Truth For Life

Alistair Begg: Have you ever complained to God when you felt overwhelmed? I think most of us have been there. And if circumstances improve, we feel relieved. But what if they don't? Today on Truth For Life Weekend, Alistair Begg explains how our reaction can be dramatically altered even when our circumstances remain unchanged.

Alistair Begg: I invite you to turn to the Old Testament with me, to the prophecy of Habakkuk, in which you will find in between Nahum and Zephaniah.

Alistair Begg: So, let me read chapter 3 for us. A prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, on Shigionoth. Lord, I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time, make them known. In wrath, remember mercy.

Alistair Begg: God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the Earth. His splendor was like the sunrise. Rays flashed from his hand, where his power was hidden. Plague went before him, pestilence followed his steps.

Alistair Begg: He stood and shook the Earth. He looked and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains crumbled, and the age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal.

Alistair Begg: I saw the tents of Cushan in distress, the dwellings of Midian in anguish.

Alistair Begg: Were you angry with the rivers, O Lord? Was your wrath against the streams? Did you rage against the sea when you rode with your horses and your victorious chariot?

Alistair Begg: You uncovered your bow, you called for many arrows. You split the earth with rivers, the mountains saw you and writhed. Torrents of water swept by. The deep roared and lifted its waves on high.

Alistair Begg: Sun and moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spear.

Alistair Begg: In wrath you strode through the Earth, and in anger you threshed the nations.

Alistair Begg: You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you stripped him from head to foot. With his own spear you pierced his head, when his warrior stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though about to devour the wretched who were in hiding.

Alistair Begg: You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the great waters.

Alistair Begg: I heard, and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled.

Alistair Begg: Yet, I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.

Alistair Begg: 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.

Alistair Begg: Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Alistair Begg: The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights. For the director of music on my stringed instruments.

Alistair Begg: Thanks be to God for his word.

Alistair Begg: Father, now we pray that in turning to your word, the Spirit of God will teach us, and that we will be changed as a result of our encounter with you, the Living God, through your written word, the Bible. As we pray in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.

Alistair Begg: Life, by its very nature, is untidy.

Alistair Begg: It constantly defies our attempts to control it.

Alistair Begg: We are challenged by it on multiple levels, on virtually a daily basis.

Alistair Begg: Physically, we are clearly not in charge, and silly if we think it to be other than that.

Alistair Begg: Emotionally, we are often very quickly overwhelmed, and find that things that we thought we had control over have unraveled before us, and we find ourselves in difficulty and often in sadness and chaos.

Alistair Begg: Spiritually, by our nature, without God, left to ourselves, we are confused. We are like those who are always learning and yet never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Alistair Begg: And all of these circumstances and more besides are inevitably represented when a congregation of this size gathers as it does routinely on the first day of the week.

Alistair Begg: And this congregation represents a whole variety of perspectives on life itself, on who God is, on what the Bible is.

Alistair Begg: And I am not unaware of that when I speak Sunday by Sunday.

Alistair Begg: But I want you to know, especially for those of you whose view of the world differs from this, that all of our study of the Bible starts from the position that the Bible is God's word.

Alistair Begg: That God, in his word, has said exactly what he wants to say and that he has said it in precisely the form that he wants it to be said.

Alistair Begg: Some, who are here today, may doubt the very existence of God, and therefore would have no truck with the idea that the Bible is God's word. Why would anybody be concerned about it, to study it, and to declare it as being authoritative? I recognize that.

Alistair Begg: Some regard God either as a figment of their imagination or as of their own creation, a God who exists for them, not by whose power they exist. And they determine just what it is they believe and not least of all about the Bible. And I recognize that some are in that position too.

Alistair Begg: But we are starting from the position that the Bible is God's word.

Alistair Begg: That doesn't clean everything up. Some people think it does. Some people think that the reason that we would be prepared to affirm that, is in order to remove the difficulties. But in actual fact, it introduces almost as many difficulties as it removes.

Alistair Begg: For example, if our world is chaotic, haphazard, and devoid of meaning, then while we may be disappointed by the horrible events of life, we should simply take them in our stride. After all, what do we expect? There is no one in charge, there is no one responsible, no one has made anything, no one has appointed anything. It's all just unfolding before us.

Alistair Begg: Interestingly, those who would affirm that kind of existence, when things go wrong, often immediately want to lay the blame at the feet of some god, real or imagined. A god in whom they say they do not believe, but yet whom they want to hold responsible for the earthquake in China, or for the tsunami, or for whatever else it might be.

Alistair Begg: Why they say that, they're not even sure themselves. What the Bible says is that God has set eternity in their hearts, that they know of God by their very creation, and although they turn their back on God, and they marshal arguments in order to make it possible for them to deny God, yet, when the chips are down, he is once again reintroduced, not as a God to be praised, but as a God to be abused.

Alistair Begg: For the believer in this God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we also have the challenge that comes as a result of affirming that God is all good and he is all powerful. And yet, we face disappointment, disease, chaos, heartache, and violence. And so people justifiably will ask the question, if this God of creation is all powerful and all good, then why are things the way they are?

Alistair Begg: Such questions are not unusual. They come routinely and they're found frequently in the Bible. And indeed, the prophecy of Habakkuk begins with two of those very questions. This little prophecy, about six or 700 years before Jesus, begins with Habakkuk bewailing the fact of injustice and violence, strife and conflict. The law of the land is paralyzed, the wicked seem to be winning out over those who are seeking to do the right thing.

Alistair Begg: Not an uncommon set of circumstances, and yet all those years before. And his dilemma is the dilemma that emerges from a belief in God.

Alistair Begg: And he is concerned about two things. One, God's timing. How long is this going to go on? And two, God's apparent tolerance of evil and of injustice. How long is this going to last, and why do you tolerate it?

Alistair Begg: Again, I say to you, those are contemporary questions.

Alistair Begg: The answer that God provides begins in verse 5 of chapter 1, and the answer that he gives presents an even bigger problem than the first one introduced by the prophet. Because what God says in response is that he is raising up a pagan people who will punish his people.

Alistair Begg: So his people have been doing bad things, and he's determined that he will raise up a nation that does really bad things to punish and to take care of those who are doing quite bad things.

Alistair Begg: Oh, now Habakkuk has a double problem, the problem of his initial question, and then the problem of God's answer.

Alistair Begg: Well, God replies in chapter 2, and he says, well, the actual fact of the matter is that justice will inevitably prevail, that the Earth will be filled with the glory of God, verse 14 of chapter 2, as the waters cover the sea.

Alistair Begg: And as Habakkuk sits or stands in the beginning of chapter 2 in expectation, laying his requests like the psalmist before God, he's waiting to see what God will say. Interesting verbs, aren't they? You usually listen to hear what somebody will say, but here the prophet is listening to see what God will say. A reminder to us that actions in this instance speak louder than words as well.

Alistair Begg: And in chapter 2, in this wonderful, poetic, challenging chapter, God says, don't you worry, the instrument that I am raising up to deal with problem number one, I will deal with and deal with properly as well.

Alistair Begg: And so in coming to chapter 3, we notice, first of all, that the prophet reacts. The prophet reacts. If you take verse 2 and 3, you can see this initial reaction. Lord, I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time, make them known. In wrath, remember mercy.

Alistair Begg: And we might want to add to that verse 16, where his reaction to the further statement that he himself is the bearer of is as described there. I heard, and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound, decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled.

Alistair Begg: So what we discover is this, that the complaints with which he has begun, how long and why, are now replaced with awe and with wonder. And there in verse 2 of the chapter, you will see that he stands to attention as it were before the display of God's power. If you like, God provided his own firework display in verse 4. His splendor was like the sunrise. Rays flashed from his hand, where his power was hidden.

Alistair Begg: And immediately, instantaneously, Habakkuk finds that he stands, he rises to his feet in the display of God's majesty and power. If you've been at events where something of significance takes place, not just the singing or the playing of the national anthem, but if somebody does something spectacularly well, whether it is in a concert or someone playing a guitar or whatever it might be, and all of a sudden you discover that people all around the place just stand to their feet.

Alistair Begg: And they stand in awe and in wonder. Isn't it awesome that this person is able to do this? That's what they're saying by standing.

Alistair Begg: And the prophet stands in awe of God's deeds.

Alistair Begg: God, in his majesty, has brought him to his feet. But in verse 16, it is the same majesty and power of God that has floored him, floored him. He not only rises to adore God's splendor, but he falls on his face before all that he has revealed of himself. And you will notice his heart pounds and his lips quiver and his feet give out and we find him literally flattened by the devastating impact of God's might.

Alistair Begg: You see, this is in direct contrast to the invented gods with which chapter 2 has closed. At the end of chapter 2, the pagan nation that was being used in order to punish God's people is described under the rubric of their pathetic and futile idolatry.

Alistair Begg: And the prophet asks in verse 18, of what value is an idol, since a man has carved it? Or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it, trusts in his own creation, he makes idols that cannot speak.

Alistair Begg: Now, just pause here for a moment and think this out, because this is the issue of idolatry. The issue of idolatry is that it is not only futile, but it is foolish. It is eminently foolish. For people to say, well, I don't believe in the God of the Bible, I don't believe in a creator God, I don't believe in the God of Abraham and Isaac and of Jacob, but I'm not saying I don't believe in God.

Alistair Begg: Well, all right, well, then tell me what you are saying. And then they will say things like, well, I believe that God is a cosmic principle into which I plug, or I believe that God is inside of myself, or I believe that essentially, since I am part of humanity, since humanity is part of creation, since God himself is part of the creation that he made, then I am somehow or another part of God myself.

Alistair Begg: And so, when you run up against it, when life is so horribly untidy, when the wheels fall off, when tragedy hits, when sickness beckons, when you stand before an open grave, to whom do you go? To the God of your own creation?

Alistair Begg: I like to think of God as opposed to a God who stands outside of time, who has created the world, and all that is in it.

Alistair Begg: Who stands to attention before a block of wood?

Alistair Begg: Who falls on the floor between an idol of my own invention?

Alistair Begg: No, you see, the God of the Bible is a God who calls people to their feet. Is a God who demands attention. Is a God who, in the display of his sovereign power and majesty, causes men and women to put their hands over their mouths, brings them to their feet in adoration and in awe, and puts them down on the floor of their bedroom before the displays of his majesty and his power.

Alistair Begg: Small wonder that when J.B. Phillips, our favorite paraphraser of the New Testament, wrote his book concerning men and women's view of God, the title of the book was Your God Is Too Small.

Alistair Begg: You see, what Habakkuk is doing here in his very own prophecy is that every display of God's power, every revealing of God's character, is like for the prophet another piece of the jigsaw. He reaches as it were into the box that God has provided, and he picks out another piece and he places it in the picture that is being formed. He is, if you like, developing his own theology as he goes along. Logos, the word or knowledge, Theos, God, knowledge of God. His knowledge of God is growing as he comes along and as the pieces go into the puzzle. He realizes, this is why God is doing this. This is who God is. I asked him why and he answered in this way. I asked him how long and he responded in this way.

Alistair Begg: And so it is that now you find him waiting patiently. Verse 16b, "Yet I will wait patiently." Well, that's a bit of a change, isn't it? Because you weren't waiting patiently when you started your little prophecy, Habakkuk. No, you were shouting, you were banging on the table. How long, O Lord? How long is this going on? Why is this happening? Why isn't this sorted out now? Look at the change. I will wait patiently. What happened? Did he get an answer? Yes. Did he get the answer he expected? No. Did his circumstances change? Not a bit. God just displayed himself. And then he said, you know what? I think I ought to do. I think I should wait patiently. Good idea, Habakkuk.

Alistair Begg: God perfectly understands your questions at the beginning, he understands that. But that's the right response. I will wait patiently, verse 16, and I will pray fervently, verse 2. And his prayer is clear. Do in our day what you've done in other days. Renew your deeds in our day. In our time, make them known. In wrath, remember your mercy. It's as though Habakkuk is living in a kind of flat, uneventful era. Nothing much is going on. And then all of this violence and destruction and injustice breaks out, and he knows that God needs to intervene, and he cries out to him. And now as he says, I'm going to wait patiently. He says, I'm also going to use the time to talk to you, and this is what I'm asking you. In your wrath, remember your mercy.

Alistair Begg: Incidentally, a prayer that would only finally be answered if you fast forward 700 years to a scene outside of the walls of Jerusalem, and to the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Son, hanging on a cross, and declaring it is finished. What is finished? The work of redemption, whereby he took in himself all of God's righteous wrath against sin, and he displayed in himself all of God's mercy provided for the sinner.

Alistair Begg: Well, that's something of the prophet's reaction. Secondly, the prophet reviews. The prophet reviews. And in verses 3 to 15, what you have is a wonderful poem. It is a classic example, I'm told, of Hebrew poetry. My time in Hebrew class was fairly brief and rather unrewarding. And so, I read that it was a classic example of Hebrew poetry. I'm passing that information on to you. I don't want you to get any impression that I actually know that firsthand. So, for those of you who read the Hebrew Bible, you can check, then you can let me know, and I know there are some who can. But I'm going to take it at face value because it certainly reads very well in the English, doesn't it? And I tried to read it as best as I could. It provides a magnificent and a frightening picture of God's acts in history. It displays his power not only over