17th Sunday after Pentecost (Prop 22 – C)
Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
October 5, 2025
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The text that I have chosen for this morning’s sermon is the Old Testament reading from Habakkuk.
O Lord, how long? Job poured out his heart and soul with these words 4,000 years ago. King David 3,000 years ago. Habakkuk 2,600 years ago. The martyrs in Heaven for 2,000 years ago and counting. Christians who have endured suffering century after century since then. And you? How long has it been? When was the last time you asked, “O Lord, how long?” When was the last time your heart pounded on the Heaven’s door while pleading “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?” When you were a helpless child? When your child died? Your spouse betrayed you? After the diagnosis? After the divorce? During hard financial times? A time of darkness and depression? Maybe you’ve never lamented to God in such a manner, in that case, praise God. Or maybe you feel cursed because you never had a reason to not ask “How long?”
If the saints in the Bible are allowed to ask “How long?”, so are you. It’s not a sin to plead for the Lord to hear our prayers. You’ll notice that Habakkuk’s lament wasn’t mean spirited not was it a cry for vengeance. He simply wanted to know when God was going to defend Himself and His people. When will He destroy the wicked? When will He deal with those who inflict violence on the innocent? The innocent, perhaps you, want deliverance from the wickedness in your life or the life of someone you love. “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?” This is the cry of the Christians being slaughtered in Nigeria and imprisoned in China. This is the question of the abused, the sex trafficked, and the unwilling porn stars. Laments are fitting for a world of wickedness.
Habakkuk tells God about the violence which surrounds him, but it appears that God won’t even acknowledge that. Why won’t God intervene on the behalf of His children. Surely, I’m not the only one disturbed by the murder of the unborn, the sick, and the elderly? When churches, and I use the term loosely, affirm abortion and assisted suicide why isn’t God zapping them with a lightning bolt to protect the innocent? Why are police officers killed for doing their jobs? Why are innocent people stabbed on buses and pushed onto the tracks of the subway? Why isn’t God angry about those who cheer murder, violence, and crime? Job asked, “Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?” Why does God allow the wicked to prosper and the innocent suffer, and for how long?
Habakkuk goes on to say: “Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?” We sure see a lot of iniquity, don’t we? Sin, crime, and violence fill our TV and phone screens. Current events cause anxiety and fear in the young and old. And what’s so frustrating is that God could stop all this with a snap of His fingers. He could stop it all just by thinking about snapping His fingers. But He doesn’t. Why does He allow men like Charlie Kirk to be assassinated for speaking the truth in love? Why are so many so-called normal” people allowing the mentally ill and the perverts into girls’ locker rooms and the places women should be safe from dangerous men.
You know what it is deep down, actually not even all that deep down? It’s hatred for God. It’s hatred for His people and His Church. The author of Psalm 74 sees it. He says, “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever?” The transgender movement, the sterilization of children, the sexualizing of children, and the whole drag queen nightmare is a direct attack on God, who created male and female in His image. The martyrdom of Christians is an attack on the body of Jesus. And every time a Christian is silenced, it’s an attack on God.
When Habakkuk finishes bemoaning the current situation, he says, “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.” Did you follow that? Habakkuk pours out his heart on God who seems remarkably silent, and he waits for an answer. He knows, despite what he sees, that God is listening and He will answer. Which He does.
The Lord says, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.” What Habakkuk is about to hear should be written down so it won’t be forgotten. And guess what? It hasn’t been. It’s here in God’s Word for us to read and take to heart. Times and situations haven’t changed much since Habakkuk’s day, so what God tells him, He tells you. Listen to what He says, not what you see. He says, “For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end – it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” It may seem like a long time coming to us, but God works on a completely different schedule than we do. We may not like it; that’s the way it goes. What’s important is that wickedness will be punished, injustices will be made right, and He will deliver His people from the sinful world. Isaiah promises us, and warns unbelievers: “For behold, the LORD will come in fire, and His chariots like the whirlwind, to render His anger in fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire.” Isaiah hears these words and he believes that they will come true one day. We hear these words and we too know that they will come true as well.
We wait with anticipation and patience because the war between God and satan, good and evil, wicked and righteous has already been decided and I hope don’t have to tell you how it ended. In case I do, Jesus won! He took the battle to sin and satan and crushed them both under His pierced heel. Christians suffer and die, wickedness prevails, but it’s only temporary. His suffering and death undo the effects that sin thrust upon us. Because He suffered, our suffering will end. Because He died, our deaths, however premature, place us in God’s arms. His resurrection is the ultimate victory over all things.
An inscription found on the wall of a cellar where Jews hid from the Nazis said: “I believe in the sun, even when it’s not shining…I believe in God, even when He is silent.” This confession of faith from the 1940’s would’ve also been Habakkuk’s, and you could say that it’s ours. This is Christian hope. Habakkuk writes, “The righteous shall live by his faith.” Living by our faith is trusting in what we cannot see. It’s believing that God will not and cannot forget us. Trust He hears your prayers even when He is silent. Believe He knows what’s going on around you and that He has a purpose for it. Believe Him when He promises to use all things for your good, because He’s never lied. Believe that one day, He will judge the living and the dead, He will put an end to wickedness, and He will bring us into our eternal rest where there are no more cries of “How long?”
At the end of his book, Habakkuk runs through a list of things that could go wrong: the crops could fail, the animals die, the fruit trees fail to blossom. All of this could happen at any time. But then he says, “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.” We too will rejoice even in the midst of the sin, wickedness, and injustice because God is our salvation and our strength. Paul tells Timothy, “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.” He too will guard your salvation, your day of glory, until you join your God in Heaven when there are no more “O Lord, How Long?”
Amen
Now the peace which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen