Some Bible books are a bit like acquaintances – they don’t rate as close friends but you do see them from time to time when you’re in the company of your close friends (NT quotations). When you happen to bump into them on their own (via a Bible reading programme?) you may find you don’t really know what to make of them, they seem to speak a different language and seem so different to your close friends. And so you make your apologies and offer to do lunch someday, being careful not to say when or where, and you run-off to find your more familiar friends.
The great shame about that kind of approach to the Bible – quite apart from what it says about our attitude to the one who gave us the Bible – is that we miss out so much. If we would only spend time with these acquaintances, we would find in them a depth we never realised was there, we would find them engaging and profound.
Habakkuk’s book may be one of those acquaintances. It gets at least 3 honourable mentions in the NT – at some very strategic points, no less – but in its own environment it looks less inviting. After all, very little indeed is known about its author and, whilst the historical situation it addresses is discernible, it isn’t dated as many of the prophets are. So we might feel the cards are stacked against us and it would be more prudent to make our visit brief.
I hope a slightly more extended visit over these next weeks will show us how mistaken that is.
1. Habakkuk’s complaint: ‘Lord, you don’t seem to care’
The situation that Habakkuk describes may be distant in time but should be familiar enough in terms of scripture: the people have turned away from God. Not all of them, certainly; there was always a righteous remnant. But sufficient have forsaken him to make the land full of violence and oppression (notice how Habakkuk piles up the adjectives here).
It is that situation which prompts Habakkuk to pray. Before we look at his prayer and the Lord’s response, I just want to suggest that the fact Habakkuk is concerned is worthy of our attention.
It reads as though he is complaining to the Lord, which in a sense he is. We might want to tut-tut but there is a challenge there for us: are we concerned enough about the state of the church and the world to wrestle before God over it? Or are we so wrapped up in the smaller details of our small lives that we are blinkered and have a blind spot in the very place where Habakkuk’s heart bled?
2. The cure is worse than the disease: Is God righteous or not?
So what is Habakkuk so worked up about? In 1:2-4 he lays the situation before the Lord: the land is full of violence and oppression; God’s people are living a lie – they are called by his name but they live as though he didn’t exist.
Given that they are his people and given that he is holy and righteous, Habakkuk wants to know why the Lord hasn’t done anything about it – “Why do you tolerate wrong?”
Maybe he was expecting the Lord to come in mighty reviving power to transform the nation but the answer he receives only leads to further anguish and confusion on his part. In 1:5-11 the Lord tells Habakkuk that he is going to deal with the situation in a way that was scarcely imaginable: he was going to raise up the Babylonians to chastise his people.
But this only intensifies Habakkuk’s sense of confusion. The problem he has is not that the people don’t deserve to be judged but that the cure seems to be worse than the disease. The Babylonians are utter pagans, notoriously violent and destructive; if God raises them up to world dominance then those who are more wicked than Israel will prosper even more (1:12-17).
How can this be right? How does this uphold God’s righteousness?
The Lord’s reply in 2:2-5 emphasises the fact that judgement will one day come. Yes, he will use the Babylonians to chasten his people but they will be responsible for their sins and will one day answer for them in judgement. No one is getting away with anything.
And Habakkuk’s response to this situation must be to rest and trust in the Lord’s sovereign and unsearchable wisdom (2:4).
The lesson for us ought to be clear, too. There are many situations that grieve and confuse us. It is not wrong to take our grief to the Lord and to ask him why. But we must then be ready to allow his word to address us and humble ourselves before the greatness of his power and wisdom. Habakkuk had to do it and so must we.
3. The big picture: If the law is paralysed, what will save us?
But there is a deeper significance to the problem that Habakkuk is wrestling with. In fact, if there wasn’t a bigger picture, it would mean when Paul quotes 2:4 he was guilty of just scanning the OT for a text to make his point, which isn’t how he uses God’s Word.
The bigger picture is tied to the Lord’s purpose in choosing Israel to be his people. That purpose was to bless the world through them, for salvation to come into the world through this people.
For many in Israel, the means for that would be the law, the torah. But as Habakkuk looks at the nation, he sees that the sin of the people has paralysed the law (v.4). If that is so, how will the Lord’s saving righteousness be effected? Is sin going to finally stymie the living God? Is Satan going to win after all?
The point Habakkuk makes here about the law is also made by Paul in Rom. 8:3 when he says “the law was powerless” because “it was weakened by the flesh”. The mere giving of the law to sinful people could never effect their rescue. The law was always going to be powerless to rescue. It could highlight sin but it couldn’t deal with sin.
What answer does the Lord give Habakkuk here? He tells him there is a solution, his righteousness will be vindicated, sin won’t have the last laugh; but that time was then still future: “the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false.” Or as Paul so aptly put it, “When the time was fully come, God sent forth his Son…”; “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…” (Gal. 4:4; Rom. 5:6).
What the law could never do, God was going to accomplish in the most unexpected way (more remarkable than raising up the Babylonians) - sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering and through him to condemn sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3).
But that was all future for Habakkuk; he wasn’t told how God would resolve this challenge to his righteousness, to his saving faithfulness. He was only told that one day it would be. What he is told is how he and others should respond: “the righteous will live by his faith”.
They must put their hope in the God of the covenant. Their trust is not to be in the law; if it was, they would be gravely disappointed because sin has paralysed the law and the law is powerless to do anything about it. No; their faith must be in God that he will one day act in person to deal with sin.
Paul’s point in quoting this verse in Rom. 1:17 and Gal. 3:11 is to emphasise that this has always been God’s way of saving; it never was through the law but was always a matter of faith; “The righteous will live by faith”. He, of course, is dealing not with anticipation but fulfilment; the time has come and God has acted to deal the death blow to sin through his own Son dying in place of sinful humanity.
So the righteous, those who put their trust in God, will live by faith. The verse in Habakkuk and as used by Paul is a little ambiguous: it could refer to faithfulness or to faith; it could have God in view or man. Where Paul quotes it in Rom 1:17 it’s very likely that he has both in view, for he speaks of salvation being “from faith, for faith” which many take to mean “from God’s faithfulness to man’s answering faith”.
Today still “the righteous will live by faith”. It is how we come to be united to the Lord Jesus Christ and share in his blessings. But it is also how we are to live our lives: with faith in God, in the dark days when we see no sign that Jesus will return, when we doubt our own salvation, when sin abounds and there seems to be no answer.
The emphasis must always be on trusting God, hoping in his faithfulness that was revealed in Jesus and sealed in the sending of his Spirit.
Is that where your trust is this morning – not just for yourself but for the church and, indeed, for the whole world? “We walk by faith, not by sight”; “The righteous will live by faith.”
