Habakkuk 1-2

The banner we have seen flying over all the Minor Prophets is this: God always keeps his promises. But for many of you, whether or not you would say it out loud, that statement has a question mark behind it. God always keeps his promises? There are so many loose ends and unresolved situations in your life that you feel like there must have been some fine print that you missed somewhere. It’s like looking through the mail and finding that letter that informs you that you’ve hit the jackpot and Ed McMahon is on his way to deliver an oversized check for $10 Million. But by the time you can think about what color you want your first Hummer to be, you read the fine print that says, “…If the 12-digit number on this card matches the one we draw,” and the finer print on the bottom of the back side of the letter clarifies, “chances of winning are 1 in 217 trillion.”

Is there fine print on this banner, “God always keeps his promises”? That is what we are going to explore this morning in the book of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk has a fascinating structure, like a Cliff Notes version of the book of Job. Habakkuk asks God a question, and God answers him. That answer brings up another question that Habakkuk asks, and God answers that as well. Habakkuk then prays a long, beautiful prayer that Stevo will walk us through next week.

This sounds rather straightforward until you consider the type of questions Habakkuk was asking, not to mention the complex mind of God that received the inquiry. On our level it is like a child asking why he has to get a shot at the doctor’s office. A three-year-old doesn’t have the capacity to understand how something that hurts so much could be good for him.

This is what makes Habakkuk much more complex than a prophet asking a few questions and God giving a few answers. This isn’t like asking for directions to the grocery store or asking who won the ballgame. Even though Habakkuk could doubtless think of some simple, theologically correct answers to his own questions, God answers him in a way that shatters his assumptions and leaves him with more questions.

Let’s walk through the exchange between Habakkuk and the Lord. Look at Habakkuk 1:2-4: “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted.”

This is a common theme in all the prophets. There is injustice amongst God’s people and the prophet is crying out to Yahweh to do something about it. It’s the same type of reaction that we would have if we found out that a businessman in our church was embezzling funds at his workplace or if a mom were teaching her children that people with different skin color shouldn’t be trusted. Our hearts, like Habakkuk’s would cry out, “this is not right!”

Let’s see what God answers beginning in verse 5. “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.”

This is not the answer Habakkuk was looking for. There were all kinds of things the Lord could say, like “I’ll send a pestilence among the wicked” or “I will use Judah’s king to sift out the evil doers.” Instead, God says, “You’re right; Judah is plagued with injustice, so I’m going to raise up the Chaldeans to punish my people.”

To which Habakkuk says, “Whoa…hold your horses! Isn’t that being a bit severe? Sure we’ve got some problems and need to be disciplined, but you’re going to punish us with the Chaldeans?” The issue here is the fact that the Chaldeans were 10 times more wicked than Judah. Look at Habakkuk’s reply in 1:13: “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?”

Imagine being in the 5th grade and complaining to the teacher that the other students in the class are cheating on the test. So the teacher says, “You’re right; something needs to be done about this. I’m going to call cousin Guido and his boys from the Mafia to come teach these kids a lesson.” When your eyebrows are pasted back and your jaw on the floor at this reply, maybe then you will understand Habakkuk’s utter incredulity at God’s answer to his question.

And of course, your response to the teacher is, “The Mafia? You’re going to call the Mafia?!? Don’t you know what they do? The concrete shoes in the river?” Habakkuk has the same response in verses 14-17. Lord, don’t you know about these Chaldeans? They gather up their captives like fish in a net! They put hooks through their captives’ lower lips to march them in a shameful procession! These are idolatrous brutes, and you’re going to send them against us?!?”

Let’s read God’s answer to Habakkuk in 2:2-4: “And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. 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. Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. ”

When my parents and sister were here last week, we read Habakkuk 1-2 for family devotion time. When we reached the words I just read and saw that they were preceded by the words, “And the Lord answered me…” we looked at each other in confusion. How is this an answer?

This is the point at which it might be helpful to answer our opening question: yes, there is fine print on the banner that flies over the Minor Prophets. God always keeps his promises. But here’s the fine print: God always keeps his promises in his timing and in his way. And that often excludes our sense of when he should do it and our sense of how he should do it.

What I’m getting to is this. God does not feel the need to defend himself about when and how he keeps his promises. The central question of Habakkuk is, “God, how can you, being good, use an evil people for your purposes? What about your promises to your people?” And for that matter, we might as well connect ourselves to this dialogue and fill in the contemporary blank. “God, how can you, being good, use cancer for your purposes?” “God, how can you, being good, use a layoff for your purposes?” “God, how can you, being good, use a wayward child for your purposes?” “What about your promises to your people?”

But God is not answering those questions. God always keeps his promises in his timing and in his way. One commentator said, “It should be noticed that God did not seek to defend his justice. Instead of answering the ‘why’ sort of question, he began by suggesting that human responsibility lay not in having all the answers, but in responding to God in the proper way” (Hill/Walton, OT Intro, p. 518). In other words, the fact that calamity is coming has been established. Now the question on the table is, “What kind of a person are you going to be? Are you going to be puffed up in your soul and arrogant like the Chaldeans and those doing injustice in Judah? Or are you going to live by faith along with the righteous? Are you going to believe that I will keep my promises, even if it isn’t when and how you think I should?”

I don’t know where you are struggling to believe God’s promises, but here is where we are in Habakkuk. We’re standing next to Habakkuk in front of this big marquee that says, “God, who is absolutely good, uses evil people and events to accomplish his good purposes.” And while we are baffled at what this marquee says, we realize that Jacob’s son Joseph is standing behind us, repeating his words to his brothers at the end of Genesis: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” And then it all makes sense. Joseph had no say in when and how God would fulfill his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So it was not for Joseph to shake his fist at God at the bottom of the well or in his jail cell and say, “God you aren’t keeping your promises!” Rather, Joseph was to trust God in whatever circumstance he faced, whether as prisoner or prince. The righteous shall live by his faith.

The book of Habakkuk has no circumstantial resolution. That is, we don’t read that the good guy wins in the end. All we know is that calamity is about to strike, God is at the controls, and our calling is to trust him no matter what. I don’t know what calamities are raging in your lives right now, but this feels immensely practical for being a poem from the 7th Century B.C. You’re imperative is not to make perfect sense out of the painful circumstances in your life or anyone else’s life. Connecting the dots and saying, “Oh, this is how God is going to keep his promises” sometimes doesn’t happen for 10 years, if it happens at all this side of death.

William Cowper, a believer who struggled intensely with depression, captured the heart of this in his famous hymn:

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill He treasures up His bright designs And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy and shall break In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err And scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.

So God answers Habakkuk’s question of “How can you use these brutish Chaldeans?” with “I know what I am doing and how I am keeping my promises. You live by faith.” But God doesn’t leave it there. He reassures Habakkuk of the promises that he is keeping so Habakkuk will know what he is to believe.

At the risk of redundancy I want to clarify what this life of faith looks like. God does not simply call us to have aimless faith. He gives us a focus, an object for our faith—himself. And he does not simply call us to have a general faith in him. He gives us promises where we can aim our faith; promises upon which we set our sights, even when the circumstances around us are contrary to what God promises.

So what promise does God give Habakkuk? Where can the prophet set his sights? In chapter 2, verses 6-20, God assures Habakkuk that he will bring the Chaldeans to justice. The first half of verse 8 best summarizes this: “Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you.” God reinforces to Habakkuk that he always keeps his promises, and he promises to execute his vengeance on the Chaldeans.

But the sweetness of God’s promises is that they go beyond a return to the status quo. God does not only promise Habakkuk that he will bring a foreign nation to justice. He promises that one day all foreign nations will know God’s saving power. Read verse 14 with me in Habakkuk 2: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

Again, the sweetness of God’s promises is that they go beyond a return to the status quo. Israel would have been happy to return to Egypt as slaves while they were wandering in the wilderness. But God had something bigger than Egypt for them—he had the Promised Land. Job would have been happy to be rid of his boils and unhelpful friends and are return to the way things used to be. But God had something bigger for Job—an encounter with the Almighty and the restoration of more possessions and family than he had before.

Brothers and sisters, the whole point of Habakkuk is that we must take the long view in believing the promises of God. What sets the righteous apart from the wicked is not his ability to make sense out of present circumstances. What distinguishes the righteous is that he or she believes that God always keeps his promises even when present circumstances speak to the contrary.