Faith, Prayer, and Trust in Divine Justice

1. "So we're going to start with Habakkuk. Who is Habakkuk? Habakkuk is a prophet. He was a prophet from Judah. And he is writing his complaint, his oracle, comes after Babylon has come, destroyed Jerusalem, and taken people. God's people into exile. This is the time Jeremiah was writing when he wrote his book, Lamentations. This is a time, something that Daniel saw as an eyewitness to of Judah falling, the unimaginable happening. The temple taken, God's people taken into exile, and a time of chaos, of suffering, of despair, of disillusionment. A time where the prophets wrote as if the world itself had ended." [00:33:38] (60 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "Habakkuk is a little different than other prophets. Typically, when you think of a prophet, you think of someone who receives a word from God. You think of someone who receives a word from God. You think of someone who receives a word from God. And goes and says it to his people. Sometimes it's something they don't want to hear, which is why Jesus speaks of prophets as ones who are cast out, even killed. Other times it's a word of comfort, like the end of Isaiah, parts of Jeremiah, a promise. Generally, at the end of the prophets comes a good, encouraging word. Habakkuk is different. Whereas a prophet normally receives from God and gives to his people." [00:36:44] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Habakkuk takes the grief, the lament, the confusion, the dread, the fear, the concern of what kind of world are my kids going to inherit, and he takes those all to God and says to him in, as Sue mentioned, his second complaint. And I say second because, as you might have guessed, there was a first. I would encourage you to read the book of Habakkuk. It's sort of similar to Jonah, where it's not difficult to read without knowing much of the historic context. And it really is a dialogue between God and his prophet, where the prophet speaks to God and brings that to him, and ending with the haunting words, why are you silent?" [00:37:13] (56 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "At first glance, this reads a little bit like an interrogation. I thought, you know, it might be helpful to revisit C .S. Lewis's essay, God and the Dock. Are you familiar with that essay where he's talking about his time in the Royal Air Force, and he's making some observations about modern people, modern being in the 1940s, and he writes that we are the first people to put God in the dock, and the dock, of course, is a reference to courtroom. Dock is where you put somebody on the stand to offer an explanation, to give witness to something, and he says, through other generations, we've always thought that God put us on trial, but here we are putting God on trial, that he has some accounting to us that he must do." [00:38:48] (56 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "God is not being put on trial by, it's a small nuance, I think, but the more I read C .S. Lewis's essay, I thought, that's a really helpful articulation of a modern problem, but that is not what is happening with Habakkuk. When you heard his words, you heard at the beginning an acknowledgement of God, who he is. God is fundamentally different, greater than us. Habakkuk never cast a doubt on that. There's never a hint that God has done something wrong. There's never a hint that God has done something himself is unjust, or that God has not responded appropriately to what is happening all around him." [00:40:29] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "What the prayer is, is a genuinely curious attempt to reconcile what Habakkuk knows to be true about God, his faithfulness in the past, and what is happening all around him. You are good. You are just. You will never die. All your ways, are good. Why is it, then, that we're suffering like this? Why is it that you are silent? Your words would change everything. You could intervene. You could rescue us in the past. Why haven't you? You know, when we pray the Lord's Prayer, it's important to note how the Lord's Prayer begins. Our Father in heaven, holy is your name." [00:41:03] (50 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "Let's move to Jesus. Jesus tells a story. So Jesus tells a story, and what is the purpose of the story? Luke tells us in chapter 18, verse 1, why is it that Jesus told this very strange story about a widow seeking justice? What is it that Luke says? In order that you might always pray and never give up. So the story that Jesus tells us, his intent in telling us this story, is so that we will be a people of persistent, constant prayer." [00:42:59] (38 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "Prepare now, be in the habit of prayer, so that when you really need it, there, I once heard that the time to dig a well is before you're thirsty, and the time to learn to pray is before you need to pray, before you actually need it, to develop this habit. So Jesus wants his disciples to habituate themselves in prayer, so that when the cataclysm comes, there's a well that they can draw from. And the story he does tell is a woman, a widow, seeking justice against her opponent. So he chooses a widow. So here is someone that would have been vulnerable." [00:44:30] (43 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "What is the widow left with? What is she to do? What is her next course of what to do? The system's not working for her. There are laws established by God that are not being followed. So, what she does is relentlessly begin to, and the word here is harass him, over and over again. In the world before, spamming was invented. She's old school spamming, knocking on the door, finding him in places, embarrassing him publicly. She's not doing that. She's not doing that. She's not doing that. He's out there with friends, and she says, there's the judge who denies justice." [00:46:26] (35 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10. "It's easy to miss the turn that Jesus makes in here and think, well, prayer must be constantly pestering God until he finally says, fine, I'll give it to you. That's not the point. So, let's look a little bit more carefully about what this parable is about. In there, the parable moves from a judge who does not fear what people say what God thinks, and then he says, how much more? So, it's intended to be a contrast. If in prayer, if our posture of prayer is pleading, persisting, thinking that we need to persuade God to do something the way the widow had to persuade the judge through pestering him, how much more confidently can we come before God in prayer knowing that He does not need to be persuaded to do what is right, that He does not need to be shown something that you can see that He's unaware of?" [00:48:19] (71 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)