How his fears and hopes touch us today
In Habakkuk we have a man whose world was collapsing around him. He saw corruption among the people of God who had all the sacrifices and religious rituals in place and yet who failed to walk in God’s ways in their individual and corporate lives. Along with this he felt the winds of war as the Babylonians emerged onto the world stage as a brutal and rapacious conquering force.
Habakkuk made no connection between the two. But God did.
At rock bottom
How long, Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen? 1:2
Habakkuk poured out his complaint to a seemingly disinterested God in 1:1-4. He sees violence and injustice all around him, and has been crying out to God to do something but his words have fallen back to earth unanswered.
He had reached rock bottom. His prayers became a cry of desperation. An act of raw honesty. He brought his complaint to the only place in the universe where he knew it would be heard and accepted and where there was the power to do something about it. The throne room of Yahweh. An act of genuine faith.
A theological earthquake
I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe,
even if you were told. I am raising up the Babylonians 1:5-6
God did answer. His answer was breathtaking. “I am raising up the Babylonians…” All of the bloodshed and violence that Habakkuk anticipated at the hands of the Babylonians had the hand of Yahweh behind it. How could this possibly be!
Habakkuk’s emotions ramp up to an enormous extent. He appeals to the covenant — Yahweh, is the God of Israel, the one who made the covenant, so surely “we will not die.” (v12) He appeals to the character of God whose “eyes are too pure to look on evil” (v13) God how could you! The Babylonians are evil to the core.
These things swirled around in his mind and he is unable to bring them to any sort of satisfying conclusion. Reality is conflicting with his theology. Habakkuk is brought to the point of humble, helpless dependence. “I will look to see what he will answer me…” Will God answer him as he waits? What will come from heaven that might possibly calm his desperation?
I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me… 2:1
All injustice will be dealt with
Chapter 2 is God’s response: all injustice will be brought before the judgement seat of God. God will deal with Israel’s injustice spoken about by all the prophets. Their failure to care for the widows and orphans, the poor, their unjust dealings in the marketplace, their religious rituals that were utterly devoid of any outworking in compassion.
The Babylonians will also be dealt with.
God is not making the Babylonians sin
the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord 2:14
That God is raising up the Babylonians does not mean he is making the Babylonians cruel. God is enabling the circumstances under which the Babylonians can be themselves. Their innate cruelty and lust for dominance will be free to be expressed on the world stage. And so quite rightly, God can and will crush them for cruel rampage. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. Not the glory of the Babylonians. Not the glory of national Israel. Not the glory of Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan or any other brutal tyrant. It is God’s world and ultimately when all else has collapsed his glory will be seen by the nations.
the righteous person will live by his faith 2:4
So, Yahweh will deal with his own people for their failure to walk in his ways. He will also deal with those who bring suffering to his people because they are doing it of their own volition. And through it all what he requires of his people is that they trust him.
Where there then does this leave Habakkuk?
These things stir deep memories within Habakkuk. Memories of his own national history. Chapter 3:1-15 is a whirlpool of images taken from the Exodus, the flood, the opening of the Red Sea and the Jordan, the sun standing still in the sky for Joshua… All events when Yahweh acted in sovereignty to judge the nations such as Egypt and to redeem and set free his people. God managing the world. His world. In his sovereign right is King.
Habakkuk to the point of joyful acceptance of the kingship of God, whatever that rule and reign may mean for the physical circumstances of Habakkuk. We know the words well,
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Saviour.
And for us?
We live in times when external forces are pressing themselves against the people of God. Fashionable new ideologies are combining towards a neo-Marxist agenda. The Marxist ideal of overthrowing everything that ha s supported the old order in order to create something new. Although it must be admitted that the ‘new’ is already old — Marxist socialism — and has already been a spectacular failure in any and every place where it has been instituted as the pathway to a global Nirvana. Venezuela would be the latest victim.
If Habakkuk has anything to tell us it is now, in Australia, it is that Yahweh is the God of nations. He is the one at whose hand nations and ideologies are free to expand or are shut down. So we must accept our new circumstances that God’s hand.
In the days of Habakkuk, God reshaped the geopolitical structures of the world. Babylon became supreme. And it must be remembered that the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest king in the world of the time, was humbled by Yahweh and eventually made a worldwide proclamation: ‘I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just.’ (You can read it in Daniel 4)
But let’s not forget that God was also active in reshaping and refocusing his own people, calling them back to walk in his ways.
We must take stock
To distance our conduct from the intentional hand of God at this time would be the height of foolishness. We must come before God and ask him what it is that he might wish to reshape in the way we as churches have conducted ourselves in his world. That does not imply sin. It is a matter of wisdom.
It would be easy for one person to write a list for others. Let’s not do that. Let’s run our minds over everything we do and ask the question, ’Is this what Jesus had in mind?’ Think about our leadership structures, our theatrical ‘worship’ times, our finances and the balance between infrastructure, salaries, resources and caring for the poor and disadvantaged among us. Think about the way we have turned so much of what we do into businesses—‘worship’, Christian giftware and trinkets, even the plethora of Bible variants. Have we become what Jesus had in mind?
Is there anything about us that suggests that God might be raising up the new, power-drunk and oppressive social engineers as our own modern Babylonians to reshape us and call us back to his ways?
Above all, this is a time for standing alongside Habakkuk. Even though the economy completely collapses around us and the ‘Babylonians’ take over, we will rejoice in God our Saviour. He is the one who makes us stable and surefooted in even the roughest terrain.
