Pilgrim Traveller

No matter how things may seem, God knows everything from start to finish. He has a plan. He is in control.

Read: Habakkuk 2: 4-20

This is God’s answer to Habakkuk’s second question, but God doesn’t explain or justify the fact that Babylon will be the instrument of judgement for Judah. Instead, he makes it very clear that he sees all and is aware of Babylon’s evil, and like all evil empires it will not be allowed to last forever. With the benefits of hindsight, we know that empires rise and fall, but if you are currently living in or under the latest world power it seems so permanent and unassailable. Habakkuk tells us that we need  to take the long view of history and to have a bigger view of God.

First of all God makes Habakkuk aware that he sees exactly how bad Babylon is, but he points out that the very things that the Babylonian empire rely on for their world ruling power are the very things that will ultimately bring them down. Pride, wealth, violence, oppression and idolatry will cause an inevitable kick back from those they have oppressed. Any nation can become like Babylon if they live by force rather than by faith in God and his ways.

Three things stand out.

• Firstly, in verse 2:4 Habakkuk contrasts the proud, who trust in themselves and live self-centred, crooked lives, with the righteous, who live by faithfulness. The Hebrew word translated “faithfulness” can also be translated “faith”, leading to some word play. God’s faithfulness to us leads to the ability for us to be fully alive and to live right. Equally, as Luther and the Reformers picked up, our faith in Jesus is the key to God giving us life and an the ability to live holy lives. Check out Romans 1: 17, Galatians 3: 11 and Hebrews 10: 37-39.
• Secondly, 2: 14 reminds us that no matter how it may seem, God is at work in his world and will not allow the proud and the violent to get away with it forever. No matter how glorious they may seem, there will be a day when all will see how transitory their glory was beside the glory of God that fills the earth.
• Finally, the real ruler of the world is not a Babylonian idol, or the spiritual power behind it, but the creator and ruler of the cosmos, Yahweh, the holy one. 2: 20 reminds us that God will have the final word. He knows everything, from start to finish. He has a plan. He is in control.

Take some time to reflect on the words from verse 4b

“But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God” New Living Translation

“But the person in right standing before God through loyal and steady believing is fully alive, really alive.” The Message

What does God want you to know from this short verse? How will it affect the way you live today?

Close friendship with God involves living with God’s mystery, so we’d better learn how to do that.

Read Habakkuk 2: 1-3

Many Christians today find mystery extremely uncomfortable. They like everything to be neatly tied down, certain and sorted, with no loose ends. They suffer from what a number of contemporary writers call “the sin of certainty” where in order to defend God’s power it becomes necessary to deny the messiness of real life lived in our messed up world, and to deny that God could be at work when things don’t seem to be working out.

Habakkuk sets out three important principles for those who want to build a trusting friendship with our mysterious God.

• Firstly, wait and see (2: 1). Close friendship leads to patient waiting. The 11^th century writer, St Anselm once wrote: “I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand”. Romans 16: 25-26 talks about “This message about Jesus Christ has revealed his plan for you Gentiles, a plan kept secret from the beginning of time.” Clearly Paul believed that God shares the secrets of his mystery.
• The main task of leaders is to grapple with God’s mysteries for the sake of those they lead (2: 2). Often our people can be too busy and distracted to hear God themselves…the last thing they need are busy and distracted leaders. Leaders need to spend much time in prayer and the scriptures, rather than being swamped by admin and meetings. The apostles recognised this in Acts 6: 2-4: “we apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food programme.” They got their God-given priorities right and appointed other leaders who were equipped and gifted by God to do the other tasks. This is one of the reasons that New Testament leadership is always plural.
• Hearing God is one thing, fulfilment of what he says may take time…sometimes a long time. Romans 16: 25-26 talks about the Gospel as “a plan kept secret from the beginning of time”. Many who believed what the prophets foretold didn’t get to see it in their days on earth…but at the right time it happened. Friendship with God is not just about waiting patiently for an answer – sometimes it’s having the faith to wait for a very long time.

What are the questions that you need to be asking God at this time…questions about his character, the things he’s doing or not doing in your world?

Prayerfully make a list, then take time to sit somewhere quiet and begin a conversation (speaking and listening) with God about each question.

Think about this:

John 16:13-14 NLT

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future. [14] He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me.

God replies when we pray. Only, on this occasion, Habakkuk finds God’s answer quite unpalatable.

Read: Habakkuk 1: 12-17

One of the things that is quickly discovered when we have a relationship with God is that friendship with God is full of mystery. Some say that God can do as he pleases, and it’s not our place to argue or question. I disagree. There will be things we struggle to understand, and if we are God’s friends we are allowed to question what he does, in order to gain, not answers and understanding, but more trust in God’s goodness and his best intentions for our good.

Habakkuk simply does not get it. How could God sort out the evil of Judah using the evil of Babylon. Two wrongs cannot make a right, as the old saying goes. So, his second Psalm of complaint contains several arguments, that go like this.

Surely you can’t use the Babylonians to sort out Judah’s evil, because:

• You can’t mean to destroy your chosen people
• You are holy…the Babylonians are anything but holy
• Judah are less evil than they are
• Babylon will brag that their god is greater than you…they can’t see that you are at work in the background, making it possible
• If you’re not going to let Judah get away with evil, why are you letting the Babylonians? Will you let them get away with it forever?

This is the mystery that Habakkuk is grappling with. In chapter 2 he gives us some pointers to how friends of God can live with his mysterious ways…we’ll look at that in the next post.

How do you come to terms with the aspects of God’s mystery in action that trouble you or that you simply don’t understand?

Make a list of those things, then think about how you might allow God to give you new understanding as you trust him to be a good God, who cares for people and does things for their good, not their harm.