Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 11, 2018 | When God Doesn't Make Sense - When God Seems Irrational

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November 11, 2018 | When God Doesn't Make Sense - When God Seems Irrational · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the last time you'll see that bumper video, and some of you are glad because you can put away your Kleenex.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is the sixth and last of our series when God doesn't make sense.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so next week we have our favorite, one of our favorite Sundays of the year.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Thanksgiving Service of Praise.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And after third service, my wife and others will be putting on a huge feast.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: We have a Thanksgiving feast.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll stay for that.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a good time.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: During our Thanksgiving service of praise, which is a little bit different, we have a shorter message type thing, but we're we've uh in recent years what we do is we bring up a couple or some other people who are really going through tough times and have learned how, seen how to praise the Lord during that.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to do that again next week.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: You really like it.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the following Sunday, November the 25th, it's sort of the Hinge Sunday, difficult for all pastors.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do between Thanksgiving and the Christmas series, the last week of Thanks uh of November?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: One thing we're going to do that Sunday is I'm going to introduce to you our Christmas project this year, which is really exciting.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in one way, it'll be like last year's Christmas project.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It will be divided.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: There will be a half of it, will be an element that's overseas.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: The other half will be right here in Topeka, special need.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that'll be in two weeks.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have our December, which is just great around here.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Laugh Out Loud with Connie speaking, the women's deal, the Christmas light show, the Sunday mornings Discover the Wonder series, and gonna be really great.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what's coming.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But today we are when God doesn't make sense.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning, in the sixth one, it is when God seems irrational, actually irrational, illogical, erratic, crazy.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll get right into it.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, open your Bible to the book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: You should maybe have it, should flop open a little bit because I've preached on this book, or at least parts of it, twice in the last 10 years.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: This message will be a little different than those because of uh of the fact that the electricity just went off.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I heard a little crackling noise.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um so anyway, it'll probably come back on eventually, or we'll get Sam up here to to to what?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, do his magic.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm gonna need a Bible because I usually read off the screen.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know it by heart.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I'm gonna start right out in Habakkuk chapter one, and I'm gonna read, and we're gonna talk about um the issue that's going on here and why it was so troublesome for Habakkuk and why it's so troublesome for us.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we begin in verse 1, the oracle that Habakkuk the prophet received.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Habakkuk, this is one of the minor prophets.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: There are 12 that in the Old Testament.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: It means it's really sad.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: He never got to play in the major leagues, he was always in the minors.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm kidding.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: But major prophets are the longer ones, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the minor prophets are a little bit shorter, still very important.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it says the uh oracle that he received, or literally the burden, this is a burden that Habakkuk carried.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he begins, well, bless you.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Carol, here's your Bible back.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he begins and he says, How long, Lord, uh must I call for help and you don't listen?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: How long must I cry out to you about violence and you do not save?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So uh have you ever felt like you just kept on crying out to the Lord again and again?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you wake up every morning, including this morning, and you and within seconds, the same thought occurred to you.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's this child you've been praying for, it's the spouse, it's this job, it's something else, this illness issue, and you keep crying out to the Lord.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is Habakkuk.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So he's crying out about a problem in his favorite city, his hometown of Jerusalem, in the southern kingdom of Judah.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is about 600 years before Christ.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Why do you make me look at injustice?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, six times in the first four verses, uh, he mentions different problems, and they all revolve around violence, oppression, strife, conflict, and justice.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oppression and violence are right in front of me.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Strife is ongoing and conflict escalates.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: What's the deal, Lord?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: The law is paralyzed, justice never prevails, the wicked hymn in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: God, you know, you're the same God who kicked the angels out of heaven who were rebellious against you, the same God who poured out, you know, uh judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah because of their injustice, their lack of hospitality, their gross sin, and so forth.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But uh this word justice, one of the great words, by the way, of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word is mishpeit.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Say with me, Mishpait, Mishpait, there you go.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: You just said a great word because it really means the heavenly pattern.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is how God governs heaven.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: By a heavenly pattern, God wants to bring down to earth thy kingdom come, thy rule, thy will be done on earth.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and so Habakkuk's going, No, you, I know you want justice, you want the heavenly pattern of rule on earth, but it's not happening.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I want it to, I'm praying for it, and this is your will.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm praying according to your will.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you help out?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then he goes, the wicked hymn in the righteous.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is, by the way, a Hebrew word I love.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's it uh because I have claustrophobia.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and the word here is literally the word for surround, but it's got like movement.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's like uh in that old Edgar Allen Poe story of how the walls, you know, move in more and more.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm freaking myself out just by describing it.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: My arms are getting closer, and I'm getting scared right now, even as I speak.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So is Tony.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so but this is the picture here.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: The wicked are getting closer and they're beginning to hem in, and the walls are closing in around me.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that justice is perverted, and he's going, Come on, I've followed you for years.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I pray about this stuff every day, every week, every month.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing ever happens.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you don't care.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting no answer.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: You appear to be asleep or on vacation or something.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: How can you tolerate this?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I pray and pray, he's saying, but you don't seem to care because nothing ever changes.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I know exactly how Habakkuk feels because we see the same kinds of injustice and atrocity, and we pray about it, and yet God, this is, I'll stick my first point up front here, God seems inattentive and indifferent for long periods of time.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Raise your hand if you think this is, if you feel if you've ever felt this.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're not gonna put your hand if you're afraid God's gonna zap you with lightning if you stick your hand up in church saying something like this.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you're okay.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: God seems inattentive.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: He seems indifferent for long periods of time, and so you and I, you and I call on him and so forth, and every week it seems like there's something else.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's a random, meaningless, senseless shooting in a country music bar and grill in Southern California, and and 12 kids, including Christian kids from the local Christian university, Cody and Elena and others, die, and it makes no sense, Lord.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: What is this about?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: How can you allow something like this to happen?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or this last week, too, over in another part of the world in India.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's this these Christians in a Hindu enclave and they're praying.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a church they come together for wind midweek prayer meeting, and all of a sudden a hundred Hindu extremists come in and they start beating people brutally, including a uh a woman who's eight and a half months pregnant, she's now in critical condition, and you and I go, Lord, well, are you not watching?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are you not seeing what's happening?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it struck me just actually this morning, so I inserted this, that Habakkuk's name is really a clue to this whole thing because the name Habakkuk actually is a is uh there's a word Habakkuk that's a clinging vine, you know, it just attaches itself.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Habakkuk is like to cling.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: You and I cling to God in kind of two ways.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: At least I do.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: One is you cling to him with an embrace.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I love you, Lord.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I love you, Lord.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So like our worship music, right?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then sometimes we cling to him like in a wrestling way, like Jacob clung to him in Genesis 32.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I felt that way.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: You feel that way often.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I felt that way at 7 o'clock last Sunday night.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm over at the hospital, and there's a guy I consider like a pastor at our church, uh, Doc Grindel, in a way, and there he is.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: He teaches Sunday school last Sunday morning.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: He goes home, takes the kids fishing, starts playing cards with his kids, and maybe God judged him because he was the kids say he was starting to cheat.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, all of a sudden he keels over and he hits the floor.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, his pull stops and he codes, and then six, four times over the next six hours, he codes.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's like he's gonna die or whatever.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we're over there in the hospital, and you know what it feels like?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the embrace part, it's the wrestling part.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm clinging to God, going, I'm like the woman in the New Testament, diving after the retreating Jesus, grabbing hold of the hem of his garment, saying, We're not gonna let him go.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: God, you can't do this.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or like Jacob wrestling, and you're going, God, I'm making deals now.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: You let me know when one of the deals kind of appeals to you, because we're gonna keep doing this.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what that's like?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Does anybody know what that's like here?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you wrestle with, you wrestle with God?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're just looking at me.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there's one of us.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, this is this is the sometimes I feel like this is my whole relationship with God has become an embrace, wrestle, embrace, wrestle, and embrace, wrestle relationship that sort of veers back and forth between the embracing, loving, adoring thing and the wrestling with God and saying, God, you you you can't do that.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to listen, you've got to, you've got to do things better.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's Habakkuk's start.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's his complaint, and then praise Jesus, the Lord replies.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I am sure that when the Lord finally spoke up in verse 5, Habakkuk had to be going, hallelujah! Everything's gonna be fine now because finally the Lord has woken up and he's gonna reply to me.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: He roused himself, and I'm not even gonna ask where he's been all this time.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna give him a hard time for not answering my prayer these last years.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just so happy because now the Lord is replying to me, and I'm sure everything now is gonna be hunky-dory.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord says this the Lord says, look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed at what I'm about to do.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: In the Hebrew, it's cool.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically four commands.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's look, see, be amazed, wonder.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like God said, I'm really excited about this.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Look at what I'm gonna do, uh, Habakkuk.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and then the Lord says, for I'm gonna do something in your days that you won't believe.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, yeah, that's cool.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm looking for.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking for stuff that I don't believe.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Lord, is this gonna be like that weird, unbelievably cool thing you did in Elisha's day where, you know, the spray people were dying in the village, they couldn't drink the water, it was polluted, and you told him to take salt, salt, salt of all things, and throw salt into the spring, and all of a sudden salt, which should ruin a spring, turned it pure and clear.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And wow, that was unbelievable.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was random.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was cool, random.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you're gonna do now?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Stuff I won't believe even when I hear about it?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: I hope so, Lord.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Lord says, Look, I'm raising up the I'm raising up ISIS.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: How cool is that?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm raising up the Sopranos, I'm raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless, that impetuous people who sweep across the whole earth to seize territories, not their own.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa, a little bit.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you're doing what?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So why are you raising them up?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Gonna raise them up and lop off their heads?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean you're raising them up?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then God continues in verses five through 11.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're fierce and terrifying.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know that, Lord.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're fierce and terrifying.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: They kill children, they rape people, they're just terrible.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Their horses are swifter than leopards, so it's nice to know.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're more fierce than the wolves in the night.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that God, just for fun or whatever, gives about 20 descriptions in verses 5 through 11 of these of these people, of these terrible, awful people who are the scariest, most violent people on the face of the earth.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord is saying, you know, these are scary people, and they all come to do violence, and they gather prisoners like sand.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right, Lord, I know that.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Their strength is their God.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: They sure don't worship you, God.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you wouldn't have anything to do with those guys.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because their worship, they worship their muscles, they love their violence, they glory, they're guilty, they're sinful.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And God says all the same thing.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: God says this.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: God's saying, watch, I'm gonna fix it.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna fix your problem there in Jerusalem.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Using some really evil guys.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna use the Babylonians to fix our problem in Jerusalem?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that kind of like using a butcher and a meat cleaver to take care of a tiny little brain tumor?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord, I tell you, I got a knock in my engine, I give you my car, I come back later that day and you put it in a crusher.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I call you, you know, you to exterminate the moles in my front yard.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I come back that afternoon and you're on a back hoe and you've torn up my whole property.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make any sense.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: God, what?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm babysitting my uh uh two young grandsons here in town, Asher and Reuben.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um and I'm in the other room reading book, and they're in the living room, and I hear Asher continually yelling at me, and he's yelling at his brother, and he's complaining, and so forth, and I know that he's building this Lego creation, this Lego city.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Asher is throughout the whole living room, and blah, blah, blah, and so forth.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he's yelling, but I'm ignoring him.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let them work it out, you know.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: So finally Asher comes in and he pulls me, says, Papa, Papa, come here, yeah.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I go with him.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he shows me, takes me in the living room, shows me his magnificent Lego city, and it's just skyscrapers.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's been working on this thing, it covers the you know the face of the earth.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: But his little brother has come in with his Thomas, the train tracks and so forth, and he's built his little train track right through the Lego city.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, He's ruining my city, Asher says.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I see it.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: You did right to tell me, to ask for my help, and I will take care of it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take care of it right now.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I walked through his Lego city and I kicked the whole thing apart.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Blast it, blast the train track.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thomas, the train flies up and hits the ceiling, so does the skyscraper, and everything is in pieces.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think Asher reacted to that?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's really how would Asher have have reacted if I had done that?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because no, I didn't do that.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you think I am?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not that kind of a person.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But if I had done it, it would have been no more irrational than what God says he's gonna do to Jerusalem.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: You got a little problem of violence and injustice there, so you know.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna bring the worst people in the world and wipe it out.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, where is that if that isn't irrational?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: No wonder Habakkuk goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, your eyes, uh no, that doesn't fit your character at all, Lord.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can I remind you of your attributes and your character?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Can I remind you that your eyes are too pure to approve evil?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can't tolerate wrongdoing, so why would you tolerate the Babylonians?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you tolerate the treacherous?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just pegging this, Lord, but I'm pegging that we in Jerusalem, we're at a 3.5, maybe a four on the 0 to 10 scale, spiritually wise.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the Babylonians, they're way down there, like at 0.1, you know, so they're more wicked, we're more righteous, so it makes no logical, rational sense for you to use them to wipe us out.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna let them continually slay nations without sparing?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do this?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's irrational, it's wrong.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: In the 1940s, 1950s, the Christians down in Cuba, in fact, everybody down in Cuba is going, help, help, help.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: We've got this terrible tyrant, his name is Batista.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the economy's decent down here, education's decent down here, we have uh religious freedom, but I mean he's a tyrant, he's mean, he takes our property, you know, at times and so forth.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Can we get rid of them?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Lord answered their prayers, praise Jesus, 1959.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: This brilliant charismatic guy comes out of the mountains named Fidel, Fidel Castro, takes over everybody, everybody's so happy, but within a couple of years, everybody's going, Lord, how come you took a tyrant but you gave us a demon?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: How come you give us somebody and there's no religious freedom anymore and he's killing us?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: That makes absolutely no sense, Lord.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you take Mussolini and then give us Hitler?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems like the Lord does things like that.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: A Christian leader in Europe recently said, which was pretty shocking, he said, you know, Europe and the West has become post-Christian.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder, he said, if maybe the fact that we have so much terrorism over here now and the Muslim radicals are taking over Europe, I wonder, is that possibly God's judgment on us to wake us up and give us and bring us back to Him?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, if God said, you know what, I sent bin Laden to America, Europe, and so forth, you know what we'd say, we'd say, God, just a second, let's compare who's more righteous here.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: America is a, okay, we're a five, four, six, whatever you want.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the terrorists, they're like it's minus five, minus six.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: What logic, what rational logic does that make to do something like that?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I already shared with you, yeah, God seems inattentive and indifferent for long periods of time, and then when he does do something, God sometimes makes things worse before he makes them better.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happened to Israel.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: They got really, really worse with blood and gore and fire and captivity.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Babylonian captivity, 70 years of captivity.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: But then, you know what happened?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: They did get better.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Out of that mess came a wonderful prophet named Daniel, and then Ezra and Nehemiah, and never again, by the way, did Israel ever put up idols and worship idols after that.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was a somehow that became the permanent solution to idol worship in Israel.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Israel did repent and did come back to God.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was mixed.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: But man, did it ever get worse?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that's true.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you prayed for your child or for your husband or for your wife or for your loved one or someone you know, and you've prayed for them, and Lord, would you draw them back to yourself?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the bottom fell out of their life.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: They lost their job, they lost everything, they crashed and burned, and then eventually they came back to the Lord.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: He said, What's going on?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord kind of whispered to you and said, Sometimes you gotta make things worse.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: They gotta hit bottom before things get better.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, sometimes God uses bad people, really bad people, to accomplish his good purposes.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Castro, perhaps?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Muslim terrorists, perhaps?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is where I begin to embrace and wrestle, embrace and wrestle.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of funny.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: A famous theologian down in the South shortly after the Civil War, a great theologian, a great Christian, a Southern Presbyterian.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have a theology book of his.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Louis Dabney stood up before his church in 1865 and said, A righteous God, for our sins toward him, has permitted us to be overthrown by our enemies.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Get this.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And his.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: You guys in the north, you didn't realize you were God's enemies, did you?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's maybe just the way Dabney looked at it, but that's that's a correct principle, isn't it?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: That sometimes the sovereign ruler of the universe will use even his own enemies, people that he will eventually judge in their turn, uses his own enemies to discipline his own friends, his own children.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, is that weird?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Does anybody ever here feel like you could do things better than God?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Nanil, you and me are gonna get zapped by the lightning.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's why nobody else is raising their hands.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: They know you don't raise your hands in church and say, I could do things better than you, God.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what you do.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, so, but okay.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: We'll both be scorched, and then that'll be fine.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes you feel like you can do things better than God, and you get in this process of loving God and embracing him.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: But then you know what?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you wrestle with him for a while and then you embrace him again.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, I'm embracing God when it comes to Doc Grendel right now.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because it looks like he's doing better.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he he's out of bed and so forth.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: But there are all these other things that I don't understand.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just, I mean, I don't understand why my daughter can only whisper.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is going on like three years now.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: It makes absolutely no sense to me.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand why this girl I know in our church, whom I just love, you know, who loves the Lord Jesus with all of her heart, why she never I want her to get married probably worse than she does.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why she goes year after year with no suitors.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand that.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand why people in our church, and there's more than one of them, have lymphoma and they're fighting it, and then for a while they they they they they're in remission and so forth, but then all of a sudden the doctor says, I'm seeing signs again.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do I I don't understand that at all?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand why you can pray month after month and year after year for your child to come back home and come back to God and it doesn't happen, even though you know that's what God would want.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's the best thing to have happen.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why some people for years don't trust Jesus as their savior, even though it's so obvious you and I know, as their loved ones and family members, that's the right thing.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: How can that be?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: How can God be uh inattentive like that?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then when he finally does seem to move, then he doesn't move at all in the way that you would want him to move or expect him to move.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I move from embracing to wrestling to embracing to wrestling.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So finally, you know, uh goes up and he says, I'm challenging you, Lord.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've given you, I'm a good debater, and I have nailed you to the wall, God.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've kicked the door down, you locked it from the inside, I've approached the throne, and I have given you an unassailable argument.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna climb up to my watchtower, and there I'll wait to see what the Lord says, and now he will answer my complaint.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I don't blame him at all.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: You think that's uh blasphemous?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's edgy.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah did it though.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, Job, some of the greatest men of the Bible talked that way to God.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know what God said back?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: He refused to get in an argument.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: He gave him three of the great verses of the Bible, and in his reply, 4, 14, and 20, and the first one, Habakkuk 2, 4, the righteous will live by his faith.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Even the Jewish rabbis back in 200 AD, who came up with a Talmud, even they said, you know, Moses gave us 613 commandments, David gave us 11, blah, blah, blah.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Said, but the single greatest command in the Old Testament was from Habakkuk, the just shall live by faith, live by faith.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: It takes three books in the New Testament to explain this line, Romans.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's the theme of Romans, Galatians.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what it means, of course, is live reflects two kinds of life, eternal life.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never be righteous before God, you'll never gain eternal life except by faith, not by works.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: But even for a believer, even for you and I who struggle in our prayers with God, we're supposed to live every day, embracing and wrestling with God, trusting Him, living by faith.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing God says.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: You say, bore me to death.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: This has been the theme for the last five weeks.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Every single week, you know, it's well, what do you do when God doesn't make any sense?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Frankly, every single week, every single passage ends up right here.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: God says, My ways are higher than your ways, not going to explain it to you.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to wrestle with me, but in the end, I'm gonna demand that you simply trust me.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, in verse 14, God says, the earth will be filled.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: I make you a promise, the earth one day will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: The most important thing to ever happen, the reason why we're created, glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, what he's saying is, one day it's gonna work out.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta trust me for that.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just wait for it, wait for it.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be happy one day.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody will do it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: It'll work out.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wait for it, wait for my plan, wait for my purpose.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And third, God says in verse 20, the Lord's in his holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: If there weren't children present, I saw them.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was over in the cab building and there were children sitting there.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that what God was saying was shut up, but I can't say that because parents don't like their little children saying that.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whoops, I'm sorry.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So don't say shut up, so excuse me.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what he's really saying here is God saying, shh, let me be God.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let me be God.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let me be God.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: My ways are higher.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know you don't understand, I know it doesn't make sense.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: I welcome you to cling to me, whether it's an embrace or whether it's a wrestle.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: But let me be God.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wait for my plan to happen, but in the end, let me be God.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Habakkuk, somehow, Habakkuk does it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely nothing changes about the circumstances, but by the end of the book, Habakkuk has heard God.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Habakkuk ends the book by saying, Okay, God, though the fig tree doesn't bud, though there are no grapes in the vines, though the olive crop fails, though the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet, yet, yet I will celebrate the Lord.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I will rejoice in God, my Savior.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll trust you, Lord.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the worst happens, I'll believe what you say.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: This book is not at all like uh like a sitcom.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not at all like one of those one-hour dramas, you know what those are like.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they all start with cool, everything's cool, everybody's happy.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a crisis, there's a catastrophe or something, and the whole show ends up, you know, they're working on the crisis, the problem, the catastrophe, and finally it resolves itself, and in the end, everything works out.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if and if that was the way the Christian life was, what would happen is let's say and you love your job, you lose your job, you're 25 years old, and you lose your job, and then you pray, and God gives you another job, and it's a better job.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as you're sitting uh over lunch at the new job, you find you're sitting next to a cute guy, you're you're a girl, 25 years old, and you're sitting next to a really cute guy, and you talk with him, and you kind of spark and so forth, and and then you find out you're in love, and then you find out he's the son of the owner of the business, and so then you keep falling in love and you marry him, and the dad gives your husband the business and so forth, and then you sell it when you're about 35 and you end up multi-millionaires, and everything is just fantastic, and that would be great in the Christian life, and that's what we'd like to have happen, and but it doesn't happen because that's just a TV show, that's not life.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: What really happens is this you grow up in life and and you're not close to God, you don't know God very well, but you have friends and they tell you about God, or you come to church, or something else like that happens, maybe radio or something, but but then you realize that God and Jesus Christ, this is exactly what you need, and you put your trust in Him one day, and wow, wow, the sky is open, the heavens are open, the angels sing, and everything is just fantastic.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And for a while, it's like the sitcom, it's just really cool.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Your prayers get answered.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even when you seem to be running out of gas on the highway and you're still 50 miles from Topeka, somehow the empty tank holds and you get to Topeka, and then at Christmas you drive to the mall, and there's always a parking place next to the door, and you lose your job, but you find a better one, and that's just the way it is.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way it is at the beginning.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then after a few years, things seem to change.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: You lose your job.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's a job you loved, you lose your job, and you keep praying for another job, and you'll get another job for the longest, longest time, and then finally you just take the only job you can find.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Then this job is way beneath you.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a master's degree, and this is just a boring job, but you take it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: And every morning you wake up and you feel like a failure.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when you start to run out of gas on the I-70, you actually do run out of gas.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're Christmas shopping, there is no parking place close to the door.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you love your husband or you love your wife, and you have a really good marriage, and you love your marriage, and you think your marriage is really great, but one day your husband just does something unbelievable that you find out about.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot believe how he's betrayed you.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he leaves you, and instead of confessing, you know, that he was in the wrong, somehow he blames you for something you never did.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't do a thing, but he blames you for the whole falling apart thing.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't get better.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then the mother or father or friend that you love so much gets cancer.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in the old days it seemed like, you know, you prayed and they went through chemotherapy and so forth, and they were in remission.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: But now what happens is they pray and they're in remission for a year or two years, and then the cancer comes back, and the doctor says, I'm sorry.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's real life.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's not at all like a one-hour drama or sitcom, but that's what you and I go through, and and you're banging on heaven's door.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door, and you're trying to kick it in, but you just stub your toe.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: You notice that Habakkuk actually got the door kicked in, and he went in and told God exactly how he felt, and you kind of sympathize with him, though it seems a little blasphemous, and you don't want to put your hand up in church.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you realize that your life, like his, is a life of embracing and then wrestling and embracing and wrestling.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you'd rather just embrace all the time, but I mean this is your this is your daughter, this is your husband, this is your wife, this is your job, is your loved one, and it's not working out.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And God doesn't seem to be listening, and he doesn't seem to be resolving it in the way you'd like him to.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, trust me.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can, after following Habakkuk's trail, you end by saying, I will trust you.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the worst happens, I'll believe what you say.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, I have no profound way to end this series.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: I will say that I'm in a close of asking Amanda to sing a song which I've been living on for the last several weeks.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: A song about believing what God says.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Will you bow your heads in a word of prayer with me and then listen prayerfully as she sings, Heavenly Father?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Please give us the faith we need.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Give us faith to be strong.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: We need it because uh though life is not long, it's hard.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we need the grace to go on.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: So give us faith.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Faith enough to embrace you and to wrestle with you and embrace you and wrestle with you again.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Faith enough to be strong, faith enough to believe what you say.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.