Jill Briscoe, a pastor’s wife and author, talks about babysitting one of their three, 3-year-old grandchildren several years ago. In their family, they had twins and a single birth all within 24 hours. They called them Search, Destroy, and Demolition. She was babysitting Demolition.
As Jill waved goodbye to his parents, he looked perfectly all right. She read him a chapter out of his favorite book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Then she put him to bed and went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, she said, “I felt a little hand, and I turned on the light. I looked at Drew: chicken pox from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.”
“Nana,” he said, “Me's having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Why should some things like this happen to I?” (Jill Briscoe, “In the Father's Arms,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 141; www.PreachingToday.com).
A lot of people are like Drew. They cannot believe that God would allow terrible, horrible things happen to nice people like them. So, what do you do when you have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, or several days like that? What do you do when God seems silent, or worse, when God’s ways confuse you?
Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to the Old Testament book of Habakkuk. It’s towards the end of the Old Testament, the 5th book from the end, the book of Habakkuk, where the prophet Habakkuk is confused about what God is doing in his day.
Habakkuk 1:1-4 The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted (ESV).
Habakkuk complains that God refuses to deal with the violence and injustice in Judah, his home country. The wicked get away with murder and God is silent. So, God responds to Habakkuk.
Habakkuk 1:5-11 “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves; their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle swift to devour. They all come for violence, all their faces forward. They gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their god!” (ESV)
God tells Habakkuk that He is sending the “dreaded and fearsome” Chaldeans (a.k.a. the Babylonians) to punish Judah for her violence and injustice. This leads to Habakkuk’s second complaint.
Habakkuk 1:12 Are you not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof (ESV).
Habakkuk cannot believe that God would use the Chaldeans to punish Judah, because they are more violent and evil than Judah ever was. Besides, using such evil people seems to go against God’s character.
Habakkuk 1:13 You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? (ESV)
Habakkuk cannot believe that “the everlastingly preeminent Yahweh, the absolutely Holy One, the immutably permanent Rock, [would] utilize so wicked a people to administer discipline on Judah” (J. Ronold Blue, The Bible Kowledge Commentary). God’s ways just don’t make sense to Habakkuk. Then he describes how helpless people are in light of Babylonian aggression—like fish caught in a net.
Habakkuk 1:14-17 You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever? (ESV)
God, are you going to allow the idolatrous, wicked Babylonians to keep killing nations forever? Habakkuk cannot believe it! God’s ways baffle him. So Habakkuk says…
Habakkuk 2:1 I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint (ESV).
Habakkuk will wait for God’s answer.
Many of God’s people find themselves in a similar situation. They wonder why God doesn’t do something about the evil all around them. Then when God does act, His ways baffle them. Perhaps, that’s where some of you are at today. God seems silent in your trouble; and when He does act, it’s completely different than what you expected. Loved ones die instead of being healed. The wicked “swallow up” the righteous (Habakkuk 1:13), and your troubles get worse instead of better.
Martin Lloyd Jones, former pastor of the Westminster Chapel in London, put it this way: “We all tend to prescribe the answers to our prayers. We think that God can come in only one way. But Scripture teaches us that God sometimes answers our prayers by allowing things to become much worse before they become better. He may sometimes do the opposite of what we anticipate… Yet it is a fundamental principle in the life and walk of faith that we must always be prepared for the unexpected when we are dealing with God” (D. Martyn Lloyd Jones in “Faith: Tried and Triumphant,” Christianity Today, Vol. 38, no. 8; www.PreachingToday.com).
So what do you do when God’s does the unexpected? What do you do when God’s ways baffle you? Well, look at God’s answer to Habakkuk and to every believer who is confused about God’s ways.
Habakkuk 2:2-4 And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith (ESV).
In contrast to the proud, the righteous live by faith. They don’t depend on themselves; they depend on the Lord. They trust Him even when He doesn’t make sense. And that’s what you must do when God baffles you. 1st…
TRUST HIM.
Believe in Him even when you cannot understand Him. Be confident that His ways are best even if they contradict your ways.
Oxford philosopher Basil Mitchell puts it this way:
Imagine you are in German-occupied France during World War II and you want to join the resistance movement against the Nazis. One evening in the local bar a stranger comes up to you and introduces himself as the leader of the local partisans. He spends the evening with you, explaining the general requirements of your duties, giving you a chance to assess his trustworthiness, and offering you the chance to go no further. But his warning is stern: If you join, your life will be at risk. This will be the only face-to-face meeting you will have. After this, you will receive orders and you will have to follow them without question, often completely in the dark as to the whys and wherefores of the operations, and always with the terrifying fear that your trust may be betrayed.
Is such trust reasonable? Sometimes what the resistance leader is doing is obvious. He is helping members of the resistance. “Thank heavens he is on our side,” you say. Sometimes it is not obvious. He is in Gestapo uniform arresting partisans and—unknown to you—releasing them out of sight to help them escape the Nazis. But always you must trust and follow the orders without question, despite all appearances, no matter what happens. “The resistance leader knows best,” you say. Only after the war will the secrets be open, the codes revealed, the true comrades vindicated, the traitors exposed, and sense made of the explanations (Os Guinness, Unspeakable, HarperSanFrancisco, 2005, pp. 149-150; www.PreachingToday.com).
In the meantime, just trust the Lord and follow His orders. You may not understand what God is doing but trust Him anyway. Trust that God is good and that He is on your side.
When Jesus hung on the cross, dying for your sins and mine, He cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Yet the Bible says, in his suffering, He “continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). Despite the injustice done to Him, Jesus continued to trust in a just God, who raised Him from the dead. You do the same. Trust God even when He doesn’t make sense to you.
I like the way Babbie Mason put it in a song. He writes:
God is too wise to be mistaken.
God is too good to be unkind.
So when you don't understand,
When you don't see His plan,
When you can't trace His hand,
Trust His heart.
My dear friends, when God baffles you, 1st trust Him. Then 2nd. ..
FEAR HIM.
Respect His right to do as He pleases in judging sin. Tremble before Him as He does His work in your world, making all things right in the end. Look at what God says about the Babylonians.
Habakkuk 2:5 “Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol; like death he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples” (ESV).
They are greedy people, whose wine has betrayed them. Babylonians were notorious for being addicted to wine, which did not make them stronger; it ruined them. In fact, according to Daniel 5, the Medo-Persian empire conquered the Babylonians 100 years later while they were drunk at a wild party. As a result, for all their drunken, greedy debauchery, God pronounces five woes on the Babylonian Empire.
Habakkuk 2:6-8 Shall not all these take up their taunt against him, with scoffing and riddles for him, and say, “Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own— for how long?— and loads himself with pledges!” Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be spoil for them. Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them (ESV).
God will judge Babylon for heaping up what is not his own, either through heavy debt or downright theft.
Habakkuk 2:9-11 “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high, to be safe from the reach of harm! You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples; you have forfeited your life. For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork respond (ESV).
God will judge Babylon for dishonest gain, obtaining valuable goods by theft, deception, or other immoral actions (Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages).
Habakkuk 2:12-14 “Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity! Behold, is it not from the LORD of hosts that peoples labor merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (ESV).
God will judge Babylon for the violence used in building their towns, which will come to nothing. Instead, God’s fame will fill the earth while Babylonian glory completely fades away.
Habakkuk 2:15-17 “Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink— you pour out your wrath and make them drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness! You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink, yourself, and show your uncircumcision! The cup in the LORD’s right hand will come around to you, and utter shame will come upon your glory! The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, as will the destruction of the beasts that terrified them, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them (ESV).
God will judge Babylon for making his neighbors drunk so he can gawk at their nakedness. As a result, God will shame the Babylonians and return to them the violence they brought on others.
Habakkuk 2:18-20 “What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols! Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake; to a silent stone, Arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it. But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him” (ESV).
God will judge Babylon for making and worshipping worthless idols, instead of the true and living God, who reigns from heaven, His holy temple.
God will judge Babylon for hoarding stolen goods, for dishonest gain, for violence, for drunkenness, and for idolatry. However, Judah was also guilty of many of these same sins (Habakkuk 1:2-4) before the Babylonians invaded their country. So, while God pronounces judgement on Babylon, He is also pronouncing judgment on Judah for some of the very same sins.
Habakkuk’s original audience would have rejoiced over God’s judgment of their oppressors until they realized that they too were objects of God’s judgment for the very same reasons. So their excitement becomes fear in light of God’s judgment against all sinners, whether they be Jews or Babylonians, whether they be family or foreigners, whether they be religious or irreligious. Regardless, God wants everyone to fear Him, to tremble before Him, as they consider the consequences of their own sin.
John Piper, pastor of the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, says, “Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Greenland in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice- and snow-covered mountains, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear arises that it might blow you and your party right over the cliff. But in the midst of it you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide. Here you feel secure, but the awesome might of the storm rages on and you watch it with a kind of trembling pleasure as it surges out across the distant glaciers.
At first, there was the fear that this terrible storm and awesome terrain might claim your life. But then you found a refuge and gained the hope that you would be safe. But not everything in the feeling called fear vanished. Only the life-threatening part. There remains the trembling, the awe, the wonder, the feeling that you would never want to tangle with such a storm or be the adversary of such a power (John Piper, “The Pleasure of God in Those Who Hope in His Love,” Desiring God, 3-15-87; www.PreachingToday.com).
In the same way, if you haven’t found refuge in Christ, you fear for your life. But, even if you HAVE found refuge in Christ, there’s still that trembling, that feeling that you would never want to tangle with such a powerful God.
Please, my dear friends, trust Christ with your life. Find your refuge in Him so you never have to fear death. Instead, you can just tremble with awe when God displays His power in your world, even if that display doesn’t make sense.
When God baffles you, 1st, trust Him, 2nd, fear Him, and 3rd…
PRAISE HIM.
Worship Him even when you don’t understand Him. Rejoice even in the midst of your pain. That’s what Habakkuk did when God’s plan baffled him.
Habakkuk 3:1 A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionoth (ESV)—that is, a wild, irregular beat, which suggests a type of lament or dirge (Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages).
Habakkuk 3:2 O LORD, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O LORD, do I fear. In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy (ESV).
As Habakkuk contemplates God’s wrath against Judah’s sin, he pleads for mercy. Then he ponders what God has done for Israel in the past.
Habakkuk 3:3-16 God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. His brightness was like the light; rays flashed from his hand; and there he veiled his power. Before him went pestilence, and plague followed at his heels. He stood and measured the earth; he looked and shook the nations; then the eternal mountains were scattered; the everlasting hills sank low. His were the everlasting ways. I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction; the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. Was your wrath against the rivers, O LORD? Was your anger against the rivers, or your indignation against the sea, when you rode on your horses, on your chariot of salvation? You stripped the sheath from your bow, calling for many arrows. Selah You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and writhed; the raging waters swept on; the deep gave forth its voice; it lifted its hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their place at the light of your arrows as they sped, at the flash of your glittering spear. You marched through the earth in fury; you threshed the nations in anger. You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck. Selah You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors, who came like a whirlwind to scatter me, rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret. You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters. I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness 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 (ESV).
God brought plagues on Egypt to set His people free. God parted the Red Sea. God reigned fire on Mount Sinai. God destroyed Israel’s enemies from the Cushite’s to the Ammonite’s, when God caused the sun to stand still until Joshua completely destroyed them. God saved Israel in the past at many times and in many ways, so Habakkuk waits for God to save Israel again. He waits for God to trouble the invading Babylonians.
Habakkuk pleads for mercy. He ponders what God has done already. Then he praises God even in his pain.
Habakkuk 3:17-19 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be 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, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments (ESV).
Even in the midst of absolute ruin and abject famine, which happened when the Babylonians captured Jerusalem, Habakkuk chooses to rejoice, because the joy of the Lord is His strength. And that’s what you must choose to do even when your world falls apart. Choose to rejoice. Choose to praise God even in your pain.
Margaret Sangster Phippen wrote that in the mid-1950s her father, British pastor, W. E. Sangster, began to notice some uneasiness in his throat and a dragging in his leg. When he went to the doctor, he found that he had an incurable disease that caused progressive muscular atrophy. His muscles would gradually waste away, his voice would fail, his throat would soon become unable to swallow.
Sangster threw himself into his work in British home missions, figuring he could still write and he would have even more time for prayer. “Let me stay in the struggle Lord,” he pleaded. “I don't mind if I can no longer be a general but give me just a regiment to lead.” He wrote articles and books and helped organize prayer cells throughout England. “I'm only in the kindergarten of suffering,” he told people who pitied him.
Gradually Sangster's legs became useless. His voice went completely. But he could still hold a pen, shakily. On Easter morning, just a few weeks before he died, he wrote a letter to his daughter. In it, he said, “It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice to shout, ‘He is risen!’--but it would be still more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout” (Vernon Grounds, Leadership, Vol. 8, no. 1; www.PreachingToday.com).
Please, don’t let your suffering take away your desire to shout. Please, don’t let your pain keep you from praising God. For in that praise, God will give you the strength of a deer to bound through the trial until He brings you to the mountaintop of triumph.
So, when God baffles you, trust Him, fear Him, and praise Him.
Stephen Curtis Chapman once said: “I have learned that we can control where we allow things that we can't understand to fall. They either fall between us and God, and we become angry. Or we allow these things to fall outside of us and press us in closer to God (Lindy Warren, “Steven Curtis Chapman's Silent Nights,” Christian Reader, March/April 2002, p. 59; www.PreachingToday.com).
Please, let your confusion draw you closer to God rather than drive a wedge between you and God. Like the songwriter said: When you can't trace His hand, trust His heart (Babbie Mason).
