The Strangeness of God's Ways

Habakkuk 1:1-11

Tonight we’re going to begin our study of the book of Habakkuk.  As I said this morning, happiness is sitting next to somebody who knows where Habakkuk is.  So I hope you’ll find somebody around you who knows where Habakkuk is and turn to it in your Bibles.  For the next few Sunday nights we’re going to be dealing with the book of Habakkuk.  The subject for tonight is the strangeness of God’s ways from the book of Habakkuk.

Now in case you’re lost, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai and so forth.  Minor prophets, Old Testament holy Bible.  That’s all the directions I can give you.  And I’ll give you a moment to find it since it is a small book.

Habakkuk chapter 1, and this is a very fascinating book, although it is very brief, merely three chapters and three very brief chapters.  It is a very, very important book.  Now tonight, primarily, I want to discuss chapter 1 verses 1 through 11.  Beginning at verse 1, we read;

“The burden in which Habakkuk the prophet did see.  O Lord, how long shall I cry and Thou wilt not hear?  Even cry out unto thee a violence and Thou wilt not save?  Why dost Thou show me iniquity and cause me to behold grievance?  For spoiling and violence are before me and there are those who raise up strife and contention.  Therefore the law is slacked and justice doth never go forth, for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore justice goeth forth perverted.”  It sounds like a description of twentieth century, doesn’t it?

Verse 5, “Behold among the nations and regard and wonder marvelously; for I will work a work in your days which you will not believe though it be told you.”  This is God speaking.  “For lo, I raise up the Chaldeans that bitter and hasty nation which shall march through the breadth of the land to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.  They are terrible and dreadful, they’re judgment and their dignity shall proceed from themselves.  Their horses also are swifter than the leopards and are more fierce than the evening wolves and their horsemen shall spread themselves and their horsemen shall come from far.  They shall fly like the eagle that hasteth to eat.  They shall come all for violence.  The set of their faces is forward and they shall gather the captives as the sand.  And they shall scoff at the kings and the princes shall be a scorn unto them for they shall deride every stronghold for they shall heap dust and take it.  Then shall his mind change and he shall pass over and offend, imputing this his power unto his god.”

A very interesting portion of Scripture.  Now we know that life is never a bed of roses and particularly the Christian life is never a bed of roses.  Even though we live the life of faith, even though our faith is very personally and very explicitly placed in the person of Jesus Christ, and even though Christ is all and all, and even though He is sufficient to every need, life, the life of faith, is never just comfortable.  There are always problems.  There are always problems in the Christian’s life.  There are always problems in the life of the Israelites.  There were problems in the mind of Habakkuk as he wrote in this prophecy.  And the reason there are always problems is because there is always an active adversary, Satan, whose desire is to tempt us to sin.  And so there are problems.  And various temptations are presented to our minds as Christians and Satan’s desire in presenting these temptations is to undermine our faith, is to cause us to doubt God, or to doubt God’s love, or to doubt that God cares.  Surprisingly enough, this is true of Christians. 

Many of us find coming into our lives problems that we cannot understand, sorrows that we cannot cope with, various temptations that tend to make us doubt God and wonder if we’re really saved, wonder if God really cares at all, wonder if the faith that we hold to so strongly could really have a failing or a weak link in it.  And so if Satan tempts us to doubt God, to undermine our faith, and then Satan tempts the unsaved by making Christianity look ridiculous, it’s an old, old tactic of Satan to present a ridiculous Christianity to the world, to try to make Christianity look like stupidity.  And he’s done it all through history.

Today, one of the main anxieties pushed off on the world by Satan is the problem of history.  That’s what we want to talk about for the next few Sunday nights in this prophecy.  The problem of history.  You see, today people are perplexed with the historical situation.  You look around you and you wonder why it’s like it is.  Now up until about 1914 or 1915 we had a different problem.  It wasn’t the problem of history that was bugging everybody, it was the problem of science.  For in the nineteenth century and in centuries previous to t