"Hind's Feet on High Places"
Maybe you've never heard of Habakkuk. Who is he? How do you even say it? This accent you might hear coming over your television set is not really an accent, at least I don't think so, its called English, and we say Ha'-buk-kuk. So whether its Ha-ba'-kuk or Ha'-buk-kuk, we're going to talk about a man we find in about the middle of our Bible, in the minor prophets. We're going to talk about some questions that he had and how God answered them. Because the questions he had are the same sort of questions that you and I have.

I heard about a little boy who kept asking his daddy questions. "How many people in the world, Dad?"

"I don't know, Son."

"How much water in the oceans, Dad?"

"I don't know, Son."

"How many pines does a porcupine have?"

"How should I know, Son?"

"Dad, you don't mind me asking you all these questions do you?"

"No, Son. How are you going to learn if you don't ask questions?"

Now that might bring a smile to our face. Maybe all of us have been caught unawares by our children asking many questions and trying to brush them off. But have you ever felt like that when you're asking questions from God? Do you ever feel like that little boy, saying, "God, why this? and why? that and why the other?" And have you ever gotten the feeling that he's pushing you away, or he doesn't know the answer, that you can't quite hear what he's trying to say to you. Now that was Habakkuk's problem. He had a lot of questions. Christian people, people who believe in God and acknowledge Jesus Christ as their savior and friend, they're allowed to have questions. Sometimes we go all the way through our lives without having some of them answered.

Habakkuk lived at a time when good King Josiah had just been killed in battle and bad King Jehoakim was on the throne. Now, he had some questions about that. How come all the good guys get killed off? Just when we're getting somewhere and Israel looks in pretty good shape, the king that made it all happen gets killed in battle. And what do we get instead? A fellow that's taking our country right down to the dregs, on a slippery slope. Is God there? Does he care? These were some of the questions that Habakkuk had. He felt that God was inactive and indifferent. In fact at the beginning of the book of Habakkuk he says this, "How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you don't listen; or cry out violence, but you don't save?"

I was talking to a woman just the other day. She has a daughter who got pregnant out of wedlock. She wanted to have an abortion, but her parents persuaded her to keep the child. She kept the child, lived with her boyfriend, and then the parents of that couple became suspicious that dreadful things were happening to their little grandchild, dreadful things, abusive things. In the end, they turned their child over to the authorities and the authorities found out that this was indeed so. The couple disappeared. The grandparents do not know where they are. But week after week I meet with that friend of mine and we pray prayers like this. "How long, O Lord, must we call for help but you do not listen, or cry out to you violence but you do not save?" It's hard not to have questions when bad things happen to good people, isn't it?

That's what Habakkuk said. "God is inactive, God is indifferent. I feel he really doesn't care. He really isn't there. It really isn't fair." Have you ever said that? Habakkuk said, "Even the law has let me down. It's paralyzed. Justice never prevails." Perhaps some of you have taken a grievance to court and you feel you haven't had your due and justice didn't prevail. Perhaps you've become bitter about it and you've got questions about it. Why doesn't God do something?

Well, Habakkuk had questions and he decided to stand upon his tower, he says at the beginning of chapter 2, and station himself upon the ramparts and "look to see what God will say to me." And he listens. He draws himself apart. He does those things we were talking about at the beginning of the program. He prays about it and he says, "I'm going to stay here until I get an answer from God, because I've got some pretty heavy questions." Well, God leans out of heaven and he says, "Habakkuk, first the bad news, then the worse news." And he simply told Habakkuk that if he thought it was bad now, just wait awhile, because it was going to get a whole lot worse. And God explains in chapters 1 and 2 that the Chaldeans, or the Babalonians, are going to come. And if you read the beginning of Habakkuk, which I hope you'll do - if you have a Bible in the home - after this program, you'll find that God describes in graphic detail how bad it's going to be when they arrive. And that just leaves Habakkuk with a whole lot more questions, he now really feels like that little boy I talked about at the beginning of the program. "How many of them will there be God?" And the answers he gets this time are clear from Heaven. He can hear them. He knows what God is saying, but he becomes more and more confused. How could God use a wicked nation to punish Judah, God's people? It doesn't make sense? Is God at fault?

Now then, once you lose faith in the character of God I don't know where you're going to get your questions answered. If you stop really beating the doors of Heaven and saying, "God explain. Somehow give me a reason for this terrible mess I find myself in." And if you begin to suspect that God is playing with you, that he isn't really fair, well that's what happened to Habakkuk. Can it happen to a prophet? Yes, of course it can. Can it happen to a Christian? Of course it can. Life isn't easy. God does send his rain on the just and the unjust all together. Bad things do happen to good people. But if you lose faith in God's character you're really in a mess.

You see, if you look at God, and just imagine that my Bible is God [holding Bible up], and you look at God through your problems, and my hand is the problems [holding hand before Bible], then God appears very small and insignificant and he can't help you at all. But if you look at your problems through your great, big God [holding Bible in front of hand], then you get things in perspective. Then you get things in perspective. And that's what Habakkuk began to do. When you're faced with a moral problem in Divine government of the universe to which you can find no solution, then you have to stand upon your tower and you have to take time out to exercise that wonderful God-given intellect and find your way into this word of God which has the answers that seem to be unanswerable. And you have to stay there long enough for the still small voice to begin to make sense to you.

What God did was a wonderful thing. He began to show himself to the prophet. Now this is what happened to Job. Job was in a mess too, if you remember. All in a day the whole of his life fell apart and what happened? God, in the end, gave him such a vision of himself that he was left totally without a question mark left in his life. And it was just as if he said, "I've had one glimpse of God and that's enough. I'll wait until I get to Heaven, see him face to face. I don't need to know the answer now."

And God, in a sense, did that for Habakkuk. But he did more than just give him the vision of himself in chapter 3 a wonderful vision of his might and his power in creation, and all the things that he was able to do. He did a lot more than that. He assured Habakkuk that he was there, that he did care and that it would be fair one day. And that was the secret.

There's a lovely poem that's a great favorite of mine.

Not 'til the loom is silent,
And the shuttle cease to fly,
Will God unveil a canvas,
And show the reason why,
The black threads are as needful,
In the weaver's skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver,
In the pattern he has planned.