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Introduction
Is God really good, when there is so much evil and so much TRAGEDY in the world?
Well, poor Habakkuk definitely lived at a time and in a place
where there was some real suffering coming over the horizon, but his big
immediate problem was with the injustice and idolatry that were wrecking life
in the southern kingdom of Israel during the final few decades of its
existence.
And all the while, the threat posed by Babylon’s imperial
expansionism grew and grew.
It seems Habakkuk lived in the closing days of the southern
Kingdom of Judah … we’re not TOLD that, but it sounds like it from the way the
book works out.
It seems that Habakkuk witnessed the rising tide of
injustice and idolatry in the Land … as well as the threat of an expansionist
Babylon with imperialistic aspirations.
It wasn’t a good situation.
But Habakkuk’s prophecy is a little bit out of the ordinary.
There is none of the usual preamble
We’re normally told something about the prophet, about his
family or his hometown or something.
But Habakkuk is unannounced:
“The prophecy that Habakkuk the prophet received.”
Habakkuk 1:1
And then he simply launches straight into his first
complaint.
No biographical background at ALL.
Obadiah and Malachi alone share this feature with Habakkuk.
Second, there is no link to a specific time period
… although there are references in the book along the way
that give the general idea.
But there’s nothing like Isaiah’s ‘The year that King Uzziah
died, I saw the LORD …’
Then thirdly,
He doesn’t even speak on God’s behalf to the people.
Habakkuk is really quite unusual because here is an Old
Testament prophet who does not accuse the wayward people he’s focused on.
He speaks directly to God about the trouble he sees …
actually it’s all about Habakkuk’s personal struggle with trying to believe
that God is good when there is so much visible evil and tragedy in the world.
Now, Habakkuk’s writings are laments … he launches complaints and
draws God’s attention to these issues, demanding that God should DO something
about it all.
“How long, Lord,
must
I call for help, but you do not listen?
Or
cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?
· Why
do you make me look at injustice?
· Why
do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict
abounds.
Therefore the law is paralysed, and
justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.”
Habakkuk 1:2-4
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.1.2-4.nivuk
Here’s how the book shapes up:
It starts straight out with:
“The prophecy that
Habakkuk the prophet received.”
Habakkuk 1:1
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.1.1.nivuk
That word for ‘oracle’ is a word that means ‘burden’ … it’s
derived from the verb ‘to lift up’ but some suggest that there is a weighty
word, a burden laid on Habakkuk’s back … which you could almost call a full rucksack ... and Habakkuk come with that urgency of a man with a burden on his back.
I wouldn’t be impressed with that argument, because the
lifting up involved in that word can also be used for the lifting up of the
voice … in this case the prophet’s voice as he tries to reason with God in
prayer over the evil he sees in the world …
I wouldn’t be impressed with this viewing the oracle here as
a burden laid on Habakkuk were it not for the way Habakkuk delivers it in a
burdened, troubled and urgent way. He feels the WEIGHT of these issues, as if it was a weight on his back.
That is exactly how the poetry and the passion of this
prophecy strike me … the man has had this issue powerfully laid on his tender
heart by God.
1) Two
complaints and two responses, 1:1-2:5
a. First
complaint, 1:2-4
The Torah is neglected.
This results in violence and injustice.
And it’s all being tolerated by the corrupt leaders of Israel whose
God-given role should really be to sort these things out.
And Habakkuk just keeps crying out to God about it, but he can’t see
anything changing:
“How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence {the word is hamas!} are before me; there is strife, and conflict
abounds. Therefore the law is paralysed, and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.”
Habakkuk 1:2-4
That could have come straight out of the Daily Mail, couldn't it?!
But the difference is that Habakkuk views the situation with spiritual eyes.
Habakkuk is a man of desperation but the key to Habakkuk is that the man
of desperation is also a man of prayer.
That is CRUCIAL and that is the point at which the situation starts to
turn for the better.
In all your despair … be a man, be a woman of prayer.
b. First
response, 1:5-11
Against that background alleging that God isn’t doing anything … God SUDDENLY responds.
Interestingly, this goes into the second person plural
here as if God is addressing not just Habvakkuk but the nation (or at least the faithful people in the
Nation) for whom Habakkuk has been speaking as their representative.
“‘Look at the nations and watch – and be utterly amazed.
For 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, that ruthless and impetuous people,
who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwellings not their own.”
Habakkuk 1:5-6
Habakkuk has been complaining (1:3) that God forces him to witness
injustice, but God now turns back to Habakkuk and the rest of the Nation in the
plural and says: ‘No, don't tell me to look ... YOU look!’
Now, sometimes when you pour out your complaint to God, you
get a response that you were not expecting and that you wouldn’t necessarily
have chosen!
Habakkuk is that man …
Habakkuk’s message here is much like the message of Micah and Isaiah when God says He will use this terrifying Empire to devour Israel because of their injustice and idolatry.
It’s plural … look, see, wonder, be astounded.
But ‘among the nations’?
Is this the outside, the non-believing community, or is it
God’s people?
There is a textual variant which sounds just slightly
different (just one letter different) and means NOT ‘the Nations’ but ‘the
treacherous ones’.
That’s the way the LXX translates it.
That’s how Paul uses it and quotes it in Acts 13:41 warning
the Jews in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch not to be like the treacherous
ones in Habakkuk 1:5.
And if that’s the correct reading and translation of this word here those in v. 5, treacherous ones appear again in v. 13 of this same chapter where they are called ‘the treacherous ones’
So Habakkuk has been complaining that God is not DOING
anything, but God has said: ‘Look over there to the East of you’.
V. 5 God says ‘I AM going to do something about it’, then
vv. 6-11 ‘now let me tell you WHAT I’m going to do about it’ … surprise!
It will be something getting done from the OUTSIDE.
God is going to deal with sin
within His own family (which has become ungodly by using an even MORE ungodly
outside source to show up the evilness of evil to His people and bring them
back to Himself.
God using evil for good in the
lives of His people to put the desire for good in their hearts.
Tell me we aren’t seeing ungodly forces from outside clarifying the issues and winnow inside His church today?!
c. Second
complaint, 1:12-2:1
Now we’re back to the second
person singular as Habakkuk picks up the problem of theodicy … the origin and
the understanding of suffering and evil in this world.
Basically, Habakkuk is going on
now to question how God can actively DO what He proposes using the Babylonians
and complaining that Babylon is even WORSE than Israel …
·
deifying their own military power,
·
treating humans like animals (gathering them up
like fish in a net) and
·
swallowing up whole people groups to build their
Own Empire.
So Habakkuk’s issue … and he puts it to God directly in this second complaint … is ‘how can You, a
just God, use such awful people as the Babylonians to be your instruments in
human history?’
“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate
wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while
the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”
Habakkuk 1:13
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.1.13.nivuk
Fundamentally, Habakkuk is outraged at God … a dangerous position to be
in, quite possibly … casting himself in the role of a watchman posted on the
city walls:
“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will
look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this
complaint.”
Habakkuk 2:1
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.2.1.nivuk
He’s being pretty bold.
And God is going to give Habakkuk a straight answer which is explicitly
not just for Habakkuk.
d. Second
response, 2:2-5
Yuo know, there's an old Latin legal phrase: Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum ...meaning
"Let justice be done though the heavens
fall."
The maxim signifies the belief that justice
must be realized regardless of consequences.
That’s approximately what’s going on here … but there’s
also more:
“Then the Lord replied: ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain
on tablets so that a herald may run with it.”
Habakkuk 2:2
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.2.2.nivuk
The idea is to create something that will be portable but permanent … it
can travel with exiled Israel once the Babylonians have sent them off into captivity, but it is not going to rot like a piece of
papyrus.
It will take time to work out what God has planned so a permanent record is necessary and travel is going to be involved, so the permanent record must be portable.
The vision will take a lot of trust to stay faithful to it, but God
assures Habakkuk (in words that take on greater significance in New Testament
times when believers will need to hold onto God’s promise of the coming
deliverance of Eternal Life through times of trial, persecution and diaspora) …
“‘See, the enemy is puffed up; his desires are not upright – but the
righteous person will live by his faithfulness –”
Habakkuk 2:4
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.2.4.nivuk
The promise Habakkuk is to engrave on that lump of rock is that God WILL
bring Babylon down - but the righteous perso will live through it by his faithfulness.
The violence and oppression of empires like Babylon creates a
never-ending cycle of revenge and God will use this to bring about the rise and
fall of nations which operate in this way.
The fact that God might USE a corrupt nation like Babylon does NOT mean
that He endorses all that they do.
On the contrary, God holds accountable all nations that behave the way
Babylon does and He will act to deal with Babylon and all like them.
And that leads into the next section of the book where God seems to
decree what He has just promised to Habakkuk … which he writes on his rock.
2) Five
‘woes’, 2:6-20
This is the opposite of blessing being called down by God on
the wrongs of the Chaldeans …
How can God use a people worse than Israel to be His
instrument of judgement against Israel?
Oh, they are going to get caught up with by God and are
already living under these woes God speaks out against them!
There’s a particularity to these woes. They're about specific things.
a. First
and second woe - unjust economics
The first woe is to those who have rigged the system of
borrowing to exploit the poor.
Modern echoes there.
God is ANGRY with that.
The second woe is against the world of privatised wealth, where wealthy people use their wealth to push poor people down and make themselves richer.
b. Third
woe – a critique of slave labour
This is about the civil leaders whose enterprise for the state is to
serve themselves …
Treating humans like animals and threatening them with violence if they
don’t produce:
“‘Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and
establishes a town by injustice!”
Habakkuk 2:12
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.2.12.nivuk
It’s FUTILE!
“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.”
Habakkuk 2:14
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.2.14.nivuk
Where’s the Glory going to go?
Not to the expansionists!
They set their hearts on that.
We set our hearts on THAT day when the Glory goes to God … and that enable sus to put up with ALL sorts
of things in the here and now.
c. Fourth
woe – the abuse of alcohol by irresponsible leaders
While
oppressing their people, these leaders are partying and wasting money on sex
and booze.
d. Fifth
woe exposes idolatry
… the thing that drives the other sins and failures
They
have made money and power into their gods, offering these allegiance … with
people becoming slaves to their own national Empire.
And this ends with the warning statement … uttered in the
presence of the prophet who had complained of God’s non-involvement and
inactivity:
““The Lord is in his holy temple;
let all the earth be silent before him.”
Habakkuk 2:20
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.2.20.nivuk
The problem of theodicy … evil in the world … now in chapter 3 (it’ll be
in verse 3) gives way to theophany: the coming of the Lord Himself, the One Who
steps right IN to His people’s pain and need.
Here's the actual solution ... God comes to His people.
But
there’s something really important to notice first, something which does a lot
to explain where this book first in the unfolding of the faith.
3) Central
universal principle, 3:1-19
This is NOT just about the Babylonian Empire
in the five and six hundreds BC.
This answer Habakkuk receives for his
situation becomes God’s answer to subsequent people in subsequent nations who
find themselves in circumstances where they are ruled over by ‘other Babylons’.
But that begs the question, then:
Is God going to allow this endless cycle of the rise of idolatrous, violent and oppressive world systems go on for ever?
That’s what chapter three comes to be all about because
chapter 3 (we’re told) is a prayer of Habakkuk but it seems to be cast in the
form of an Ancient Near Eastern ‘taunt song’!
a. Plea
for God to bring down corrupt nations
It’s based on God having done this in the past, but it seems
a bit ironic because Israel has become a corrupt nation and Habakkuk is
protesting against God bringing it down …
“A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet.
On shigionoth.”
Aha!
So this is a song – we’re told the tune - and this is also a
prayer.
Here it comes:
Lord, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of
your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known;
in wrath remember mercy.”
Habakkuk 3:1-2
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.3.1-2.nivuk
Habakkuk is in a position where He prays for stuff then gets
more than he bargained for again, here, there’s
been a bit of God appearing silent then appearing suddenly out of nowhere already
in this book …
b. God
appears in POWER! 3:3-7
This all looks pretty similar to the way God appears in Nahum, in Micah
and (in fact) also at Mount Sinai!
“God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.
His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the
earth.”
Habakkuk 3:3
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.3.3.nivuk
Cloud, fire, earthquake …
And someone has very aptly said:
“When the Creator turns up to confront evil, everybody
will be paying attention!”
And then, in the midst of judgement there is redemption ...
c. New
Exodus typology, 3:8-15
Habakkuk (possibly with thoughts of Sinai still running
through his mind) goes on to describe God’s intervention as leading to a future
new Exodus, when God came as a warrior fighting for His people and split the
sea in His battle with Pharaoh:
“You came out to deliver your people, to save your
anointed one.
You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you
stripped him from head to foot.
With his own spear you pierced his head when his warriors
stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though about to devour the wretched who
were in hiding.
You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the great
waters.”
Habakkuk 3:13-15
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.3.13-15.nivuk
Pharaoh has here (like Babylon) become an archetype of
violent, enslaving nations.
But at THAT point:
“You came out to deliver your people,
to save your anointed one.
You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness,
There are echoes here of Genesis 3:15!
"you
stripped him from head to foot.”
Habakkuk 3:13 NIVUK
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.3.13.nivuk
But in our enthusiasm for the downfall of evil, we
mustn’t miss that there’s a clear reference here to God saving His people along
with a reference to His anointed one:
v. 13 “You came out to deliver your people, to save your
anointed one.”
It’s a reference to the line of Davidic Kings in which the hope of Israel lay, with great David’s Greater Son ... the Anointed One, the Messiah.
The memory of the past Exodus become the image of the New
Exodus that God will perform.
He will once again defeat evil.
He will once again bring down the Pharaohs and the Babylons
of this world.
He will bring justice to all people.
He will rescue the oppressed and the innocent.
This is what enables Habakkuk to close the book with hopeful
praise.
d. Concluding
hopeful praise, vv. 16-19
“I heard and my heart pounded,
my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled.
Yet I will wait patiently for
the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.
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 sheepfold and
· no
cattle in the stalls,
yet
· I
will rejoice in the Lord,
· I
will be joyful in God my Saviour.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet
of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the
heights.
For the director of music. On my stringed instruments.”
Habakkuk 3:16-19 NIVUK
https://www.bible.com/113/hab.3.16-19.nivuk
Oh yes.
Did you notice that by the end there NOTHING has improved,
things are in fact ABOUT to get WORSE … and yet Habakkuk has changed, and by faith in God’s promise
Habakkuk is singing?!
Whether there is violence and oppression, or food shortage
or drought … or whatever … Habakkuk will choose trust and JOY in the covenant
promises of God.
Conclusion
What’s happened by the end of this book is that Habakkuk has
become a shining example of how the righteous DO live by faith.
Yes … the justification that comes by God comes by faith
alone.
But the faith that justifies does NOT come alone … it comes
bringing a life lived faithfully, patiently, trusting to the long-distance
promises of God to deal with the trials and the troubles of the life lived more
immediately, and Habakkuk recognises how dark and how troubled that more
immediate life can become.
He invites US into that journey in faith through this immediate
life, trusting to the God Who loves this broken world so much more than we do,
trusting that He is NOT looking the other way but is watching it closely and
(as in the past but more decisively) He will one day deal with its evil.
There is so much more than Biblical teaching on
institutional evil going on here.
As Paul writes to Roman believers living and suffering
persecution from the evil Empire of THEIR day:
“For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed –
a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written:
‘The righteous will live by faith.’”
Romans 1:17
https://www.bible.com/113/rom.1.17.nivuk
That verse is, I want to suggest to you, not simply a text
about the mechanics of salvation, but is also about how to live as a believer
through times when the wicked seem to triumph, when evil and oppressive powers
persecute the Church of God and when to us the Lord seems very far away.
Hebrews 10:38 backs that idea … making it about
fidelity … setting this verse and the earlier use in Genesis 16:5 where
Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness - setting those in the context
where we have to trust God for what He says even when our sight tells us the opposite.
And that's exactly what faith is ...
God wants our on-going fidelity when it looks like He isn’t
coming in for us, coming to our aid.
And THAT’s what the book of Habakkuk should be doing to us:
giving those who have been put right with God by grace through faith alone the
encouragement we need, the stuimulus we need to live by faithfulness.
May God bless our hearts through His Word.
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