Habakkuk 3: ‘Trusting the God who has proved himself trustworthy’

Joe sits in church with a big smile on his face.  He has a lot to be happy about.  He has a lovely wife, a great job and delightful kids.  Indeed every Sunday in church Joe thanks God for all God has given him. 

But what if everything fell apart?  Supposing Joe goes into work that Monday and finds out that he is going to be a victim of the credit crunch.  He arrives home to tell his wife that he has lost his job only to find that she has left him for someone else.  In the months ahead his misery worsens as one of his children struggles with a debilitating illness.

What happens to Joe’s faith when life hurts?  Does he see any reason for thanking God now?  Can he trust the God who has allowed such terrible things to happen to him?  How can he hold onto his belief in the goodness of God when his world seems to be falling apart?   

This is something every Christian needs to learn.  You see the truth of the matter is life is not always easy.  All we have to do is live long enough and we will experience some kind of loss or suffering.  So how do we hold on to our faith when our world is falling apart?  Habakkuk 3 shows us!

Habakkuk knows that things are going to get very painful for himself and his people.  They are going to be overthrown by the ruthless Babylonians and taken from their land.  He will witness much that will surely give him reason to weep.  Yet as we read through this passage we see that it ends with a great expression of faith.  How does Habakkuk move from perplexity to praise and from fear to faith?

….. God even when life seems perplexing will be helped trust God even when life seems perplexi tell him what is on our heart.

1.  The big picture reminds him that God can be trusted (1-15)

LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD.  Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.  Here is a prayer for revival.  It’s a prayer based on the fact that the God who has acted with such power and might in the past can work in similar ways in Habakkuk’s day, and he can work in similar ways in our day!  Habakkuk had asked God to step in and stop the rot that was so evident in his society but he also prays, in wrath remember mercy.  We might look at this corrupt society, we might look at churches that have sold out on the truth and behave in ways that bring dishonour to God’s name, and we might pray that God would put an end to the evil that we see.  Indeed one day he will deal with all evil.  But we also pray, ‘Lord, save many on these wicked people.’  On the day of God’s final judgement we will see his righteous condemnation of the ungodly and we will also have ample evidence of the mercy by which he has saved ungodly people like us.

God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.  His glory covered the heavens—One commentator writes, ‘His radiance, as he comes, lights up the sky above and is reflected on the earth below . . . the spreading of his radiance throughout heaven and earth is compared to the rays of the sun, diffusing its light far and wide’ (Bruce).  So often our Christian lives are simply centred on ourselves.  We imagine that God exists only to serve our desires and we fail to ponder his magnificence.  We are the poorer for our self-centred spirituality.  Let’s read verses like these and wonder at the glory of God.  Let’s praise God for who he is.  Then, with this in mind, let’s be amazed that this awesome God has time for us; that this holy God values us; that this perfect God takes pleasure in us; and that this sovereign God even works his purposes for our ultimate good.  Let’s remember that the God who owes us no good thing has been better to us than we have ever realised!

Verse 4 seems to be recalling God’s presence at Mount Sinai.  The talk of plagues and pestilence, in verse 5, remind us of the punishments inflicted on the Egyptians in Exodus.  We are told of the tents of Cushan in distress, the dwellings of Midian in anguish—when God delivered his people from Egypt the neighbouring peoples were filled with fear.  In verse 8 there is mention of the rivers—remember how God turned the Nile to blood (Ex. 7), parted the Red Sea to enable his people to escape slavery (Ex. 14-15) and parted the Jordan to allow them to enter the promised land (Josh. 2).  Verse 11 talks of the sun and moon standing still in the heavens—this seems to be an allusion to the events of Joshua 10, where we read that the sun stood still and the moon stopped at the defeat of Gibeon.  You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one.  Here God’s people are referred to as his anointed and of course when we hear talk of God’s ‘anointed one’ we think of Jesus (‘Christ’ means ‘anointed one’)—God rescued him from death after he had been crucified and through his resurrection we have life.  You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness—this seems to be a reference to either Pharaoh or the leaders of Canaan, both of whom experienced God’s righteous anger.  In verses 14-15 there is another reference to the destruction God brought upon the Egyptians, who, like the ruthless Babylonians were soon to do, had set out to defeat God’s people.

Do we see what is happening here?  Habakkuk is remembering how God acted in the past!  Indeed as we read through the Old Testament we can see that people often recalled the great saving events of God.  In particular they remembered the events surrounding the exodus from Egypt for the exodus was the great saving event of the Old Testament.   As God’s people recalled it they were reminded that God is both great and good.  He has proved himself to be trustworthy. 

Of course the Exodus foreshadowed an even greater rescue—that surrounding the cross!  We move from perplexity to praise as we recall the great saving events of the past and remember that our God has shown that he is to be trusted.  It’s so important that we sing cross-centred songs, pray cross-centred prayers and think cross-centred thoughts.  As we are reminded of this great saving event of God we can be assured that God is both great and good.  And that is what we most need to know when life leaves us feeling perplexed.

2.  It will all work out in the end, but it will be tough until then (16)

Dreadful days lied ahead for Habakkuk and his people.  They would endure terrible suffering.  The very thought of it causes the prophet to tremble and quiver.  He hates the thought that the Babylonians would think that they have triumphed and give credit to their idols.  Then notice the little word ‘yet’ in verse 16 (there are two great ‘yets’ in this passage).  I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled.  Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.  Habakkuk knows that there will be a day beyond the day to come.  It might look like the enemies of God’s people win yet Habakkuk knows that that there will be another day when God will set the record straight and repay the ruthless Babylonians for their evil.  On that day God will show his wonderful righteous judgement.  Habakkuk waits for that day! 

For us today may be dreadful, tomorrow may be worse, but there will be a day ahead when God will set all things straight.  Ruthless people may seem to have their way but on that day they will be called to account.  Indeed we look forward to a day when the Lord will return to judge the wicked and bring an end to the suffering of his people.  That is the day on which we are to place our hope!

3.  From fear to faith (17-19)

Os Guinness writes, ‘God’s people may not always know ‘Why’, but they can always know why they trust God who knows why!’

Habakkuk knows that there are grim days ahead.  He knows that he and his people will suffer.  There will surely be many tears.  Yet Habakkuk takes a backwards look, at the great saving events of the past, and sees that God has shown himself to be trustworthy.  Let us look at that great saving event of the cross and see that God is indeed trustworthy—even when our circumstances tempt us to doubt it.  Then look forward beyond the troubles of today and tomorrow and see that there is a day ahead when he will set all things straight, indeed we are assured that on that day he will bring an end to all suffering for his people.  It’s with a perspective of past and future that Habakkuk utters one of the greatest statements of faith in the Bible:

Though the fig-tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen

and no cattle in the stalls,

(Then comes the second great ‘yet’ of this passage)

yet I will rejoice in the LORD,

I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

Everything appears to have fallen apart yet the believer still has reason to rejoice in our God.  In the distressing days Habakkuk knows that God will be with him.  In the difficult times we can experience God’s strength and ultimately we can prevail in grace—as we pray with honesty, remember the cross, wait with hope and even humbly rejoice.  Habakkuk ends this wonderful little book:

 The Sovereign LORD is my strength;

he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

he enables me to go on the heights.

 

Copyright note:

Unless otherwise stated all Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE,

NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.  Used by permission.

 

Habakkuk 2: The Lord reigns

In the film ‘The Remains of the Day’ Anthony Hopkins plays the role of an emotionally repressed butler, in an English country house in the 1930s, who falls in love with the housekeeper, played by Emma Thompson.  The butler is incapable of expressing his feelings and so the relationship remains stilted and unreal.  One commentator writes about this saying, ‘Often our relationship with God can remain at a similarly superficial and unreal level.  We think that we dare not explode and tell God what we feel about his silences, his decisions and his ways.  But God wants the kind of honesty with which Habakkuk confronted him.  God wants us to trust him with our deepest fears and our wildest feelings . . . God wants us to throw everything at him, not to pretend that we do not think and feel in ways which are, for a certain kind of believer, unacceptable or shocking.’   We have all felt frustrated with life, maybe we have vented that frustration with close friends, but do we feel the freedom to honestly tell God how we feel?  Do we think that we need to pray as if we are tip-toeing around a museum or can we open up with true emotion? 

I am not suggesting that we treat God without reverence.  I am saying that we need learn about prayer from people like Habakkuk, Job and the psalmists.  They were willing to cry out to God.  They brought their aching hearts to him.  They asked ‘How Long, O Lord?’  God is big enough for our questions and gracious enough to listen to our complaints!    

It’s around 600 BC.  Habakkuk lived in Judah, a kingdom that was in unique covenant relationship with God.  Yet these people ignored God’s law—they are like those today who claim to be Christians but won’t submit their thinking to the clear teaching of the Bible.  They were corrupt and violent.  So Habakkuk wanted to know ‘When are you going to step in and stop the rot?’  This first complaint was that God appears to do nothing.  These people are dishonouring his name and God is not doing anything about it.

When God answers Habakkuk the prophet is totally shaken and his second complaint is that God seems to be about to do the wrong thing.  God was not only going to remove the wicked from the land; he was going to remove everyone from the land, and use the ruthless Babylonians to do it!  This flies in the face of what Habakkuk understands about God and he asks more questions, including ‘how could you use such a wicked people to fulfil your purposes?’

At the beginning of chapter 2 Habakkuk is standing like a guard in the watchtower of the city awaiting God’s answer.  Then the LORD replied.

God has revealed his plan (2-3)

God tells Habakkuk to write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.  God reveals his truth to Habakkuk.  Indeed God has revealed himself and his ways right throughout the Bible.  Where our thinking is at odds with the Bible’s revelation we must realign our thoughts.  As we grasp God’s truth in the Bible we are to run with it—God’s words are to be shared.  Sometimes people will tell you something beginning ‘just between you and me . . .’  God’s word is the opposite of that—it is for sharing, we are gossip the gospel, we are to ask God for the opportunity and the courage to share what he was shown to us.    Christian truth is not private truth!

For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false.  Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and not delay.  In our instant generation it might seem that God acts very slowly but he does act in his time.  God would stop the rot and judge Judah fourteen years later.  Sixty-one years later he would judge the ruthless Babylonians.  We still await Jesus’ return and the final day of judgement when he will set every matter straight.

We are to trust him (4-5)

God will stop the rot.  He will punish evil.  Indeed, on his day of judgement, he will justly repay people for all the evil that they have done.  Of course, that leaves us with a problem: ‘what about the evil that we have done—what about the fact that we too are guilty of sin?’  Verse 4 gives us the grounds for our hope.

See, he [referring to Babylonia in general and their king in particular] is puffed up.  Being puffed up refers to proud people who rely upon themselves.  His desires are not upright—but the righteous shall live by faith.  In this context faith means trusting God’s promises.  Faith believes something because God says it.  Habakkuk was to know the Babylonians would be overthrown simply because God had said it.  Faith knows there will be a day of judgement because it is foretold in God’s word.  Faith is confident that God will forgive the sins of those who turn to Christ because that is what God has promised.  Faith knows that God’s people will live in a new earth and a new heaven because that has been promised too.

This phrase ‘the righteous shall live by faith’ is picked up in the New Testament (e.g. Gal. 3:11) to teach that God’s people are saved by grace.  Grace is God’s free, unmerited, unearned and undeserved favour.  As we take God at his word, trusting in his promise to forgive those who turn to Jesus, we need not fear the coming day of judgement.  On the cross Christ dealt with our sins and we can now know what it is to be counted righteous.

The New Testament also quotes this verse in describing the sort of life we should live (Heb. 10:38-39).  We are to live a life of deepening trust in God.  We are to continue to cling to his promises and our hope is to be based on his faithfulness even when life is dark and confusing.  We do not have all the answers to all the questions that the pains of life throw up at us but we have been shown enough of God in his word to know that he is good and trustworthy.  We are not promised a life free from suffering and pain but because of Christ we have a living and eternal hope.        

Right throughout the Bible humanity is divided into one of two categories.  These are not categories that are based upon our wealth, our reputation or our appearance.  These are categories based on our relationship with God.  It is about being saved or lost.  It tells us that there are only two ways to live.  In verse 4 it is the difference between being puffed up—that is self-righteous and independent of God’s mercy, or living by faith—being made righteous through faith and depending on God’s mercy.

He will judge all evil (6-20)

Habakkuk complained that God was going to use the Babylonians to punish the people of Judah.  Habakkuk could not understand how God would use the wicked to swallow up people who were less wicked than they were.  It didn’t seem just!  But God shows Habakkuk what will happen to the Babylonians.  He might use them for his purposes but their evil will not go unpunished.  In a series of five woes we hear of the Babylonians fate.  These words are given in the form of a taunt song that the victims will sing when they see their oppressors face what is due to them.  They may describe the fate of a Babylonian empire in the past; they surely also point us ahead to the final day of judgement.  Martyn Lloyd Jones writes, “The principle for us to hold on to is that God is over all . . . Your worldly man may make a fortune by evil business methods and arrive at the top.  But see the end of the ungodly!  Look at him dying upon his bed; see him buried in a grave, and think of the doom and woe that are his destiny!  We should feel sorry for the ungodly that they are fools enough to become drunk on temporal success.  Their end is fixed.’  

Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion.  The Babylonians pillaged and made themselves wealthy by extortion.  Their lives have centred upon personal greed.  But the tables will be turned, their debtors will suddenly arise, they will tremble and they will become the victim.  The plunderer will be plundered.  They will face judgement for the fact that they had treated other people’s lives cheaply in search of personal gain.  Throughout the generations empires have exploited weaker states.  God notices!  Empires have claimed that they would last for ever but in the providence of God they all come to an end.  Indeed in the end it will only be God’s kingdom that will endure for ever!

Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high to escape the clutches of ruin.  The picture is of a bird building an inaccessible nest.  The Babylonians thought that their empire was untouchable.  While people may think that they will get away with what they have done, no one will!  Even those who think they have covered their tracks will one day have everything exposed.  It may seem that people practice evil with impunity but one day they will face God’s judgement.

Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!  Has not the LORD Almighty determined that the people’s labour is only fuel for the fire, that nations exhaust themselves for nothing?  For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea—‘One day God will act in a decisive way in his world, he will remove everything and everyone that refuses to acknowledge him and he will remake his world in perfection . . . One day God will be finally honoured as he ought to be.  Human life will be finally renewed, unspoilt by either sin or the consequences of sin.  One day the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’ (Matthew Brailsford).      

Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbours, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze at their naked bodies.  This seems to relate to the humiliation of those that are conquered.  Those who have sought to shame others will find themselves shamed.  The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory.  In the Bible the cup is a symbol of divine retribution.  Remember Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, ‘Take this cup from me.  Yet not what I will, but what you will’—Jesus experienced the cup of God’s wrath that we might be spared it!

Woe to him who says to wood ‘Come to life!’  Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’  In our relativistic age it is improper to criticise someone else’s religion.  The Bible has no such qualms.  The Babylonians idols were nothing.  They were simply worthless creations of human hands.  Before we think of idolatry being something limited to other cultures remember that the Apostle Paul wrote of greed which is idolatry (Col. 3:5).  We live in a highly idolatrous society and we must be careful not to practice this form of idolatry.

But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.  The Lord alone in the living God!  He is God of all the earth.  One day all nations and all people will have to give account to him.  While the corrupt and violent may prosper and triumph that will come to an end!  Silence is commanded ‘so that everyone will consider his awesome nature and realise his sovereignty over all creation’ (ESV Study Bible).  

Conclusion

Habakkuk wanted to know how God could allow the evil Babylonians be instruments of his judgement.  God points out that the he would deal with the Babylonians.  Indeed the Persians overthrew them in 539 BC.  The judgement does not stop there.   There will be a future day of judgement when the Son of God has returned, when all evil will addressed, and when the earth will be filled with the glory of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

Imagine it is a cold night in April 1912.  You are a passenger on the Titanic.  Now there were three levels for the different social classes on that boat.  The boat contained a great assortment of people.  But in the coming hours there would only be two categories of people.  There would be the saved and the lost.  Which of those two categories you were in puts everything else in perspective.  Indeed nothing else much matters.  The Bible continuously presents us with an equally stark division.

You see there are only two ways that we can listen to these verses.  

We can be among the righteous that live by faith—admitting our guilt, enthroning Christ as our king, living a life of trusting him and delighting in the fact that Jesus experienced the cup of God’s wrath that we would not be condemned.  You are among the saved!  Indeed aware of God’s coming judgement we are to run with it, we are to share this news with other people that they too might be prepared.  

Or will we be people who know the awful truth of the word woe personally?  We can depend upon wealth, financial security or power but one day we will face the cup of God’s wrath ourselves.  So many people live for the now with no thought of the eternal future!  Those who refuse to turn to God in faith will experience divine retribution for all the evil that they have done.  They are the lost!

May God’s judgement be something that brings us comfort as we see all evil being dealt with, rather than something we experience with trembling as we face the consequences of our evil, having refused God’s mercy!

Copyright note:

Unless otherwise stated all Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE,

NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.  Used by permission.

 

Habakkuk 1: How long, O Lord?

 

Habakkuk despairs about the society he lives in and those who claim to be the people of God.  What should be our assessment of our society and those within it claiming to be the church?

I think that western society is essentially sick!  We live in an indulgent society in a world of need; we are a highly-informed society that closes its eyes to global inequality; a society where young people think that drinking themselves silly constitutes a good time—and so we see staggering and puking youth on our news programs; a society that demands its rights and ignores its responsibilities; a society where the unborn are terminated if they threaten to be an inconvenience; a society where our TVs feed us a junk-food diet of trivia and titillation; a society of self-centred relationships with a cheapened understanding of sex; a society that has turned its back on the church! 

But then let’s look at the church that it has turned its back on!  So many churches in the western world can’t handle an unpopular message.  They don’t want to appear intolerant in saying Jesus is the only way to the Father.  They don’t want to be accused of being narrow and so they dilute the gospel’s warning that we need to be rescued from judgement and hell.  Even churches that pride themselves on holding on to the truth can be little communities of fractured relationships and bitterness.  There is no shortage of stories of people who claim to be Christians who have been harsh and uncaring or crooked in business.  The church is supposed to be the light in a dark world but so often it appears indistinguishable from that world, if not at times worse than the world!

So what is God going to do about this sick society and these twisted people who claim to belong to God?  That’s what Habakkuk wanted to know!

It is about 600 BC.  God had acted in line with his promise to make a people from Abraham.  He had made them a nation and given them a land yet they persisted in unfaithfulness and so the nation was divided in two.  Habakkuk lives in the southern kingdom, Judah.  These corrupt people are supposed to belong to God.  Why is he letting them dishonour his name in this way?

Habakkuk’s first complaint—when will you stop the rot? (2-4)

Have you ever wondered about church history?  When I studied a little church history in college I was left wondering whether what I was studying was actually the history of the church.  What I mean is that it was often the institutions that called themselves the church that were caught up in error and persecuted those who preached the gospel.  There were times when what was called the church was unbelievably corrupt and self-serving.  Why would God allow himself be dishonoured by letting godless people claim his name?  Why does he put up, in our day, with the nonsense of a variety of churches from a variety of denominations that simply refuse to submit to God’s revealed teaching in the Bible?  I just don’t know!

Habakkuk brings a similar complaint before the Lord.  He looks at his society and sees violence and injustice.  His society claimed to be a special covenant people of God.  However they ignored God’s law and the righteous suffered.  This is a place where justice is perverted and strife and conflict abound.  ‘How long, O Lord before you will stop the rot?’

I want us to take something from Habakkuk’s example.  Here is a man who feels passionately about injustice.  Here is a man who is stirred by the wrongs committed by those claiming to belong to God because their actions surely dishonour God’s name.  Here is a man who brings his complaint to the Lord in prayer.

How different Habakkuk is from us!  We often get most passionate about things that are trivial—we get worked up if the service is not quite to our liking but don’t care if our relationships are shallow.  We often are apathetic about things that bring dishonour to God’s name but are enraged if our pride is any way dented.  We tend to gripe to others about our complaints and stir up division rather than begin with bringing them to God in prayer and thinking about how he would have us deal with the issue.

As Habakkuk brings his complaint to the Lord he has to deal with a problem that all of us will face at some time if we pray.  Why does it appear that God is not listening?  Why is he slow to answer?  Why is he not responding by doing what I would have him do?  Commenting on this, Marytn Lloyd-Jones writes, ‘If God were unkind enough to answer some of our prayers at once, and in our way, we should be very impoverished Christians.’  One of the hard lessons we are going to learn as we study this powerful little book of Habakkuk is the need to trust God even when all that we see around us makes us question whether God is trustworthy!  

God’s response—He is in control (5-11)

God says to Habakkuk, “Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed.  For I am going to something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.”  We had better be ready for the fact that God’s ways are often surprising.  He tells Habakkuk that he is going to raise up the Babylonians, a ruthless and godless people, who will bring terror to the land.  Indeed this happened in 587BC when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and carried the people into exile.  Habakkuk could never have imagined that this would be how God would achieve his purposes.

These verses remind us that God is in control of history.  Evil people do evil things but God gets his way.  As one preacher explains, ‘This is a truth that is often unpopular, but clear in the pages of the Bible: God is sovereign over everything – including evil actions.  Nothing happens in this universe, in history, in our own personal lives, that is beyond God’s control.  Everything ultimately serves his purpose – even evil actions.’  Think of the cross.  That was the classic occasion in which God acted in an unbelievable way.  There evil people got their way and crucified Christ, and so enabled God to save sinful people from our sin.   

Would we rather live is a world that was the subject of randomness or one that is under God’s sovereign control?  That’s not as easy a question to answer as it first seems!  In a world of chance we would have no-one to blame and no difficult questions to ask because there is no reason to anything.  In a world subject to God’s sovereign control we can feel perplexed at what God is up to.  God’s sovereign control over history leaves us with many unanswered questions about this world and our lives.  Yet the challenge is not so much to figure out why things have happened as they have but to respond to our circumstances with trust in God.  This powerful little book of Habakkuk presents us with that mighty challenge!

Habakkuk’s second complaint—how can you use evil people to achieve your goals? (12-17)

Habakkuk’s society was bad but the Babylonians were far worse.  How could God use them to fulfil his purposes?  How could God use evil pagans to punish those who were supposed to be his people?  “O LORD, are you not from everlasting?  My God, my Holy One, we will not die.  O LORD, you have appointed them to exercise judgement; O Rock, you have ordained them to punish.  Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.  Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?  Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”  The people would be helpless like fish swimming into a net and the Babylonians would give glory to their so-called god for the catch!

What God has revealed he is going to do flies in the face of what Habakkuk believes about God; it seems unjust, it leaves him utterly perplexed!  Have you ever been perplexed by the things that God lets happen to us and in our world?  Habakkuk had surely wanted God to remove wicked people from the land but God was about to remove everyone.  It would appear that God was giving up on his promise to Abraham and destroying his people.  How can this be?  We will see how God responds when we look at chapter 2.  What we can declare from our vantage point in the here and now is that God did not give up on his promise to Abraham.  He continues to save people from sin and the consequences of sin—that’s what the promise to Abraham was really about.  From the remnant of these people comes Jesus upon whom God’s plan of salvation rests.  Despite appearances his faithfulness is certain!

Conclusion

We finish with a warning: we may have questions about the things that God lets happen but these questions never provide an excuse for refusing to put our trust in him.  Someone may say ‘I can’t believe because . . .!’ Whatever it is won’t let them off the hook on the day of judgement. 

In Acts 13 the Apostle Paul is speaking to the Jewish religious leaders in Antioch.  There he quotes Habakkuk 1.  He is pointing out that their forefathers, at the time of that prophet, ignored God’s warnings, refused God’s grace, and so faced God’s judgement.  He urges them not to make the same mistake: ‘. . . my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you . . . Take care that what the prophets have said does not happen to you: “Look, you scoffers, wonder and perish, for I am going to do something in your days that you would never believe, even if someone told you.”’  In Jesus we can know forgiveness for our sin but a coming judgement awaits all those who refuse to repent and avail of the grace of God in Christ.

So we may look at others in our fallen society and see their sin, but have we realised that our sin contributes to the sickness of this world?  We may look at the hypocrisy of those who claim to belong to the church, but have we seen our own hypocrisy?  Let’s not choose to miss out on the mercy that God offers to us in Jesus Christ!  God’s ways may remain a mystery to us and we might never get the answers to the questions but one day we will see that he has done what is right and that he has been wonderfully gracious and faithful to his promises and his people.  May we be among those who have placed our trust in him!

 

Copyright note:

Unless otherwise stated all Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE,

NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.  Used by permission.