FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture References: Habakkuk 3:2-6; 17-19

Light dominates the sight of God who comes to deliver the people. Rays, like rays of the sun, shone forth from divine hands, but while the light tells of God’s splendor and might, it also veils the extent of God’s power (verse 4). Even when God has done mighty deeds and we are praising Him for His greatness, there is much more that we have not seen; and we cannot see because we cannot know all of God. Habakkuk was not out of line in approaching God with reverent caution; that is still today our basis of approaching God.

It follows, for Habakkuk, that if God’s people are liberated, then what has kept them from freedom will be destroyed. As God the warrior comes to deliver them, pestilence comes ahead, and plague follows behind as tools of destruction to those who oppose God (verse 5). Pestilence seems to refer to disease, and plague evidently alludes to disasters of nature. The Egyptians had experienced these as severely as they had refused to let God’s people go.

God the warrior, in Habakkuk’s prayer-vision, now takes a position from which He examines the conditions in all the world: “He stood and measured the earth.” And as God looked, nations shook; people became fearful because of what might come to them as a result of this warrior’s judgment. The earth itself feared such acts of judgment: the mountains scatter or crumble, and the hills sink. The earth quakes in fear of the judgment of God because God has been said to have so acted in the past; God’s “ways are everlasting” (verse 6).

If this is how God acts, fear alone is inappropriate; utter terror is called for. Habakkuk is never able to put this out of his mind. His prayer is very honest and genuine. His problem is our problem: What to do with all that is attributed to God? Is God a God of mercy as many have said? Is He a God of judgment as others insist? Or both? Without the benefit of God’s revelation in and through Christ Jesus, Habakkuk moves into the realm of hope and faith and comes, in verses 17–19, to a powerful affirmation of his faith in God’s mercy.

His vision is over. His rehearsal of the dramatic acts of God as warrior has been offered to God and the people who worshiped with Habakkuk. Back into his present, things have not changed. He and His people are still “in the midst of the years,” still in need, still despairing.

But, somehow in spite of all this, Habakkuk, still in worship and dialogue with God, breaks out into song. His song is a magnificent song of trust, and the basis for his desire to find his strength in the Lord.

Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls— yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. – Habakkuk 3:17-18.

What if the difficulties continue? What if Habakkuk tells his people there is no relief in sight? What if our crops are destroyed and we end up without basics like figs and grapes and olives or even no food at all? That’s a drastic thought and extreme. He is not proposing some aesthetic lack or being deprived of some frill. He proposes, in his inner reasoning, the possibility of being without a very basic food; doing without food can change everything, attitudes, perceptions, and commitments. For further complications, what if our flocks are lost and livestock is taken by a group presumed to be God’s agents of judgment? Easier said than done to be sure, but at least Habakkuk said it with conviction and sincerity. Even though all these come to pass, he confesses, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” His response is as extreme as the possibilities he entertains.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: Habakkuk 3:2-6; 17-19

I suppose when honesty prompts us to address the issue of God’s vastness, we are putting forth questions to Him such as: Have we really known You, God? Have we understood You at all? How reliable are the statements we have heard made about you (and people say a lot about you, God)? It’s natural to raise these kinds of questions. Habakkuk had heard God called a God of deliverance, and he had also heard some unspeakable acts attributed to God and were called God’s judgment. So Habakkuk prayed, “O LORD, I have heard Your speech and was afraid” (Habakkuk 3:2).

In addition to expressing Habakkuk’s wariness in coming before God, this excerpt and in the whole Book of Habakkuk reveal an underlying concern. Habakkuk wants to know why wickedness seems to swallow up justice in the world if God is any kind of God at all. God’s vastness and all that has been attributed to God caused Habakkuk to fear God, not primarily in the sense of facing possible harm at God’s hand, although this wasn’t unheard of in the prophet’s day and time, but with sufficient mystery to want to come into God’s presence and to this subject with reverent caution.

Habakkuk continues his dialogue with God by appealing to the side of God he had heard about and wanted most to believe, which he hoped against hope was the true nature of God. And, not surprising to us, it was the attribute of God which caused people to call God merciful.

Habakkuk considers the times in which he lives to be turbulent and troublesome for himself and his people. That’s what he means by the phrase, “in the midst of the years,” in verse 2b. “In the midst of the years” calls God’s attention to Habakkuk’s own time, filled with difficulty and need. Destruction and violence mar his community; strife and contention abound. Nations rage and devour those weaker than themselves. The arrogant rule, and the poor suffer. False gods are worshiped throughout the world. Thus, Habakkuk prays for God’s mercy. He also prays, if God’s wrath is somehow evoked by what he and his people are doing, let God remember mercy.

We now know that we do not have to plead with God for mercy; but for the days he was living, Habakkuk was a very forward-thinking prophet. He dared to hope that God’s mercy could prevail, though actions of human beings certainly could justify, in the reasoning of the day, acts of angry judgment on God’s part. The prophet thinks he is justified in seeing God as merciful and, thus, asking for mercy based on the dramatic display of God’s role as deliverer; this was no unrealistic hope. God had been known in history to act as deliverer. This was nowhere more clearly seen, as Habakkuk understood, than in the “Exodus,” the leading of God’s people away from Egyptian bondage. So Habakkuk calls up this image in his prayer as he works toward having his assumption become fact for him. God is pictured as a warrior. God is marching from the region of Sinai toward Edom, as God did at the exodus when the Israelites were delivered at the Red Sea. The implications in this vision are that God can again show mercy and deliver the people, and that, as had been done before, the enemies of God’s people will be overcome by God.

When God moved to deliver the people, God’s “glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise,” writes Habakkuk in verse 3. Of course, this depends on where you were and who you were. The Israelites may have noticed God’s glory in the parting of the Red Sea, but the Egyptians, as you can most likely imagine, weren’t nearly as impressed with this “God” that the Israelites were thanking as the water closed in on their heads. For the purposes of Habakkuk’s vision, God as deliverer shines when people are liberated; and when persons are liberated, the earth itself fills up with praise for Him because there is harmony with the intention of creation itself. It is evident that Nature itself, is involved in the praise.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References: Habakkuk 3:2-6; 17-19

When the pressing times of life come and our coping capacities are not sufficient, where do we turn? Or when we need support with energy merely to make sense of life day by day, on whom do we call? The answer you would expect to hear from a Christian pulpit, especially on a Sunday morning, is, of course, “God.” And most of us would want to give that answer, but are we really convinced that God is our strength? I think many of us have had evidences of God as strength in our lives, and we likely wish we could appropriate this reality more consistently. So how do we come to the point of living in such a way as to find our strength in the Lord? Well, coming to the point has something to do with the degree to which we believe that God can be our strength; this fact becomes a conclusion by which we live.

A principle way by which we come to conclusions is through a type of ongoing inner conversation. Our understanding of God, for example, is rarely shaped in any major way by a single reading, service, conversation, or experience. Rather, we take what we glean from all of these, and process our “hypotheses” over periods of time; certainly thinking about them and maybe testing them in verbal exchanges with ourselves and others, or even action. The real testing ground of our thoughts about God, though, is the inner conversation with God as we contemplate the validity of certain assumptions. In this sense, we do theology, and we are involved in the ongoing process of faith development. It’s certainly a “non-exact science.” If we’re appreciative of free thinking and rethinking, we can grow by the rather continual testing of positions we have held. We’re evidently trying in this process to move to some conclusion which will give us greater understanding, greater assurance, or at least will allow us to survive for a time. Our lives are finally shaped by the few conclusions, in other words, the absolutes, we may be able to call them, which we are able to reach by what amounts to integration of many strands of thought.

Our Old Testament Scriptures takes us into one of these inner conversations with God. Though the form is polished and poetic because Habakkuk had prepared this prayer for public worship, the content or gist of this prayer is the same as the inner dialogue and the searching conversation we often have with God ourselves as we look for what we can hold onto.

There’s something about coming into God’s presence, regardless of how comfortably we may slip into conversation with God, certainly unconscious at times, which often makes us “test the waters” a bit. That’s justified, since there is more to God than we know and can even comprehend. There can be this sense of being acquainted and yet unacquainted with God. It has nothing to do with how God relates to us as if God intended to “keep us guessing” about where we stand. God has made that clear through the revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. Even so, there is more to God than we can comprehend so our approach is cautious, a feeling out of things, as it were. John Baillie caught the motivation for this attitude in the opening lines of a prayer he penned in A Diary of Private Prayer:

Almighty and eternal God,
Thou art hidden from my sight:
Thou art beyond the understanding of my mind:
Thy thoughts are not as my thoughts:
Thy ways are past finding out. ¹

To Be Continued

¹ John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949).
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.