How Long

Most of us were taught, somewhere along the way, that a believer does not ask God how long. You trust, you wait, you keep your questions to yourself. Then you open the Bible and find the question on nearly every page where a man is in pain. The psalms ask it thirteen times. Prophets ask it. An angel asks it. Souls already in heaven ask it. And Jesus, standing in front of a crowd that would not believe, asks it of them. If the question were unbelief, God would not have had it written down so often and then bound into the book He gave us to pray from.

So this letter is for the man or woman who has been asking it in the dark and feeling guilty for asking. You are in good company. The company is the point.

The prophet on the wall

Habakkuk is the only prophet whose book begins with a complaint against God. Not against Israel, not against Babylon. Against God. "O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!" (Habakkuk 1:2). He has been praying about the wickedness in Judah and nothing has changed. "Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth" (Habakkuk 1:4).

God answers, and the answer is worse than the silence. He is sending the Babylonians. The prophet asked for judgment on his own people’s sin and God is sending a people more wicked still to carry it out. So Habakkuk asks again, and this time it is the question underneath every how long: "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" (Habakkuk 1:13). You are holy. You see this. Why are You quiet?

Then he does the thing this whole letter is about. He does not walk away, and he does not pretend to be satisfied. "I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved" (Habakkuk 2:1). He climbs the wall and waits for God to speak. That is what faith looks like when it has a question it cannot answer. Not silence, and not a smile. A man on a watchtower.

Job and the Preacher say it out loud

Habakkuk’s complaint has an older voice behind it. Job, sitting in the ashes with his friends telling him that the wicked always get what they deserve, looks at the world as it actually is and says: "Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?" (Job 21:7). "They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave" (Job 21:13). And he quotes what those men say about God: "What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? and what profit should we have, if we pray unto him?" (Job 21:15). Job is not agreeing with them. He is refusing to lie about what he sees. His friends had a tidy theology where suffering always meant sin and prosperity always meant blessing. Job’s answer is to point out the window.

The Preacher in Ecclesiastes does the same, and colder. "All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness" (Ecclesiastes 7:15). "There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous" (Ecclesiastes 8:14). And he names the thing that makes the delay dangerous, not only painful: "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Ecclesiastes 8:11). The waiting is not only hard on the righteous. It emboldens the wicked. That is exactly what Habakkuk saw, and exactly why he asked.

Jeremiah asks it with his hat in his hand: "Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?" (Jeremiah 12:1). And God’s own people in Malachi’s day say the thing you are not supposed to say: "It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance" (Malachi 3:14), "yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered" (Malachi 3:15). The Bible records that complaint without flinching. It does not agree with it. But it lets it be heard.

The hymnbook kept the question

If you want to know whether God minds the question, look at what He had Israel sing. "How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?" (Psalm 13:1-2). Four times in two verses, and that is a psalm of David, sung in the temple, set to music by God’s instruction. "LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?" (Psalm 94:3). Psalm 74, Psalm 79, Psalm 80, Psalm 89, Psalm 90. The question is liturgy. God put it in the mouths of His people and told them to sing it.

And Psalm 73 is the whole journey in one chapter. Asaph says what Job said: "my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked" (Psalm 73:2-3). He gets as far as "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency" (Psalm 73:13), which is Malachi’s complaint in the first person. "When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end" (Psalm 73:16-17). Nothing changed outside. The wicked were still prospering when he walked out. What changed was that he had been in the presence, and from there he could see where the road went. The psalm ends not with an answer to the question but with a Person: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever" (Psalm 73:25-26).

Hold onto that. It is the shape of every answer God gives to how long.

What God said to the man on the wall

Habakkuk waited, and God spoke. "Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry" (Habakkuk 2:2-3). Notice what He does not give. No date. Not a day, not a year, not a sign to watch for. An appointed time, known to Him, and a promise that it is not late by His clock even when it is late by ours.

And then the line that Paul built the gospel on and Luther found his way home by: "Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith" (Habakkuk 2:4). That sentence was first spoken to a man asking how long. Not to a theologian working out justification, though Paul quoted it for that in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11, and he was right to. It was spoken to a prophet on a wall who could not see the end and had to decide whether to keep standing there. The just shall live by his faith means, before it means anything else, that the righteous man lives through the waiting by trusting the One who set the appointed time. Hebrews says it exactly that way: "For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith" (Hebrews 10:36-38). The writer of Hebrews is quoting Habakkuk, and he is quoting him to people who were asking how long.

God gives the prophet two more things. "For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea" (Habakkuk 2:14), the end of the story, so he knows where it goes. And "But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him" (Habakkuk 2:20), which is not a rebuke for asking. It is the answer to the question Habakkuk had actually asked. You asked why I hold my tongue. I am not absent. I am in the temple. Be still a moment and you will know it.

Everyone who asked, and what they were told

Isaiah, at the moment of his call, with the coals still on his lips, asks it: "Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant" (Isaiah 6:11). An honest answer and a terrible one. Sometimes the how long is longer than your life.

An angel asks it. "O LORD of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years?" (Zechariah 1:12). Even the angel of the LORD, standing in the presence, asks on behalf of a people who have waited seventy years. "And the LORD answered the angel that talked with me with good words and comfortable words" (Zechariah 1:13). The question drew comfort, not correction.

Daniel hears it asked at the river: "How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?" (Daniel 12:6). And the answer to Daniel himself, the man who had prayed three times a day for seventy years: "Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end" (Daniel 12:9). "But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days" (Daniel 12:13). You do not get to know. You get to rest, and you get to stand in your place when the day comes. That is not nothing. That is everything a man actually needs.

The souls under the altar ask it, and they are already with God. "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Revelation 6:10). They have died for Him. They are in His presence. And they are still asking. The answer: "white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled" (Revelation 6:11). The delay has a reason, and the reason is other people. There are brethren still to be gathered in, and the Judge will not close the door while they are on the road. Peter says it plainly: "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). Every day you are asking how long is a day someone else is being given to come home.

The One who asked it Himself

Then there is the day a father brought his boy to the disciples and they could not heal him, and the crowd was arguing, and Jesus said: "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me" (Matthew 17:17). He knows the question from the inside. He asked it of us. And then He healed the boy.

He has heard it asked of Himself, too. In the boat, asleep on a pillow in the storm, His friends woke Him with it: "Master, carest thou not that we perish?" (Mark 4:38). And at Bethany, when He got word that Lazarus was sick, "he abode two days still in the same place where he was" (John 11:6). He waited on purpose. He let the how long run its full length. Martha met Him on the road with the complaint of every mourner: "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died" (John 11:21). And before He did anything about it, "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). He did not weep because He had no plan. He was minutes from the tomb. He wept because the waiting had cost them something real, and He felt it. That is the God you are asking how long. Not one who delays because He does not care, but one who delays for reasons that are good and weeps over what the delay costs you in the meantime.

And He told a parable "to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint" (Luke 18:1), about a widow who would not stop asking an unjust judge for justice, and then He turned it toward His Father: "And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily" (Luke 18:7-8). Though he bear long with them. Jesus knew the waiting would feel long. He said so. And then the last line of the parable, which is the real question hiding under all of ours: "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). The question is not whether He will come. It is whether we will still be on the watchtower when He does.

Is it in vain?

There is a second question hiding inside how long, and it is the one Malachi’s people asked: what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance? If the wicked are winning, is doing right a waste? The letter would be a cruelty if it did not answer that, and God answered it in the same chapter where the complaint was made. "Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not" (Malachi 3:16-18). A book of remembrance. Nothing you have done quietly for His sake has gone unrecorded, and a day is coming when the difference between the two kinds of men will be plain to everyone who ever doubted it.

That is the whole New Testament’s answer too, and it says it without hedging. "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 15:58). Paul puts that sentence at the end of his resurrection chapter on purpose: because He rose, nothing done for Him is lost. "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not" (Galatians 6:9). In due season. The harvest has a date, and it is not the sowing date. "For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name" (Hebrews 6:10). He would have to be unrighteous to forget it, and He is not.

Jesus said the reward is not missing, it is deferred and it is His to give: "thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly" (Matthew 6:4). Seeth in secret is the answer to Asaph’s "I have cleansed my heart in vain." It was not in vain. It was in secret, and secret is where the Father does His looking. And the psalm that tells you not to fret about the man who prospers in his way goes on to say where the two roads end: "For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace" (Psalm 37:10-11). The Preacher, for all his coldness, ends his book on the same note: "For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:14). Every work. The good ones too.

So to the man who has done it by the book while others cut corners and got ahead, who has kept his word when breaking it would have paid, who has stayed when leaving would have been easier: it is not in vain. "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him" (Psalm 126:5-6). The seed is in the ground. The ground is not the end. And the last word on the matter was spoken from heaven to John: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them" (Revelation 14:13). Their works do follow them. The wicked man’s wealth stays behind when he goes down to the grave in a moment. The righteous man’s work goes with him. That is the profit, and it is the only kind that crosses.

What Habakkuk sang on the way down

The book that began with a complaint ends with a song, and the song is written for a stringed instrument, which means it was meant to be sung by others after him. Nothing outside has changed. Babylon is still coming. The prophet looks at a land about to be stripped bare and sings this: "Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places" (Habakkuk 3:17-19).

That is not a man who got his answer. It is a man who got his God. Asaph walked into the sanctuary and came out with a portion instead of an explanation. Job, after all his chapters of asking, said: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee" (Job 42:5), and stopped asking, not because the question was answered but because the One he had been asking was standing in front of him. Habakkuk climbed the wall with a question and came down with a song, and the question was still open. The Babylonians still came.

So ask it. Ask it the way David did, in a psalm, out loud, with the full weight of your grief on it. Ask it the way Habakkuk did, from the wall, and then stay on the wall. "Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD" (Psalm 27:14). The waiting is not the absence of the answer. The waiting is where you meet Him. "It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD" (Lamentations 3:26), and that line was written by a man sitting in the ruins of Jerusalem, two verses after "It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23).

He will come, and He will not tarry. In the meantime He is in His holy temple, and He is not holding His tongue. He is holding the door.

Study the passages in the Study Bible: Habakkuk 1, 2 and 3; Job 21; Ecclesiastes 8; Psalm 13, 73 and 94; Malachi 3; Revelation 6; Luke 18; Hebrews 10. Related: Overwhelmed, Suffering, Providence, Free Will and the Plan That Cannot Fail, and Every Warning, Gathered. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to the Study Bible; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.