Habakkuk: Redeeming Suffering

You know, I've mentioned this the last couple times when I've been here. I love
Redeemer church But I also love your pastor and his wife Mary Ann. In fact,
there's three P's That really stand out to me for my relationship and my love With
your pastor and the first you actually saw evidence of that Once again in his
pastoral prayer the fact that he knows the individuals in this church, the fact that
he cares for the individuals in this church. In fact, I was walking in with him.
He was giving me a gift as I was going out to him with his, in his car.
He gave me some baseball and basketball cards that his kids had growing up. And as
he was walking in, we were talking, but then he saw all of you and was connecting
with all of you and asking specific questions about your lives. And so brother,
thank you for modeling pastoral care. But then he's extremely practical. You know,
anytime that I run into a bind, as he said, I immediately think, what would Bob
Lapine say? And so just recently, there was some doctrinal issues that we were
facing at our church. And I know that Bob is going to be plugged in to all of
the different movements in evangelicalism. He's to know who's saying what and he's
gonna be able to expand my horizon for the topics that I'm interested in and even
issues that we're facing at our church and so brother you've been so practical in
your help for me and then I think the last one is a preacher I value Bob Lapine's
voice as a preacher in fact I've listened to several of his messages from Revelation
I'm done with Revelation So I'm listening to what I should have said in Revelation
as I listen to Bob. Bob has an amazing ability to go deep, but in such a relevant
and approachable way. And so, brother, you're an incredible preacher. And those three
P's, as well as many others, are reasons why I love you, my friend, and I'm
grateful for our partnership. So why Habakkuk? That's my attempt to be funny and
pronounce Habakkuk, but why Habakkuk? I would set it up to you really in reference
to the songs that we've sung this morning, as well as the name of your church.
So do you ever walk into this room and sing the songs and just think to yourself,
well, that sounds great and I know that's to be true, but My life doesn't
necessarily match up. In fact, I was listening to the first song.
How firm a foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord. And there's a phrase that talks
about when through fiery trials, your path resides.
And you know, it's easy to sing that in this room, but what if right now in your
life, you are actually going through fiery trials. Even the name of your church,
Redeemer Community Church, focuses on the redeeming attributes and power of Christ.
And yet aren't there areas of your life and potentially topics in your life that
maybe it's more challenging to see Jesus as Redeemer than when we simply gather
together on a Sunday morning.
And so is there a tool in our lives that God provides us unexpectedly so that
gives us the opportunities that when we experience life that doesn't match what we
think we know and doesn't necessarily engender in us the feelings that motivate our
worship, is there a tool that God is to actually grow us in that, to be able to
connect what is disconnected. And I would submit to you that he does and that that
tool is suffering. And so this morning, the title of the message is redeeming our
suffering. And so as an extended introduction to why Habakkuk,
I wanna take us on a time machine journey back to 2003.
2003, for my wife and I, was really a perfect storm. It was the second anniversary
of the childhood dream for me of being a Major League Baseball player and following
after the shoes and journey of my dad being drawn to an end,
unexpectedly so. It was three months after my childhood hero and close family friend
had unexpectedly and tragically died. It was coming to about the two and a half,
if not three point anniversary of Sally and I concluding that God's continual answers
of no to our requests that he would bless us with children meant that we would
never enjoy that gift. And so I did what I would not encourage you to do,
and that is I flopped open the Bible and just closed my eyes and trusted the Holy
Spirit to bring me to what he wanted me to see, and he brought me to Habakkuk
chapter three in verse 19. And so if you haven't turned there, I would encourage
you to do that, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, and then this book,
Habakkuk. And as I arrived at Habakkuk 319, I read a verse that I hoped I would
be able to truly say from my heart, despite our perfect storm of suffering.
The prophet writes, "God the Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deers.
He makes me tread on my high places, and I thought to myself, well, the foundation
of my life seemed like shifting sand. I wanted to have this resolved,
and so I backed up to verse 18, and I saw that the prophet was dedicated to
rejoicing in the Lord, to taking joy in the God of his salvation,
but that's really where I stopped
because don't we expect prophets to be able to rejoice?
Don't we expect the apostles and the authors of scripture to rejoice? Don't we
expect Jesus to rejoice? And the temptation for us is to say that those prophets
and those apostles and even Jesus himself are out of touch with our reality,
with our human experience. But then I backed up to verse 16 and 17.
Habakkuk says, "I hear, and my body trembles. "My lips quiver at the sound.
"Rotteness enters into my bones. "My legs tremble beneath me. "Yet, I will quietly
wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us. So you can tell in
that verse that the Habakkuk life is not a life of comfort. It's not a life of
ease. But then the challenge that I had is, well, maybe Habakkuk, your life isn't
as bad as mine is. Well, look at verse 17. He says, "Though the fig tree should
not blossom, nor fruit on the vines. The produce of the olive fail and the fields
yield no food. The flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the
stalls. This was a world turned upside down.
Economically, socially, physically, militarily, spiritually,
Habakkuk was anticipating a world "turned upside down a perfect storm,
if you will." So when I read this and realized Habakkuk can relate to me and yet
can find reason to rejoice, can find reason to be resolved, I thought to myself,
I need to back up and figure out how he got there. And so the big idea of the
entire book of Habakkuk will help you and me, whether the suffering we've experienced
is in our past, in our present, or in our future, to be able to get to a place
where it will be a tool that God will use to redeem suffering to grow our worship
of Him. And the big idea is this, we must reflect, resolve,
read, and rejoice eternally. "Friend,
if you can follow this progression "and have these four R's be present in your
life, "you will be able to redeem suffering." So the first one,
number one, reflect eternally. We must go back to chapter one to begin our journey
to redeem suffering and we're introduced to the prophet in verse one with not a
whole lot of details. It says this is the oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.
Habakkuk the prophet. Now we've got to use the details in this section and then go
back to the historical books to fill in some of the gaps as to who Habakkuk was.
Habakkuk was a prophet to the southern two tribes of Judah. And so since the son
of Solomon, Rehoboam, the nation of Israel was divided into two sections,
ten tribes to the north called Israel and then two tribes to the south called
Judah. Now Judah's history was an interesting study of righteous and wicked kings.
Israel's history was a rather straightforward study of only wicked kings. And so as
a prophet in Judah, you had the potential of either serving righteous kings or
wicked kings. And so we need to back up before Hezekiah to understand, or before
Habakkuk, to understand where Habakkuk was in his prophetic career. And we must go
back to a king by the name of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was an extremely righteous king,
and there were great spiritual reforms in Judah under the reign of Hezekiah.
But Hezekiah's son, Manasseh, and his grandson, Ammon, were extremely wicked.
In fact, we could actually chart 57 years in Judah where the downward spiral was
continuing to occur.
Now thankfully, in God's grace and in his mercy, he assigned an eight -year -old to
be king of Judah by the name of Josiah. And Josiah is described in 2 Kings chapter
22 as a king who walked not only in righteousness, but listened to this in the
ways of David.
In fact, this young king did not turn from the right or to the left, but stayed
steadfast in his focus on Yahweh. And that was the king whom Habakkuk served.
Great reform, great spiritual growth, until unexplainably,
Josiah went out to battle against the king of Egypt, and in that battle he was
killed, and his two sons Jehoiha's and Jehoiha king reigned and were extremely
wicked. So Habakkuk is serving a righteous king and then two very wicked kings under
whose reign was the result of moral madness. In fact,
these King's reigned in the exact opposite of the law of God. And it impacted all
areas of Judah's society. There was greed, there was hypocrisy,
there was deception, all in the leadership, all in the citizens. Does that sound
familiar to our day?
So how would Habakkuk respond? would he simply shrug his shoulders? Would he make
fun of all of the deplorable society around him? Would he get angry?
How do we respond when we see that going on all around us? Well, what Habakkuk did
is what I commend to you, and that is he reflected eternally. If you look at verse
two, he goes to the Lord. This is an important step when we face suffering. He
says, oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear or cry to you
violence and you will not save?
He's not recognizing this simply as a social issue. He's not simply looking at this
with horizontal lenses. He's going vertically to the Lord and recognizing that he
must ask questions of the Lord. Dear friend, there's a difference between asking the
Lord and accusing the Lord, isn't there?
God delights in our asking questions of him. In fact,
there's a book that is entitled "Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy." I I encourage you to
pick that up if you are struggling with this idea of suffering, and it instructs us
on the biblical concept of lament.
God delights in us asking questions of him, but with an eternal perspective.
See, when we accuse God, we come to him with a horizontal perspective. Asking him
why his dealings with us are unfair, defining what is fair in our expectations and
our definitions, but Habakkuk comes to God with an eternal perspective.
And he says, "How long? When will you save?" Verse 3,
"When will you intervene?" There is iniquity and sin going on. There is destruction
going on. There is violence going on, there's strife going on, there's contention
going on. And he goes in verse 11 to the word of God.
Verse four, he says, "The law, the Torah is paralyzed and justice never goes forth.
The wicked surround the righteous." So justice goes forth perverted.
How do you respond when you experience suffering. How do you respond when you look
at the life around you and you see injustice? How do you respond when there's a
problem in your life? Well, for me, I immediately go to spreadsheets, whiteboards,
and Bob Lapine.
Solve my problem.
But I think the example of Habakkuk moves us to the path that is important.
The path is actually modeled for us in a negative way in Genesis chapter three and
verse six. You can write that down and look at it later. It says that Eve saw the
fruit. She recognized it as a delight in her eyes. She desired it and then what
did she do? she took it. What we see in Exodus chapter 32 is this same path.
Moses takes a while on Mount Sinai, I read this this morning. The people begin to
grumble and complain. They come to Aaron, the priest, and ask him to make gods that
they can see, that they can hold on to, that they don't have to rely on faith to
follow and worship. And Aaron simply sees, and he recognizes,
and he does. See, the important component that is left out is the vertical
reflection on the Lord, going to the Lord. There are examples in the Old Testament
of people who did this well. You can write these down, Genesis chapter 25, verse
22,
when Rebecca felt the striving of the twins inside of her, she went to the Lord to
ask questions. The life of Joseph is an example of this. When Pharaoh had dreams
and brought to Joseph the problem of interpreting dreams, Joseph went to the Lord
and Habakkuk models this. He goes to the Lord and asks questions, but this is
important, dear friend. When we ask questions of God, we are telling Him that we
are willing to listen and embrace His answers.
Now that's not easy, especially when we're experiencing suffering.
Habakkuk goes to the Lord, and the Lord does respond, but in a way that the
prophet does not expect.
Wouldn't we expect, and wouldn't the prophet expect that the Lord would say, hey,
you know what? You're right, I do need to save my people. I do need to punish the
wicked. But verse five is a passage that is often on Christian mugs.
But I submit to you that those people who created those mugs don't understand it.
Look at verse five, I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if
told. I've heard this said at weddings,
but the work that Yahweh is doing is sending an extremely wicked nation to punish
His people. So the prophet begins his wrestling through suffering with a reflecting
on the eternal, but then he moves, number two, to a resolve that is eternal.
See, a reflection is more of an awareness. It's more of an initial focus,
but resolve is where we're now being able to hold on tightly, anchor deeply in a
foundation. And so the prophet listens to what the Lord says in response to his
request, and he has more questions, because what God says is I'm raising up the
Chaldeans, or you can write down in your notes, the Babylonians, same group of
people. I'm raising them up to be the solution to your problem.
Now let me just give you a quick history lesson. The Babylonians had defeated the
Assyrians and the Egyptians and were now at this time the rising power in the known
world. And when a nation was becoming the rising power, you had two options when
they defeated you. Number one, you could pay exorbitant taxes. Taxes that were so
great that it would just naturally weaken you, and so they had you. You couldn't
provide for your own people. And there was a downward spiral that you would never
be able to dig out of unless you chose option two, which was to rebel. Now you
can write down Jeremiah chapter 39 and look at this later, because Zedekiah the
king, this would happen after the details of Habakkuk, he did rebel. And the reward
for Zedekiah's rebelling was that Nebuchadnezzar gouged out his eyes
So these were not great options. The Babylonians would either require such taxes that
you would never be able to recover, or you could rebel and they would just defeat
you and make life even worse. So the Jews were not in a great situation as they
moved forward. In fact, the Lord provides even more details. Look at verse 15 of
chapter one. describing the Babylonians, he brings up all of them with a hook.
He drags them out with his net. He gathers them in his dragnet, so he rejoices and
is glad. And what this is, is a description of historical realities.
Historians tell us that what the Babylonians would do is grab large fish hooks and
pierce the upper lip of their defeated foes and they would string them together and
drag them through the streets of their capital city. These were violent and
oppressive people.
And so as the prophet hears the Lord, I'm sure there were more questions than
answers, but he resolved eternally.
See, human logic would have required Habakkuk to focus only on the horizontal,
only on the military threat that was coming upon them, only upon the Babylonians and
the society that they were going to be up against.
But notice what Habakkuk does in verse 12 of chapter one. He reflects on the
character of God. Are you not from everlasting? Oh Lord, my God,
my holy one, he seems to have a resolve. We shall not die, oh Lord, you have
ordained them as judgment. And you, look at this description of the Lord. Oh, rock
have established them for reproof. He is resolved to focus eternally.
But there are still many questions for the Habakkuk. Many questions for the prophet.
And aren't there times in your life even though you are discovering truths about
God, even though you are resolving eternally where there's still many questions.
God still seems to be working in a way that you would not expect, and the prophet
finds himself at that crossroad.
And if you'll go down to chapter 2 and verse 4, we actually find a verse that I
would submit to you, is potentially the crossroads of all of scripture.
The crossroads of all of redemptive history, in fact, the New Testament will quote
this verse three times, including Romans one, chapter 17.
Here's what the Lord says to the prophet. There is a contrast in verse four between
the prideful. Their soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the
righteous "shall live by his faith."
What's interesting is the contrast between horizontal and eternal in verse four.
Those who are focused on the horizontal are dependent on circumstances. They rise and
they fall on circumstances. They live only day to day. Maybe some of you are in
the spiral of that right now.
If your life is going well, then you have a smile on your face and you're
rejoicing. If life is not going well, then you are depressed and you are spiraling.
This last election day, Christians all over our country woke up with the potential
of either rejoicing or fretting.
The Lord tells the prophet that the prideful, the horizontal focus lived day to day.
They rise and fall with circumstances. And then look at verse five, he describes
this as death. The greed of death is never satisfied,
is it? The older you get, the more you will realize that.
But the contrast is what the Lord tells the prophet. And he's almost encouraging the
prophet to continue to focus eternally. He says the righteous shall live by faith.
Faith in what? Faith in circumstances changing. Faith that tomorrow will be a better
day. No, no, no. Faith in the character of God, dear friend.
That's where our faith is grounded. And the wonderful reality of that is that
circumstances may never change.
But our God always stays the same.
So the righteous live by faith because they are anchored in the character of God.
They're anchored in the eternality of His character. And so the prophet reflects
eternally. Now he is encouraged to resolve eternally, and then he moves to,
number three, read eternally. In chapter two, there are some interesting words and
concepts that the Lord wants the prophet to write down, which by the way, at this
stage of redemptive history, that's how Scripture was being formed. As God would
speak to humans and they would write it down and so Scripture was in the process
of being formed. And so look what the Lord tells the prophet,
verse 2 of chapter 2, "Write the vision. Make it plain on tablets so that the
person who has it might run and read it." We see what that instruction is and what
that command is. It's the understanding that God is going to judge Babylon.
In fact, if you look at chapter two, beginning in verse six, you see the beginning
of the woes. Verse six, "Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own." That was
the Babylonians. Verse nine, "Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house." Verse
12, "Woe to him who builds a town with blood." Verse 15, "Woe to him who makes
his neighbors drink." And then verse 19, "Woe to him who says to a wooden thing,
'Awake!' The Lord will be faithful. The wicked will be judged." He's writing this
down as Scripture.
But Habakkuk still has questions. Habakkuk is still wrestling with the horizontal
reality that the Lord is unfolding to him. And so what you see in chapter three is
that the prophet goes back through written word that he already has. And he goes
through the history of Israel.
Verse two, "O Lord, I have heard the report of You and Your work, O Lord, do I
fear? In the midst of years revive it. In the midst of years, make it known in
wrath, remember mercy, he's going back through what he's read in scripture, what he's
been taught in scripture, because listen to this, scripture moves us to see the
character of God on display.
And he begins to rehearse the history of Israel. Verse five, he references plagues.
Verse seven, the Lord split the earth, remember the water that came from the rock
when the rock was split. Verse 11, "The sun and the moon that stood still." He's
rehearsing what he's read. He's rehearsing what he's been taught. This is the basis
for where he's trying to find confidence as he anticipates this prophetic future for
Israel and for God's people.
You know, friend, one of the greatest Tools that God will grow you in your
steadfastness with and your courage from is suffering and In the process memorize
scripture
Memorizing scripture is one of the greatest tools that God has gifted us with That
can bring us through suffering consider Psalm 119 verse 11 and the gift of scripture
your word, have I laid aside and hidden in my heart? Why, so that I may not sin?
Aren't times of suffering great potential threats for us to sin, to give up on the
Lord, to make decisions that we wouldn't otherwise make? And yet, the Word of God
has the potential of keeping us from sin. John 17, 17, the Lord is praying for His
disciples, including us, set us apart and equip us with your word.
Your word is truth.
John 10, verse 35, your word cannot be broken. What a tremendous gift the word of
God is that when the storms of life are blowing on us, when our world is shifting
sand, when we don't understand and we thought we knew God, but what we see in life
seems to be different. It is the word of God that serves us as an anchor.
Now up to this point, these three R's have been focusing on duty, haven't they?
You've got to reflect eternally. You've got to resolve eternally. You've got to read
eternally. And there's a certain sense of duty that I'm commending to you,
that Habakkuk is commending to you. And before we move on to the emotion that is
offered to us, let me remind you of this quote, "Often the choppy waters of our
feelings are best
navigated by the steadfast captain of duty." Let me read this again.
Often the choppy waters of our feelings are best navigated by the steadfast captain
of duty.
There's a reason why these first three R's have focused on duty. It's because the
human condition that includes emotion is a volatile one. We have happiness one day,
sadness the next. Isn't it interesting that Ecclesiastes 3 .1,
as we talked about last year, I know you probably don't remember, but there's that
long list of the contrast. There is a time for mourning and a time for dancing.
There's a time for joy. There's a time for sadness. The human emotions are all over
the map, and they swing one way to the other, almost in a daily moment -by -moment
fashion. And so we must be reminded of the importance of duty, and that often the
choppy waters of our feelings are best navigated by the steadfast captain of duty.
But friends, duty left to itself is not sustainable.
That's why God's Word often talks about both duty and delight, doesn't it? That's
why Psalm 1 -2 says, "On your law I meditate day and night, but it is also my
delight." And that's what we see with Habakkuk as we move to the fourth R.
He's reflecting eternally, he's resolving eternally, he's reading eternally, but then
number four, he's rejoicing eternally. And he realizes the defeat of Judah is
inevitable. In fact, that's what verse 16 describes for us.
He's hearing metaphorically speaking in his body trembles. His lips are quivering at
the sound of this concept, the Babylon is coming. My legs tremble beneath me.
It is going to happen. And then verse 17 again, describes the world being turned
upside down. And most of us have not experienced, well, I guess we did in 2020,
our world being turned upside down. Everywhere you turned, what was normal was
abnormal. But this is describing no hope for the future.
There's no horizontal hope. It is going to be turned upside down, And this will be
the reality the Habakkuk and the generation of the citizens of Judah would experience
for the rest of their lifetime.
And yet he says in verse 18, "I will rejoice." Now this word "rejoice" is not
simply a human emotion, but it is at a minimum that. This joy is a happiness that
is so impactful that an associated visible response is the only acceptable expression.
This is what the joy is. Now, most of you experience joy on a daily basis, but
not this kind of joy, the kind of joy that only and expectedly requires a physical
response because you're so full of joy. Kansas City has had this for the last seven
years. I know I'm seeing it every year we do this we're becoming more and more the
Patriots and people hate the Chiefs but I will tell you this most of Chiefs fans
in Kansas City are not taking this for granted and I can tell you watching the
game last week there was this kind of rejoicing because you could almost you could
hear the city just shouting out. We were giving high fives to the people we were
watching the games with. We were starting to send texts out to say, "Okay, we're
going to gather together, and we're going to watch the game together, and we're
going to bring food together." There's a physical response to the joy that we felt,
but here's the reality, we may lose today. Pray that we don't.
But as a team who's won the Super Bowl the last two years. Guess what? The next
year happens and we're not content. See this kind of rejoicing is simply an
illustration, but it's not the rejoicing Habakkuk is talking about. Habakkuk is
talking about a rejoicing that doesn't have a new season that changes it. Habakkuk
is talking about a rejoicing that even in the middle of suffering he still can have
it. How is this rejoicing even possible through the progression of this amazing book
that includes, I'll give you five steps, questioning and asking questions of God,
not questioning from an accusing standpoint or a grumbling standpoint,
but asking questions of the God of the universe, that we expect him to answer and
then we say we're willing to be okay with those answers. So we ask questions of
God. Number two, we wrestle with his answers.
We wrestle with his answers. The concept of fight or flight comes to mind.
When we experience something in life that we don't understand, when we experience
something that is hard in our life, that the natural tendency is to flee,
to run away from it. But I think when we look at scripture and God allows us to
have those fiery trials that that song, "How Firm a Foundation," reminded us that he
often allows in our lives, he wants us to wrestle with it. He wants us to wrestle
with the answers. He wants us to wrestle with God's character. And then number
three, there's a turning point. And the turning point is that we're not dependent on
circumstances, but on the character of God. So we ask questions,
we wrestle with the answers. There's a turning point of moving from depending on
circumstances to depending on his character, which moves us to number four, which is
a source of hope. And friends, the source of hope is being unpacked by your pastor
in the book of Revelation. And look at the shadow of that in chapter two,
verse 14.
The prophet says, "For the earth will be filled "with the knowledge of the glory of
the Lord "as the waters cover the sea." See, the anticipation of God being faithful
to his character is what motivates us and what provides for us true hope.
And the fact is, God doesn't give us all the details, does He? As you're studying
in Revelation, He doesn't give you the exact calendar events. He doesn't give you
the exact timing, but He does reveal His character. And that was enough for the
prophet to have a source of hope and then move him to the fifth step that is
encouraging for us in suffering, but is probably the most difficult. And that is
being content to wait.
You know, one of the most challenging experiences in the human life is to wait.
But this led him to confidence. Confidence in the character of God.
And it really brings me to where I landed as I was studying this in the midst of
our perfect storm. And that was bringing me right back to my favorite attribute of
God, which is his sovereignty.
And my journey with his sovereignty has been a rocky journey. I think it's been a
combination of my own pride, my own personality, the personalities of those who have
tried to show me God's sovereignty as they would try to wake me up as a college
student at 6 a .m. to join them at the coffee shop with a little tulip on their
sweater.
Those who are overly Calvinistic, it's been a rocky journey for me,
but what God has done by His grace and for His glory is to affirm that He is
sovereign. And not just in salvation, but in every detail of our lives.
In fact, Psalm 115 .3 says, "Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever He
pleases." The conclusion of the ultimate sufferer other than Jesus,
a man by the name of Job, was that your will cannot be thwarted.
And so this is not a opportunity for us to just say, "Well, God's sovereign, so
what are you gonna do?" It's actually an opportunity for us to follow the example
of the prophet.
And for me, as I sat there in that perfect storm, God proved himself once again
faithful, just not exactly the way that I would have drawn it up.
And he used once again the tool of suffering to redeem my understanding of him,
Redeem my opportunity to grow as a worshiper, and redeem me to move away from
dependence on circumstances changing, to depending on the character of God who most
brilliantly is on display in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Would you pray
with me? Father, thank you for this book that most of us have not spent time in
like we should. I thank you that Habakkuk was a prophet who was a human just like
us. I thank you that we can relate to him and what he was going through. I thank
you that you took him through a journey of suffering that allowed it to be redeemed
and in so doing grew his understanding, his dependence and his awe of your
character. Would you do that for us now, even as this service concludes,
and we enjoy the symbolic opportunity that is unparalleled to reflect on the person
and work of Jesus Christ and the salvation that is offered through him. I pray
these things in Jesus' name, amen.