Complaining to God

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So turn with me to Habacic.

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I've titled this message complaining to God complaining to God.

I don't know if you have a picture of what

it looks like to complain to God, maybe from your

own life, maybe from maybe a movie. When I think

of complaining to God, the first scene that comes to

my mind is Lieutenant Dan at the top of the

mast of.

A ship, just sort of shaking his hands towards.

Heaven and uh and going back and forth with God.

I'm not saying that's the way to do it. I'm

not saying Lieutenant Dan is our example.

I'm just saying it's a picture.

If you're here this morning as a non Christian, I

just want to go ahead and start by saying I realize,

and I think Scripture realizes that there may be some

complaints that you have.

That you feel have really kept you from faith.

It's also possible for us to become so fond of

our complaints that we prefer them to faith.

If you're here as a Christian, when.

We start talking about complaining to God, you may have

questions like, is it ever right to complain to God?

What's the what are the right words, What's what are

the right issues for me to bring up with him?

What's the right posture?

Well back a book about that a backic is like

most of us, frustrated by terrible stuff, and he goes

back and forth with God.

That's the whole book.

He goes back and forth, lots of complaints, and he

goes through what I'll just call a growth process.

He goes through a growth process.

He is not the same person at the end of

the book with the same posture at the end of

the book that he is at the beginning.

Not because God.

Gives him some naive pat answers, not because he tells

Habakk what he wants to hear. But he does come

out the other side with trust and joy, and his

readers were invited into that process, which we'll take in

two steps. For us, we'll take in two steps. Here

are the steps next week and this week next week

Chapters two and three, This week, Chapter.

One next week.

If our aim next week is that kind of awe

and trust and joy and confidence, and we see how

about to get to this week our aim is a

little bit more modest.

This week. Here's what I'm shooting for.

An open mind, an open mind that is ready to

let go.

Of a small minded view of God, to let go

of a small minded view of God's work. And next week,

after we've spent this week letting go, next week will

grab hold.

Of something else.

If this week we open our minds, next week we'll

see how God fills them. A bit of a cliffhanger,

because here's the thing we got to come to grips with.

Sometimes God handles terrible stuff by using terrible stuff. Let's

read chapter one of Habakk. We'll read chapter one and

the first verse of chapter two, which you'll see, is

like the perfect picture of an open mind. The oracle

that Habakik the prophet saw, Oh 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 while 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, and so

justice goes forth perverted. 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'm 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 them. 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 at rulers, they laugh, They laugh at every fortress,

for they pile up earth and take it. And then

they sweep by like the wind and go on. Guilty

men whose might is their God? Are you not from everlasting?

Oh Lord, my God, my holy one, we shall not die.

Oh Lord, You've ordained them as a judgment, And you,

oh Rock, have established them for reproof. You, who are

of purer eyes than to see evil, and cannot look

at wrong. Why do you idly look at traders and

remain silent when the wicked swallows up a man more

righteous than he? You make mankind like the fish of

the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He

brings up all of them with a hook, and he

drags them out with a net, and he gathers them

and his dragnet.

So he rejoices and is glad.

Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to

his drag net, 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.

I will stand.

I will take my stand at my watch post and

station myself on the tower and look out to see

what he will say to me. But I will answer

concerning my complaint. This is the word of the Lord.

So there we have it, complaining to God Habacchic in

this back and forth when you can see already, and

this back and forth is this first chapter is got

three parts to it, right, starts with Habaccic complaining and

God answers him. And then Habacic is like, whoa, I've

got more complaints. And so we're gonna take those three

parts of this back and forth like this. I'm gonna

call the first one bringing complaints, the second part challenging answers,

and the third open questions, bringing complaints, challenging answers, open questions.

So let's go with part one. Bringing complaints.

I mean, that's what he does, this guy Habaca. You

see verse one, the oracle that Habakac the prophet saw.

So Habaka is a prophet and he is ministering at

kind of the worst time in Israel and Juda's history.

Is his ministry is during some of the worst kings

and some of the grossest behavior from the people who

call themselves the people of God. And so that's what

he starts complaining about. He's like, your people stink. And

in verse two he brings me. He starts with two,

and three and four. He just brings three verses of complaints.

And here's the curious thing. Here's what we have to wonder.

What is the nature of these complaints. What's his posture?

Reverent? Irreverent?

Well, I mean the verse two he says he's clearly

concerned about God's help. Why he's like, I cry for help,

I cry to you. But also what's he saying about God,

You're not doing it. You're not helping. You're the helping God,

You're the saving one. You're not saving Verse three. I mean,

he's clearly concerned for a stop to violence and a

stop to iniquity and wrong.

But also, God, you're not doing anything. You're idly.

Watching, isn't that what he says? You're just twiddling your

thumbs God verse four. Clearly he's concerned that God's instructions,

his law and justice go forth untwisted, that the righteous

would prevail and the wicked be thwarted. Because right now

the righteous are being thwarted and the wicked are prevailing.

So Habacca is like, what's the nature of these complaints?

Habacic is kind of bringing the right stuff, right, I mean,

certainly there are some things that Hebaccaic and God are

agreeing about. Same with you, as you get frustrated over

terrible things. I am sure there are things that you

were frustrated about that you.

Can complain about. And God's like, yep.

So he's kind of bringing the right stuff, maybe in

the right way.

Don't know.

Jury's ow, we'll see. But here's the thing. Maybe he's

bringing the right stuff, Maybe he's bringing in the right way.

He's for sure bringing it to the right person. I'm

not saying who backs the perfect example. Like I said,

he's in a growth process. But lamenting lamenting is usually right.

Some of the people with the strongest prayer lives are

those who lean into lament, who aren't content to just

bring their tidy little requests and to bring their tidy

little points of thanksgiving to God that they know check

all the right boxes, but are ready to bring what's

really in there out of the basement and bring it

to God. As Psalm says, I pour out my complaint

before him, I tell my trouble before him.

Lament is good.

Biblical lament isn't grumbling, which is not good, right. Biblical

lament is bringing complaint to God. Sinful grumbling is bringing

complaint against God. So I suppose we have to ask

ourselves this question when we bring our complaints to God.

Is our complaining biblical lament or sinful grumbling? Or does

it kind of seem to slide around and.

Hit both before you're done? Is that fair?

I mean, Habaccics truly seems to slide around Moses's complaints,

seem to slide around Job's complaints. Certainly slide around lots

of real biblical reverent lament in Job, and then sometimes

he just takes a left. And here's the thing about

those saints about Hbaccic Moses job others. God never says,

how dare you? He corrects them with mercy. He moves

them because they're willing to be moved.

You know, the people of.

Israel in the wilderness, they brought grumbling before the Lord

and God.

As God went to.

Correct them, they just stiffened their neck and they're like, no,

I'm gonna be hardened in my grumbling.

I was really their great fault.

Not that they had a complaint, not that they brought

it to God, but they wouldn't hear him when they did. So.

If your complaints slide around between biblical lament and sinful

grum grumbling, let me just tell you, without advocating or

even like suggesting that sinful grumbling isn't sinful it is.

I'm just saying, where else are you going to go

with it? As John Piper said, I was at a

conference with Piper and he was on job. Is the

only thing I remember from the whole conference. He's in

this Q and A session and here's what I'm getting at.

The question that the conference attender asked, was it is

it ever right to be angry with God? And Pastor

Piper said no, it's always wrong to be angry with God,

that's always wrong.

God is right.

And our and our and what is right and righteous

is for us to acknowledge that He is right and

to not be angry with him.

But but but.

If you are angry with him, the right thing to

do is bring it to him, because he already knows.

Where else are you gonna go with that?

So, whether your heart is full of biblical lament, or

your heart is full of sinful grumbling, or it's sliding around,

like so many times the people of God's hearts are

sliding around, where are you gonna.

Go with it?

But to him, maybe the question isn't so much are

you bringing biblical lament or are you bringing sinful grumbling?

Maybe what we need to ask ourselves is am I

bringing my complaints to God at all? Or am I

just pretending a little tidy religion and leaving how I

really feel and what I'm really thinking and my real

complaints and my real questions and my real.

Concern learns down in the basement.

To just play with yourself, just fill around with it yourself,

just grumble about it yourself. Just keep it to yourself. God,

I'll talk to you about the tidy things. Bring those complaints.

Where else are you gonna go? Instead of being afraid

to bring our honest complaints to God, I think we

should be afraid not to. So how does God respond

a back ache is bringing his complaints. That's the first

part of this exchange. Here's the second part of the exchange.

God provides some challenging answers.

Right, I say.

Challenging because the very first verse of God's piece of

this is the key verse of our whole text says

in verse five, look among the nations and see wonder

and be astounded, For I'm doing a work in your

days that you wouldn't believe if told.

You're not gonna believe this.

Now that the sense there in verse five is not

you are not able to believe this, is rather this

sense here's your challenge back The challenge is to believe this.

The challenge is to believe this. And that's key because

eventually Habakik does come to the place where he believes this,

and there are many who don't. Paul picks this verse backup.

There's only two verses in all of ABAC that are

quoted in the New Testament, and this is one of them.

And Paul picks up this verse when he's preaching the

Gospel in Acts, chapter thirteen, and he says, here's the challenge.

The challenge is to believe this.

Don't be be careful, he says, be careful to have

an open mind. Don't be like those that Habakik is

referencing who aren't able to believe that God can do

what he says he can do, and that God is

doing things the way God decides to do them. God

is saying, here, the challenge is to believe my work.

It's bigger than you think. You've got small thoughts of.

My power and my promises and my plans. You're gonna

have to let that go. You're gonna have to have

an open mind, says in verse six, because look, I'm

raising up the Chaldeans, which is another term for the Babylonians,

that bitter and hasty nation, which is a little ironic,

because if there's anything that Habakk is leaning towards in

all of this, it's bitterness and being hasty. I'm raised,

I'm braising up that nation. And then he goes through

verse seven through through eleven. He just lays it out.

He's like, these people are fearsome, they are dreaded, they

are wicked. You talking about terrible stuff. Watch this terrible stuff.

I told you. I told you in Deuteronomy twenty eight.

He says, I told.

You I was going to I can act this way,

I can bring this, I can use this. He uses

the same terms as he uses in Deuteronomy chapter twenty eight,

like an eagle, and that should.

Trigger her backic.

Oh, yeah, you said that you might bring another nation

like an eagle. Here's the thing, verse eleven. Right at

the end of it, verse eleven, here's the thing God

himself is using.

The godless.

Calls him guilty, guilty men whose strength is their God.

And that's that's ironic because where Habaka gets to in

the end, like what I told you, he's in a

growth process, and part of it is he gets to

the point where he's like, God is my strength, But

for these people, it's just the opposite.

Strength is my God.

And God is handling terrible stuff by using terrible stuff.

This would be like if you complained to.

God now and you said your people are entangled in

sexual sin and lives of selfishness, and churches are saying it's.

Okay, it's perfectly fine to.

Live like yeah, And pastors all over are popping up

disqualified like a fish kill, and God says, yeah, terrible stuff.

And your challenge, your challenge is gonna be to get

your head around this because I'm going to handle that

with even more terrible stuff. I'm gonna send a persecution

that's gonna close the doors of eighty percent of the

churches in this country.

What are you talking about. I'm bringing my complaint to you.

That's terrible stuff is going on, and you're gonna give

me that.

That's the tool that you're going to use.

You're gonna have that crooked stick in your hand, You're

gonna have that wicked instrument.

I mean, that's just a hypothetical example.

But the challenge again, the challenge is to believe that

God's work may be bigger than you thought. I've seen

I've seen families come to thrive and flourish.

Spiritually because of devastating bankruptcy that only God could use.

I'm convinced I'm going to see a marriage come to

real healing because of cancer. Pastor Seth used the term

this morning, the grace of misery. Can you let go

of small thoughts? About what God should do. That he

gives and he takes away, that he rescues and he disciplines.

That he can draw straight lines with crooked sticks, and

even what he made crooked, who can make straight? And

that's how Paul uses this verse in his preaching and

Acts thirteen. It's like, be careful, be careful to have

an open mind about what God has done. All right, brothers,

the rulers of this people fulfilled the prophets by condemning

the Christ. They executed him wrongly and an injustice. They

did all that was written of him in their wickedness.

They took him down from the tree. They laid him

in a tomb. Talk about terrible stuff injustice and wickedness

and suffering and death to bring you justification and freedom

and life.

Be careful have an open mind to believe what God

has done.

If you have seen and benefited from God's use of

the most terrible cross for your most glorious good, be

careful to have an open mind to believe that sometimes,

if he chooses, he can handle terrible stuff by using

more terrible stuff. If he can use a terrible cross

to take our savior and exalt him before the watching world.

If he can take a terrible cross and take a

desperate people and rescue them and save them, bring them

to himself, and give them a robe of white, and'll

train them in righteousness. If he can take a terrible

cross and use that to take people from every tribe

and tongue and nation and gather them together, that they

would stand and sing the praises of their king. If

he can use a terrible cross, be careful to have

an open mind, to trust that he is who he

says he is, and he does what he says he does,

including non Christian, including even taking a rebel like you

and restoring him to himself and forgiving you, making you

his own. Have an open mind. That's the challenge. And

he says to Habakak, you're struggling to get You're going

to struggle to get your head around this. You've brought

your complaints. I've challenged you with my answers. How does

Abacak respond, Well, that's the third part of this exchange,

which I'll just call open questions. Open questions. A Bachick

then lays out some questions in response to this. You

saw them there when we read it, And here's the

curious thing.

This is worth noticing, This is worth considering.

Are these just questions? Or are or is this questioning?

Every parent knows the difference questions or questioning. You know

some questions. I've heard it said. Some questions are a window,

Some questions are a wall. Some questions are faith seeking understanding.

Some questions are deflections. What do we have on our

hands here?

Do you know what I mean by that? Questions versus questioning.

It's a great example of it in Luke chapter one.

In Luke chapter one, the angel Gabriel shows up and

announces to the priest Zachariah, your wife Elizabeth is going

to have a baby.

And there he is.

He's a priest, he's older, he's educated. He's right there

in the temple. An angel appears to him and he

announces the birth of a baby. And Zachariah says, how's

that gonna work? And Gabriel says, yeah, you're not gonna

talk for a while.

Because he didn't believe me.

Same chapter, same angel, same announcement. Gabriel goes to Mary.

There's Mary. She's a teenage girl. She doesn't have all

the education that Zachariah has. Gabriel brings the same announcement,

the announcement the birth of a baby, and Mary asks

the same question, how's that gonna work?

And Gabriel says, let me tell you all about it, because.

Even though they asked the same question, one of them

had a heart that was questioning. He was asking a

wall question and Mary's question was an open window. Please

tell me about the plan of God. So which of

those two do we have from habakk or does it

kind of slide around and be both well, I mean,

let's look at verses twelve and thirteen. Here's Habakic's first question.

Are you not from everlasting old Lord, my God, my

whole only one?

You're pure? You can't look at wrong?

Can a holy god of purer eyes, of purer eyes

like yours look at wrong?

Can you ordain and establish these? Aren't you pure? God?

Which I think is back It's.

More like, aren't you dainty? You can't get your hands dirty?

I think if we take a little spice out of

that question, it becomes.

God, can you really use whatever you want to use?

Then he asked his question verse thirteen, saying, why do

you idly look at traders and remain silent with the

wicked swallows of a man more righteous than he is.

But how how can God stand to use the viciously

wicked against someone who's more righteous? I mean, look, we've

been terrible, it's true, But the Babylonians that's beyond the pale.

Aren't you fair? Again?

If we take a little spice out of this question,

I think it just becomes this, God, you're really not

handcuffed by our ideas of fairness?

Are you? Next question?

I'm back, it says in fourteen through seventeen. So what

you're doing is you're making all of mankind like fish

in a barrel. And these people are inhumane, and they

are greedy, and they are idolatrous, and you're just gonna

let him keep going.

Aren't you fed up? Where's the urgency?

It is?

He gonna could just keep going forever?

Again, I think if we take a little spice out

of that question, it just becomes this.

You can pretty much choose your own timing, can't you? God?

You can choose your own timing. Well, we find out.

Which direction Habacic is leaning, whether he's opening up a

window or he's putting up a wall.

By verse one of.

Chapter two, because however he started, this is where he gets.

I will take my stand up my watch post.

I'm gonna look to see what he's gonna say. So

maybe he started off questioning and now he's gotten softened

to just where he's asking questions.

But however he started, he goes for an answer.

Just a picture of him standing there on the wall

waiting for God's answer. This is like the picture of

an open mind. We've gone back and forth, and maybe

I put.

Up some walls.

But whatever those questions were before, I'm opening them now.

How about you? Are your questions windows or walls?

Here's my encouragement. Open your questions. Make windows out of

those walls. You want an open mind, Open your questions.

Become a little skeptical about your skepticism. There's one person said,

we have to learn to doubt our doubts too. The

backck is going through this growth process. You can too,

bring your complaints to God. Bring your complaints to God?

Where else will you go with them? Accept the challenge

that that God doesn't fit in your small categories. Be

careful to have an open mind. This is the challenge

to believe that he said, he does what he says,

and he is who he is, and then open up

your questions to God and his word.

And see what he says.

And that's where we're gonna leave it this week, just

standing on the wall, waiting for answers, an open mind,

and we'll see next week what God does to fill it.

But right now, and I asked the ushers to come

down to the bottom of the aisles with the elements

for the Lord's Supper, because we're gonna celebrate the grace

of God in Christ, by whom we can come to

the Lord at all