Caught Up in God's Plan, Ruth 4

On Memorial Day Weekend in 1973, a country rock group called Mason Proffit performed at the Ozark Mountain Folk Fair in Eureka Springs Arkansas. When they arrived in Eureka Springs, the band members were so taken with the beauty of the area that each of them bought a piece of land nearby. Then, shortly after the festival, the group disbanded. One of the band members, John Michael Talbot, became a Christian a year or so later. He joined a Franciscan community in Indiana after he’d been a Christian for a few years, and, in seeking to live out his vow of poverty, tried to sell the land he’d bought in Arkansas. But no one wanted to buy it. He was stuck, it seemed, with this land he’d bought on a whim several years before, when it looked like he was at the beginning of a successful career in music.

But God had plans for that land. In the early 80's, Talbot and several others moved to Arkansas to establish Little Portion Hermitage; today about 40 people live at the hermitage, and there are also Little Portion cell groups all over the country. They have a mission in Latin America, and hundreds of people travel to Eureka Springs for spiritual retreats. God has used that piece of land that John Michael Talbot bought on a whim in 1973. But Talbot himself had no idea of that when he bought it, and for some time afterwards it was a burden to him. When we’re in the middle of things, we often have no idea what God is doing or what He has in mind.

The book of Ruth revolves around three major characters: Naomi, Ruth and Boaz. When we first encounter Naomi, she is full of bitterness and believes God is her enemy. Her life is a mess; she’s lost her husband and two sons, is living in a foreign country, and has been reduced to poverty. Ruth, the Moabite, is determined to stay with Naomi, her mother-in-law, and travels with her to Bethlehem. She’s committed to Naomi, as she says when Naomi urges her to go back home: “Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people, your God is my god” (The Message). Ruth is committed to Naomi, but she is also a widow, living in a society where widows are in a very precarious position. Boaz is a respected member of his society and is financially successful, but unlike many other men of his time, he’s also compassionate and committed to following God’s Word. And, over the course of the book, God brings these three people together, apart from any planning on their part, and does things that none of them could have envisioned even in their wildest dreams.

God meets their immediate needs, of course. That’s the thing they’ve been praying and hoping for. At the end of chapter three, Naomi and Ruth have decided to leave the situation in God’s hands. They’ve done all they can do, and now they need to rest in Him. And, in chapter four we see the end result. Boaz very promptly follows up, just as he promised. The Old Testament law made provision for people in Naomi’s situation. The land that belonged to her husband Elimelech needs to be redeemed by a close relative, to prevent it from being sold to another tribe; and the person who redeems the land also inherits Ruth. Children born to her will be considered descendants of Elimelech, to keep his line from dying out, and they will inherit the property that is being redeemed. The redeemer only gets temporary possession of the land. He’s preserving the community, not enriching himself. That’s why the other close relative declines. Marrying Ruth will complicate things for his own descendants. So Boaz agrees to buy the property and to marry Ruth.

In the course of one day, Naomi and Ruth are delivered from poverty. For a long time, everything in Naomi’s life had been going wrong. Things went on like this for so long that she lost hope that things would ever be different. Life was like that for Joseph. His brothers had sold him into slavery in Egypt, then he had been falsely accused and thrown into prison. At one point it looked like he might get out. He had interpreted dreams for two other prisoners and knew that one of them was getting out of prison soon. Joseph said to him: “But remember me when it is well with you; please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon” (Genesis 40:14-15). But the man got out of prison and forgot about Joseph. Everything went wrong in Joseph’s life. But then, one day he woke up in prison, just like any other day during the years he’d spent there, and by the end of the day he was out of prison and was the prime minister of Egypt. On the day that Boaz buys Elimelech’s property, Naomi and Ruth’s life is changed. God has come to their rescue; He’s provided a home for Ruth, and a new family for Naomi. So, the first thing that happens is that God comes to their rescue and provides for their immediate needs.

But that’s not the only thing that’s happening here. God also uses them, apart from their knowledge, to bring about a change in their society. This story takes place during the period of the Judges, a time when the spiritual life of the nation is in chaos. Here’s the reason that’s given repeatedly in the book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). There was a general lack of consistent leadership during this period. That’s the importance of the genealogy at the end of Ruth. Boaz and Ruth become the great-grandparents of King David, the king who over and over again is described as a man after God’s own heart. Through them, God is going to raise up a leader for His people. God is at work, not only rescuing Naomi and Ruth, but providing for the needs of His people.

But even that isn’t the full story. I usually skip over the genealogies when I’m doing my regular Bible reading, because there’s not much in a list of names that I can apply to my life. But these genealogies are significant. God doesn’t carry on His work of redemption in the world through general principles. He uses people. The names on these lists are the names of people who went about their daily lives seeking to be faithful and found themselves caught up in something they could never have imagined for themselves. These long lists of names that we find in various parts of Scripture remind us that God uses real people to fulfill His purposes in the world. Listen to these words from the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” (Matthew 1:1-2). You can read the stories of these people in the book of Genesis. But then, a little later in the list, “and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David” (vv. 5-6). And it keeps going all the way to Jesus.

Boaz and Ruth and Naomi become part of the great work God is doing in bringing a redeemer into the world. They become part of the central story of Scripture. We understand that great leaders like Moses and Joseph and King David are part of this story. They stand out because of their great abilities as leaders of God’s people (as well as because of their faithfulness in following Him). But Ruth and Naomi and Boaz seem to be fairly ordinary people. They’re not leaders in the nation. None of them are prophets. They’re just ordinary people, going about their daily lives, seeking to be faithful. And they end up being part of the story of God’s redemption.

How does all this come about? How do these ordinary people, going about the business of their lives, come to be included in such great things? They’re not aspiring to greatness. They don’t have grandiose plans. They’re not great visionaries, out to change the world. They’re like the Psalmist in Psalm 131: “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me” (v. 1). They’re not seeking to make a name for themselves. They’re simply people who are seeking to be faithful in a growing relationship with the living God. The end of the psalm directs attention away from ourselves and onto God: “O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore” (v. 3). The psalmist doesn’t have grandiose plans for himself; his trust and his focus are on God. Ruth and Boaz and Naomi are like that, and they find God doing things beyond their wildest imaginations. A life of faithfulness in what God calls us to do has consequences far beyond anything we’re able to see.

Two things stand out especially about these people. First, they’re seeking to be faithful to God. Even though Naomi is bitter at the beginning of the story and believes God is her enemy, at the first evidence of God’s sovereign care she bursts out “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message). Boaz greets his workers with the words “The Lord be with you” (2:4). He’s blessing his workers. No doubt there were people who used this greeting just as a formality, but everything we see about Boaz suggests more than this. He cares about the spiritual welfare of his employees. He also blesses Ruth: “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge” (2:12). These aren’t just people who are going about their duty because it’s the right thing to do. They’re not grim moralists or legalists. They’re people who are seeking to be faithful to God’s Word in the context of a growing relationship with Him. These are people who are seeking to walk with God.

The second thing that stands out about these people is that they live out their faithfulness to God in the context of community. Their relationship with God involves more than just having a strong devotional life. He’s called them to be part His people. That’s why Boaz follows so carefully the correct procedures for redeeming Elimelech’s property. In marrying Ruth, he’s seeking to bring children into Elimelech’s family, rather than his own. He’s not enriching himself. He’s acting for the good of the community (which the other kinsman-redeemer, for one reason or another, wasn’t willing to do). And the greatest things that are happening have to do, not with them individually, but with what God is doing for His people through them.

One of the devotional books I've enjoyed is a book of daily readings from the writings of Frederick Buechner. Buechner is a Presbyterian minister, but he’s mainly known for his writing. Here’s part of the reading for January 1: “I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living... opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day’s work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him.... If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace” (Listening to Your Life, p. 2). Ruth, Naomi and Boaz are three people who find their ordinary lives opening up “onto extraordinary vistas.”

Communion is one of those mysteries that involve us in far more than we understand. Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (John 6:54-56). As we come to the Table of the Lord in faith, we’re entering into this great work of redemption that God has been carrying on since the Fall (the work that Boaz and Ruth and Naomi were part of). We’re taking part in something that opens up “onto extraordinary vistas.” In doing this, we experience God’s presence and blessing in our lives. Here’s what one author says about communion: “When the elements of bread and wine are taken in faith, the transforming and nourishing power of Christ for the salvation and the healing of the person is made available” (Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith, p. 111).

But this isn’t the end. Having been refocused in God’s presence by taking part in corporate worship, we go out into the world again, as people who belong to Jesus Christ, as people who have been made part of something much bigger than anything we can imagine. But most of the time it doesn’t feel that way. What God calls us to do is cultivate a life of faithful obedience to His Word in the daily reality of our lives, knowing that He is continuing His work in ways we’re not aware of. We’re usually in too much of a hurry to see outward results. We don’t have to make grandiose plans about all the things we’re going to accomplish. Most of us are not in a position to change the world (and most people who are in that position don’t change it for the better anyway). But the thing we can see clearly in the book of Ruth is this: a life of faithfulness in what God calls us to do has consequences far beyond anything we’re able to see. May God enable us to cultivate lives of attentive obedience to His will, trusting in His sovereign power to accomplish His purposes.

Cooperating with God's Purposes, Ruth 3

Awhile back I read about a man who bought a new Winnebago. He took it out on the highway, and after he got it up to cruising speed, turned on the cruise control and then went into the back to make himself a cup of coffee. He thought cruise control was something like auto-pilot, I guess, so he didn’t see any need to remain at the wheel. So he was indignant and sued the company. Obviously there was something wrong. The cruise control wasn’t working.

We saw in chapter two that Naomi has come to a new realization of God’s sovereign care. He hasn’t forsaken her after all (as she had thought); He has her life in His hand and is caring for her and for her daughter-in-law, Ruth. When she sees what is happening, she cries out, “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message). He has plans for them, greater things than they ever could have imagined for themselves. But that realization doesn’t lead Naomi to sit back and do nothing, waiting for God to work out His sovereign will. She doesn’t turn on the cruise control and sit back with a cup of coffee, as if her responsibilities were now over. She understands that God’s sovereign care in our lives is not like cruise control (or auto-pilot). God doesn’t work in that way. He calls us to work in cooperation with His purposes.

What do we mean when we say that God is sovereign? We mean that He is the King of all creation. He is the ruler of the universe. This means, 1) that all things belong to Him, that He is the owner of everything in creation. Everything that exists was made by Him and belongs to Him. The Bible only allows for a limited idea of private property. We are stewards of the things He’s entrusted to our care, and none of it belongs to us absolutely. Someday we’ll have to give an account for how we’ve used the things He’s entrusted to our care. 2) Saying that God is sovereign also means that He has the authority to impose His will on His creation. This follows from saying that He is King. He has the right to command, and it’s our duty to obey Him. And 3) it implies that He is in control of all things, that nothing happens unless He allows it (see New Dictionary of Theology, pp. 654-55). Jesus is assuming God’s sovereignty when He says: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-30). Naomi has rediscovered the truth of God’s sovereign care. She always assumed His sovereignty, but for awhile she was convinced that He was exercising His sovereign power to destroy her and bring her to ruin. Now she’s rediscovered the truth that He, the Almighty, is watching over and caring for her.

Notice, first of all, that this new realization of God’s sovereign care doesn’t lead Naomi and Ruth to sit back and wait passively for Him to act. They don’t say, “well, we know now that God has this situation under control; all we need to do now is wait. If we get involved we’ll just make a mess of things.” I’ve known some people who believed so strongly in God’s sovereignty that it crippled them. They were sure that God has all things under control, that He is ordering all things according to His own will. And it crippled them. It led them to fatalism: “God has already decided everything that’s going to happen; what difference do my choices make.” It often led them to irresponsible choices, because they were assured that God is taking care of everything, and even if something bad happens as a result of my irresponsibility, all of it comes under the umbrella of His sovereign rule anyway. Notice that the assurance of God’s sovereign care doesn’t affect Naomi and Ruth in this way. It doesn’t give them a license to sit back and do nothing.

Naomi was passive before, when she was depressed and believed that God had become her enemy. When life was filled with nothing but bitterness and pain, and when she believed God was trying to destroy her, what was the use of trying to better her situation? But now, everything has changed. The assurance that God is with them, that He is working out His purposes in their lives, gives her the courage to act.

We need to be careful how we apply biblical doctrine. The truth is that we really don’t understand God’s sovereignty very clearly. We’re not capable, at this point, of grasping the relationship between God’s control over all things and our very real responsibility to act in obedience to His will. God’s Word tells us that we can rest in the assurance that He is sovereign, that He has all things under His control, that nothing happens unless He allows it, and that He is even able to take evil and turn it for good. But when we become fatalistic in response to this, we’ve misapplied the doctrine. Or when we say, “God already knows everything I need, and He’s promised to take care of me, so there’s really no need to pray,” we’ve twisted things. We’ve applied the truth in ways that are not true.

Daniel says, in chapter 9 of his book, that he’s been studying the prophesy of Jeremiah: “I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years” (9:2). It sound pretty clear-cut. Once the seventy years are over, they’ll be able to return. All they need to do is wait it out. But that’s not how Daniel responds: “Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession....” (9:3-4). He understands something of God’s plan from meditating on Scripture, but that leads him to an intensive time of prayer and fasting. He wants to understand more, and he also wants to confess the sins of his people and cry out for the fulfilment of God’s promises. He doesn’t assume that God’s purposes for His people will be fulfilled apart from any action on their part.

Naomi has come to see the truth that Paul expounds in Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing left for her to do. She sees it as her responsibility to seek a husband for Ruth: “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.” Knowing that God has their lives under His sovereign care frees her to act. When she didn’t know this, she was paralyzed. There didn’t seem to be any point in trying any more. Now that she knows God is working on their behalf, she’s free to take some initiative. An assurance of God’s sovereignty over all things sets us free to act in obedience, trusting Him to use our feeble efforts to carry out His purposes. An understanding of God’s sovereignty should stir us to action, not paralyze us.

The next thing to notice is this: the assurance of God’s sovereign care doesn’t take away the element of risk in their lives. Ruth takes some real risks following Naomi’s instructions. She goes to the threshing floor alone at night, in a society where the vulnerable are often taken advantage of (we see some examples of this in the book of Judges). There’s a very real possibility that she’ll be harmed, which is why Boaz, once he discovers that she’s there, tells her to stay till morning. It simply wouldn’t be safe for her to return home alone at night. But she’s also risking her reputation. Prostitutes often carried out their trade at the threshing floors. Here’s an example from the book of Hosea, where God is comparing Israel to a prostitute: “Do not rejoice, O Israel! Do not exult as other nations do; for you have played the whore, departing from your God. You have loved a prostitute's pay on all threshing floors” (9:1). There’s every possibility that if Ruth is seen there her intentions will be misunderstood. That’s why Boaz sends her away before it is light, saying “It must not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.”

And there’s also the possibility that Boaz himself will reject her. He’s shown her kindness while she’s been gleaning in his fields, but now she’s going to ask him to marry her. She’s a foreigner, after all, and he’s an important person in the community. Ruth takes some real risks in following Naomi’s instructions. An assurance of God’s sovereign care is no guarantee that things are going to work out well in the short term. We know the end of the story, but Ruth doesn’t when she sets out to visit the threshing floor. Scripture has plenty of examples of people for whom things haven’t worked out well, even though they’ve been people who are under God’s sovereign care, people who love Him and want to serve Him. Living in obedience to our sovereign God often involves taking risks and making ourselves vulnerable, and there’s no guarantee that things, in the short term, will work out the way we want.

But then, having stepped out, having taken the risk of going to the threshing floor at night, trusting in God’s sovereign care does mean that the end result is not up to them. It’s not their responsibility to make things turn out well. Boaz tells Ruth something she didn’t know: there’s another kinsman who is actually first in line. He needs to follow the Law and make the need known to this other person. So things aren’t yet resolved at the end of chapter 3. They’ve done what they can, and now it’s out of their hands. But trusting in God’s sovereign care means that they can stop and wait. They don’t have to keep pushing, trying to pull strings to make sure things turn out the way they want. They’re assured that God has their lives in His hands, so, having done what they could, they leave it with Him.

Here’s what sometimes happens to us. On the one hand, we respond to the realization of God’s sovereignty by becoming passive. It all depends on Him, so we don’t have to do anything. We just sit back and wait for Him to do it all. Whatever happens is God’s will. But then, on the other hand, we respond to the realization of our own responsibility by taking the whole burden upon ourselves. Now it all depends on us. We saw, in the first chapter, this attitude in Carlo Carretto before he went to live in the desert: “With this mentality I was no longer capable of taking a holiday; even during the night I felt I was ‘in action.’ There was never enough time to get everything done. One raced continually from one project to another, from one city to another. Prayer was hurried, conversations frenzied, and one's heart in a turmoil” (Letters from the Desert, trans. by Rose Mary Hancock, pp. 14-15).

But neither of these extremes is true. God does call us to act in obedience, and our obedience makes a difference. There is something for us to do, and God expects us to step out in obedience, even when it means risking everything for His sake. But then, having done that, we can rest in the assurance that the burden of success doesn’t rest on us. Once Ruth gives Naomi a report, Naomi responds: “Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest, but will settle the matter today.” She knows that Boaz is responsible and that he will do what he promised. But this other relative could decide to marry Ruth, and they don’t know him; maybe he’s not as honorable as Boaz. They don’t know what the outcome is going to be. But Naomi’s able to step back and wait because she’s already been assured that “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!”

God doesn’t call us to make sure things turn out well. Our part, in reality, is very small, and the burden rests on Him. That’s why Jesus could say: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Here’s the truth: God is the sovereign ruler of the universe. He is the one who “accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will” (Ephesians 1:11). He is the one who is able to make all things work together for good. And He, as sovereign of the universe, calls us to cooperate with Him in the fulfillment of His purposes. He doesn’t call us to bear the burden of it all; He simply calls us to walk with Him in obedience. Paul gives the balance in Philippians 2:12-13: “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” The foundation is “God is at work in you.” He’s the one who enables us to act in obedience. But we’re not just to wait passively. We’re to work out our salvation, cultivating a life of loving obedience to our King and Master, taking risks in obedience to Him, knowing that the ultimate outcome is His responsibility.

Martin Luther lived much of his adult life at the center of controversy and conflict. When he first began to confront some of the corruptions that had crept into the life of the Church, it looked like he might not survive. Just 100 years earlier, Jan Huss, had been burned at the stake under almost identical circumstances. But God preserved Luther’s life, and the Reformation transformed the Western world. Listen to what Luther said later in his ministry: “I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise, I did nothing. And while I slept... or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no priest or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.... I did nothing; I let the Word do its work” (quoted by Fred W. Meuser, Luther the Preacher, p. 66). God had done great things through Luther’s preaching, but Luther recognized that the outcome wasn’t his doing at all. He had simply carried out his calling; he had preached and taught and written God’s Word, resting in God’s sovereign power for the outcome. He acted in obedience, and he took great risks. But in the end he admitted, “I did nothing.”

In our hyper-vigilant, hyperactive age, we need this assurance: God is in control. The sovereign ruler of the universe has our lives in His hand. He is all-powerful, and “He... loves us, in bad times as well as good!” All power in heaven and on earth is His. Being assured of this truth, we can have confidence to lay our lives at His feet, to take risks for Him, to risk losing everything for His sake. The immediate results are His burden, and He’s already assured us that the final outcome will be beyond our wildest expectations.

God Still Cares, Ruth 2

In 1978, I was traveling from north Bihar to Uttar Pradesh, in north India. I and another OM’er (Operation Mobilization worker) had been in Bihar for about a week, and we were anxious to get back to our home base. For one thing, we weren’t all that crazy about Bihar, and also our mail was waiting for us in U.P. So we set out in the morning, having been told that it was about a 4 hour trip. We didn’t have a map, and there weren’t any signs pointing the way, so we were dependent on asking directions from people. But we were expecting it to be a fairly easy trip. We were used to finding our way around in India, and we didn’t expect any real problems (other than breaking down, which was always a possibility with OM vehicles).

When we left the town of Motihari in the morning, we asked directions from a couple of people to make sure we were going the right way. We turned onto the road that they had told us would lead to Gorakhpur, and after two hours we were feeling good about the progress we’d made. We’d been able to travel at a reasonable speed, and by now should have been about halfway there. Then, about half an hour later, the road ended at a river. There was no bridge and nothing to do but turn around and drive 2 ½ hours back to Motihari and start over again. At the moment when I saw that river, I felt like the bottom had dropped out emotionally. It was out of proportion. After all, we were going to get back eventually. But all the feelings of alienness, of being someplace where I don’t belong, descended on me. I thought, “what on earth am I doing here?” People had laughed at us when we stopped in Motihari to ask for directions, and I felt sure they had intentionally sent us the wrong direction. I had been really anxious to get back to Gorakhpur, which was the closest thing to home at that point, and now we were further away than when we’d started.

As we saw in chapter one, both Naomi and Ruth have had a series of overwhelmingly difficult experiences. Both are widows in a society where the position of widows is very precarious. Naomi has spent ten years in a place where she’s known as a foreigner, and during that time has lost her husband and two sons. Ruth has lost a husband and has now left her home to settle in Israel with her mother-in-law. So now she is known, everywhere she goes, as a foreigner, someone who doesn’t belong. But their experiences of grief have also alienated them from this world. They’ve had the kinds of experiences which make people ask, “what on earth am I doing here?” That’s why Naomi, at the end of chapter one, says “Call me no longer Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” Remember that Naomi means “pleasant,” and Mara is the Hebrew word for “bitter.” She’s saying, “the name Naomi, the name you called me when I lived here, doesn’t describe me anymore. It doesn’t fit with the things God has brought into my life. My life has been bitter and painful; the Lord Almighty has afflicted me. Call me Mara, because my life is full of bitterness.” Life, for both Naomi and Ruth, has not turned out the way they had hoped.

That’s the background to chapter two. Naomi is clearly depressed and has lost hope. She no longer believes God is good. He has become her enemy, and what hope does she have, since He is Almighty? There’s no way she can resist His will. She doesn’t expect, any longer, to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Ruth has bound herself to Naomi and is determined to stay with her at all costs. But that doesn’t mean she has an easy time of it. She has her own grief to bear, and now she’s away from home, in a place where everyone sees her as a foreigner.

In a situation like this, it’s very easy to become paralyzed, to give up hope, to feel like it’s just not worth the effort to do anything. Paul draws tremendous hope from the assurance that God is on our side: “if God is for us, who can be against us?” But if God is against us, as Naomi has come to believe, what’s the use of trying? Who can help us if the Almighty has become our enemy? But in the midst of all these depressing thoughts, Ruth decides to do something. She says to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” The last verse in chapter 1 tells us that they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, so Ruth decides to take advantage of the situation.

Gleaning was a special provision made in the Law for poor people in the land. Listen to these verses from Deuteronomy: “When you harvest your grain and forget a sheaf back in the field, don’t go back and get it; leave it for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow so that God, your God, will bless you in all your work. When you shake the olives off your trees, don’t go back over the branches and strip them bare – what’s left is for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. And when you cut the grapes in your vineyard, don’t take every last grape – leave a few for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. Don’t ever forget that you were a slave in Egypt. I command you: Do what I’m telling you” (24:19-22, The Message). This is what Ruth is referring to when she says to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” The Law made special provision for people in their situation.

So Ruth steps out and is guided to a field belonging to Boaz, one of Naomi’s relatives by marriage. We’re told about Boaz at the beginning of chapter two, but it’s clear that Ruth doesn’t yet know who he is. She’s looking for somewhere to glean, but there’s no assurance that she’ll be treated well as a foreigner. The nation has fallen into a lawless condition, as the author of Judges says: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (21:25). She’s taking a risk going out like this. Verse 3 says, “As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.” As it happened. She’s not scheming about how she might put herself into contact with this rich relative. She doesn’t even know about him. But God guides her to the right place at the right time. God has plans for Ruth and Naomi, and for Boaz, that none of them are yet aware of. He is bringing them together for a purpose, although they don’t know it. This secret leading of God is called providence. It’s the sort of thing Paul is talking about in Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” God is going to take all the things that have happened to them, all the difficult things, and is going to bring good out of them. He is going to redeem these things.

So Ruth steps out and is providentially led to the field of Boaz. That’s the first thing that’s here. The second thing is that Boaz takes notice of Ruth and goes out of his way to show her kindness. We need to realize that Boaz is not typical of the Israelite men we read about during this time period. One commentator makes this observation: “Boaz stands out against an uninspiring crowd. He is the only male character in Judges 17-Ruth 4 who consistently demonstrates compassion, integrity, and moral courage in the face of challenge. Others pretend to such traits but uniformly fail to incarnate them.... Boaz stands head and shoulders above all the men in the... context” (Michael S. Moore, New International Bible Commentary: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, p. 333). Notice, for example, how the subject of Ruth’s safety keeps coming up. Boaz urges her to only come to his fields, and warns his own workers to keep their hands off, to leave her alone. And, near the end of the chapter, Naomi says to her: “You’ll be safe in the company of his young women; no danger now of being raped in some stranger’s field” (The Message). Ruth steps out and God providentially leads her to just the right place at the right time.

Boaz has already heard about Ruth; he’s heard about the kindness she’s shown her mother-in-law. When he takes notice of her and speaks kindly to her, Ruth is startled: “Why have I found favor in your sight, that you should take notice of me, when I am a foreigner?” And Boaz answers her: “I’ve heard all about you – heard about the way you treated your mother-in-law after the death of her husband, and how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth and have come to live among a bunch of total strangers” (The Message). He’s heard reports about her and he wants to reward her for her kindness; so he provides for her and ensures her protection in his fields: “Listen, my daughter. From now on don’t go to any other field to glean – stay right here in this one. And stay close to my young women. Watch where they are harvesting and follow them. And don’t worry about a thing. I’ve given orders to my servants not to harass you” (The Message).

But he goes one step further. He’s also concerned about her spiritual welfare, so he says this: “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you’ve come for refuge!” We don’t know, at this point in her experience, how much Ruth knows about the God of Israel. Her understanding may be fairly vague. But in identifying with Naomi and coming to Bethlehem, she’s taken refuge under God’s wings. Often our first steps toward God are unclear and uncertain; we don’t know quite where we’re going or what we’re getting ourselves into. But God has our lives in His hand, and He is providentially leading us. When we first take refuge in God, we don’t have a clear idea of what we’re doing; but He is faithful and honors our tentative, uncertain steps toward Him.

So Ruth spends the day gleaning in Boaz’s field, and when she returns home and gives Naomi a report, Naomi immediately recognizes that God has been with her: “Blessed be the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.” She then tells Ruth that Boaz is a close relative, something that will become important in the next chapter. Notice the contrast between Naomi’s attitude in chapter one and her attitude when she hears about Ruth’s day. In chapter one, she’s filled with a sense of bitterness. Things in her life have been so overwhelming that she’s lost a sense of hope in God’s kindness. She doesn’t expect Him to bring good things into her life any more. She doesn’t believe in God’s goodness and kindness. But as soon as she hears Ruth’s report, she’s filled with gratitude.

There’s a big difference between someone who turns away from God because of suffering and someone who temporarily loses sight of God’s kindness because of grief. Jesus described the first kind of person in the Parable of the Sower. These people are represented by the seed that falls on rocky ground. “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away” (Matthew 13:20-21). They take offense at God and His ways and they turn away from Him. They want nothing more to do with such a God. Naomi isn’t like that. She’s bewildered and confused; she’s lost sight of God’s goodness, because of the things that have happened to her. But at the first evidence of God’s sovereign care, she turns to Him in gratitude. She recognizes that He cares about her, that He hasn’t forsaken her after all.

Naomi has doubted God’s goodness, but she hasn’t turned away from Him. Doubt isn’t the same thing as unbelief. We’re often too hard on people who struggle with doubt. Maybe their doubts are threatening to us. Those who turn away from God are guilty of unbelief, but doubt isn’t the same thing at all. Doubt is a struggle of faith. Os Guinness describes it as “faith in two minds.” On the one side is faith, and the opposite of faith is unbelief; doubt is wavering between the two. The things that happened in Naomi’s life were so overwhelming that she doubted God’s goodness; she didn’t know how to reconcile her experience with what she believed about God.

Doubts need to be faced honestly, or they can eventually lead us to unbelief; but we don’t need to fear our doubts. Doubt is a normal experience for God’s people living in this fallen world. J.C. Ryle, an Anglican Bishop near the end of the 19th century, had some wise words in this area: “Some doubts there will always be. He that never doubts has nothing to lose. He that never fears possesses nothing truly valuable. He that is never jealous knows little of deep love. Be not discouraged; you shall be more than conqueror through Him that loved you.” Doubt is a normal part of Christian experience. Rather than denying our doubts, pretending that they aren’t there, we need to face them. And we can face them knowing that God is bigger than our doubts about Him. Here’s a good prayer to use when you’re struggling with doubt. It’s by Martin Luther: “Dear Lord, Although I am sure of my position, I am unable to sustain it without Thee. Help me, or I am lost” (quoted by Os Guinness, Doubt, p. 236). God is bigger than our doubts about Him. That’s what Naomi is experiencing at the end of chapter two. Her soul was filled with darkness and doubt, but now, at the first evidence of God’s gracious care, her soul is flooded with light.

The truth is that God cares about us and is at work redeeming every part of our lives, ordering things to work out for our ultimate good. We can see that clearly happening with Ruth and Naomi. And Paul says it is true of us: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” He’s already proven His love for us by giving His only Son. How can it be that He’ll not take care of us? “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” (Romans 8:32). God is committed to taking care of us, bringing us safely to His eternal kingdom, where we will live in His presence forever.

But we still live in this fallen world, and sometimes things happen which fill us with doubt. Things happen that don’t make sense. How can a good, loving, all-powerful God permit such things? Naomi was a genuine believer who, for a period in her life, became overwhelmed with doubts about God’s character. She lost her bearings for awhile, like my friend and I did in North Bihar. But God didn’t forsake her; and He won’t forsake us either. He is bigger than our doubts about Him. C.S. Lewis said “No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.... The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence” (The Business of Heaven, p. 17). Our doubts grow out of our human weakness, living in a fallen, disordered, broken world. The bigger reality is that God cares about what is happening to us, and He is committed to bringing us safely to His eternal kingdom. He will give us the light we need, and will enable us to say, with Naomi, “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message).

Your God Will Be My God, Ruth 1

Several years ago I read a series of letters by Carlo Carretto. Carretto was a leader in an Italian youth movement called Catholic Action. He was an effective leader, but in 1954, when he was 44 years old, he left his career behind and joined a community in the Algerian desert called the Little Brothers of Jesus. In his letters he describes the things that were going through his mind: “For many years I had thought I was ‘somebody’ in the Church. I had even imagined this sacred living structure of the Church as a temple sustained by many columns, large and small, each one with the shoulder of a Christian under it. My own shoulder too I thought of as supporting a column, however small.... After creating the world, God went away to rest; with the Church founded, Christ had disappeared into heaven. All the work remained for us, the Church. We, above all those in Catholic Action, were the real workers, who bore the weight of the day. With this mentality I was no longer capable of taking a holiday; even during the night I felt I was ‘in action.’ There was never enough time to get everything done. One raced continually from one project to another, from one city to another. Prayer was hurried, conversations frenzied, and ones heart in a turmoil” (Letters from the Desert, trans. by Rose Mary Hancock, pp. 14-15).

While he was in the desert he made a discovery: “After twenty-five years I had realized that nothing was burdening my shoulders and that the column was my own creation – sham, unreal, the product of my imagination and my vanity. I had walked, run, organized, worked, in the belief that I was supporting something; and in reality I had been holding up absolutely nothing. The weight of the world was all on Christ Crucified. I was nothing, absolutely nothing” (p. 16). He said that realization set him free, that he felt like a young boy on holiday. It filled him with genuine, joyful freedom.

The calling to be witnesses to the life of God in this dark world can be an intolerable burden if we think the weight of success rests on us. If it’s our job not only to act as witnesses, but also to win people to Jesus Christ, the burden can become overwhelming. When we think it’s our responsibility to bring people into the kingdom, the pressure becomes so great that we resort to whatever means will lead to outward success. We borrow techniques from the world of sales and try to manipulate people into faith by convincing them that the product benefits outweigh the cost. We tiptoe around unbelievers, because we’re afraid that even a slight misstep might turn the person off forever.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher of the 20th century, who pastored Westminster Chapel in London for 30 years, tells of preaching a sermon and noticing that a man he knew who was a notorious drunkard was weeping throughout the service. After the service, as he was shaking hands with people he considered whether he should invite the man to his study for more conversation; but in the pressure of the moment he decided not to and the man shook his hand and left. The next day he saw the man on the streets of London and the man said to him, “if you had invited me, I would have come to your study to talk about the condition of my soul.” Lloyd-Jones responded, “I’m inviting you now.” But the man wasn’t interested; he said, “no, but if you’d asked me last night, I would have come.” And Lloyd-Jones told him, “if what was happening with you last night doesn’t last any longer than this, I’m not interested in it.” I know many people are disturbed by a story like that. Shouldn’t Lloyd-Jones have grabbed the man by the hand and yanked him through the door while he had the chance? Did he drop the ball, so that this man was lost, when he might have been saved if Lloyd-Jones had responded correctly at the right moment?

The book of Ruth is a story about how a young woman from Moab – a foreigner with no rightful place in God’s kingdom – becomes part of the nation. What is it that attracts her and makes her want to remain with Naomi when she returns to Israel? Obviously part of the answer has to do with her relationship with Naomi, but Orpah also has a relationship with Naomi, and she returns home to Moab. What is it that leads Ruth to stay with Naomi and become part of the nation of Israel?

This story is set during the period of the Judges, a very bleak time in the spiritual life of the nation. The closing words of the book of Judges describe what was going on at the time: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (21:25). Spiritual leadership was lacking in those days. One of the most horrible stories in Scripture is the account of the Levite and his concubine in chapter 19. They stop to spend the night in one of the towns of Israel and the concubine is raped and murdered. The Levite then cuts her into twelve pieces and sends a piece to each tribe of Israel, calling for the nation to punish the offenders. This leads to civil war, and most of the tribe of Benjamin is wiped out.

The nation of Israel, at this point, is not at its best. They’re not living out their faith in a way that is likely to attract outsiders. No one is leading them as a nation, so all the people are doing what they feel like doing.

What about Naomi? What does her life look like? One of the things I read suggested that it was Naomi’s faith and consistency as a believer that attracted Ruth to God. Ruth could see God’s influence in Naomi’s life, and she wanted to experience the same thing. But Naomi has been through a really difficult time. She and her husband, along with their two sons, left Israel and went to Moab because of a famine. Then Elimelech, her husband, had died. The death of a family patriarch in this society was devastating. Naomi was left as a widow, and the family had to recover its bearings without Elimelech’s leadership. Since they were living as resident aliens in Moab, they didn’t even have the support of their own people.

Widows in the ancient world were in a very precarious position. Naomi tried to recover the situation by having her sons marry Moabite women. Maybe in this way the family line could carry on. But after 10 years, neither of them had an heir, and then they both died. So, within a ten year period Naomi has been widowed and has lost both her sons. She sets out for Israel, having heard that things are going better than when she left, but along the way the seriousness of her situation hits her. What hope is there for three widows traveling to a new place? She’s lost everything. She has nothing to offer these women any longer. So she urges them to go back to their own land. Naomi’s life, at this point, is in ruins. Theresa of Avila was a great woman of prayer, but things didn’t always go well in her life. Once, while she was sick with a fever, she was on a journey and discovered that she was going to have to cross a river. She was going through a difficult time anyway, and having to get in the water was the last straw. She was at the end of her rope, so she turned to the Lord and complained, “Lord, amid so many ills this comes on top of all the rest!” A voice answered her, “That is how I treat my friends,” and she replied “Ah my God! That is why you have so few of them!” (quoted by Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology, p. 133). Ruth could have said, looking at Naomi’s life, “is this what it means to be under the protection and lordship of the God of Israel?”

But then, often people who are suffering have a strong witness. I’ve heard testimonies from people who visited Christians who were terminally ill, often in great pain, and they come away realizing that they were the one’s who were ministered to. They went to the hospital expecting to give encouragement and they received more than they gave, because the suffering person had such a strong assurance of God’s presence and blessing. So, even though the nation, as a whole, is in a sorry state spiritually and Naomi herself has experienced severe trials for an extended period of time, it would be possible for her to maintain a powerful witness to those around her. But that doesn’t seem to be the case either.

She tells her daughers-in-law, when she’s urging them to go home, “it has been more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.” All the things that have happened to her, she says, have been because the Lord has turned His hand against her. God isn’t helping and supporting her any longer. When they arrive in Bethlehem, the women there exclaim, “Can this be Naomi?” and she tells them, “Don’t call me Naomi.... Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” Naomi means “pleasant,” and Mara is the Hebrew word for “bitter.” She’s saying, “the name Naomi, the name you called me when I lived here, doesn’t describe me any more. It doesn’t fit with the things God has brought into my life. My life has been bitter and painful; the Lord Almighty has afflicted me. Call me Mara, because my life is full of bitterness.”

Things in her life have been so overwhelming that she’s lost a sense of hope in God’s kindness. She doesn’t expect Him to bring good things into her life any more. She doesn’t believe in God’s goodness and kindness. Let’s not be too hard on her. The losses she’s experienced have been devastating. Abraham Kuyper, who was the prime minister of Holland and also a theologian and a preacher, said this: “When for the first time... the cross with its full weight is laid upon our shoulders, the first effect is that it makes us numb and dazed and causes all knowledge of God to be lost.” We find ourselves shocked and dazed and disoriented. We feel weak and vulnerable, as if the bottom has dropped out of our world.. This is what’s happened to Naomi. God isn’t finished with her yet, but she can’t, at this point in her life, know what He has in store for her. She’s not capable, right now, of bearing the weight of responsibility for attracting others to the kingdom of God. It’s enough for her just to keep going.

All these things together make it highly unlikely that Ruth would be attracted to the faith of Israel. Because of a general lack of spiritual leadership, the religious and social life of the nation is in chaos. The people are going their own way, doing whatever seems best, and the results are disastrous. Naomi has experienced devastating loss in her life, with the result that she’s unable to give Ruth any kind of spiritual encouragement or direction. And if Ruth believes that God’s favor results in prosperity and happiness, Naomi’s life is likely to convince her to stay away from the God of Israel.

And yet, look how Ruth responds when Naomi urges her to return to Moab: “Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people, your God is my god; where you die, I’ll die, and that’s where I’ll be buried, so help me God – not even death itself is going to come between us” (The Message). How do you explain that response? Ruth clearly loves Naomi and is determined to stay with her, despite all the reasons for going back to Moab (the place where she’s lived all her life). The only adequate explanation for Ruth’s commitment to Naomi is that God is at work in her heart in ways we can’t see. God is going to include her in His great work of redemption. She’s going to become one of the people through whom He brings a Redeemer into the world.

God is at work in ways we don’t understand and can’t plan for. He doesn’t call us to figure out how to pull people through the door of the kingdom. He simply calls us to walk with Him faithfully over the course of our lives and to speak the truth as we have opportunity. But then He uses our witness in ways we never could have expected. Often He’ll use us in surprising ways, without our awareness, even when we’re not trying to do anything. I’ve sometimes taken flak from people because I read every chance I get. At some jobs, I’ve tried to read during my breaks, and from time to time other Christians have told me that this is a bad thing. In their view, I should have spent the time socializing with others, trying to minister to them and possibly win them to Christ. The problem for me was that I had been interacting with my co-workers during work time and I really needed a break from it. I really don’t have the capacity for endless interaction, and reading during my breaks helped me to keep going.

A few years ago, I was working as a cabin counselor for one of the Adventure Weekends at Kenbrook (Adventure Weekends are for children who are too young to go for a whole week). My group that year was especially draining; two of the kids were on medication for ADD, and a couple of the others probably should have been. The only free time we had was on Saturday afternoon, for one hour. The rest of the time we were with the kids. When it was time for my break, I was drained and needed to recuperate. So I sat on a bench in front of the cabin and read my Bible. A friend from the E-town church was down the hill at the retreat center; he and his wife were attending a marriage encounter weekend. They went for a walk on Saturday afternoon, and saw me sitting alone in camp, reading my Bible. He told me afterward that this had a major impact on him. He had heard me talk about the importance of reading Scripture, but it hadn’t really taken hold of him. After that weekend he became more diligent in his Bible reading, simply because he saw me sitting on a bench reading my Bible (doing the sort of thing that some people have seen as a hindrance to my ministry). I wasn’t seeking to minister to anyone. I didn’t even know he was at Kenbrook. I was just trying to survive. But God used it in his life, completely apart from any intention on my part.

Carlo Carretto was right. The burden is not ours. God calls us to walk with Him and to speak the truth as we have opportunity. It’s not our responsibility to coax and manipulate people into making decisions. It’s not our job to grab people by the hand and yank them through the door of the kingdom. When I went forward at an evangelistic service in the spring of 1974, one of the pastors talked me out of becoming a Christian right then. He talked to us about the cost of following Jesus Christ, and as a result I backed off. It was months later that I actually committed my life to Christ, because that man was concerned about speaking the truth, not coaxing me into a decision (which he could very easily have done).

We don’t need to worry about our image, as if it depended on us to present an image that makes people think it’s a great, fun thing to be a Christian. We need to stop pretending. We are free to be ourselves. The most important thing is that we walk with God and seek Him diligently, whatever else is going on in our lives. And then, as we walk with God for a lifetime, He calls us to speak honestly to others as we have opportunity. We don’t need to sell the gospel to anyone. We simply need to bear witness to the reality of God’s presence in our lives (even when God’s presence in our lives isn’t having the kinds of effects we hope for).

As we seek to be faithful witnesses in this fallen world, God will use us. Often we’ll be surprised at the things He uses; He’ll use our feeble efforts, but He’ll also use things that seem insignificant to us. He’ll use us when we think we’re at our worst, when we think we’ve failed. It’s God’s work, and He works in ways beyond our comprehension. Our calling is to be diligent in prayer, to cultivate our relationship with Him, to pray for others, and to bear witness when He gives us the opportunity. May He enable us to do this, and to live faithfully in this world as His representatives.

Rejoicing in God No Matter What, Habakkuk 3:1-19

Probably the most joyful person I’ve ever met was a missionary in northeastern Madhya Pradesh, in India. He was 92 years old when I knew him, and he’d been working in India for 65 years. He and his wife had retired in their mid-60's and returned to the West, but after a year or so the Lord had called them to return to India and begin working in an area that was untouched with the gospel. So they went back and lived in a tent for the first two years then continued to live in a mud hut. His wife had died the year before I met him, and his intention was to stay in India until he died.

We worked with him for two weeks, and I was able to have breakfast with him each morning. The thing that struck me was that he seemed to be constantly aware of God’s presence. No matter what else was going on around him, he was filled with a deep, abiding sense of joy. He wept when he told us about his wife’s death, and he expressed grief at the condition of the church in the West. But underneath everything there was still a strong sense of assurance; when the cloud passed what he returned to was this deep rejoicing in the Lord. He wasn’t afraid to express sorrow, but His joy in God wasn’t shaken by the sorrow he experienced. In his book, Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan describes a place near the end of the journey called Beulah: “In this country the sun shineth night and day: wherefore this was beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and also out of the reach of Giant Despair: neither could they from this placed so much as see Doubting Castle. Here they were within sight of the City they were going to: also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof; for in this land the shining ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of heaven” (p. 146). I believe that’s where this man was living when I knew him. He was upon the borders of heaven, living within sight of the Eternal City.

But he didn’t spend his whole life there. He’d been walking with God for a very long lifetime, laying aside his own desires and plans and submitting to God’s lordship. There was nothing contrived about his joyfulness; there was nothing superficial about him. The danger for us, in looking at someone like him, is to think that we can become like that immediately, without struggle or difficulty. We think, “I believe the same gospel he did; I should be like that.” So we determine that we’re going to rejoice all the time, and whenever something happens that threatens to overwhelm our superficial happiness, we push it under the surface. I’ve known Christians like this; they really wanted to rejoice in all things, but they seemed, in reality, to be depressed. The joy wasn’t real, and the sadness was.

I’m afraid some of our worship songs even encourage this sort of thing. In the early 18th century, Isaac Watts wrote a great hymn: “Alas! And did my Savior bleed?” Here are verses 3 & 4: “Well might the sun in darkness hide, and shut his glories in, when Christ, the mighty Maker died for man the creature’s sin. But drops of grief can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe; [he experiences grief when he looks at what our sin cost Jesus] here, Lord, I give myself away, ‘Tis all that I can do.” In the late 19th century, a man named Ralph Hudson added a refrain. Refrains were popular at that time, and maybe he thought the hymn wasn’t joyful enough. So he added this: “At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away, It was there by faith I received my sight, and now I am happy all the day!” Is that true? Is it true that since you became a Christian you are now “happy all the day?”

Trying to rejoice in God without confronting reality leads to phoniness and superficiality. We can’t short-circuit the process. We don’t learn to find joy in the Lord by denying the reality of sorrow and grief. Habakkuk, in this chapter, comes to a strong affirmation of joy and strength in God, but he doesn’t begin there. He begins crying out for judgment, grieving over the wickedness of God’s people, then he wrestles with the problem of God’s justice. Then, having begun by speaking the truth in God’s presence, he’s finally able to come to a place where he finds joy and strength in God. This prayer in chapter 3 of Habakkuk is one of the greatest expressions of joy in the midst of difficult circumstances, but we need to remember that this doesn’t stand at the beginning of the book. This isn’t where we begin; this great hymn in chapter 3 only makes sense in the context of what has gone before. And, even as he’s expressing confidence in God in this chapter, he’s filled with dread at what is coming: “I hear, and I tremble within; my lips quiver at the sound. Rottenness enters into my bones, and my steps tremble beneath me” (v. 16a). He’s not just “happy all the day,” he’s finding joy and strength in the midst of real struggle and difficulty. The question for us is, “How does he get there?” How is he able to rejoice at this time?

The first thing to notice is that Habakkuk celebrates in prayer the great things God has done in the past. “I have heard all about you, Lord, and I am filled with awe by the amazing things you have done. In this time of our deep need, begin again to help us, as you did in years gone by. Show us your power to save us” (NLT). He remembers that God has done great things for His people in the past, then he celebrates some of those things in prayer. Verses 3-15 are a poetic rehearsal of some of the ways God has rescued His people, ending with this: “You marched across the land in awesome anger and trampled the nations in your fury. You went out to rescue your chosen people, to save your anointed ones. You crushed the heads of the wicked and laid bare their bones from head to toe. With their own weapons, you destroyed those who rushed out like a whirlwind, thinking Israel would be easy prey. You trampled the sea with your horses, and the mighty waters piled high” (NLT).

This is a common theme in the Psalms. In Psalm 18, for example, the psalmist celebrates God coming to his rescue, pulling him out of deep waters. Psalm 107 describes at some length how God’s people have gotten into trouble, often through their own sins, and yet when they’ve cried out to God for help, He’s been faithful in coming to their rescue. When we’re in trouble, we need to remember that our situation is not unique. God has dealt with people in trouble before. This situation is not beyond Him; it may be beyond us, but we’re not on our own. We saw in our last sermon that a false god will corrupt every area of our lives and will destroy us in the end. Idols are powerless. But the living God is able to rescue us; we have plenty of evidence for this both in Scripture and in the history of the Church. And the longer we go on with the Lord, the more evidence we have from our own experience.

So we stop ourselves and begin remembering the great things God has done in the past. We remember the Exodus, how God miraculously delivered His people from their slavery in Egypt. Then we remember how He brought them back to Israel after the Babylonian captivity. Then, several centuries later, when the Incarnate Word was put to death on a cross, God raised Him from the grave. We remind ourselves that God has exercised extraordinary power on behalf of His people. One reason we need to be reading Scripture regularly is to remind ourselves of these things. We’re forgetful, and we lose our sense of perspective. So we need to stir ourselves up by reading these things over and over throughout the course of our lives. Then we bring these things into God’s presence in prayer, and we cry out, “O God, you have done great things for your people in the past; we desperately need your help now. Come to our rescue!” And we look back over our own lives and see how God has been with us, and we bring those things into His presence in prayer, not because He’s forgotten, but because remembering in this way stirs our faith. That’s what Habakkuk is doing here; he’s remembering, in prayer, the great things God has done for His people in the past.

The second thing to notice is that there’s a change in the direction of Habakkuk‘s prayer. Although he began, in chapter one, crying out for judgment, he now begins crying out for mercy: “in wrath may you remember mercy.” He’s praying here for the very people he was praying against in chapter one. Habakkuk knows that God is a God of justice, who will exercise vengeance on those who persist in oppressing others. This God has created us in His own image, with an innate desire for justice. The problem is, what do we do with this sense of outrage that wells up within us? This outrage is, at least at the beginning, part of being creatures made in God’s image. Living in a society where people get away with bullying and oppressing others fills us with outrage; that’s what was happening to Habakkuk at the beginning of this book. But how do we put this together with the command to love our enemies, or with Jesus’ prayer “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing”? What do we do with our God-given emotional response to the evil things people do to one another? How do we let go of the rage that wells up within us?

I think we make a mistake when we jump too quickly to forgiveness and grace. We deny the reality of what we feel and try to push it under the surface. We pray for forgiveness for others, but inside we’re full of bitterness and resentment. It’s not that we’re faking it. We’re genuinely trying to pray in the way we think God wants us to, but we can’t get beyond our emotional response to the evil around us.

Praying like Habakkuk does in chapter one is a good first step. This kind of prayer helps us give voice to things we probably wouldn’t express otherwise, things we may not even want to face in ourselves. Rage is similar to grief. If we try to suppress it, it will reappear in some other form and will do much damage. It needs to be expressed and articulated. We need to recognize and take ownership for our rage, and then we need to yield it to God’s wisdom and providential care, saying to God “but you know best how to deal with this.” This kind of prayer gives us a way to express these powerful feelings, feelings which can turn into bitterness, or something worse, if we don’t deal with them. Walter Brueggemann talks about using the Psalms in this way: “The Psalms serve to legitimate and affirm these most intense elements of rage. In such speech, we discover that our words (and feelings) do not destroy the enemy, that is, they are not as dangerous as we thought. Nor do our words bring judgement from heaven on us.... Our feelings brought to speech are not as dangerous or as important as we imagined, as we wished, or as we feared. When they are unspoken, they loom too large, and we are condemned by them. When spoken, our intense thoughts and feelings are brought into a context in which they can be discerned differently” (Praying the Psalms, p. 59).

We often move too quickly to the point of forgiveness and grace without facing fully what is really in our hearts. When we do that, the result is less than what God is calling us to do. We need to admit the truth and then bring it before God in prayer. Praying like Habakkuk does, or like the psalmists do, helps us give expression to these things in God’s presence, where they can then be transformed. But until we’ve faced the truth, we’re not able to move ahead. We can’t forgive until we’ve faced the depth of our anger and hatred. God commands us to pray for our enemies, but to get there we first need to express, in His presence, our anger and desire for vengeance. It’s important that Habakkuk’s prayer for mercy, “in wrath remember mercy,” happens in chapter 3, not in chapter 1. He prays for God to show mercy, but that’s not where he begins.

The third thing is this: seeking God, turning to Him during a time of distress, brings Habakkuk to a place where he’s able to rejoice in the Lord. At the end of the prayer, even though he knows his whole world is going to fall apart, he finds joy and strength in the Lord. Listen to verses 17-19 in The Message: “Though the cherry trees don’t blossom and the strawberries don’t ripen, Though the apples are worm-eaten and the wheat fields stunted, Though the sheep pens are sheepless and the cattle barns empty, I’m singing joyful praise to God. I’m turning cartwheels of joy to my Savior God. Counting on God’s Rule to prevail, I take heart and gain strength. I run like a deer. I feel like I’m king of the mountain!” The Babylonians are going to come and take them into captivity. Life as he’s known it is going to be turned upside down. The fabric of the society is going to be torn apart. And yet, he’s able, looking at what’s coming, to find joy and strength in God.

Does that mean that he never again experiences what he says in verse 16? “I trembled inside when I heard all this; my lips quivered with fear. My legs gave way beneath me, and I shook in terror.” In verses 17-19 has he crossed over a line, so that now everything is joy and gladness and now he is “happy all the day”? No. He continues to experience sorrow and grief, but underneath it all is the certainty that God will accomplish His purposes. Even in the midst of great sorrow, he knows that it is going to end. No doubt there are times when he sees this more clearly than at other times. But his perspective has been enlarged by seeking God and coming to Him with his struggles and questions.

Two things that he’s said earlier in the book have prepared the way for what he says in these closing verses. 1) “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (2:14). Habakkuk knows that day is coming, whatever happens in the meantime. He’s assured of a future that fills him with hope. Having remembered in prayer the great things God has done in the past, we need to go on to remember His promises for the future. Our present situation is temporary, and soon we’ll be in God’s presence, worshiping Him face to face in His eternal kingdom where there is no more sorrow or pain or separation from those we love. 2) “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (2:20). This God, who has come to the rescue of His people over and over again throughout history, and who has promised to fill the earth with the knowledge of His glory, is exalted in heaven and calls us to worship Him. He is still the same, yesterday, today and forever, and this God has promised to be with us always, to lead us to His eternal kingdom. We are weak, and we lose our perspective, but He is with us and will lead us till the end.

That’s why Paul is able to say, in Romans 5: “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who he has given us.... Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ....” We don’t rejoice in the midst of sufferings because we’re masochists. We are able to rejoice because we have a certain hope for the future: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” We don’t always feel the power of that hope, but it’s true whether we feel its power or not. And, as we remember this over and over again throughout the course of our lives, it transforms our perspective. That’s why A.R. Fromman, the man I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, was so filled with joy. He’d been living in the light of these things all his life. He’d experienced sorrow and difficulty, but in the midst of it he’d experienced God’s grace carrying him through. He’d read about, then experienced, God’s deliverance in the past. He’d faced the truth about himself and about the world he was living in. And then, having faced the truth, he found that God is sufficient. It was a great thing to hear him affirming that so close to the end of his life.

We don’t need to pretend. We don’t need to fake it. God is enough. But we begin by facing the truth, crying out to Him and pouring out our deepest struggles. Then we remind ourselves, over and over again, about who He is and what He’s done for His people, and also for us, in the past. And as we do that, He gives us foretastes of heaven, glimpses into the kind of joy we will know when the earth is filled with the knowledge of His glory. That’s what happened to Habakkuk at the end of chapter 3. That’s why he was filled with joy in the midst of the certainty of destruction. And the more we live in the light of this hope, the more it will transform our perception. Even if we continue struggling and doubting all our lives, this is still true: “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” But since it is true, may God enable us to say, along with Habakkuk, “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.”

The Foolishness of Resisting God's Rule, Habakkuk 2:6-20

One of my favorite stories when I was little was the book, “The Little Engine that Could.” I remember hearing that story over and over again as a child, and I’ve also read it to my own children. It’s about a small engine that accomplishes a seemingly impossible task, pulling a load of toys to the top of the mountain, by repeating over and over, “I think I can, I think I can.” It’s a good story. We often give up too soon, and by perseverance and determination we can accomplish surprising things.

But, like any story, the moral can be taken too far. It’s one thing to say that we can often accomplish more than we think if we persevere with faith and determination; it’s another thing altogether to say that we can accomplish anything we set our minds on. A lot of the hype I hear about sports today seems to be based on the assumption that if you believe in yourself you can do anything. Losing is the result of not believing strongly enough. Several years ago, when I was working in human services, I was sent to a motivational seminar. The speaker was very upbeat and cheerful (as well as being one of the most hopelessly shallow human beings I’ve ever encountered), and his basic assumption was that we can do whatever we set our minds to, as long as we believe in ourselves.

G.K. Chesterton has an interesting discussion about this idea. Here’s what he says: “Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, ‘That man will get on; he believes in himself.’ And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written ‘Hanwell.’ [Hanwell was a London institution for the mentally ill.] I said to him, ‘Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.’ He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. ‘Yes, there are,’ I retorted, ‘and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter [a morally reprehensible person]. Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief...: the man who has it has ‘Hanwell’ written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus’” (Orthodoxy, pp. 9-10). These verses in chapter 2 of Habakkuk are written about people who believe thoroughly in themselves.

In our last sermon we saw that Habakkuk is wrestling with the problem of God’s justice. How can God make use of these wicked people, the Babylonians, to execute His justice? How does this fit with what we know to be true of Him? God gives Habakkuk an answer in the early part of the chapter, and part of the answer is this: although He is not carrying out His judgment immediately, He will do so in the future. A day of perfect justice is coming, in God’s own time and according to His perfect wisdom. Because of this, resisting His will, refusing to submit to His lordship, is foolish and self-destructive. Those who persist in this direction are on a collision course with reality. No matter how strenuously they believe in themselves, they’re going in a direction which is certain to fail miserably.

The first thing to notice is that these people are making false claims about themselves. These are people who delight in using power over others, but the power they’re using is not their own and one day it will be taken from them. The strength they are misusing has been given to them by God, but soon He’s going to take it away, and then everything they’ve done will crumble. Listen to verse 13: “Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?” They have a certain amount of freedom to misuse the gifts they’ve been given, but they don’t have control over the final outcome.

Everything we have in this life has been entrusted to us by God, and He’s going to call us to account one day for how we’ve used it. He’s entrusted us with the ability to influence others, and He entrusts some of us with a limited amount of power, but these are dangerous gifts. First of all, for a definition of power. It’s helpful to distinguish between power and authority. Power is primarily related to ability, and authority is primarily related to right. Authority is the right to command. If I say that someone has authority, I am saying that he has the right to give me a command, and to expect me to obey. If someone, in the rightful exercise of authority, gives me an order, I am obligated morally to obey.

Power, by contrast, is the ability to coerce. It’s the ability to make people do what I want. It’s the ability to compel people, contrary to their will, to obey my wishes. Both power and authority come from God, and He alone possesses both absolutely. To us humans, He gives limited authority and a degree of power. Human authority is always limited, and our use of power must always be limited by our God‑given authority.

The problem is that we have the ability to do things that we have no right to do. Strong people have the ability to bully those who are weaker. That’s what the Chaldeans were doing to all the other nations in the region. The rich and powerful have the ability to oppress the poor. This is a misuse of power; it’s an ability that one has no right to use. But power is not evil in itself. A mother has the authority to tell a small child not to run into the street, and if the child tries to do so anyway, she has the right to forcibly stop him. This is a legitimate exercise of power. If she then throws the child to the ground and starts kicking him, she has exceeded the bounds of her authority and is now misusing her superior strength. The police have the right to forcibly stop a person who is committing a crime, but if they take him back to the station and torture him, they have exceeded their authority. They may have the ability to do so, but they do not have the right.

So this is an important principle to hold onto: power must always be limited by authority, and power that is divorced from legitimate authority is always wrong. It’s also important to remind ourselves often that power, even when it’s legitimate, is a dangerous thing. We very easily become corrupted by it. George Whitefield, the great evangelist, says this about the temptation to power: “I find a love of power sometimes intoxicates even God’s own dear children, and makes them to mistake passion for zeal and an overbearing spirit for an authority given them from above. For my own part, I find it much easier to obey than to govern, and that it is much safer to be trodden under foot than to have it in one’s power to serve others so” (quoted by Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 2, p. 339). The temptation to exercise absolute power is the temptation Satan used on Eve: the temptation to be like God. We need to be always aware of the tremendous power of this temptation. The Babylonians, at the point in history that Habakkuk is describing, have become intoxicated with the lust for power. It’s corrupted them and dehumanized them. They’ve forgotten who they are as human beings, and they’ve begun to do things that they have no right to do. In abusing their power, they’re making false claims about themselves. They’ve forgotten that they are creatures who will one day be called to account for this power with which they’ve been entrusted.

The second thing is that they’re making false assumptions about the future. They’re assuming that things will always be as they are now, and that they can do things that will enable them to stay in control. They’re grasping for security by oppressing others: “Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin!” Here it is in the New Living Translation: “You believe your wealth will buy security, putting your families beyond the reach of danger.”

The problem with that way of thinking is that the world is headed in a direction that they are unaware of. They think the current arrangement is just the way the world is; that this arrangement, in which it’s possible for one nation to lord it over others and to become rich by oppressing and stealing from those who are weaker, will continue forever. But this situation is temporary; things are ultimately headed in a different direction: “Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

One of the most dangerous mistakes we can make, in looking at the condition of the world, is to assume that things will always be this way. The world is in an abnormal state. Things are not the way God created them to be. Sin has brought corruption into the world; oppression and tyranny are part of the world because people want to be like God. But this situation will not continue forever. The One the Babylonians are resisting is the One whose presence is going to fill the earth with overflowing abundance in the future. They’re resisting the lordship of the One who “accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will” (Ephesians 1:11). This One whose lordship they’re resisting is going to fill the earth with His glory; what will happen to them then?

The third thing to notice is that they’re making false assumptions about God. They’re trusting in gods that don’t exist at all: “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. Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’ Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it.” They’re putting their trust in an illusion, in gods that simply don’t exist; and soon the illusion is going to be taken away. The reality is stated in verse 20: “But the Lord is in his holy temple.” All the time that they are worshiping and serving false gods, the living God is exalted in His holy temple. He’s the One who gave them the power they’ve been abusing, but they’re giving the credit to these gods that don’t exist at all. These false gods are going to let them down, and they are going to be called to give account to God their creator, the One whose lordship they’ve rejected.

This passage divides up into five sections, each pronouncing condemnation on some aspect of the Babylonian nation. The last section, vv. 18-20, condemns their idolatry. Why have they become such evil, oppressive people? Partly because they’ve been worshiping gods made in their own image. The living God, who created us, confronts us with our sinfulness and calls us to repentance; but idols made in our own image affirm the worst things about us. They permit us to go on in our self-destructive ways; they tell us that everything is going to be fine. Here’s a good description of idolatry: “Pagans take that which is simply found within their nature; and taking what is as the measure of what is good, they represent it to themselves and make of it a god: man as the measure of all things” (Jeffrey Burke Satinover, “Jungians and Gnostics,” in First Things, October 1994, p. 44). They make gods in their own image, like the Babylonians. And here’s how it works out in practice: “In thus spiritualizing the instincts, pagan worship therefore tends naturally to the violent, the hedonistic, and the orgiastic. Pagan religious ritual arouses the instincts, especially sexuality and aggression, to the keenest possible pitch.... Violent intoxication, temple prostitution, the ritual slaughter of enemies, self-mutilation, even child sacrifice: all these historical phenomena can be understood not as pathological, but as predictable end-points to the unfettering of human nature” (Ibid.). The Babylonians became like they were by worshiping gods made in their own image, gods that affirmed the worst things about them, rather than calling them to repentance.

Those who resist God’s lordship are on a collision course with reality; they’re on a foolish, self-destructive course. They can’t possibly succeed. They’re trying to go against the grain of reality: the truth about themselves; the truth about the certain direction of the future; and the truth about God, the Creator of all things. Habakkuk’s series of woes ends with idolatry, because being deceived about God, worshiping idols, leads us to be deceived in all the other areas. So, if we don’t want to become like them, we need to begin by examining our assumptions about God. Are we bowing before God, the Creator and Lord of the universe, or are we manufacturing gods in our own image? Have we created a comfortable god, who tells us only things we want to hear, who affirms all the things we want to do, or are we bowing before the One who calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him? We may not be bowing before gods of wood or stone, but if we’ve created a safe, comfortable god, who only tells us things we want to hear, we’ve become idolaters. We’ve found a respectable way to evade God’s lordship in our lives; and we won’t succeed any more than the ancient Babylonians did. A false god will corrupt every area of our lives and will destroy us in the end.

We’re faced with two alternatives. We can invent gods that make it easy for us, for now, to live for ourselves, grasping after whatever we think will make us happy. But we’ll destroy ourselves in the end. And even in the meantime we’ll find, again and again, that these things are not what we were hoping for. St. Augustine was right: our hearts are restless until they find rest in Him. So the only real solution is to surrender to His lordship and seek Him. This is the conclusion the author of Ecclesiastes reaches near the end of his book: “Honor and enjoy your Creator while you’re still young, Before the years take their toll and your vigor wanes, Before your vision dims and the world blurs And the winter years keep you close to the fire” (12:1-2, The Message). Or this, from Hosea the prophet: “Come, let us return to the Lord! He has torn us in pieces; now he will heal us. He has injured us; now he will bandage our wounds. In just a short time, he will restore us so we can live in his presence. Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring” (6:1-3, NLT).

And that’s where Habakkuk, after all his questioning and struggling, leads us in the final chapter: “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.” Why can he say this? Because he knows things the Babylonians don’t know. He knows the truth about God, about himself, and about the future that this God is going to bring about: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” In the meantime, because we also know the truth, let’s press on to know this true, living God. Let’s make it the business of our lives to know Him and to walk under His lordship.

God's Justice in an Unjust World, Habakkuk 1:12-2:5

When I left India, in early 1979, I spent a few months in Belgium before returning to the States. The OM base where I was staying revolved mostly around two areas: finance and maintaining OM vehicles. I wasn’t of much use in either of these areas, but I guess the leaders decided I was likely to do less damage helping the mechanics. So I worked for three months, assisting in the garage. The head mechanic would give me simple jobs to do, by describing to me exactly what he wanted and what tools I’d need. Almost always, though, the jobs turned out to be more complex than I was expecting. I’d run into unexpected problems and find myself in over my head, so I’d have to go back and pester my boss with more questions. Because my understanding was so limited, this was a regular experience during the whole time I was there. The jobs were never really as simple as I expected, and they nearly always led to more questions than I could answer myself.

This is the position Habakkuk is in by the middle of chapter 1. We saw in the first sermon that he is struggling with living in a society that is in serious spiritual decline. The people are living in persistent rebellion against God and are even persecuting those who speak in His name. So Habakkuk cries out to God about the situation: “Why are you allowing these things to happen? Why don’t you do something?” And God responds, “I’m raising up the Babylonians to come and punish my people.” Habakkuk knows something about these Babylonians, so he responds, “what kind of an answer is this?” The answer he received to his first question hasn’t helped at all; it’s created more problems, raised more questions.

Conditions in this fallen world are such that it often looks like no one is in charge. Those who manage to get the upper hand, who gain an advantage over others by seizing power, or by having lots of money, or by learning to manipulate people, end up tyrannizing those under them. People, looking at this situation, often conclude that there is no God, or that if there is a God, He is either unjust or is powerless to bring about justice.

This is the problem Habakkuk is faced with in the middle of chapter 1. How can this answer he’s been given – that God is going to use the Babylonians to punish His people – how can this be consistent with what he knows about God? Listen to him, as his words are translated in The Message: “God, you’re from eternity, aren’t you? Holy God, we aren’t going to die, are we? God, you chose Babylonians for your judgment work? Rock-Solid God, you gave them the job of discipline? But you can’t be serious! You can’t condone evil! So why don’t you do something about this? Why are you silent now? This outrage! Evil men swallow up the righteous and you stand around and watch!” Habakkuk was complaining about his own people in the beginning, but the Babylonians are clearly worse. “How can they be the ones to deal out punishment? How can this be, and is it going to keep going on indefinitely? Is this the way things are, and are they going to continue in this direction? How can I reconcile this with what I already know about God?” God’s response to Habakkuk, at the beginning of chapter 2, tells us some important things about His justice in this world that’s so full of injustice.

The first thing is that God’s justice is not apparent on the surface of things. Habakkuk needs to be attentive and put himself in the way of receiving an answer to the question: “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.” Some of the commentators are very concerned about whether or not Habakkuk actually goes up into a watchtower. They want us to be sure to understand that this is a spiritual exercise that Habakkuk is engaged in, and that he doesn’t actually need to go anywhere special. It’s something that happens within him, in his heart.

But this is a false dichotomy. What we do, and where we are, has an immense impact on the things that happen within us. A friend of mine told me about being on a fishing trip, and one of the men he was with said, “I don’t need to be in church; God speaks to me right here.” So my friend asked him, “Is that true? What does He say to you?” And, of course, the man didn’t have a response. God wasn’t speaking to him, he was just doing something he liked and he felt good about it. When I hear people say, “I can worship God anywhere,” or “I don’t need to set aside special times and places for prayer; I can pray anywhere, anytime;” I usually assume that these people are spending very little time, if any at all, in worship and prayer. It’s true that we can pray anytime, anywhere. But it’s also true that God calls us to set aside times and places to worship Him and cultivate His presence, and when we refuse to do this we end up not praying and worshiping much at all. Was Habakkuk literally stationing himself on one of the watchposts of the city? Probably not. But I’m certain that he had specific times and places where he cultivated God’s presence, and that’s what he’s describing here. He raised the question, then he diligently and persistently put himself in the way of receiving an answer from God.

The author of Psalm 73 is wrestling with a similar question. He begins the psalm by affirming the goodness of God: “Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart.” He believes that this is true, but then he goes on to say that he went through a time of doubt in this area. He looked around him and saw wicked people prospering; they oppressed others and got away with it; they seemed to live charmed lives, not struggling like other people: “For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people.... Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning” (vv. 4-5, 12-14). He looked around and saw that wicked people had a much easier, less painful life than he did. So he began wondering, “what’s the point of my obedience?” But here’s the turning point in the psalm: “until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end” (v. 17). He went into the place set aside for corporate worship, the place that God had set aside for making Himself known to the people, and then God enabled him to see the truth. What we’re doing, and where we put ourselves, will have an effect on our spiritual perception. Can we pray and worship God anywhere, anytime? Yes, but only if we begin by praying and worshiping Him together with His people in those places and times where He has chosen to make Himself known. God’s justice is not apparent on the surface of things. Habakkuk needs to be attentive and put himself in the way of receiving an answer to his question. The same thing is true for us.

The second thing is that God’s justice is not going to appear in its fullness right away. He’s not going to crush injustice immediately. He tells Habakkuk two things that point in this direction: 1) write it down (so that if will be available for people to read in the future); and 2) be patient and wait for it to come. Here it is in The Message: “Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision-message is a witness pointing to what’s coming. It aches for the coming – it can hardly wait! And it doesn’t lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time.” It will come right on time, but not on our timetable. Our calling is to “wait for it” in confidence that God will carry out His plans in His own time and according to His own wisdom.

But waiting patiently is not resigning ourselves to the injustice all around us. It doesn’t mean that we just say, “oh well, that’s just the way things are; there’s no use getting worked up about it.” If you never get worked up about the injustice of this world, you don’t understand what’s going on; you may have managed to safely insulate yourself from the suffering of others in this world, but what you’re doing is not the thing God is calling Habakkuk to do. Psalm 37 is another psalm that addresses this problem. The psalmist begins with the words, “Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers” (v. 1). Why does he begin this way? Because fretting, getting worked up about it, is a very natural response. So he’s saying, recognize the larger truth about the situation (“for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb”), and turn your heart to the Lord (“Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security”). He’s saying, “you’re going to need to be intentional to keep yourself from fretting over this; you’re only going to be able to do this by turning to the Lord for help and recognizing that He will set things right in His own time and way.”

Waiting on God’s time is not stoic resignation. Paul has a good description of what it’s like to wait on God for the fulfillment of His purposes in this world: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:22-25). We’re waiting in patience for the fulfillment of our hope, but during this in-between time we “groan inwardly.” We’re filled with longing, and we cry out to God, like we see Habakkuk, and the psalmists, doing: “How much longer, O Lord?”

This leads to the third point, which is this: though it may, at present, appear otherwise, those who trust in God and obey Him are better off now and will be infinitely better off in the future. Even while we’re waiting in faith and hope, we are better off than those who appear to have the upper hand right now. Listen to verse 4 in The Message: “Look at that man, bloated by self-importance – full of himself but soul-empty. But the person in right standing before God, through loyal and steady believing is fully alive, really alive.” Jesus said, “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?” (Mark 8:36-37, The Message). That man, “bloated by self-importance,” is in the process of losing his soul.

If we only look at things as they are right now, in this particular slice of time, we’ll get an inaccurate picture. Those who live by faith in God have life and are moving in the direction of greater fullness of life in eternity. The wicked are dead, alienated from the source of life and of all good, and they are moving in the direction of ultimate, final separation. The consequences of the life of faith are infinitely more desirable than anything the wicked are able to take by force in this life.

So, how do we, as Christians, respond to the reality of injustice in the world? We cultivate God’s presence and influence in our lives. He is the source of all justice. If we’re concerned when we see injustice, our concern should drive us to Him, not away from Him. Habakkuk models that for us. As we draw closer to Him, we’ll be able to see things in clearer perspective. We bring our concerns and questions to Him, like Habakkuk did, then we put ourselves in the way of receiving an answer. Then we accept the fact that injustice is going to be part of this world until the Lord returns. We don’t like that, and we don’t just resign ourselves to it. We do all we can to reduce injustice and to work for justice within the context of our individual callings. Christians have historically been engaged in seeking to make this world a better place to live by showing compassion and working for laws that prevent brutality and exploitation. But we do that within the context of a world that’s in rebellion against God and that repeatedly asserts its independence from Him. Because of that, our success is always less than what we desire, and we pray and long for that day when we will live together in the new heaven and new earth. We live by faith, in anticipation of that time when everything will be made right, and we will see God face to face. We work for justice, but we recognize that we won’t be able to eradicate injustice until that day when God makes all things new.

And when we begin crying out to God about injustice, we see that the problem is not just “out there.” The problem is also within us. Injustice is a result of sin, and we are sinners. Our central focus is in these words in verse 4, which in many ways are the central point of the book. This phrase, “the righteous will live by their faith,” is quoted three times in the New Testament, twice by the Apostle Paul and once in Hebrews (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38-39). Paul uses it at the beginning of his great exposition of the gospel in Romans: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.” We’re made right with God by faith, and we continue to live in a right relationship with Him through faith. This gospel is the “power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith.” This gospel is the only hope for sinful people living in this fallen world with all its injustice. Jesus has borne the weight of the world's sin, ours included; the price has been paid in full, not just for our individual salvation, but for the healing of this world.

As people made right with God by faith, this is what we look forward to: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:1-5). Until that day, may God help us to walk with Him, cultivating His presence in every area of our lives; may He help us to live increasingly according to the life of His eternal kingdom, seeking to show mercy and grace to others in His name; and may He enable us to hold firmly to the hope of the gospel and to proclaim that message to all in the hope that they will believe and be saved. “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered” (Psalm 130:3-4). That forgiveness comes to us in the gospel, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” May we, having contributed, even in seemingly small ways, to the injustice of this world, know the power of that forgiveness in our own lives, and may we offer it to others and pray that they will believe and be reconciled to God.