Trust Him When You Don't Understand

15 June

Habakkuk 1:12-2:1

I've known my friend Kyle and his family for about 25 years now, after meeting them on a surf trip up to Bundjalung country. One day he said to me, do you want me to teach you how to hunt? I said sure, sounded fun.

So we walked out onto the sand dunes and sat down.

“So when do we start hunting?”, I said.

“Just sit quietly,” Kyle said.

I waited a bit, then asked again.

“Stu, just be quiet.”

I sat there for what felt like ages, then whispered, I don't even know why I was whispering, “when do we start hunting?”

“Stuart, can you hear anything?” he said.

“No.”

“Keep listening then,” he said.

Eventually I heard a bird. Kyle asked if it was in the near circle, the middle circle, or the far circle around us. I said middle. Which direction? Over there. Okay, let's walk. We got up, walked toward it, sat down again. Another bird. Same questions. Same process.

I still didn't fully understand what was going on. But Kyle explained it later, when you walk into an environment, the animals you're hunting will run from you, and that disturbance spooks the birds, who make noise. Follow the noise, and eventually you find what you're looking for.

It's a picture of trusting someone when you don't understand what's going on. I kept listening, even though it didn't feel like hunting yet, because I knew Kyle was good and knew what he was talking about.

The Second Complaint

In verse 13: Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, the Holy One? 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?

He’s asking: God, how can you raise up a nation more evil than even Manasseh, the worst king Judah ever had, to come and destroy us? How can a good and holy God use evil people to accomplish his purposes without becoming responsible for that evil himself?

This is the real tension of the book. Habakkuk isn't confused about whether Judah deserves judgment. He knows they do. What he can't get his head around is the method.

Don't Walk Away

Here's something I've noticed after 35 years as a pastor. When people go through hard times, I've really only seen two responses to God. They either walk away from him, or they walk toward him. Some people get angry and blame God and leave. Some people, when things are going really well, walk away too, because they don't want anything, including God, interrupting the good times.

But other people, in the middle of the hardest seasons, go to church. They open their Bible. They pray. Even when they don't understand. Even when they're angry or confused.

My old minister Jack was like that with me. I went to him as a teenager and said, “Jack, I don't think I'm a Christian anymore. I've got too many doubts.”

So on his suggestion, we met up every Tuesday for a long time. And at first I talked too much, just like with Kyle. But over time I started listening. And what Jack kept saying, week after week, was: it's okay to have doubts and to complain to God, but don't walk away from him. Keep living as a Christian even when you don't feel like one, because God will hold onto you. He won't leave you or forsake you.

That's exactly what Habakkuk does. He doesn't walk away in disgust. He walks toward God with his complaint — bold, honest, and anchored in a covenant relationship. Not a polite, no-strings-attached acquaintance, but the kind of relationship where you've said, I'm not going anywhere, and neither is God.

Three Things God Shows Habakkuk

God doesn't give Habakkuk a tidy explanation. But he does show him three things worth holding onto.

First, God is sovereign over evil. Isaiah pictures the Assyrians as an axe in God's hand — the axe doesn't get the credit, the woodsman does. Some Christians think God is somehow not in charge when evil happens, that he's just there to help clean up afterward. But Habakkuk is learning that God is in charge even of the evil. That's confronting. But it's also the only way any of this makes sense.

Second, and just as important, God doesn't stand behind good and evil the same way. Good comes from God. Evil remains fully the responsibility of the evil agents who commit it. The Babylonians aren't off the hook because God uses them. They're acting out of their own greed, violence, and idolatry, and in chapter two we'll see God judge them for it too. God being sovereign over evil is not the same as God approving of it.

Thirdly, and this is where it gets remarkable, God can use the worst human evil for good without being tainted by it. Remember Joseph? His brothers sold him into slavery, a genuinely evil act. But Joseph later says to them, you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. The brothers' evil wasn't outside God's control. And God didn't need their evil to accomplish his purpose, but he wove it in anyway, for good.

All the Way to the Cross

In Acts 4, the early church prays about what happened to Jesus, Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel gathered together against God's holy servant, to do whatever your hand and your plan had decided beforehand should happen.

The crucifixion of Jesus was the single most evil act in human history. Wicked people, acting out of envy, fear, and hatred, arrested the innocent Son of God and nailed him to a cross. And it was exactly what God had planned before the foundation of the world, because without that death, there's no payment for sin, and without payment for sin, there's no forgiveness.

God used the very worst that human evil could do, and turned it into the means of salvation for the entire world.

So when God tells Habakkuk he's raising up the Babylonians, as confronting as that is, it's the same God who, centuries later, would let wicked men nail his Son to a cross, and use it to save the world.

Faith, Not Explanation

Habakkuk doesn't get a neat philosophical answer, what he gets is something harder: faith. Not because everything's been explained. Not because the questions have stopped. But because the character of the God he's talking to is good, even when his methods are beyond understanding.

So if you're in a season where you don't understand what God is doing, don't walk away. Walk toward him. Keep listening, the way I had to with Kyle on the sand dunes, the way I had to with Jack over cups of tea. And if you need someone to sit with you while you listen, grab a brother or sister. Sit with them, pray with them, and keep walking toward God together.

Habakkuk ends his book at a tall tower, watching, waiting. And eventually he gets to a place where he can say: though the fig tree does not blossom and there's no fruit on the vines, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord is my strength.

That's not the absence of questions. That's faith, trusting the character of a good God who is always in control, even when his ways are beyond what we can see.

You're standing in the shadow of the cross. Whatever you don't understand, take it to Jesus. Keep listening. Keep talking to him. Don't give up. Keep walking by faith