From Fear to Faith

Rejoicing In The Lord In Turbulent Times

D Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Martin Lloyd-Jones

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781844745005
• eBook ISBN:
  9781844747054
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

The country was on the brink of a devastating invasion. Famine threatened. Violence and social injustice filled the land. Habakkuk the Old Testament prophet had every reason to sink into despair. Where was God in these turbulent times?
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of the twentieth century's foremost preachers and Bible teachers. The parallels he draws between the message of Habakkuk and the crisis-ridden West are still powerfully relevant to our own times. Here is the secret of the problem of history. No event, however catastrophic, fails to find a place in Godâ?Ts loving purpose for humanity. Habakkuk's great assertion of faith, in the midst of enormous personal upheaval and emotional strain, can be ours: 'Yet I will rejoice in the LORD... The Sovereign LORD is my strength.'

CHAPTER ONE

THE STRANGENESS OF GOD’S WAYS

Habakkuk i. 1—11

A. Two Statements of Fact

The message of Habakkuk is sorely needed in these days when so many are perplexed by this problem of history. We begin, therefore, with two statements of fact:

I. GOD’S WAYS ARE OFTEN MYSTERIOUS

(a) His inaction

The first thing we discover when we study God’s actions is that He may seem to be strangely silent and inactive in provocative circumstances. Why is it that God permits certain things to happen? Why is the Christian Church what she is today? Look at her history over the last forty or fifty years. Why has God permitted such conditions? Why has He allowed ‘modernism’ to arise, undermining the faith and even denying its fundamental truths? Why does He not strike these people dead as they utter their blasphemy and their denials of the faith which they are ordained to preach? Why does He allow so many wrong things to be done even in His name?

Again, why has not God answered the prayers of His faithful people? We have been praying for revival for thirty or forty years. Our prayers have been sincere and zealous. We have bemoaned the state of affairs and have cried out to God on account of it. But still nothing seems to happen. Like the prophet Habakkuk many are asking ‘How long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear, even cry out unto thee of violence and thou wilt not save?’ But this is not only the problem of the Church as a whole; it is also the question which confronts so many people personally. There are those who have been praying about someone who is dear to them for many years, and God does not seem to answer. They reason within themselves like this: ‘Surely it is the will of God that a man should become a Christian? Well, I have been praying for him for all these years and nothing seems to happen. Why? Why is God thus silent?’ People are often impatient about this. Why does He not answer our prayers? How can we understand a holy God permitting His own Church to be as she is today?

(b) His unexpected providences

A second thing we discover is that God sometimes gives unexpected answers to our prayers. This, more than anything else, was what really startled Habakkuk. For a long time God does not seem to answer at all. Then, when He does answer, what He says is even more mysterious than His apparent failure to listen to our prayers. Habakkuk was quite clear in his own mind that the need was for God to chastise the nation and then send a great revival. But when God replied, ‘I am answering you by raising up the Chaldean army to go right through and destroy your cities’, that was the last thing he could ever have imagined that God would say. But that is what God did tell him, and that is what actually took place.

John Newton wrote a poem describing a similar personal experience. He felt that he wanted something better in his spiritual life. He cried out for a deeper knowledge of God. He expected some wonderful vision of Him rending the heavens and coming down to shower blessing into his life. But instead of this Newton had an experience in which for months God seemed to have abandoned him to Satan. He was tempted and tried beyond his comprehension. Yet at last he did come to understand and saw that that was God’s way of answering his prayer. God had allowed him to go down into the depths to teach him to depend entirely on Him. Then, when Newton had learned his lesson, He brought him out of his trial.

We all tend to prescribe the answers to our prayers. We think that God can come in only one way. But Scripture teaches us that God sometimes answers our prayers by allowing things to become much worse before they become better. He may sometimes do the opposite of what we anticipate. He may overwhelm us by confronting us with a Chaldean army. Yet it is a fundamental principle in the life and walk of faith that we must always be prepared for the unexpected when we are dealing with God. I wonder what our fathers would have thought forty years ago if they could have had a pre-view of the state of the Christian Church today. They were unhappy enough about things even then. They were already having meetings for revival and for seeking God. If they could see the Church at the present time, they would not believe their eyes. They could never have imagined that spiritually the Church could have sunk so low. Yet God has allowed this to happen. It has been an unexpected answer. We must hold on to the hope that He has allowed things to become worse before they finally become better.

(c) His unusual instruments

A third surprising feature of God’s ways is that He sometimes uses strange instruments to correct His Church and people. The Chaldeans, of all people, are the ones whom God is going to raise up to chastise Israel! Such a thing was unthinkable. But here again is a fact which is evident right through Scripture. God, if He so wishes, can use even a godless Chaldean. In the course of history He has used all sorts of strange and unexpected instruments to bring His purposes to pass. This is a very relevant fact today, for it would seem that, according to the Bible, much of what is happening in the world now must be regarded in this light. We may perhaps go further and say positively that Communism, which seems to be feared by so many Christians today, is but an instrument which God is using to deal with His own people.

The importance of all this lies in the fact that, if we do not view these things in the right way, our prayers will be wrongly conceived and wrongly directed. We have to realize the true state of the Church, and recognize its iniquity. We must understand that it is possible that the forces which today are most antagonistic to the Christian Church are possibly being used by God for His own purpose. The plain teaching of the prophet is that God may use very strange instruments indeed, and sometimes the very last instrument that we would have expected.

II. GOD’S WAYS ARE OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD

(a) By careless religious people

God’s ways are often strange and perplexing and surprise at what He does is felt by more than one type of person. It is, first of all, a matter of great surprise to the more careless amongst religious people. In Hab. i. 5, God refers to the godless in Israel, those who had become careless and slack. ‘Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously; for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.’ Their attitude was: ‘Here is that prophet telling us that God is going to use the Chaldeans. As if God could do anything like that! There is no real danger; don’t listen to him. These prophets are always alarmists, and threatening us with evil. The very idea that God would raise up a people like the Chaldeans to chastise Israel! The whole thing is impossible!’ The trouble with Israel was that they would never believe the prophets. Yet, in fact, God did deal with His people exactly as He said He would.

The attitude we find in Israel is as old as the Flood. God warned the ancient world of judgment through Noah, saying, ‘My Spirit shall not always strive with man’. But men scoffed and said that such a thing was monstrous and could not happen. It was the same with Sodom and Gomorrah. Easy-going people could never believe that their cities would be destroyed. They said God would intervene before that happened, and continued in their indolent ways in the hope that God would deliver them without much trouble to themselves. In the time of Habakkuk the attitude was the same. But God did raise up the Chaldeans, and Israel was attacked and conquered. The nation was laid low and carried away into captivity.

The most signal illustration of this principle is recorded in Acts xiii where the apostle Paul quotes the fifth verse of Habakkuk i and applies it to his contemporaries. He declares in effect: ‘No, you will not believe, any more than your fathers did. But because Israel has not recognized her Messiah, has even crucified Him, and now refuses to believe His gospel, God is at last going to act in judgment. He is going to raise up the Roman power to sack and to destroy your temple, and you yourselves will be cast out among the nations. I know you will not believe this, for the prophet Habakkuk has already prophesied it, and you are continuing to ignore his message.’ The year A.D. 70 inexorably came. The Roman legions surrounded Jerusalem and destroyed it and the Jews were cast out among the nations where they remain until this day. It is true that careless religious people never believe the prophets. They always say, ‘God will never do such things!’ But I am reminding you that God does so act. God may be using Communism in our time to chastise His own people and to teach them a lesson. We dare not continue, therefore, to be smug and indolent, saying it is unthinkable that God could use such an instrument. We must not allow ourselves to be lulled into the state of those who dwell at ease in Zion and who fail to read the signs of the times.

(b) By the world

In the second place, God’s ways are very surprising to the world. ‘Then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, and offend, imputing this his power unto his god’ (Hab. i. 11). The Chaldeans completely failed to realize that they were being used by God and imputed all their success to their own god. They thought that they owed their success to their own military prowess, and boasted of the fact. But God was soon to demonstrate to them that it was not so, and that as He had raised them up so He could cast them down. The world, even more than God’s own people, fails to understand God’s ways. Those arrogant powers, which have been used by God for His own purpose at various times in history, have always prided themselves on their achievements. The pride of the modern world in its scientific progress and in its political systems is typical of this. Because the enemies of the Christian faith see the Church languishing and find themselves coming into the ascendancy, they impute their success ‘unto their own God’. They fail to understand the true meaning of history. Great powers have been raised up and have conquered for a while, but they have always become drunk with their own successes. And suddenly, they in turn have found themselves cast down. The real significance of history never dawns upon them.

(c) By the prophet himself

Lastly, God’s ways were baffling even to the prophet himself. But his reaction was a very different one. His question was as to how all this is to be reconciled with the holiness of God. He exclaims, ‘O Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there are (those) that raise up strife and contention.’

B. The Biblical Answer

It must suffice to establish the following general biblical principles by way of an answer to this problem of history:

I. HISTORY IS UNDER DIVINE CONTROL

‘For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation.’ God controls not only Israel, but also His enemies, the Chaldeans. Every nation on earth is under the hand of God, for there is no power in this world that is not ultimately controlled by Him. Things are not what they appear to be. It seemed to be the astute military prowess of the Chaldeans that had brought them into the ascendancy. But it was not so at all, for God had raised them up. God is the Lord of history. He is seated in the heavens and the nations to Him are ‘as grasshoppers, as a drop in a bucket, or as the small dust of the balance.’ The Bible asserts that God is over all. He started the historical process, He is controlling it, and He is going to end it. We must never lose sight of this crucial fact.

II. HISTORY FOLLOWS A DIVINE PLAN

Things do not just happen. Events are not just accidental, for there is a definite plan of history and everything has been pre-arranged from the beginning. God who ‘sees the end from the beginning’ has a purpose in it all, and knows ‘the times and the seasons’. He knows when to bless Israel and when not to bless her. Everything is under His hand. It was ‘when the fullness of the time was come’ that God sent forth His Son. He allowed the great philosophers, with their clarification of thought, to come first. Then emerged the Romans, famous for ordered government, building their roads and spreading their wonderful legal system throughout the world. It was after this that God sent forth His Son. God had planned it all.

There is a purpose in history, and what is now happening in this twentieth century is not accidental. Remembering that the Church is at the centre of God’s plan, let us never forget the pride and arrogance of the Church in the nineteenth century. Behold her sitting back in self-satisfaction, enjoying her so-called cultured sermons and learned ministry, feeling just a little ashamed to mention such things as conversion and the work of the Holy Spirit. Observe the prosperous Victorian comfortably enjoying his worship. Note his faith in science and his readiness to substitute philosophy for revelation. How constantly he denied the very spirit of the New Testament! Yes, the Church needed chastisement, and it is not at all difficult to understand this twentieth century when we consider the story of the nineteenth. There is indeed a plan discernible in all these things.

III. HISTORY FOLLOWS A DIVINE TIMETABLE

God does not stop to consult us, and everything takes place according to ‘the counsel of His own will’. God has His time; He has His own way; and He acts and works accordingly.

IV. HISTORY IS BOUND UP WITH THE DIVINE KINGDOM

The key to the history of the world is the kingdom of God. The story of the other nations mentioned in the Old Testament is relevant only as it bears upon the destiny of Israel. And ultimately history today is relevant only as it bears upon the history of the Christian Church. What really matters in the world is God’s kingdom. From the very beginning, since the fall of man, God has been at work establishing a new kingdom in the world. It is His own kingdom, and He is calling people out of the world into that kingdom; and everything that happens in the world has relevance to it. It is still only in process of formation, but it will finally reach its perfect consummation. Other events are of importance as they have a bearing upon that event.

The problems of today are to be understood only in its light. What God is permitting in the Church and in the world today is related to His great purpose for His own Church and kingdom.

Let us not therefore be stumbled when we see surprising things happening in the world. Rather let us ask, ‘What is the relevance of this event to the kingdom of God?’ Or, if strange things are happening to you personally, don’t complain, but say, ‘What is God teaching me through this? What is there in me that needs to be corrected? Where have I gone wrong and why is God allowing these things?’ There is a meaning in them if only we can see it. We need not become bewildered and doubt the love or the justice of God. If God were unkind enough to answer some of our prayers at once, and in our way, we should be very impoverished Christians. Fortunately, God sometimes delays His answer in order to deal with selfishness or things in our lives which should not be there. He is concerned about us, and intends to fit us for a fuller place in His kingdom. We should therefore judge every event in the light of God’s great, eternal and glorious purpose.

CHAPTER TWO

THE PROPHET’S PERPLEXITY

Habakkuk i. 12—17 (especially verses 12 and 13)

A. How to Face the Problem

It is important for the Christian not only to read the newspapers and to understand something of what is happening in the world, but to understand the significance of events. There are, in our time, grave dangers confronting the Church and, unless she is careful, like Israel of old she may enter into political alliances to try to stave off the very thing which God has ordained. It is essential that the Church should not view things with a political eye, but learn to interpret events spiritually and to understand them in the light of God’s instructions to her. What to the natural man is utterly abhorrent, and even disastrous, may be the very thing God is using to chastise us and to restore us to a right relationship to Himself. So we must not jump to hasty conclusions.

I. THE IMPORTANCE OF RIGHT METHODS OF APPROACH

Most of the problems and perplexities of the Christian life arise from a lack of the right method of approach. It is much more important that we should know the method of approach than that we should have pat answers to particular problems. People usually want a clear answer to a specific question, but the Bible does not always give us what we desire in this respect. It does, however, teach us a method. We are apt to panic and to jump to false conclusions when the unexpected happens and when God is dealing with us in a strange and unusual manner. In Psalm lxxiii we are taught the danger of speaking unadvisedly with our lips. The Psalmist, seeing certain evils, exclaimed, ‘Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.’ Was there any point, therefore, in being religious? But he suddenly pulled himself up and said, ‘If I should speak thus...’, realizing that he had spoken unadvisedly with his lips. He had begun to speak without really thinking.

In every such situation we must discover the right way to act. The problem may come in a personal form; it may come to us nationally; or it may come to us as world citizens in the wider sphere of historical events. So let us analyze carefully this perfect example of the method of approach of which so many are found in the Bible.

II. THE METHOD DESCRIBED

(a) Stop to think

The first rule is to think instead of speaking. ‘Be swift to hear,’ says James, ‘slow to speak, slow to wrath’ (Jas. i. 19). Our trouble is that we are swift to speak and swift to wrath, but slow to think. According to this prophet, however, the first thing to do is to ponder. Before expressing our reactions we must discipline ourselves to think. It may seem superfluous to emphasize this, yet we all know well that this is where we most often go wrong.

(b) Re-state basic principles

The next rule is that when you start to think you must not begin with your immediate problem. Begin further back. Apply the strategy of the indirect approach. This is a well-known principle in military planning. The real enemy in the last war was Germany, but the Allies began to defeat Germany in North Africa, a strategy of indirect approach. Such an approach is sometimes of vital importance in the spiritual life, especially when we are confronted with a problem such as the one before us. We need to start our thinking further back, and to approach the immediate problem indirectly.

We must first remind ourselves of those things of which we are absolutely certain, things which are entirely beyond doubt. Write them down and say to yourself: ‘In this terrible and perplexing situation in which I find myself, here at least is solid ground’. When, walking on moorlands, or over a mountain range, you come to bogs, the only way to negotiate them is to find solid places on which you can place your feet. The way to get across the morasses and the places in which you are liable to sink is to search for footholds. So, in spiritual problems, you must return to eternal and absolute principles. The psychology of this is obvious, for the moment you turn to basic principles, you immediately begin to lose your sense of panic. It is a great thing to reassure your soul with those things that are beyond dispute.

(c) Apply the principles to the problem

Then, having done that, you can take the next step. Put the particular problem into the context of those firm principles which are before you. The fact of the matter is that all problems are capable of solution only if they are put into the right context. The way to interpret a difficult text of Scripture is to consider its context. We often mistake the meaning of a phrase because we take it out of its context; but when you put your problem text into its conte...

Table of contents

• From FEAR to FAITH
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF HABAKKUK
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• Footnotes