Minor Prophets: Habakkuk

Habakkkuk 

Acceptance, the Greatest Test of Faith  

Habakkuk 1:2-4  A Complaint – Prophesies to God (Descriptive, not Prescriptive)

2 O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you, “Violence!” and you will not save? 3 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. 4 So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted.

Period: Habakkuk prophesied during a period of moral decline in Judah, marked by idolatry, social injustice, and oppression. This era is often associated with the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, who reintroduced idolatry after King Josiah‘s reforms. 

The name “Habakkuk” is a rather unusual Hebrew name, which can either mean “one who wrestles”.

Key Theme: The central theme of Habakkuk is theodicy and privation. God is good and made everything good. 

• Habakkuk wrestles with how a righteous God can allow evil to flourish and how He can use a wicked nation to punish a less wicked one. 

Central Verse: The verse “The just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4) is a key verse in the book and is quoted in the New Testament, highlighting the importance of faith in God’s plan and timing while experiencing injustice from evil. 

The Pain of Why?

• Why is it that evil people seem to prosper, but the good people, all these bad things happen to them?  Why?

• Why is it that I work hard at work and I’m honest, and then the jerk over there who’s lazy and cheating, that person gets promoted?   Why?

• Why is it that the person who gets into all sorts of bad stuff lives to the age of 102, but a great Christian father gets cancer and dies at the age of 42?  Why?

• How come I’ve got these headaches that don’t go away?  Or, how come I’m battling with depression?  Or, how come someone I love is going through this?  And God, it seems like you could do something about it, but you don’t.  Why?

That’s the question that Job raised – “Why, God?  Why am I suffering the way that I am?”  

• It’s the question the apostles had when they came to Jesus, and they wanted to know, “Why was this man born blind?”  Why?  

• • We even hear Jesus ask this question as he hung on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Why?

Habakkuk has several problems with God.  

1. The first one is this – he says, “God,  you don’t seem to care.  

   1. You’re letting all these things go on in the world that aren’t right.  

2. His second complaint is this. “God, why won’t you fix this?  You aren’t doing anything about it, even though you could.”  

   1. Now, Habakkuk has enough respect for God to say, “God, I know you could do something about it if you wanted to.  

   2. But I don’t understand why you won’t.  Therefore, you don’t seem to care.  You aren’t doing anything about it, even though you could.”

3. And number three, “God, why are you unfair?  What you’re doing isn’t right.”  In other words, Habakkuk was saying, “God, if I were in your shoes, if I were God, I would do things differently.”  

   1. Let’s be honest for a moment.  How many of you have ever thought something like that? 

Part of the problem is our limited perspective.  

• Illustration: Ever seen a parade, ever been in a parade, ever flown over a parade? 

• Ever see the town just before you land? 

• God is up here, and he sees everything, everywhere, and all at once.  

  • Meanwhile, we’re stuck in just a tiny piece of this big picture.  And all we can see is what’s happening around us. 

From our perspective, what God is doing can be confusing at times.  

• And you see this so often in the Psalms.  

• Approximately one-third of the Psalms are composed of people crying out to God, “What is going on here?  Why are these things happening?  God, why aren’t you doing anything?” 

So, here, we’ve got Habakkuk, who is struggling with his faith because he looked around and he saw men who were flagrantly violating God’s laws and distorting justice on every level, without any fear of divine intervention.  

• It just seemed to be a mockery of God, as if people were saying, “Well, what’s God going to do about it?  

• He hasn’t done anything to anybody else.  We’re not worried one little bit.” 

And that just didn’t seem right to Habakkuk.  

• And we can understand and relate to his concern, can’t we?  

• Because we read in the scriptures about the power of God, and how God accomplishes his purposes in this world, and then we look around at all the wickedness and injustice.

There are times when it just seems like God isn’t doing anything.

So, Habakkuk says to God, “How long are you going to let this go on?  

• How long before you punish these people the way they need to be punished?” 

He starts with this question:

             “LORD, how long must I ask for help and you ignore me?”  (Habakkuk 1:2)

We begin to question God’s apparent inactivity. Where’s God when we need him?

• Examples: 

  • A godly mother prays for her wayward son. He was raised in the church, he went to Sunday school, he knows the Bible—but when he left home, he left it all behind. For many years, his mother has prayed for him, but to this day, he remains a prodigal son.  God, where are you?

  • A wife prays for her husband, who left her after twenty-three years of marriage for a younger woman. He seems utterly unreachable, and the marriage is swiftly headed for divorce.  God, where are you?

  • A husband prays for his wife, who has terminal cancer.  She has six, maybe seven months to live.  None of the treatments can stop the tumors.  The elders pray over her in the name of the Lord, but she dies a few months later.  God, where are you?

1. Why would a good God allow this to happen to a good person? 

Assumption 1: Suffering is about fairness 

1. Suffering should not happen if someone is innocent. – No one is innocent but Christ. 

   1. Suffering happens to everyone, most of all to the only person who was ever innocent – Jesus Christ. 

   2. When asking God why, remember to ask why Jesus suffered abuse and shame for you.

2. Life should be fair – If life were fair, we would all be doomed for hell. 

   1. Romans 3:10-12 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11  there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12  All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

Assumption 2: If you are in control, why did you allow evil to happen in the first place? 

• God is not in control of everything. Although he is in control of all eventualities. 

• He has given His creation: Free will. 

• Free will was never intended by God to be used for sin, but a fre-ed will to not choose sin. 

• Mankind chose to sin, and He became hopelessly depraved. 

  • Even in His will, He could not on His own return to God. 

  • God chose us, we did not choose HIm! 

    • John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you, 

• • Born into sin, God must free our will to choose Him again.

Assumption 3: If you are the creator. Why did you create evil? 

Did God create evil? No. Everything God created, He called good. Is Evil good? 

• Therefore, Evil is not a “some-thing”  it is a nothing.

1.  If God exists, why does he allow Evil? – 4th Cent. Augustine 

   1. The problem of Evil, reconciling Suffering with the Sovereignty of God. 

   2. We even wrongly call the greatest tragedies the worst thing, Acts of God. 

2. When pain and suffering are great, we are tempted to redefine and rewrite our theology

• Man develops a Case against God:

  • God must be unfair because people get sick and die.

  • God is partisan, making some rich while others are poor and destitute.

    • Romans 2:11 God is no respecter of persons. 

How can your good and loving God create such things?

• Why did he endow man with such a capacity for wickedness? 

  • The Atheist responds with this logical fallacy.

    • Here is the deceptive progression: 1) God created all things; 2) evil is a thing; 3) Therefore, God created evil. 

• What we call evil is, in fact, a deprivation, subtraction, and removal of the good and is therefore not really a “thing” at all.   

• Like the “hole” in a donut, it describes what is not there, and what is missing. 

• All things are created. All things were created good. 

  • Poverty is not a thing; it is the absence of supply 

  • Fear and Hate are not things; they are the absence of love 

  • Sickness is not a thing, but the absence of health – dis-ease

  • Death is not a thing, but the absence of life 

Brokenness, Falleness, and emptiness are not things; they are the depravity of something, the subtraction, and the absence or removal of a thing. 

Something was not created but destroyed. 

• We call the removal of something or its depravity evil. 

  • Evil is not something; it’s the depravity or the lack of something. 

Evil Is the Absence of Good: When good is removed from a thing created good, we call that evil becuase the purpose of that thing has been diminished in value to a no-thing or nothing. 

Because when he gave us free will, he meant for us to have, well, free will. The opposite of free will would be directed will. 

• Atheist claim: Why obey and trust in a good God if evil remains in the world? 

• Theist Claim: God is doing something about evil and will judge all evil in time. 

II. What good does it do to be an atheist in light of evil being the absence of good? 

• Can man even know good if he is evolved from a monkey and before that a fish in the ocean? If man is a result of chemical coincidences and universal luck, how can he know truth and good aside from opinion and guessing? Since man is created in the image of God, he rightly identifies the need for justice and for good in light of the absence of good or evil. 

C.S. Lewis: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. 

III. So God gives Habakkuk an answer, but God tells him in advance that he’s not going to like the answer.  

(Habakkuk 1:5) God said, “Look at the nations!  Watch them and be amazed and shocked.  I will do something in your lifetime that you won’t believe even when you are told about it.”Preachers love to pull this verse out all by itself and talk about how God is going to do some amazing things in your life.  

• I will do something in your lifetime that you won’t believe.”  

• Trust God, something wonderful is coming!  

• And that may well be true.  

But that’s not what God is saying here. 

(Habakkuk 1:6-7, NCV).God says to Habakkuk, “I will use the Babylonians, those cruel and wild people who march across the earth and take lands that don’t belong to them.  They scare and frighten people.  They do what they want to do and are good only to themselves.”        

God tells Habakkuk, “I am well aware of how wicked the Jews are, and I have my plans to take care of things.  If I told you what I’m going to do, you wouldn’t believe it.

And God was right – Habakkuk couldn’t believe it!  Because they were the most hated and the most feared nation on the face of the earth. 

• And if a conquered city wasn’t obedient enough, the Babylonians might put a pile of skulls in the city to serve as a warning not to rebel against them.  They poked out the eyes of conquered kings and marched the rulers off in chains, sometimes with hooks through their jaws.

• The point is, these were nasty people, and God knew how bad they were. 

• When God decided to punish Judah, he picked the meanest nation there was to do the job for him.

Now, Habakkuk knew that evil needed to be punished, but he couldn’t understand why in the world God would punish the wickedness of his own people by using a nation that was even more wicked.  That just didn’t seem to make sense.

To help you understand why Habakkuk was so upset, let me make the situation a little more current.  

1. Suppose you were to go to God in prayer and you say, “Lord, this country is declining morally every year.  

2. Crime and violence are increasing, people have no sexual morals anymore, there’s no integrity, no honesty.  

3. There’s no justice in the courtroom. 

“Lord, why don’t you do something about it?  The truth is, some of you may have actually prayed that prayer. 

And suppose God were to answer us personally as he did Habakkuk, and he said, “I’m well aware of how corrupt the United States has become,

• So I’ve made some arrangements.  

• In just a few years, a group of Muslim terrorists will invade the United States, and they will take over and punish all Americans.”

Now I don’t know about you, but my response to that would be, “Wait a minute, Lord.  I’m a little confused here.  Yes, we’ve become an immoral nation, but the muslims are even worse.  They are among the most evil people in the world.  They kidnap schoolgirls. They murder and terrorize. 

So Habakkuk says,“So how can you put up with those evil people?  How can you be quiet when the wicked swallow up people who are better than they are?” (Habakkuk 1:13, NCV)

If God cannot tolerate wrongdoing (which is true), how then could he use the Babylonians to punish Judah?  

• Babylon’s sins were far worse than the sins of Judah.  

• How does that even begin to make sense?  It’s not fair.  It’s not right.

We need to be reminding ourselves of who God is.  

We remind ourselves of who we are not! 

We recognize that God has all wisdom and knowledge, and we don’t. 

We are tempted, in our human frailty, to want a God who will do everything that we think he ought to do.  And to do it the way we want him to do it, when we want him to do it.

So, let me ask you this question — How big is your God?   Because you need to figure out the answer to that question before hard times come.

And they will come.  There will be times when you will pray to God and you won’t like the answer you receive.  We all know that we should pray “Thy will be done” — and most of us do that — but it still surprises us when we discover that God has a completely different plan in mind than we do.

There is an important distinction to be made between God controlling evil and God creating evil. 

• God is not the author of sin, but He can use sinful men to attain an objective. Romans 8:28says, “For those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.” 

  • “All things” include both good and bad things. 

  • We thank God not for evil or bad things but for His working them together for good. 

• If God could not control evil, He would not be God. 

• His sovereignty demands that He be in control of everything, even “dreaded” nations such as Babylon.

The problem in Habakkuk is that God was using the Babylonians (an evil people) to accomplish His will. 

The perfect example of this is Jesus’ crucifixion: the murder of Christ was an evil act, but through it God redeemed His elect and “disarmed the [demonic] powers and authorities” (Colossians 2:15).