you become in a right relationship with God so that you will know his protection and his love and enter into a relationship with him. You see he loves you on a one to one basis. The forces of evil they deal with you almost like fishermen deal with fish carelessly at times heedlessly not appreciating the harm and the hurt that they cause.

The devil doesn't appreciate you. There are evil forces that don't appreciate you. You're just one little fish in a big ocean.

It's almost like the Japanese dredge fish that come along and they don't even use nets now. They suck the poor fish out and sometimes they over fish the waters. They couldn't care less about one individual fish.

But don't you see don't get too lost in my analogy. That's the way the devil deals with humanity. Bring them all on trample them down.

It doesn't really matter why because he has an argument not with man himself but with the man who with the God who made men come into this world who bear men's image. You never find God dealing with men like this war machine of Babylon deals with men and if they're dealt with like this the reason is that this is what they opted for. The consequences of the built up sins of humanity are seen even today in the way the political ripples in East Africa, Central Africa, in Eastern Europe, in Southeast Asia.

Look at the way the Burmese treat the Karen people. What is the problem? Well you see we've said we can do it without God. We've got our committees.

We've got our United Nations. We've got things under control. The fact of the matter is we don't have things under control.

What you have in the Bible is God's rules for life. You push those rules aside and things go wrong. You have no call, no claim on God to answer in terms of his responsibility than if you buy a television set and you refuse to wire it up in the way the manufacturer told you so to do.

Why do you have three wires? Why must they be set in a certain order? Because the manufacturer is some sort of Victorian person who wants to rob you of your pleasure. Don't be so stupid. Similarly with the Bible you see.

Why does God give us the Bible? Because he's trying to be a killjoy and to suppress us from enjoying life in this world not a bit. He is the God of joy. He makes kittens.

He makes young cubs. Go out to the whales says the psalmist. Watch them frolic in the water.

God looks on those things. He wants us to enjoy the very handiwork that he has brought into the world and when we pollute it, the ecological level, when we pollute ourselves at the moral level and things go wrong you can blame one another but you can't blame God. So Habakkuk is beginning to appreciate as he knew right at the beginning having set up the stepping stones that ultimately any hope that he's got is that God will somehow one day intervene.

So what does Habakkuk do? Well, having described something of the attributes of God and the attitudes of men and women, he turns to the altitude. He says, I'm going to climb a high tower and see what God will do. Verse 1 chapter 2, I'll stand on my watch and station myself to the ramparts.

I'll go to Cicero Ring and spend a couple of weeks up there. I'll look to see what he will say to me. Do you have a place where you stop off? Not necessarily a high place.

Some of you know but I'll put it on record on tape. The reason at the human level why Maybridge Fellowship still exists is because when I was asked if we would take over that declining little witness and despite some folks saying that we in the got enough to look after and that was a fairly intelligent comment to make, I just felt from Cicero Ring looking down on the whole panorama of Worthing that God was saying, you've got to go for that and help to rebuild what otherwise would have faded out. I say that not for the glory of the town, I just want to put it on record for the glory of God.

To get away, to go off for two or three days, to spend time in your own home just waiting for the Lord. You know some of our ladies who engage in counseling, some of our menfolk for that matter, will join with me and say one of the problem with counseling is that some of the people want to be counseled, don't want to listen to anything you want to say, they just want to talk. That's the problem with prayer.

It's all that's necessary for you to tell God a thing or two. But Habakkuk, he has told God a thing or two but he's got wisdom you see. He says I'm going to break away from everything and now having put my point of view to the Lord, I'm going to stand on my watchtower and I'm going to wait and I expect that God's going to give me a rollicking for even daring to ask the question.

I think God does give him a rollicking but the rollicking will be more in the form of a chuckled rollicking if you can have such a thing because Habakkuk, you see, he hasn't betrayed anything. He's got all the big theological pieces in order. He's standing on the right stones.

He knows that this God has the whole world in his hands. He is from everlasting to everlasting. He will execute judgment but Lord it's the machinery, it's the nitty-bitty, it's the clanking of the wheels that sometimes they seem to last so internably before you really show what you're about and Lord I wish you'd get on with things more quickly so that I could understand and tell other people and keep them happy.

I've often wanted to do that myself. You know sometimes think that a pastor, sometimes people think the pastor's a sort of Wizard of Oz, you know, or a slot machine. You pay your money, pull the handle and out comes the answer to your theological problem.

Often he's got more problems than you've got. But you see the point is that if you can approach life as Habakkuk approached life then eventually you get to the point looking back when you realise just how impudent you were in saying God you got it wrong. And he says it's all right.

I knew you thought I get it wrong so I didn't tell you what I was doing because you would have wanted to have tinkered around with it. But time's always on my side. Remember I'm from everlasting to everlasting and you're just really quite finite.

You may know a bit but you don't know that much. And that's the way to cope with life my friends. So I've just about finished what I was gonna say that I didn't say.

You've got compressed in those notes so take them and God bless them to you as you as you read them through. What we know of God gives reason to wait before him. His character causes us to wait in humility and with absolute confidence.

Let me repeat again what I've often said from this pulpit. They're wonderful words they're not mine they come from Bishop Anselm in the third or fourth century a great Christian leader. He said this we do not we do not understand in order to believe.

We believe in order to understand. When I acknowledge that God is when I take that step of faith then it brings a great framework in which the understanding comes immediately or ultimately. God doesn't have to prove himself to me.

He did elevate me to the Trinity if he did. He doesn't have to. What God asks from me is my obedience.

Abraham I repeat from last week did not live by logic. He lived by faith. He did not live in the flush of signs and wonders though I do believe in signs and wonders and incidentally to put the record right for anyone who made a wrong conclusion I would claim to be a charismatic in as much as I do believe in all the gifts of the Spirit available to the church within the sovereignty of God today but I do not live by signs and wonders.

I live by pledges and by promises. I live by this book. When I cannot understand what God is doing what God is allowing then I engage in the same sort of reaction as Havercook.

I tell the Lord what I think. I tell him respectfully. I go from stepping stone to stepping stone.

Then I back off and I wait. Sometimes I waited six months. The answers come.

Sometimes waited a year. Sometimes as with the death of my dad I have no answer but one day. That's the way that you come at these things.

This is how you deal with the uncertainties of life. God could it be the case you're making a mistake? The divine chuckle. No but I thought you might have said that.

Hang on. Watch this spot. I'm still at work.

My beloved friends let's pray. Father there's some people here and they're broken. Some folks whose family lives have brought a lot of disaster and tragedy as well as a lot of happiness.

Some people here can't understand all that you've allowed but they've got enough on to believe you and to know that your arms are rounded about them. May this word this morning have strengthened them we pray. May this tape as it goes off to various other places here and elsewhere abroad may it minister to that part of the body of Christ that listens to it.

We thank you for the honesty of your word. Thank you it allows us to be honest in its preaching and in its application. So continue to bless this church where we don't understand.

Help us to trust and realize that you've got everything in control as you have the Old Testament world in your control. You have the New Testament world in your control. We thank you that despite the problems in Bosnia and in Africa time is on your side.

Eternity is yet to be and those who have been callously and unfairly dealt with and yet have groped out in faith to you the moral universe ruler of the universe they have a destiny that's secure and an eternity which will balance every redress and pay dividends a million fold. Help us to trust you when we cannot trace you and to continue to have a day-by-day experience of you and your grace. The name of Jesus your son and always our beloved Savior and all God's people said amen.