Will God intervene in our nation?” (Habakkuk 1:1-17)
Billy Milton - May 4, 2008
| Other formats : |
 |
Mp3 audio recording |
Many years ago when I lived in Scotland a lady in our village lost all three of her children in an awful car accident. She was turning right when a lorry being driven by a drunk man failed to stop and literally flattened her car from behind, seriously injuring her and killing her three children. Can you begin to imagine how she felt? That is every parent’s worst nightmare. The effect on the village where we lived was traumatic and the anger felt towards the drunk driver was scary. If it had been the wild-west he’d have been lynched on the spot. However the thing that caught me off guard a bit was the fact that a couple of people were really angry at God. “Why does God allow this type of thing to happen?” “Why doesn’t he sort out idiots like the drunk driver?” and various other angry comments.
I suppose most of us have stuff that happens that really upsets us and even makes us question our faith. I want you to feel that ‘mmmph!’ in your stomach. Stuff happens and we wonder why God allows it. The ancient prophet Habakkuk finds himself in that position in our passage today. He is not a happy man. In fact he’s hopping mad and his complaint to God verges on blasphemy! He can see that his country is in a dreadful state, in all sorts of ways, but what concerns him even more than that is his perception that God is tolerating the wrong and doing nothing to intervene. As we see the state of our country some of us might secretly be thinking that Habakkuk’s complaint isn’t so wide of the mark even today? We see stuff and we go, “ummmphh – come on God do something!”
As a way to try and answer your doubts, I want you to imagine for a moment that you’re driving round the M25 when all of a sudden the traffic begins to slow down and pretty soon you’re crawling along at walking pace. Can you imagine that?! You sigh in frustration. It’s the middle of the day and once again the M25’s snarled up – cones as far as the eye can see. Then as you approach the roadworks a workman in overalls is holding up a sign which says, “Slow, men at work.” To be more precise maybe that sign should read, “Slow men, at work” and then maybe it would be more accurate?
If you’re anything like me you’ll quickly check out the roadworks. Ten workers out there. One is supervising, and we know that’s not work! Four are leaning an their shovels, typical British workman. One is talking on his mobile phone, one is having a drink of water, one is in the portaloo. One is driving the big yellow machine — which looks more like play than work to me — which leaves one guy, one lonely guy, to wield the shovel and move the dirt around. Ten workers and only one sweaty soul is doing the work! Typical! And I’m late for my appointment… because they can’t get their act together. I’m not allowed to lean on a shovel all day so how come they get away with it? Give me 5 minutes and I’ll show them what work is!
Except that of course… I might just be wrong. I may have mis-interpreted what I thought I saw. The shovel-leaners might be ready to leap into action at just the right moment, when the earth-moving machine finishes its work. The guy on the phone might be coordinating things with expert knowledge. I may not have seen that the guy drinking water has only just finished lifting a giant slab of rock. I certainly don’t understand the skill it takes to run that giant machine, and I don’t have a clue what it means to supervise such a complicated operation. In other words, my petulant moaning about their laziness and incompetence is ill-informed and almost certainly unfounded.
What my eyes think they see is only part of the truth. The real issue is that I’m out of my depth here and I just need to trust that the workmen know what they are doing, and then let them get on with it. You know, unlikely as it sounds, our natural reactions with regards to those mending our motorways can find a parallel with our view of God. Sometimes it looks like God doesn’t really know what he’s doing or doesn’t care. Can’t God see that there’s a lot to be done down here? Can’t God grasp that this world needs His involvement, needs it now, needs it quickly?
Habakkuk the prophet seems to have felt that way. He complains about the desperate situation he sees around him. The Babylonians had chipped away at the little kingdom of Judah until there was hardly anything left. Can’t God see that his nation is suffering and that the Temple of Jerusalem is in danger?
The way Habakkuk put it was: “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. ” “mmmmpphhh!” DO IT
In other words, God, how come you are doing nothing in the face of all of this evil? How is it that you let me, your prophet, stand out here in the hot sun and yell my head off, and you do nothing to back me up? Now, time for a bit of honesty. Have you ever felt a bit like that? Have you ever felt like crying out to God, “Just do something, anything, to correct whatever is going on out here?” Young teenagers being stabbed to death on the streets of London and we seem to hardly ever hear about an arrest. God, why don’t you do something? Almost a year since little Maddy McCann went missing in Portugal. I prayed for her safe return, maybe you did as well? She’s still missing – probably dead. Lord, where were You? Can’t you do something? God seems to be throwing a sickie!
Like Habakkuk, we complain so quickly. “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” But, as with the road crew, seldom do we see the whole picture. We don’t see all that goes into getting a job done. The truth is that God is at work, and God is always at work. God is at work, according to His purposes, not ours. But we don’t always see Him working because He uses methods that we don’t always understand. He works in His own way, and we rush by, like drivers at the roadworks, unable to see the whole picture, unable to discern God’s methods. Making snap judgments.
So God answered Habakkuk. Not that he has to explain himself to us but on this occasion he chose to help Habakkuk out by assuring him that there was a whole lot more going on than Habakkuk could see:
“Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. For I am rousing the Babylonians, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. Dreadful and fearsome are they.
” (vv6-7)
The Lord says, Habakkuk, hard as you might find this to believe, everything is completely under control, so don’t tell me I’m not doing anything. It’s just that you don’t understand my methods. In fact, God says, even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe because my ways are not your ways. I’m going to use the Babylonians. A ruthless, impetuous, pagan people? That’s like saying to us, “I’m going to use Al Quaeda to bring Britain to repentance.” I might struggle if that was the message God gave us – how can God use an evil terrorist group to accomplish his purposes. But he could.
Through the Babylonians God would indeed mould and shape His people into what He wanted them to be. Through them God would bring justice and direct history. It might not be the way you or I would do it. It might not happen when we snap our fingers. But God is never just leaning on his spade. We often fail to grasp it because His methods can seem so unlikely.
For example, on a day-to-day basis, God can use the tool of failure. If you or I fail, or if the church fails at something, does that mean that God was not at work? Not at all. It might only mean that God will use that failure as a tool to shape us and mould us into what He wants us to be. It might just mean that God is using failure as an instrument to nudge us into seeing that we need Him and that we cannot succeed on our own. It’s tempting to scream at God and ask Him why He is not at work in KRC like He seems to be in some other mega-churches but maybe we just don’t see the big picture. For God uses unlikely instruments to accomplish His will; our job is to believe that and trust Him.
You see, the real issue is not whether God is at work or not. The issue is not God at all. The issue is us. The issue is whether you and I can have faith in a God who is working all around us in ways that maybe we can’t understand right now. As I said a few weeks back – are you prepared to be obedient even when you don’t understand?
Finally, Habakkuk gave up trying to do it all by himself and then getting huffy because he thought God should reward his efforts. He gave up his complaining and chose another stance. And in chapter two we’ll see what his new position was. Suffice to say that he discovered, and believed it deep within his soul, that God was indeed working around him and for him and through him. But he had to give up the complaining first.
I need to learn that lesson as well… and maybe you do too? My smug moaning about God’s apathy is out of line. What my eyes think they see is only part of the truth. The real issue, the fundamental issue, is my faith and yours. We don’t need to be worrying about somebody else being lazy, least of all God. We don’t need to focus on how hard we work or how much we have to do. We just need to trust God, that He knows what He is doing, and we need to get on with what God has given us to do.
And we will find out, to our great joy, that in the world we were afraid God had abandoned, He is at work. That in the church we thought depended so much on our efforts, God is always at work building his church, using all those other flawed and unworthy people. And that in our very own lives, our overly busy, physically exhausted, emotionally drained, spiritually dried up, lives… even there, even there, God is able and willing to work!