FHBC Sermon Notes

Sometimes life doesn't seem "fair". As if justice is absent. Where is God we ask?

This is the problem of pain as Lewis coined, the problem of suffering. How can a good God, a just God allow all this evil to reign on earth. Sometimes in response we say that if God won't do it, then we will and set out on our own to "solve" the problem, enact justice. Does this work? Sometimes this because the base reason that people reject the existence of God at all. Where does that lead us?

Habakkuk
Habakkuk is around 600 B.C. Israel (the northern kingdom) has been destroyed. Judah remains, but injustice abounds, sin is abundant. As a preacher, a prophet, Habakkuk proclaimed the message of God to the people. This book though is a bit different. It is voiced as a series of questions toward God, asking this very question, the question of how God can be just and allow all this suffering. But it does not stop there. This also includes God's answer.

1. The believer yearns for God to display His justice against the egregious persistent exercise of in, (1:2-4)
Similar to Psalm 13. "How Long will you hide your face." Note: I really suggest the Sojourn Music album of Isaac Watts songs, including a great blues song from the words of Psalm 13. How Long.
There is violence in the land. This word for violence is the same as in Genesis 6:12 where the remedy was the flood.

What do we learn from the prophets response to God in this manner. First we see a proper Christian response to sin. We have so easily underpinned by our own excuses, our own spin on justice, upset about injustice against us, and soft on our injustice to others, more importantly, our injustice towards God himself.
Second he state that God is just. Exodus 34:6-7, Deut. 32:3-4. The prophet looks at scripture, and knows that God is just, and so he asks, these questions. It is this tension between God's sin and his justice for which Habakkuk is crying out.

Note that this is not a call to social gospel or social justice, but we must understand that this is central to how we live, and how we respond to injustice ourselves. We cannot be pleased, we cannot become complacent with sin.

2. God promises to exercise his justice in his sovereign time and according to s sovereign plan, (1:5-11)
Exodus 16:28 Numbers 14:11
Long before Habakkuk God himself was asking this very question. He asks us how long.

But... God is also patient and merciful and restrains.

Where would we be if God had truly judged us without delay for our own injustices?

But God is not idle.

He is sovereign over all time, his will is being done now and forever. In these verses we see God explained that he was changing the entire middle east region, the history and kingdoms of this time to accomplish his will. He raises up the Babylonians for the purpose of justice. And we know later on they too saw the judgement of God. Be encouraged, God is not idle.

And this we know as Christians, the story that Habakkuk did not yet know, that sin has been conquered, that death has lost its sting. And let us have this heart, that we may pray that God's mercy might have full effect. Trust in God.