Well, welcome back to Struggling Well as we continue our look at the prophet Habac. we talked about last week and I just want to begin there again is he was honest enough to face the confusion he had with how God was working and what does that feel like for us today?
You know, last week you did say something that I resonated with me is that oftenimes we're so busy looking at the confusion that we don't see God.
And as I have talked with various people over the years and just recently I heard this from a friend that when life turns upside down or things are different, we spend a lot of time trying to analyze what is different and trying to make a new normal for ourselves, whatever that may be. And I'm not sure how much this fits with where you're going, but so anyway, I just think that a lot of people are when they're in the midst of struggle or they see struggle that they spend a lot of time We spend a lot of time looking at the news trying to strategize through our struggle and very little time looking for God.
Yeah. And I there's probably more than this to it, but I think a lot of that has to do with because we want to control.
Mhm.
We want to control. We would say I would say we live in a dark and chaotic world. on and there's so many examples of that on a macro level, a worldwide level, but there's also examples of that within our own lives
and life can get dark and life can get chaotic and life can get confusing and but again rather than looking to God we try to analyze and then we try to manipulate and manage our world to where we can control it and get out of the darkness and the chaos.
And I wonder how much we miss in those times when we're trying to rearrange and control and figure out what's next. How much of God we miss and what he's doing because we want life to look a certain way.
Yeah. Exactly. And I think that's to me the turning point in this short little three-chapter book is chapter 2 verse one when I when Habach says, "I'll climb up on my watchtower and stand at my guard post. There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer my complaints."
And then while he's there, it goes on next verse and says, "Then the Lord said to me, write my answer plainly on tablets so that a runner can carry the correct message to everybody else. And then here's the part that gets hard. The vision is for a future time. In other words, there is hope coming, but you're going to have to wait. And who wants to hear that message?
Well, nobody then probably because they were in turmoil and certainly not today where we are a generation. Well, it's been this way for generations, not just this generation, but we want things now. I want resolution now. Yeah. And so if I were to ask you where you find hope and to say, "Well, God says hope is coming, but you're going to have to wait for it." How would that feel? How does that feel to you?
Well, will I wait?
Yeah,
that's the question. Or will I try my best to retool my life in a way that I think might bring me some ease?
Yeah. And so it's that combination of will I wait and then where in that waiting where in my faith, do I place my hope? And so, Habach is now given this answer that first of all, he didn't like God's answer to his first complaint that he's going to send the Babylonians. Now, he's waiting on the watchtower. He writes down this answer that God says, "Hey, you're going to have to trust me. There's a vision. There's hope coming. There's an answer coming. But, but until it gets here, can you trust me? Can you keep your eyes on me?"
Well, he says in the end of verse three, if it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay. That's like almost an oxymoron. It's going to seem slow, but it won't delay.
Right? And that really points to the fact that God's timing is very different than our timing. the rest of the second chapter really talks about the evil that is present and there are five different woes, five different evils. that he talks about that I think makes Babylon and I never can pronounce this word right archetype. Is that the right way to say it?
Of any nation that finds himself here with these things cuz it's not unique to just Babylon. That's who Habach is addressing and God is addressing the Babylonians and he goes, "Don't worry, I'll take care of them." And in and the five different things are there are two mentions of unjust economic treatment of people.
Mhm. that's a problem. There's a problem of slave labor and how that's treated. there's a problem of irresponsible leaders who just simply drink and carry on and expose and sexual exploits and everything else and they don't take care of their people. And then the last one in verse 18, he says, "What good is an idol carved by man or a cast image that deceives you? How foolish to trust in your own creation a god that can't even talk." And again to me, that's a picture of the world we live in today. People put their hope and they put their trust in their own creation. Not what God can do, but in their own creation.
In the ESV, I mean, oh, this is amazing. Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, "Awake!" to a silent stone, "Arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it. But the Lord is in his holy temple. let all the earth keep silence before him. So that whole I mean it sounds so silly that somebody would erect something you know wooden or golden or whatever and try to breathe life into it or make it come alive as opposed to worshiping God,
right? But you think about the things that we worship today. One of the things that I think is so much worshiped by man by all of us that we have the danger of this is money. and economic prosperity. And maybe now not even on so much prosperity as stability
and you know the economic markets around the world are just up and down and all over the place and it's caused this panic because for years that's where we put our faith and our hope
and it's just not there. and so in all of this he ends that second chapter by saying but like you said the Lord's in this holy temple.
Yeah. Let the earth be silent before him. H how rare is it for me to be silent before God?
And yet we on our wall in our kitchen, there's a wooden thing that says, "Be still and know that I'm God." And there are times when I thinking I think, "Oh, I think I'll take that down and put a different picture up there or something just to freshen up our decor." But I can't take it down. And the reason is not because it's so outstanding of a piece of artwork, but because of the fact that I need the reminder to be still. to sit with it, to sit in it, sometimes to literally sit on it and wait for God to speak. But again, I'm when I hear him say it's going to feel like it's slow, but I'm not going to delay. Well, like what? Help me, God. Help me there. And that's where for me, my faith has been grown and stretched is to be okay with silence knowing that there is an answer not an answer doesn't necessarily mean the way I want it but that he will speak.
Yeah. And I think for me in just practical terms the two places where I struggle with that are you know ever since we retired from the church people have said to me well how are you enjoying your retirement? And I've answered by saying well I don't it doesn't really feel like retirement to me yet because we've been really busy. busy. We're always seems to be that we're going somewhere doing something.
And so the idea of being still gets thwarted sometimes because of the busyiness of life. And then the other piece that is really true for me is I don't do well with silence. Like when I get in the car, the first thing I do is turn the radio on. And it's either going to be to a music station to listen to music or it's going to be to sports radio to catch up on the latest news on sports. I don't like silence.
Which is so funny to me, Jimmy, because you are an introvert in comparison to my more extroverted personality, right?
I get in the car and I don't want to hear anything.
I know. I don't know why it is. I And I do but I do think it is a subtle battle that I have with the Lord and a subtle battle that the enemy knows about that as I look at all this and I go, "Okay, I'm going to wait on God's answer. I'm going to wait on him." And yet that last verse is convicting to me. Let the earth be silent before him because I can fill my world with noise. And I wonder if sometimes, not consciously, but unconsciously, that's my way of going, I'm not going to be silent before you, Lord. I'm going to fill it with something.
Well, when people say to you, "How's retirement?" They're assuming that you're playing golf every day or maybe, you know, I don't know what. But what would it be like if you and I said to people, "We are just sitting and waiting. and listening. They'd be like, "Oh,
yeah,
pretty boring. Pretty, well, that's sad. I guess is it health? You can't do anything. I mean, are you having a mental breakdown?" It's not what even in our Christian culture, it's not something that people are ready for.
Yeah. I think, you know, again, I'm not I'm really not picking on the church, the big C church, but we fill worship service. Every time we gather corporately, we fill it with noise. We fill it with activity. We fill it we don't leave much room for silence. And that's hard. If you say, "Okay, folks, we're going to take the next two minutes and just be silent before the Lord." People will think those two minutes feel like two hours. It gets uncomfortable for people. And yet, what does it mean to sit before the Lord, to listen to what he is saying, not just what I have to say to him? And Habach's going to change from this, which he's kind of laid out everything now to the third chapter, which we'll look at next week, which is really his prayer. It's he's voiced his complaints to the Lord. The Lord's given him an answer. The Lord's finally said, "Write my answer on tablets. I want you to know it will seem slow. Wait patiently because it will not be delayed." And so, how is Habach going to respond? We'll see that in chapter 3 and maybe it'll give us some insight as to how we should respond to the Lord as well.