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Habakkuk – The Burden Prophet (2 of 4)

Focus Text: Habakkuk 1.12-2.1

Habakkuk’s second complaint went like this:

“Are You not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, You have appointed them for judgment; O Rock, You have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours A person more righteous than he? Why do You make men like fish of the sea, Like creeping things that have no ruler over them? They take up all of them with a hook, They catch them in their net, And gather them in their dragnet. Therefore they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice to their net, And burn incense to their dragnet; Because by them their share is sumptuous And their food plentiful. Shall they therefore empty their net, And continue to slay nations without pity? I will stand my watch And set myself on the rampart, And watch to see what He will say to me, And what I will answer when I am corrected.” (Habakkuk 1.1-4).

You have to give it to Habakkuk for being honest with his feeling: he did not hide the fact that God’s will as it had been revealed to him was less than pleasing. The verses just prior to this complaint capture the fact that the Lord intended to raise up the Chaldeans (Habakkuk 1.6) as a means of punishing Israel. In order for this heathen nation to triumph over Israel, they would have to be exalted among the nations militarily and in other ways equally as obvious; this was Habakkuk’s complaint; why should God exalt a nation who routinely practiced idolatry and turn His back on the people whom He had promised to deliver (Israel)?

In this complaint Habakkuk asked a sobering question in any age. In the lives of nations that last for any period of time, they frequently become cocky and seem to think that they raised themselves by their own bootstraps; certainly this was the case with Israel and it has historically been the case with scores or hundreds of others. It can be true even of our nation. Read again the sobering question: “Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours A person more righteous than he?”

It was the case that the Chaldean nations were wholly given over to idolatry and opposed the monotheistic nation of Israel with a passion. Yet, according to God’s own admission, He intended to use the Chaldeans to punish Israel. Hence can Habakkuk’s question: “Is it right to use a more wicked nation to punish a nation of lesser wickedness?” The implied answer had to be, “Yes!” This answer was not what Habakkuk wanted to hear and in some measure he seemed to think that the removal of material blessing in this life was a sign of God’s disapproval just as the inverse was thought to be true, i.e., the bestowal of God’s physical abundance on a people is indication of God’s approval of that people. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth!

God indeed makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust and causes the sun to shine on all peoples (Matthew 5.45). We must accept God’s physical blessing with great gratitude but we must never mistake them for God’s approval of our spiritual activities!

Questions:

1. Who were the Chaldeans? What was their predominant religious persuasion?

2. Why would the fact that God intended to punish Israel by a heathen nation cause Habakkuk to complain?

3. Who said that God makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good?

4. What can we conclude from the fact that God blesses us physically? What can we conclude when those blessing are taken away?

"Today's Little Lift" from Jim Bullington

Comfort in Isaiah II (12-14-10)