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description. Now let's dive into today's
message. Faces that I that I don't
recognise and some faces that I do recognise.
Yeah. And, and, and maybe some of you
think like who is this guy? Because I haven't really been
around for the last 4-4 weeks. My wife and I recently welcomed
a new boy into our family. So.
So I'm not some stranger coming to to preach here.
I serve on the eldership team and I'm happy to do so.
So hope to meet some of you soon that I that I haven't made yet.
But that's us. Well, that's me a little bit at
least. We are starting a new series
today out of the book of Habakkuk.
And I'm like almost, I'm hesitant to, to say a book.
I guess we always refer to it as a book.
It's a, it's a small prophecy. And Habakkuk is, is considered 1
of what they call the minor prophets.
And I think as Colin said this morning, you know, he's they
refer to it as minor prophets, but they speak about major
things. I don't think the minor prophets
has anything to do with the credibility of the message.
I think it's just because it really is shorter.
And the series really speaks to this idea of a nation being
under God's judgement and nation being under God's judgement.
And although my message won't really speak to that today, the
the prophecy as a whole really speaks to that.
Now if you think of one of the biggest objections to the
existence of God, you will most certainly hear how can a loving
God allow all the evil we see in our world today?
Sickness, death, murder, and suffering are all seen to be
reasons to doubt God's existence or against his existence.
And most people would add to that objection that they may be
willing to accept that there is a God that possibly created the
universe, that there is some being that is higher than than a
human, but that God is not loving and kind and just that
cannot. That God cannot care for people,
Not if you look at the world around you.
Is that true? Is it not possible to have a
loving God and evil in the world?
Must it be 1 or the other? Should we just accept that this
is what the world is and just get on with life?
As we look at Habakkuk, we see this person of Habakkuk having a
person, a very personal struggle with a very similar question,
but in a very different way and come to a very different
conclusion. Over the next couple of weeks
that we'll spend in this book. We will see.
He's not content with what he sees in in the world around him.
He's not OK with what he sees in the world around him.
And what he does is he takes this discontentment, these
questions that he has directly to God.
We will also see how God responds and how he receives
God's response. So the scripture we're going to
look at is literally just the first 4 verses out of Habakkuk
1. So if you have your Bibles here,
you can open to Habakkuk chapter one, verse one to four.
I find that I have to go to the to the index because if you just
page, it's not a lot of pages, so you often miss it.
So Habakkuk, one verse one to four.
I am Habakkuk the prophet, and this is the message that the
Lord gave me. Our Lord, how long must I beg
for your help before you listen? How long before you save us from
all this violence? Why do you make me watch such
terrible injustice? Why do you allow violence,
lawlessness, crime and cruelty to spread everywhere?
Laws cannot be enforced. Justice is always the loser.
Criminals crowd out honest people and twist the laws
around. Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, thank you that we can gather this morning.
Oh, I just want to pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Now, Lord, pray that the Holy Spirit would.
Holy Spirit, that you would guide me in in what I say, that
I would be true to your word, that I would say what you want
me to say. I pray that you would.
Yeah. Open each of our hearts, Lord,
to what it is you want us to hear and see this morning.
Will you be with us? Amen.
OK, so maybe just some context. And this is directly quoted from
the Bible Project. How many of you guys know the
Bible Project? So they have, they do these
short, very cool videos to give an overview of biblical books
and and then they also have like transcripts of that.
So just a little bit of context on Habakkuk.
So Habakkuk lived in the final decades of Judah, which was
Israel's southern Kingdom. It was a time of injustice and
idolatry, and he saw the rising threat of the Babylonian Empire
on the horizon. Unlike the other Hebrew
prophets, Habakkuk doesn't accuse Israel or even speak to
the people on God's behalf. Instead, all of his words are
addressed to God. The book of Habakkuk tells us
about Habakkuk's personal struggle to believe that God is
good when there's so much tragedy and evil in the world.
So like I said, that's from the Bible Project.
So like many of us today and many other people in the world,
Habakkuk looked around him and saw that things are not the way
they should be. He speaks specifically in this
these 4 verses to the violence that he must witness, the
terrible injustices that he must witness.
He speaks about the the increase of lawlessness, crime and
cruelty. And he states, as a matter of
fact, that justice always loses and that honest people almost
come off second best. He speaks about how the law
cannot be enforced and our laws are being twisted around.
I think if we read this, it's almost hard to believe that it
was 2600 years ago because I think it's very similar to what
we would feel about our world today, many of us at least.
So you're welcome to take these stats with a little pinch of
salt. I did get them from Google, but
they are apparently from the the latest crime stats.
So if you take the average number of people murdered in
Cape Town annually, it works out to 8 people a day being murdered
in Cape Town. So that's the annual number of
murders that are recorded in Cape Town worked out to an
average of eight people a day. The average number of people
dying of cancer in the Cape Town area, again, taking the annual
number of people dying of cancer works out to around 30 people a
day that die from cancer alone. 22% of people in Cape Town are
unemployed and therefore struggle to care for themselves
and for their families. Farther from home, but quite
close to our hearts and to our beliefs.
I'm sure you all know that Christians are being killed and
persecuted all over the world for their faith.
So when we look at what Habakkuk saw and what we are seeing in
our world today, it's very similar.
And we must be able to look at that and say that is terrible,
that is not how it should be. These evil things that are
happening in our world is not OK.
Just like ABBA Cook thought and felt and saw in his time.
But why is it like this? Why?
Why is it that over the last thousands of years, things have
changed, but they haven't really changed?
We still see a lot of what he saw today.
We still have to witness this. Like we can see from those stats
this violence every day. We still see the corruption and
see how injustice or justice never seems to come for a lot of
people. And we still see laws being
perverted and twisted for personal gain.
Why is it that way? And the short answer is, it's
because of sin. The way the world is now is not
the way that God intended it. And if we go and read in
Genesis, we can see a glimpse, a short black portal into what
life could have been like if not for sin.
Walking with God in the garden in the cool of the day, they
seem to be peace between God and man, and also between man and
the surroundings. Obviously at the start doesn't
speak really about other people except for Adam and Eve, but
there's no mention of pain and suffering and even the
possibility of pain and suffering at the beginning.
However, as we know, or as many of us know, Adam and Eve choose
to disobey God before we judge them too harshly.
And I know I've said this before.
I'm pretty sure that each of us here would have done the same
thing. I think when I was growing up, I
thought like, sheesh, Adam, Eve, you guys, you've made such a
poor decision. I saw a meme the other day,
someone giving someone like this eye and then it says you looking
at Adam when you get to heaven. It's like you messed up.
The truth is maybe, maybe it would have been something else.
Maybe we would would have chosen to not eat the fruit, but maybe
it would have been something else.
So really Adam and Eve, they are responsible, but I don't think
we would have done much better. And we can see that we can see
that in our own lives and we can see that in the lies and in the
world around us. So that moment is what is
referred to commonly as the fall.
OK, So in in Afrikaans, it's, it's very it's so much better,
so much more descriptive. It's speaks of dishunder fall
and if I have to translate that that directly, it's the sin
fall. So but in English we say it's
the fall. And after that, in the Bible, we
see the spiral of how sin causes suffering, people choosing
themselves, choosing for themselves what is good and what
is right, and ultimately what it ends up as is in death and
suffering for the people around them, for themselves.
And then obviously the question comes up, but what about the
devil you know? Isn't it actually all his fault?
Isn't it? Can't we just blame him?
It's not us, we're just, we're just human.
I'm only human after all. And we must give him some
credit. Always think that people say
like the devil, you mustn't over credit him, but you must also
not underestimate him. And if we read the, the the
story in Genesis, we can see that he does play a role.
And the way that I see this is he kind of gets the conditions
right for us to make the wrong decisions.
No, man, God didn't say that. That's not that's not what he
meant. Surely God, surely God wants you
to be happy, you know, like he just gets the conditions right
for us, but we still make the decision.
The point is this, the suffering we see in the world is very much
caused by people. It's caused by our sinful
nature. It's caused by us wanting to
choose what is right for ourselves or just by pure
selfishness and greed because we live in this fallen world.
But it also speaks that because of that, so on the fall, because
of the the, the fall, the world is just broken.
So, so some of the things you're not going to be able to say, oh,
it's because Stefan made that bad decision and that's why this
person is now in the situation that they're in.
Some of it is just because we are now in a fallen and broken
world. It even speaks about creation
not really being what it was, what it was meant to be.
But the point is it all comes down to the fall.
And it is quite a hopeless situation.
If we, if we look at our world and the fact that we're going to
see all of this and a lot of people are going to face a lot
of this suffering and then we're going to die.
And then it's the end. And if you believe in afterlife,
you're going to die and it's the end.
And then you stand guilty before God.
Then it is quite a hopeless situation.
But through Jesus, God makes a way for us to escape that
hopeless situation, to escape that cycle of sin and death and
suffering. Romans 3/20/25.
This always comes to mind when you just think of how we all
fall short. It says for all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God, everyone.
And that's why I say that we stand before God, guilty, each
one of us, None of us sitting here, standing here, none of us
are good. Each of us, if we die today, we
are guilty in front of God. But all are justified freely by
his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement.
Atonement means it's like in in our place or in someone's place.
So Jesus was sacrificed in our place.
They call it substitutional atonement.
So substitute means he takes my place through the shedding of
his blood to be received by faith.
So through the work of Jesus, through the sacrifice of Jesus,
we can be freed from that sin and become a new creation, not
only free from the power of sin, but we can become agents for
good. Bible speaks that not only are
we are we a new creation and freed from the power of sin, we
actually are now called children of God.
We are welcomed into the family because of what Jesus did.
We become what the Bible speaks of as salt, salt and light in a
fallen and Dark World. We spoke about the suffering and
the evil in this world. By the power of the Holy Spirit,
and Despite that evil world, we can look forward to a day when
we will be with Jesus where there will be no more of this
for the thousands of years that we were speaking about.
There will be no more pain and there will be no more suffering.
So I want to take a moment here and say that if you have not
believed the good news that Jesus died for you, was raised
to life, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and that you
can be free from the power of sin, and that you can be
reconciled to God and called not only a saved person but a child
of God. I would say that if you have not
believed and put your trust in Him, then today is the day.
And I know that many of us, like I did for a long time, would
call ourselves Christians. But I want you to understand
that there's a difference between being a traditional
Christian. What I mean by that is you grew
up Christian. It's like you're churched.
We are churched. There's a difference between
that and putting our trust and our faith in Jesus for
salvation. So I want to encourage you.
Nothing is stopping you from doing it even now.
Praying to God, praying to Jesus.
Lord, I need you. Yeah, I come before you.
Please. Will you accept me into your
household? Please.
Will you make me a son? Will you make me a daughter?
Today's the day. And if you want to chat some
more, if you want some pray afterwards, please.
I encourage you to come and speak to me or or one of the
other leaders that will be around and part of being made
new is that we like have a cook cannot look at the world around
us and be OK with what we see. We our response actually cannot
be. It's just what it is.
People die, people are sick. So as Christ followers, how
should we respond to what we see in the world?
Or how should we respond to when we look at Habakkuk, what he
also saw in the world? Do we respond as many people do
and conclude that they cannot be a God?
Not if you look at the world around you?
Do we respond that by thinking if there is a God, he really
doesn't care much for us? Or maybe he just doesn't like
us. Can we?
And what I mean by can is are we allowed to pray to God and to
ask God why? Why Lord as Habakkuk did?
Is it OK to ask God why? And I'm going to start off by
saying the short answer but not the full answer is yes.
I think from what I see in the Bible, it is OK to ask why and
I'm going to with these scriptures won't be up on the
screen. So if you would like to have
them the references, you can write them down or take them
down South. First one, Philippians 4 verse 6
says this. Don't worry about anything, but
pray about everything with thankful hearts.
Offer up your prayers and requests to God.
Now I know that we read that not in the context of asking God why
do we see the suffering in the world, but the way that I see
the last bit of that verse is also a request I can make a
request to God. God help me.
Help me understand why I see what I see in this world.
Matthew 7 verse 7 says ask and it'll be given to you.
Again, one that often gets used. For material things, I think
when I think of that, my most prayer in terms of that context
has been for for wisdom and for guidance.
Going to that first and saying, Oh God, you say if I ask, you'll
give it to me. If I seek, I will find and help
me, help me, help me with wisdom.
But again, I don't see why we can't say that that is the same
is true for asking God. God, why?
Why do we see the suffering? Why do we experience the
suffering? Why?
Why is it like this? Jeremiah 33 verse 3 says call to
me and I will answer you and it will tell you great and mighty
things which you have not known. Psalm 145 verse 18 says the Lord
is near to all call on him, to all who call I am in truth.
Psalm 34 verse 17 to 18 says when the righteous cry for help,
Lord, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their
troubles. The Lord is near to the broken
hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
So these are just a couple of references, but the point I'm
trying to make is the Bible encourages us to speak to God,
to ask for help, to call on him, to make our requests known to
him. And some of the places it says
he will, he will answer us. But is that the same as what we
see Habakkuk doing? Is that the same as what seems
to be a questioning God or complaining to God?
It's important to note that Habukuk's posture, he's the way
that he's approaching God here, is what would be referred to as
a lament. So lament is like a passionate
expression of, of like sadness and grief and sorrow.
Habukuk looks at the world around him, looks at the, at
those things he mentions in those four verses and it saddens
him. It saddens him and his response
to this grief and this sorrow and this heartbreak is to turn
to God and ask God as we see why Lord, why?
Why are you? Why are you taking so long to
actually do something about this?
Why aren't, why aren't you doing something about this?
Other biblical examples of lamenting we see a lot of in the
Psalms. There's about 1/3 of the Psalms
that are psalms of lament and I'm just going to give a couple
of examples. So Psalm 13 verse one to two
goes like this. How long Lord, will you forget
me forever? How long will you hide your face
from me? How long must I take counsel in
my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long Lord? There's the other one.
I'm not sure if it's in these ones where it says like how long
will you be silent? How long will you not answer my
pray these are that's out of the Psalms.
Here's another one, Psalm 74 verse 10 to forces how long, O
God is the foe to scoff? So how long is how long is the
enemy going to be bragging like this?
How long is the enemy going to revile your name?
Are they going to revile your name forever?
Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand, take it from
the fold of your garment and destroy them?
Point of that is bring justice. Bring justice.
Psalm 89 verse 46 to 47 says how long, O Lord, will you hide
yourself forever? Now, I'm not sure about you, but
I have sometimes read these Psalms and thought that's so
very accurately describes how I feel sometimes.
So Lord, I've been, I've been praying to you forever.
How long before I'm going to hear from you?
How long before you're going to speak to me?
And we see quite a bit of that. As I said in the psalms, we see
Habakkuk asking God like why I've been praying so long.
We'll just go back to the to the Scripture quickly.
How long must I beg for your help before you listen?
How long before you save us from all this violence?
So we see quite a bit of this in the Bible, and I'm going to give
you 3 good reasons. I think they're good reasons why
we can conclude that we can bring our doubts and our
heartbreak and our failure to understand things around us to
God and ask why the first one is it seems like the Bible
encourages that the Bible when when we see the writings in the
New Testament, the the apostles are encouraging guys to to speak
to God. Make your requests known to Him,
reminding the people he keys for you.
He wants He wants to know what's going on.
You know like he knows, but he still wants you to to say.
The second is that the Bible has many examples of God's people
making their requests known to him, even if these requests in
the form of asking God why he is not doing something about the
evil in the world. As we see in Habakkuk's case and
as we see with many other examples in the Psalms. 2
examples that I thought of here as well is Paul asking God to
take away the thorn in his flesh.
You know, like you might think that Oh well Paul, you know,
like just deal with it. You know, you, you've been
saved, so just deal with it. But Paul has the the boldness to
ask God, God, please, will you take this away?
But it also then has the the peace to accept God's answer
that my grace is sufficient for you.
The other example that I thought of was Jesus, Jesus in the in
the Garden of Gethsemane praying to God.
Please God, if possible, will you let this cup pass me by
having the, you know, not just Jesus knew his task, but he was
still at a point where he asked the Father, please, if possible,
let this cup pass me by. But not my will be done, but
your will be done. And the interesting thing that I
noted between those two examples is Paul, at least what we see,
got an answer. Paul got an answer to say my
grace is sufficient for you. I don't see Jesus really getting
an answer. Doesn't mean that God didn't
answer him, but we don't see it. Finally, the third reason is we
see that God actually answers some of the people publicly.
What we see, God answers some of the people, Paul being one of
the examples. And who was Habakkuk?
The other example, God actually answers him.
We're not going to get into it today.
And that's been quite challenging for me in my prep
is, is a lot of the context around the book only comes in
the later verses and chapters. But what I can tell you is that
God answers his question. He answers his lament, He
answers his complaint, which I'm sure you'll see next week.
So we can conclude that it is OK for us to approach God with our
questions. Why, Lord, do we see this evil
and suffering in the world? Why, Lord, this did this happen?
Lord, why is this happening to me?
Lord, please take away this this thorn in my flesh.
However, when I was preparing for this, I thought about
another example about someone who complained to God, a man
called Job. Now, when I was growing up, the
only thing I remember of the book of Job was how amazing he
was, you know, because God did so let so many things happen to
him and he remained faithful. And that's kind of the story of
Job that I remember growing up and only when I was older, I, I
realized that there's a section in Job where God actually
rebukes Job. So, so if you don't know what
rebukes mean, it's like where God basically tells him, Who do
you think you are to ask me something like that?
So what's the difference then between Job asking these
questions of God and Habakkuk? So just for a little bit of
context, Job, after much suffering, I mean, he lost
everything and he was sick. He was full of sores.
His children died quite horribly.
A wall fell onto them. He lost all of his, like,
possessions and stuff, so cattle and all of that.
And then there's a section where he kind of says to God, I wish I
was never born. He says that he asked this
question of like, why does God even let me live?
Why does he even let me live? Why did I not just die at birth?
So this is Job in his suffering, in his very real and terrible
suffering, he asks these questions of God and Job
receives quite a strong rebuke. So you can go and read it.
I think it's around chapter 38. I think I might be very wrong
there, but but Job receives a strong rebuke from God.
And and just to give you some some idea of that is like God
saying to Job, like, where were you?
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth along
those lines. So when Habakkuk's case, God
gives him, we will see quite a nice answer.
He entertains this questioning of Habakkuk.
He's like, OK, now let me explain to you, this is what's
happening and this is what will happen.
And then Habakkuk will complain again.
And then God says, no, no, don't worry, this is what will happen.
And then this is what will happen.
But in Job's case, he gets a rebuke.
He basically says to him, who do you think you are?
Who do you think you are to question me?
So what is the difference? Job was rebuked and Habakkuk was
answered. So commentators argue that the
difference in God's response to these people comes not from the
fact that they were quish asking questions of God, but from what
was being asked and how it was being asked and the heart behind
it. Job was asking questions out of
bitterness. He was, he was upset with God.
He was upset with God. He was claiming that God is
treating him unjustly. In essence, he put God on trial,
attempting to judge God's ultimate wisdom and authority
over everything. Habakkuk.
Habakkuk's questions were rooted in a righteous feeling of what
they call indignation, a feeling of like, you know, like
discontent with how things are, like this shouldn't be how
things are, and a desire to see God's law vindicated.
He asked why, with intent to understand what is God's plan
not to question or condemn God's character and decisions.
In short, Job was rebuked for challenging God's wisdom in his
personal life, while Habakkuk was answered with a plan because
he wanted to align his righteous concerns with what he's seeing
around him to God's sovereign movement in history.
What is encouraging though, is even though I would not
recommend the way that Job approached God, both of these
people at the end end up in submission and in trust to God.
And if we think about Job's story, you know, after that and
after he acknowledges his kind of wrongdoing and sin, to
question God's wisdom and character, God actually does
also restore him. So a easy way to assess our own
hearts when we want to come with questions to God is are we
questioning God? Are we questioning His plan, His
wisdom, His character, or His ways?
Or are we asking God questions so that we can align with His
heart when we see evil in the world around us?
When we ask God why, we are not questioning His character, but
we are asking questions. Why, Lord, why are you taking so
long to do something about that? And that was the heart of
Habakkuk. He knew that God is a just God
and he saw this evil around him and he was asking.
He was, he was wanting clarity. I guess he wanted to know God,
why are you taking so long to bring justice on these people?
So in conclusion, Habakkuk was not happy or content with what
he saw in the world around him and we shouldn't be either.
His response is to pray to God, to bring his requests to God, to
tell God how he feels about the injustice and the evil that he
sees in the world around him. And we can see in those verses,
the fact that he asks how long must I ask for help?
Implies that he has been asking for a long time, that this was
not the first time that he asked God how long and then God
answered him. When we are faced with doubts
and questions, we should take it to God first.
When we see the injustice and suffering in the world, we
should take it in to God first. And God in His divine wisdom may
give us an answer. He may give us guidance, He may
do this through His word, the Bible, He may do this through
the Holy Spirit, He may do this through His people, the church,
or He may just give us peace when we bring our questions and
doubts and concerns to Him. Philippians 46 again says do not
worry about anything, but pray about everything with thankful
hearts. OfferUp your prayers and
requests to God. Then because you belong to
Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can
completely understand. And this peace will control the
way you think and the way you feel.
Let's pray, Lord Jesus, thank you for your word.
Thank you that we can look at Habakkuk's story, you know, and
see, have some, some empathy, Lord.
We, we see what he sees. We see pain and suffering in our
world. We see evil.
And we also come before you, Lord, and we ask, Lord, in
humility and in full trust of you, Lord, how long, Lord?
And we pray, Lord, that when we have these questions, we pray
that you would bless us, as you say, with peace, Lord.
We pray, Lord, that if it is your world that you would answer
us, Lord, speak into our doubts, speak into our concerns, speak
into our questions, Lord. We pray, Lord, that through the
Holy Spirit you would help us to have a posture like Habakkuk and
not a posture like Job. In that example, we pray for
your guidance, Lord. We pray that you would change
our hearts, Lord, if our hearts are hard, maybe our hearts are
hard towards church, to church people.
Maybe our hearts are hard towards there are young people
outside of church. Maybe our heart is hard towards
you, Lord. Maybe we have been praying for a
long time and we haven't heard anything.
We haven't received peace. I pray Lord that you would come
and soften that heart. Lord.
I pray, Lord, that there would be a confidence that you, the
creator of the universe, the creator of us, the sustainer of
everything, the one who has allowed us this morning to take
another breath, to stand on our feet.
That you see the injustice, that you see the evil, that you see
our doubts, Lord, and our, our failures, our Lord, and that one
day, maybe one day we may understand some of these things
through your through your grace, your honor, we also thank you,
Lord, we thank you for for Jesus.
We thank you with all these worries that we have hope.
We have hope past this life. We have a hope that we will see
a day where there will not be any more of this suffering and
evil in our world. We praise you and we thank you
for that in Jesus name. Thank you for listening to
today's message. We hope you are encouraged and
challenged in your faith. If you're in the Southern
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