Habakkuk part 2: – Why Are You Silent Lord?
Thesis: When we experience times of silence from God we must make sure that our heart is in the right place and we must trust God because He knows best. Silence is not a bad thing from God and we ourselves need to learn to practice the discipline of silence before God.
Summary of last week’s message:
Habakkuk’s first complaint found in Habakkuk “How Long Lord?” is a common cry of many people throughout the history of the world. It’s the time question. We want answers to how long must we endure evil in this world.
Let’s recall what happened in our story of the prophet Habakkuk last week. He complained to God about all the evil in Judah. The Word of God is being rejected by the people and the King. Some of the Prophets have been killed for their words from God. Some of their writings have been destroyed. The King is into idol worship and the rejection of God. The nation is practicing child sacrifice as they serve their idols.
So Habakkuk gets overwhelmed and squares off with God. How long God? In other words “Do something God!” “NOW!” Habakkuk pours out his complaint to God and amazingly God answers him. But Habakkuk does not like the way God responded to his complaint about dealing with the evil in Judah. When God responds he says, ‘No way God you are doing it wrong!” Listen to his feelings behind his response to God’s way of dealing with the nation of Judah.
Scripture Text: Habakkuk 1:12-2:1
O LORD, are you not from everlasting?
My God, my Holy One, we will not die.
O LORD, you have appointed them to execute judgment;
O Rock, you have ordained them to punish.
13 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?
14 You have made men like fish in the sea,
like sea creatures that have no ruler.
15 The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks,
he catches them in his net,
he gathers them up in his dragnet;
and so he rejoices and is glad.
16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and burns incense to his dragnet,
for by his net he lives in luxury
and enjoys the choicest food.
17 Is he to keep on emptying his net,
destroying nations without mercy?
Habakkuk 2:1:
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.
Play by play on Habakkuk’s response to God’s amazing way to deal with sin in Judah:
O LORD, are you not from everlasting?
My God, my Holy One, we will not die.
O LORD, you have appointed them to execute judgment;
O Rock, you have ordained them to punish.
Here is what Habakkuk is saying to God:
1. Lord you are the One who is in control- you’re a number 1
2. You are my God and remember Judah is your chosen people – they are yours!
3. You are the Holy One – the one who pure and has no impurity in Him and that which is holy will have nothing to do with evil.
4. Truth is Lord you will not let your people die!
5. Yes, I know you have appointed the heathens to execute jusgement on your chosen people.
6. But you are the ROCK – the foundation of Judah!
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?
7. Then he hits God with his hammer of words- God you are too pure to use those Babylonian Barbarians. They are evil and you do not tolerate wrong or evil! So why would you do this. I assume that because there is the insertion of the words “Why are you silent?” that God did not respond to Habakkuk right away. After he laid out his 2nd complaint to God – there is no immediate response.
a. Silence – Can you empathize with our man of God! You pour out your heart to God – your upset overwhelmed and you yell and scream and rationalize with God and He is quiet.
b. Don’t you hate that?
c. I mean really we want things NOW today! Instant answers – instant information like you get when you do a search on the internet. We want responses immediately when we have questions.
d. We want problems solved NOW! We want answers NOW!
e. We do not want silence- silence makes a lot of us uncomfortable!
Illustration: GO sit down and be silent for a few minutes.
Challenge the people afterwards- How did that make you feel – Uncomfortable -Nervous? Did you want to make noise to get rid of the silence? Did you want to leave and go do something to eradicate the silence?
Introduction:
In The Silence of God by Rabbi Benjamin Blech he shares these thoughts about God’s silence:
On a wall in a cellar in Cologne, Germany, where Jews had hidden from the Nazis, there was found an inscription. The anonymous author who perished with his fellow victims left behind these words: "I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when not feeling it. I believe in God even when He is silent."
Of all the difficulties Jews had to endure during the Holocaust, perhaps the hardest of all was the apparent absence of God. Jews cried, and their Creator did not seem to hear. Jews prayed and there was no response. Jews died al kiddush Ha-shem, sanctifying the name of the Lord with their last breath on earth, and the heavens only responded with silence. How could the Jews continue to believe? Is it conceivable for a compassionate God and the concentration camps to co-exist?
The wonder is not that there were Jews who lost their faith in Auschwitz. Far more remarkable is the fact that many Jews continued to cling to their faith and maintain their belief in their divine Ruler of the Universe.
Throughout History many have asked God like Habakkuk , “Why are you silent?”
I. Silence is not abnormal in a relationship with God.
a. Listen to the Psalmist long before WW 2.
i. Psalm 42:1-5:
1. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
ii. Our Psalm here shows that Habakkuk was like 100,000 of others who are and were struggling with the silence of God in their difficult circumstances.
iii. Listen to these thoughts from the article The Silence of God, by Dr. Brian Allison:
1. The Psalmist was in deep pain not only because he was separated from God, but, more so, because God seemed to be separated from Him. God had distanced Himself; He was ’nowhere to be found.’ There was no visible tokens of His favor and blessing; no clear evidences of His grace or His mercy. God seemingly has forgotten him; and in his anguish, the Psalmist cried out in despair. God had become silent to Him. And it was this excruciating fact that his enemies ’threw into his face.’ So, he grieved, "My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all day long, ’Where is your God?’" (vs. 3). His own heart remorsefully confirmed the truth of his enemies’ taunts concerning the divine absence--"I will say to God, my Rock, ’Why hast Thou forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, while they say to me all day long, ’Where is your God?’" (vss. 9,10). Again, do you know what the silence of God is like? … The experience of the pain of God’s silence--the absence of His felt-presence--may result in gloom or depression. The Psalmist uttered in soliloquy, "Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?" (vs. 5a). The man was obviously overwhelmed; he was overcome by the stressful situation. He was confused. And, as a result, he slipped into depression. Accordingly, he talked to himself. Do you know what that is like? You are so disturbed, you are so upset, that you begin to talk to yourself--"What is going on? What is the problem? What is happening? Get ’hold of’ yourself." That is a desperate situation, but self-talk can be quite medicinal during the times of confusion associated with despair. Outward circumstances, conflictual relationships, and spiritual upheaval can cause inner anguish, despair, or anxiety?
b. Listen to others in the Bible that have had to deal with the silence of God.
i. Judges 6:13,14: "But sir," Gideon replied, "if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all His wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, ’Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian." The Lord turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?"
1. Truth is Gideon is complaining about God’s silence at the point in time when God is trying to talk to him!
2. Do you think you may have ever done something like this to God in your life?
c. Look at the Israelites reaction when things went wrong during Exodus and God was silent:
i. Exodus 14:11 - 12--They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ’Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"
1. God was present, but the Israelites didn’t recognize His presence because He was silent.
2. Do you think you have ever done something like this in your life?
d. Jesus himself had to endure the silence and also the presence of God being removed from his life.
i. Matthew 27:46--About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" Jesus is quoting Psalm 22--a Psalm which does have despair ringing in it’s words and emotions.
e. David DePra in his article the Silence of God wrote this about the times when God is silent.
i. “If you have walked with God for any length of time, you will experience times when no matter how hard you pray, God is silent. He just doesn’t answer. And there is no indication that He ever will. Why does God do this? Hasn’t He promised to answer prayer? Doesn’t He know how much we need Him? Is there something you ought to be doing to get God to respond to you? The first thing it helps to realize is that the silence of God in the life of a Christian is normal. Yep. It’s the way God works. That’s because He wants us to walk by faith, and not by sight. There is another, more important reason, however, for God’s silence. Often, when we seek God for answers, we are not in the spiritual condition necessary to receive the answer. So God waits until we BECOME, in order that we might understand. Then He can answer us. We’ll be ready to receive it. We need to see that in the trials and problems of life our greatest need is usually NOT information. It will do us little good if God merely gave us "the facts." We’d either completely misunderstand the Truth, or it would actually do us harm. Only if we abide in the silence of God by faith will we develop the spiritual characteristics necessary to hear God’s answer.
T.S. – Our Prophet in his complaints to God is learning that silence from God teaches us many valuable spiritual lessons.
II. Habakkuk had to learn in the midst of his complaining to God that when God is silent there is a reason for it.
a. The truth is God may be silent, but He does not desert us or leave us to handle things alone.
i. Isaiah 59:21--"As for Me, this is My covenant with them," says the Lord. "My Spirit, who is on you, and My words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth, or from the mouths of your children, or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever," says the Lord.
ii. When God is silent we must learn the practice of silence ourselves- Habakkuk reveals this as his book moves on in a few spots we will look at next week he talks about the importance of being silent before the Lord.
1. Habakkuk 2:20 “But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.”
2. He also inserts the word Selah in his writing which means pause – be silent and think calmly on this thought from God.
a. Habakkuk 3:3,9,13
b. Isaiah 30:15: This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
iii. We need to remember texts like 2 Corinthians 12:9,10: The Lord said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
b. When God is silent, we may feel weak--but God’s power is made perfect in weakness. When we are weak, we are strong if we allow god to strengthen us in times of silence.
i. When God is silent, we rely on faith.
ii. If we are relying on faith in difficult times then our faith is going to grow and our character is going to develop.
iii. Romans 5:1-4:
1. 1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
CONCLUSION:
Lessons Learned:
• God is in control – not you!
• You do not need to know everything because He knows all things.
• Wait on God and Trust Him – practice the art of silence.
• Remember: He is with you
• Remember: He will one day open your eyes and you will get the answers to all your questions.
Bartet states, “The way to handle God’s silence is to "wait" on Him. Action apart from God is based on ignorance, impatience, and impotence. As such it is destined to bring heartache and trouble. Our best success apart from God is failure.”
But learning to wait and understand that I don’t need all the answers that all I really need is to trust God because God is in control of my situation and it will all in the end turn out for good. In the time frame of waiting I believe God usually enlarges our vision of Him.
It happened to Habakkuk. He learned to wait in the presence of God’s roaring silence and he came to understand that God is in control even when it appears He is not.
He discovered that God uses nations and people without even their knowledge.
He discovered that God uses imperfect people to do his perfect will. God can take something meant for evil and turn it around for good. God can turn a nation around by using a method we may disagree with but He knows in the end it will heal not hurt for eternity.
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