I Will Rejoice in the Lord | Habakkuk
Brian Hedges | July 20, 2025
Let’s turn in our Bibles this morning to the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk. If you’re following along in one of the Bibles in the chairs in front of you, it’s page 785. Habakkuk follows Micah and Nahum.
All of us face seasons and situations in our lives when we are confronted with suffering and evil and when we ask God, “Why? Why did you allow that to happen to me?” Or maybe more generally, “Why do you allow such things to happen in the world?” Those situations can range from mild to severe, from the ordinary, garden-variety trials we all face to the traumatic, life-altering tragedies of life.
I think of a young pastor I know whose wife was recently diagnosed with cancer. She’s the mother of several young children. Here’s a couple trying to serve the Lord. Why?
I think of a couple I know whose son was in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, who died in that event. Why?
I think of starving children, of AIDS orphans, of the 36.8 million refugees in the world right now, people who are displaced from their country, seeking safety in asylum because of conflict, violence, and persecution in their native homelands. Why is the world as it is?
More specifically, we ask sometimes, “Why do good people suffer while the wicked sometimes seem to get away with everything?” Why does a little girl get leukemia while, perhaps, a very wealthy businessman is guilty of white-collar crime and never gets caught? Why do some couples who are eager to be parents and build a godly home struggle with infertility, when we know that there are plenty of parents in the world who have children who are not particularly great parents. Why do some marriages fail and end in divorce?
I want you to make this personal this morning as we begin. Ask your own “why” question, because we all have these issues that we face in our lives at some time or another. “Why did I get passed over for that promotion, or not get hired for that job? Why did my husband leave me? Why did God allow my parents to abuse and neglect me when I was a child? Why was I in that horrible accident? Why did God take my loved one from me?” These are universal questions, questions that Christians ask, non-Christians ask. Everyone has to wrestle with the problem of suffering and evil in this world.
The prophet Habakkuk was a prophet who struggled with just those questions. This is the sixth message in our series on the minor prophets, and Habakkuk strikes a slightly different note than some of the other prophets. Just as Jonah, who we looked at last week, is something like Old Testament narrative in the minor prophets, Habakkuk is something like a psalmist. In fact, some of the scholars believe that Habakkuk may have been connected to the Jerusalem temple as a songwriter or hymnist or something like that. We don’t know for sure, but certainly his book reads as Hebrew poetry, and in the third chapter you actually have something like a psalm.
He was one of those seventh-century prophets, contemporary of Nahum, Zephaniah, and Jeremiah. The broader context of this book will become clear as we study together.
I think we can break the message of Habakkuk down into these three main points:
1. The Problem of Evil
2. The Mystery of God’s Ways
3. The Call to Live by Faith
I want to work through each one of those in turn.
1. The Problem of Evil
The problem of evil, of course, is often discussed by philosophers and by theologians, but it’s a problem that is relevant to all of us, because we all face these questions in our lives. By evil I mean both what we call moral evil and what we call natural evil.
Moral evil would be the evil things that people do to one another. This has to do with sin, with injustice, with wrongdoing—any kind of sin or crime that someone commits against God or others is moral evil.
Natural evils are the bad things that happen in the world. You might think of accidents, calamities, natural disasters—tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, forest fires, floods. You might think of sickness, both physical sickness or disability as well as mental sickness or suffering. All of those things would fall under the realm of natural evil. No life is untouched by the problem of evil. We all wrestle with it, and Habakkuk did as well.
You can see that in the first four verses of this book. Let’s read it, Habakkuk 1:1-4. Notice the questions.
“The prophecy that Habakkuk the prophet received.
“How long, Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.”
I mean, you see it right off the bat, as he asks, “How long?” and, “Why?” “Why, Lord, do you not intervene? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Why do you permit evil?” That’s the question this book is wrestling with.
Habakkuk was writing this during the final years of the southern kingdom of Judah. He was probably a resident of Jerusalem, and he’s struck and troubled by the injustice and the sin, the iniquity, the wrongdoing that’s happening within the kingdom of Judah. He’s seeing the corruption within the royal family, within the house of the king. He’s seeing the corruption in the land. Judah’s taking the same course that Israel had prior to them, and he’s asking these questions: “Lord, why don’t you intervene?” As we’ll see in a few minutes, he’s very surprised at God’s response to his question.
But I want us to just pause on this for a minute and note some lessons we can learn from just the way Habakkuk wrestles with the question of suffering and the problem of evil.
(1) The first lesson is this: just note the importance of asking the hard questions. IT’s actually important that we do ask the questions, that we wrestle with these questions, that we ask the “why” questions, the “how long” questions. “Why do people suffer? Why is there evil in the world? Why doesn’t God act?”
Some of you are right in the middle of this right now, because you’re going through something in your family or in your personal life or you’re troubled by what you see happening in the world, or you’ve had some shift in your focus, your frame of reference, and all of a sudden you’re aware of how much evil and injustice and sin and wickedness there is, and it’s upset you, it’s disturbed your faith. Your world has been rocked, your equilibrium is off, because you don’t know how to answer these questions.
If that’s where you are this morning, I want to recommend some books to you. I’m not going to quote extensively from these this morning, but three books that I would recommend are Tim Keller’s Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, Don Carson’s How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, and Scott Christenson’s What about Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory. These books are different in different ways, but they’re all helpful in their own way, and if you’re wrestling with these questions, if you’re struggling to find answers, these books, I believe, will help you.
The Bible itself wrestles with the questions. It does not shy away from them, and in fact, over and again, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Scriptures address the problems of evil and suffering. Just read the laments and the imprecations in the Psalms, as the psalmists ask, “How long, O Lord?” Feel the pain of Job in the book that bears his name, as he loses everything. He loses his children, he loses his wealth, he loses his health, and he asks the question, “Why am I suffering in this way?” It doesn’t seem just to him. Listen to the cries of the martyrs in Revelation 6, as they say, “How long, O Lord, until you vindicate us?” Study Paul’s wrestling with God’s mysterious, inscrutable ways in Romans 9-11. That’s probably the most difficult theology found anywhere in the Bible, as Paul is working through these issues. Notice the perplexity of the disciples in the Gospels, as they are dumbfounded and confused by what Jesus says is about to happen to him in his suffering. And think about the questions that the prophet Habakkuk asks here. The Bible deals with this question, the problem of evil.
(2) I think these passages suggest that there are some errors for us to avoid when we talk about evil and suffering.
Here’s an error to avoid: superficiality, which is when we just kind of go through life not asking the question at all. You know, you can go through life like that for a while. You can kind of skim along the surface, you can be happy with your successes, you can enjoy all the prosperity and all the blessings; you can especially enjoy this when you’re young and you live in a country such as ours is, and you go through a period of time where you’re not really even having to ask these questions.
But it only lasts for a little while, because there will come an inopportune death in the family, or you’ll find yourself facing a divorce or cancer or infertility or a car accident, or some other tragic event, and you’ll come to a moment where it’s impossible to continue as you were before, and the superficial approach to life just won’t work anymore. It’s in those times that your faith will either break or your faith will mature in new ways.
Another error to avoid is pat answers and glib responses. It’s possible even for Christians to do this, where we are faced with someone who’s going through a hard time, and rather than listen, rather than weep, rather than pray with them, we’re just quick to say, “Ah, there’s always a silver lining behind the cloud. Turn that frown upside down. Don’t worry about a thing, because every little thing’s going to be alright.” No offense to Bob Marley, but that’s an approach that a lot of people have, is just to look on the bright side, but really ignoring the depth of pain and suffering in the world.
(3) Here’s still another error to avoid, and that is shutting down the questions of others, as if asking “How long?” and “Why, God?” are questions that are incompatible with faith in God. Just shutting it down. “We don’t ask those questions. We don’t ever question the way things are in the world. You just have to believe,” and we say that in a way that doesn’t really reckon with the difficulty and with the struggle of faith.
We need to understand that every philosophy, every religion, every worldview has to wrestle with the problem of evil. This is something that’s not just for Christians, it’s really for everyone. We all have to face these questions.
For example, if someone wants to say, “There is no God,” you still have to reckon with the problem of evil in the world. This is how one of the famous atheists, Richard Dawkins, the famous British scientist, one of the new atheists, this is how he does it. This is what he says, and this is kind of the alternative. If you refuse to believe in God, you’re going to be left with something like this. He says,
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good; nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
I commend him for his honesty, because if you don’t believe in a God, that’s what you’re left with. But it’s a pretty hopeless outlook on life to say, “There’s really no rhyme or reason to suffering; it’s just what happens. You just had bad luck.”
I think the Bible commends something better. The Bible gives us, instead, a compelling model for addressing the problem of evil. It never shies away from the hard questions, it never gives us a pat answer. Instead, it gives us deep, complex answers. But to get those answers we have to take the whole Bible into account, all of Scripture. We have to understand that in addressing these issues, the Scriptures are relentlessly focused on God—on God’s character, on God’s ways, on God’s plan, on God’s purpose. Not just on the human problem, not just on our individual experiences of suffering, but lifting our gaze to the character and the plan of God.
That’s exactly what we see happen in the book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk raises these questions: “How long, Lord? Why, Lord? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?” Then God responds in verse 5, and the way he responds is surprising and to Habakkuk had to have been disconcerting. Look at Habakkuk 1:5-7. These are the words of God. He says,
“Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told.
I am raising up the Babylonians [or the Chaldeans],
that ruthless and impetuous people,
who sweep across the whole earth
to seize dwellings not their own.
They are a feared and dreaded people;
they are a law to themselves
and promote their own honor.”
Here’s Habakkuk, and he’s saying, “Lord, why don’t you do something about the injustice in Judah?” and God says, “I’m going to do something. I’m going to send the Chaldeans. I’m going to send the Babylonians, and they’re going to raze Jerusalem to the ground.” It’s not at all what Habakkuk expects.
2. The Mystery of God’s Ways
This, then, leads us to wrestle with the mystery of God’s ways. That’s the second point. At first glance, God’s answer seems to make the problem not better, but worse, because it seems like God is dealing with injustice by just unleashing even more injustice.
(1) Again, it teaches us some lessons, because the God of the Bible surprises us. He does not do what we expect because he is not like us.
This is the struggle of Habakkuk. You see the struggle in Habakkuk 1:12-13. This is his second complaint. He says,
“Lord, are you not from everlasting?
My God, my Holy One, you will never die.
You, Lord, have appointed them to execute judgment;
you, my Rock, have ordained them to punish.
Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.”
Just notice right there what Habakkuk is saying. He is affirming the character of God that is taught throughout Scripture, that God is the eternal one, he’s from everlasting; that he is immortal, he will never die; he is strong and stable, a foundation, a rock; and he is holy, his eyes are too pure to look on evil. That is the orthodox teaching of Scripture throughout about the character of God, and Habakkuk affirms this.
But in light of what God has just said to him, it raises another question, and you see it in verse 13. He says,
“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.
Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?
Why are you silent while the wicked
swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”
That’s the issue. The Babylonians are more wicked than the Judeans! Why is God going to tolerate this?
Really, friends, this is the big question when it comes to the problem of evil and understanding how evil exists in a world where there is a holy and a good and a sovereign and a powerful God. This is the question: How can a just and holy God allow injustice? How can a loving and powerful God permit evil?
Perhaps this has been nowhere put more concisely, more crisply, than the philosopher David Hume, when he said,
“Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? From whence then is evil?”
If God is good and he permits evil, he must not be powerful enough to stop it. If he’s powerful but he permits evil, he must not be good. I mean, that’s the dilemma. That’s the big question, isn’t it?
What is a biblical response to that? I think we have to begin the response by saying that the Scriptures refuse an underlying assumption in the question. The assumption in the question is that we as finite human beings can fully comprehend the ways of God, that we can understand the mind of God.
Here’s the deal, folks. For you to really understand all the ins and outs of God’s ways and of God’s plan and God’s purpose, you would have to be God. You would have to have an infinite mind, a mind that is able to comprehend all that God comprehends. And we don’t.
(2) So this is the second lesson here: God is not only good and powerful, he is also infinitely and incomprehensibly wise. This is how the Scriptures wrestle with the question. The Scriptures, not least of all the book of Habakkuk, affirm God’s revealed character. He is good, he is also powerful; he is holy, he is also just; he is sovereign, he is faithful; he is all of these things. But Habakkuk’s prophecy challenges our limited understanding and calls us to trust in the wisdom of God’s mysterious ways. It doesn’t diminish the issues, it doesn’t deny the problems or the questions, but it calls us to look up, to lift our gaze to see the incomprehensible wisdom of God.
Romans 11:33-36, at the end of Paul’s argument about the justice and righteousness of God, says,
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
‘Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?’
‘Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?’
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.”
3. The Call to Live by Faith
How, then, are we to respond? Are we to simply say that we can’t understand and give up trying, or is there something more? I think there is something more, because the Scriptures instead call us to live by faith, not by sight. That’s what you have in the rest of this book of Habakkuk, the call to live by faith—point number three.
What I want to do in the last ten or fifteen minutes or so here is walk through the essence of these last two chapters, Habakkuk 2-3, and show you five things that we learn about living by faith.
We can begin with Habakkuk 2:4. It is the most famous verse in Habakkuk, famous because it’s quoted three times in the New Testament. It’s the second half of the verse. So it says,
“See, the enemy is puffed up;
his desires are not upright—
but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness.”
So there’s a contrast here between the righteous and the unrighteous, between the enemy and those who are righteous and who believe. This is the verse—we probably know it best in the old King James—“The just shall live by faith.” Paul quotes this in both Romans and in Galatians, and it’s also quoted in the letter to the Hebrews.
There are different ways this is translated. Some of the translations lean more into the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone, which is how Paul seems to use this verse in the book of Romans. So the King James, “The just shall live by faith,” or the English Standard Version, “The righteous shall live by his faith.” And some versions lean more into the emphasis on faithfulness—the NIV that I’m reading here, “The righteous person will live by his faithfulness”—and that, of course, is the emphasis in the letter to the Hebrews, as it calls us to endurance and perseverance and faithfulness and obedience to the Lord. I think both emphases are true, and what I want to do is flesh this out now by looking at these five things we learn about living by faith in Habakkuk, and we’ll work through these quickly. Five things.
(1) Number one: Wait on God and expect him to act. Look at Habakkuk 2:1. He says,
“I will stand at my watch
and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,
and what answer I am to give to this complaint.”
There’s a word picture, an illustration kind of baked into that verse, as he says, “I’m going to stand on my watch.” You have to remember that in the ancient world, the cities were walled cities, and the cities were guarded by watchmen, by sentries who would position themselves in the ramparts of the city, and they would watch for the enemy to approach, they would watch for danger. It was their job to warn the city of danger.
Of course, this was before there was anything like electric light, and there would be times when it was so dark that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I used to live deep in the big country, in Texas, and we were so far away from town and from electric lights that, if the lights in the house were out at night and it was a night where it was cloudy outside and you didn’t have the light of the moon or stars, I could walk outside in my yard, hold my hand in front of my face, and couldn’t see it. That’s how dark it was.
This was how many people lived in the ancient world. So you just have to imagine the experience of the watchman who was posted there night after night after night, straining his eyes in the dark to see if there’s any movement out in the distance, and then every night enduring and just waiting, hour after hour, for that first blush of dawn, for light to crack the sky, for morning to come.
That’s the picture that Habakkuk is giving here. It’s the same picture you have in Psalm 130:5-6, where the psalmist says,
“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.”
Now, the problem with us—and this is why so many of us struggle in the life of faith—is that we don’t like to wait. We want everything right now. We’re used to microwaving our food, we’re used to fast food, we’re used to instant anything. I mean, if your webpage on your browser won’t load up in a split second, you feel impatient! At least I do.
I’m reminded of the story of the preacher, back in the nineteenth century, who was very agitated one day. People recognized he was agitated; he was pacing the room. Somebody asked, “What’s wrong?” and he says, “The problem is that I’m in a hurry and God isn’t.”
We feel that way a lot. We don’t even know how to wait.
It begins, friends, by getting our minds and our hearts centered on God, by getting our souls quiet. That means you have to turn off the noise, you have to turn off the devices long enough that you can not only hear yourself think but you can start to get your mind on the Lord, and then do what the psalmist did and put your hope in his word. Wait on God with expectancy.
(2) The second thing is trust in God’s revelation of his character and plan. You see that in Habakkuk 2:2-3.
“Then the Lord replied:
“‘Write down the revelation
and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald may run with it.
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 will not delay.”
So Habakkuk is to wait on the Lord and he is to trust in God’s revelation of himself and actually write it down.
This is one of the unique and distinctive things in the Christian faith, that we have a God who speaks to us, and he speaks to us through words, and the words are written down and recorded for us in Scripture. God spoke to Habakkuk, he wrote down the revelation, and he is then to trust in that revelation. God’s word will be fulfilled in time.
What follows is actually a series of woes against Babylon. What God reveals to Habakkuk is that God himself is just and he will hold Babylon to account. We’re not going to look at those in detail in the rest of Habakkuk 2, but here’s a summary. This is from Fee and Stuart’s really helpful on Reading the Bible Book by Book. They say,
“God strikes the gavel five times [and here’s the summary]:
The plunderer will be plundered
The haughty conqueror will be shamed
The builder’s building will become fuel for the fire
The one who forces others to get drunk will drink shame from the cup of God’s wrath
The silent idol will be silenced before Yahweh, who is present in his holy temple”
God will hold Babylon to account. He is working out his sovereign purposes; he will show himself to be just, and Habakkuk has to trust in God’s word, and he has to wait for the fulfillment.
It’s very possible that Habakkuk himself never personally saw that fulfillment. He may have died before these prophetic woes were fulfilled.
You and I face similar situations. We are called to trust in God’s revelation of his word and his will, his purpose, his plan in Scripture, even if we can’t see how it will be fulfilled, even if we can’t see when it will be fulfilled, even if we can’t see why God has purposed to do things the way he has; but we are called to fix our gaze on him, put our trust in him, and trust in his word.
(3) That leads to a third aspect of walking by faith: we are to stand in awe before God’s transcendent holiness and his sovereign wisdom. We see it in Habakkuk 2:20 and again in Habakkuk 3:2. The first says,
“The Lord is in his holy temple;
let all the earth be silent before him.”
And then Habakkuk himself says,
“Lord, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.”
Listen, we don’t know the answers to the how question, the why question, the when question; but there is another question. There is the who question. Who is in control of human history? Who is the one who reigns? Who is this God? This God reveals himself to us, and we are called to stand in awe and sit in silence before him.
It’s like Job. He lost so many things, and he wants his day in court with God, and he finally has this audience with God, this mighty theophany, as God speaks to him from the whirlwind. And you have several chapters where God just astounds Job with the wonders of creation. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” What does it do to Job? It humbles him, so that when it’s all over he says, “I had heard about you with me ears—I’d heard with the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes have seen you, and I humble myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.”
There’s a similar response that we have to come to in our own lives, as we face these hard questions. We have to recognize that God is God and I am not, that God is sovereign, that God is holy, that God is just, that God is good, that God is who he has revealed himself to be. I may not understand all of his ways, but I am called to humble myself before him and stand in awe of God.
(4) Then we are to remember God’s mighty deeds. This is the bulk of Habakkuk 3. Look at Habakkuk 3:1-2.
“A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet. On shigionoth.
Lord, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day,
in our time make them known;
in wrath remember mercy.”
Again, I don’t have time to work through all the details here, but essentially, if you read Habakkuk 3, what you have is a recounting of God’s mighty saving deeds in the history of Israel. You have the Lord who rules over the chaotic waters in creation; the Lord who revealed himself in a theophany at Sinai; the Lord who came as a mighty warrior in the exodus to deliver the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt; the Lord who caused the sun to stand still for Joshua—all of that is recounted in Habakkuk 3, as Habakkuk reminds himself of how God has acted in the past, and he takes comfort from that. He remembers the mighty deeds, the saving work of God.
We should remember all of that, too; but friends, we have so much more to remember, don’t we? Because we have not just the Old Testament, we have the New Testament. We have the gospel! We can look back to this time in history when Jesus, the Son of God, was born and incarnate among us, and he lived a perfect life, and then he went to the cross as a substitute for us and he took sin and evil and suffering onto himself, and then he defeated death and rose in triumph from the dead and ascended to God’s right hand and gave his Spirit to the church. These are the great, saving, redemptive acts of God in history, through his Son, Jesus Christ.
We look back to that—that’s the answer to the problem of evil. It’s that God in person came to this planet, and he took on evil personally. He let it do its worst, and he defeated it.
I love these words from Scott Christenson in his book What about Evil? He says,
“The glory of God is seen in the face of the divine hero of redemption, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He immersed himself into the heart of evil on a black Friday and emerged from that evil on a bright Sunday three days later. He defeated death by death. Ironically, he crushed evil by loading its monstrous weight on his buckling body. He became the hero by being treated as a villain.”
There’s the answer. There’s the Christian answer to the problem of evil: it’s a person. It’s Jesus, crucified and risen for us.
Habakkuk could only understand this in mystery. He couldn’t fully understand what would take place. But we have God’s revelation of himself through his Son. We are to remember God’s mighty deeds.
(5) And then finally, number five, rejoice in the Lord, not in circumstances. Look at the end of this book, Habakkuk 3:17-19. These are beautiful words that capture the heart of faith. He says,
“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,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
“The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.”
Here’s Habakkuk; he’s faced with all this judgment that’s going to come on his people. He’s going to live through this himself, experience this himself. There will be famine in the city of Jerusalem. Habakkuk is going to suffer through all this with the people of God, even though he’s a faithful prophet. But he says, “Even though the fig tree doesn’t blossom and there are no grapes on the vines and the fields fail, there’s no food—even though I go through famine and find myself on the brink of starvation, I will rejoice in the Lord.” He relocates his joy, not in his circumstances but in his God. That’s how he responds.
That’s the choice for us. Our choice, when we are faced with suffering and evil, is, how will we respond to what comes?
Do you remember that wonderful scene in The Lord of the Rings—I think this was in the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring—when Frodo says to Gandalf, “I wish the ring had never come to me; I wish none of this had ever happened”? And Gandalf says, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the times which are given to you.”
That’s the call to the life of faith. It’s how we respond to the suffering and the evil that will inevitably come in our lives. How will we respond? Will we respond by trusting in the Lord?
As a pastor, I’ve walked through many different scenarios over the years with friends, with family, with church members, people who have gone through really difficult circumstances—the death of loved ones, a terrible diagnosis, tragedy in the family, breakdown in relationships. I mean, all the stuff. I have to say that I have often been inspired by you. I’ve been inspired as I’ve seen faithful believers who are facing the worst, and they don’t complain. They pray, they trust God’s will, they trust God’s plan, they look for how God is going to use it. They look at it as an opportunity to grow in faith. I’ve seen that many, many times, including in recent days, and it inspires me, it encourages me; it makes me want to live by faith as well.
But I’ve also occasionally seen the other response. I’ve sometimes seen people who, instead of looking up and trusting in God, they look inward. Instead of walking by faith, they retreated into self-pity. Instead of just asking the “why” question but then taking those doubts to the Lord, they took the questions in a very negative way and started asking, “Why is God punishing me? Why is God treating me like this? What did I do to deserve this? Why do I have to go through this?” Instead of growing in their faith, their faith has diminished.
We have a choice. We have a choice of how we will respond. Habakkuk gives us the model: it is to rejoice in the Lord. It’s to trust in the Lord, no matter what happens, because we trust his character and we trust what he has done through his Son, Jesus Christ.
I want to end by reading to you words that have been a comfort to me for well over thirty years now. These are words of a hymn written by the English poet William Cowper. William Cowper was manic-depressive. He was in and out of institutions for the mentally ill much of his life. He attempted suicide four or five times; he was mercifully protected by God and didn’t die in that way. But he was loved and cared for by his friend, his pastor, John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace.” Together they wrote hymns. It was really a strategy John Newton used to help pull William Cowper out of himself, out of his troubles, and to use his poetic gifts to enrich the church.
One of those hymns is this hymn, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.” I think, apart from Scripture, it is one of the best and most concise expressions of the biblical faith that looks up to the wisdom and the goodness and the sovereignty of God, even when we can’t understand. So read these words with me.
“God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.
“Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.
“Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.
“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
“His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
“Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.”
Let’s pray.
Our Lord and our God, we bow before you today, and we humble ourselves and we stand in awe before your inscrutable wisdom, before your spotless holiness, before your mysterious ways. We confess that there are questions we don’t have answers to, there are problems in the world that we do not understand, problems in our own lives that baffle us, that maybe are deeply confusing and disorienting. But Lord, this morning, as we’ve learned from your word, we want to look beyond all those questions to you, the God who has revealed yourself in Scripture, the God who has revealed yourself in history and supremely has revealed yourself to us through your Son, Jesus Christ.
Lord, we affirm this morning our trust in you, that you are both good and powerful, but also wise and sovereign, working out your purposes in ways we don’t fully understand. We thank you, Lord, for the revelation of yourself in the gospel, that through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ we can see the worst events in human history, the worst forms of human suffering and cruelty, and at the same time we can see how, in your amazing providence, you used that to bring redemption and salvation to us.
Lord, we pray that you would give us the faith to believe that you will use all of our pain for good, all of our suffering, and that indeed you will work all things out for the glory of your name and for the good of your people. Would you give us faith to walk with you through the difficult times and to say with Habakkuk that we will rejoice in the Lord our God, no matter what befalls us in our circumstances? Would you help us, Lord, not to be those people who retreat into anger and bitterness and resentment and self-pity, but instead be people who maintain open hearts before you and who trust in you even in the midst of the darkness.
Lord, we pray as we come to the Lord’s table this morning that at the table we would remember once again what Christ has done for us, taking sin and evil and suffering onto himself and defeating death through his death and resurrection. May the gospel give us hope in the midst of our trials. Lord, lift our eyes to see you today, and by your Holy Spirit would you take these truths and burn them deeply into our hearts in ways that will be sustaining to us through the whole of our lives? We pray that you would do this both for your glory and for our good. We pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
