Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church

(Matthew 24:1-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14)
"Where Is God In Times of Trouble?"

Introduction

Where is God when the world around us seems to be coming apart at the seams? How can God stand idly by while terrorists wreak havoc? How can God watch his creation being fouled and polluted by plumes of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico? How can he remain silent while a woman is raped, a child abused, a man beaten down? Where is God when life hurts, when injustice fills the land, when his own people live no differently than the nations around them, when they cry out to him day and night for deliverance?

These are the kinds questions posed by the Prophet Habakkuk in the waning days of the Kingdom of Judah. Israel had already divided after the death of King Solomon into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The Northern Kingdom has been defeated and dispersed among the nations by the Assyrians, and now the Southern Kingdom of Judah is languishing, its leaders refusing to heed their prophets who warn them that they are on the same path to destruction if they do not repent and return to the Lord.

Habakkuk joins the cry, the great prayer to God to revive and restore his people, and it is in this context that we have the privilege of walking with the prophet as he moves, in Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s description, “from fear to faith.” This morning, look with me as Habakkuk describes the problem of trying to understand what God is up to in times of trouble, and then as God reveals to him the solution, the way to know and rest in God’s goodness and grace.

Body

1.      The Problem:

God’s strange silence (1:1-11)

God’s even stranger answers (1:12-17)

God’s sovereignty over human history (1:5,6)

2.      The Answer:

Learning to watch and wait (2:1)

Learning to write the vision (2:2,3)

Learning to trust the promise (2:4)

Conclusion

Here at the last, we have the word that would transform the apostle Paul’s understanding of how we are made right with God, and through Paul’s Roman letter, these words of Habakkuk would be used to save the likes of Martin Luther and John Wesley, as well as untold millions of others, because Habakkuk took his stand at the watchtower, and then recorded plainly for all to understand what God revealed to him: “I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told,” but for those who have seen the vision, who have heard the story, “the righteous shall live by his faith.”

© John M. Wood, all rights reserved