When the Voice of God Grows Still -Habakkuk 1:1–4: Stefan Potgieter

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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

Philippians 4:6

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.

Matthew 7:7

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

Jeremiah 33:3

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

Psalms 145:18

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,

Psalms 34:17–18

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

Psalms 74:10

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

Psalms 89:46–47

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

suburbs, would love to welcome you in person at one of our

serves. Don't forget to subscribe, share

this message with a friend, and stay connected with us on social

media for more inspiration throughout the week.

Until next time, stay please and keep shining your light.