In the film ‘The Remains of the Day’ Anthony Hopkins plays the role of an emotionally repressed butler, in an English country house in the 1930s, who falls in love with the housekeeper, played by Emma Thompson. The butler is incapable of expressing his feelings and so the relationship remains stilted and unreal. One commentator writes about this saying, ‘Often our relationship with God can remain at a similarly superficial and unreal level. We think that we dare not explode and tell God what we feel about his silences, his decisions and his ways. But God wants the kind of honesty with which Habakkuk confronted him. God wants us to trust him with our deepest fears and our wildest feelings . . . God wants us to throw everything at him, not to pretend that we do not think and feel in ways which are, for a certain kind of believer, unacceptable or shocking.’ We have all felt frustrated with life, maybe we have vented that frustration with close friends, but do we feel the freedom to honestly tell God how we feel? Do we think that we need to pray as if we are tip-toeing around a museum or can we open up with true emotion?
I am not suggesting that we treat God without reverence. I am saying that we need learn about prayer from people like Habakkuk, Job and the psalmists. They were willing to cry out to God. They brought their aching hearts to him. They asked ‘How Long, O Lord?’ God is big enough for our questions and gracious enough to listen to our complaints!
It’s around 600 BC. Habakkuk lived in Judah, a kingdom that was in unique covenant relationship with God. Yet these people ignored God’s law—they are like those today who claim to be Christians but won’t submit their thinking to the clear teaching of the Bible. They were corrupt and violent. So Habakkuk wanted to know ‘When are you going to step in and stop the rot?’ This first complaint was that God appears to do nothing. These people are dishonouring his name and God is not doing anything about it.
When God answers Habakkuk the prophet is totally shaken and his second complaint is that God seems to be about to do the wrong thing. God was not only going to remove the wicked from the land; he was going to remove everyone from the land, and use the ruthless Babylonians to do it! This flies in the face of what Habakkuk understands about God and he asks more questions, including ‘how could you use such a wicked people to fulfil your purposes?’
At the beginning of chapter 2 Habakkuk is standing like a guard in the watchtower of the city awaiting God’s answer. Then the LORD replied.
God has revealed his plan (2-3)
God tells Habakkuk to write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. God reveals his truth to Habakkuk. Indeed God has revealed himself and his ways right throughout the Bible. Where our thinking is at odds with the Bible’s revelation we must realign our thoughts. As we grasp God’s truth in the Bible we are to run with it—God’s words are to be shared. Sometimes people will tell you something beginning ‘just between you and me . . .’ God’s word is the opposite of that—it is for sharing, we are gossip the gospel, we are to ask God for the opportunity and the courage to share what he was shown to us. Christian truth is not private truth!
For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and not delay. In our instant generation it might seem that God acts very slowly but he does act in his time. God would stop the rot and judge Judah fourteen years later. Sixty-one years later he would judge the ruthless Babylonians. We still await Jesus’ return and the final day of judgement when he will set every matter straight.
We are to trust him (4-5)
God will stop the rot. He will punish evil. Indeed, on his day of judgement, he will justly repay people for all the evil that they have done. Of course, that leaves us with a problem: ‘what about the evil that we have done—what about the fact that we too are guilty of sin?’ Verse 4 gives us the grounds for our hope.
See, he [referring to Babylonia in general and their king in particular] is puffed up. Being puffed up refers to proud people who rely upon themselves. His desires are not upright—but the righteous shall live by faith. In this context faith means trusting God’s promises. Faith believes something because God says it. Habakkuk was to know the Babylonians would be overthrown simply because God had said it. Faith knows there will be a day of judgement because it is foretold in God’s word. Faith is confident that God will forgive the sins of those who turn to Christ because that is what God has promised. Faith knows that God’s people will live in a new earth and a new heaven because that has been promised too.
This phrase ‘the righteous shall live by faith’ is picked up in the New Testament (e.g. Gal. 3:11) to teach that God’s people are saved by grace. Grace is God’s free, unmerited, unearned and undeserved favour. As we take God at his word, trusting in his promise to forgive those who turn to Jesus, we need not fear the coming day of judgement. On the cross Christ dealt with our sins and we can now know what it is to be counted righteous.
The New Testament also quotes this verse in describing the sort of life we should live (Heb. 10:38-39). We are to live a life of deepening trust in God. We are to continue to cling to his promises and our hope is to be based on his faithfulness even when life is dark and confusing. We do not have all the answers to all the questions that the pains of life throw up at us but we have been shown enough of God in his word to know that he is good and trustworthy. We are not promised a life free from suffering and pain but because of Christ we have a living and eternal hope.
Right throughout the Bible humanity is divided into one of two categories. These are not categories that are based upon our wealth, our reputation or our appearance. These are categories based on our relationship with God. It is about being saved or lost. It tells us that there are only two ways to live. In verse 4 it is the difference between being puffed up—that is self-righteous and independent of God’s mercy, or living by faith—being made righteous through faith and depending on God’s mercy.
He will judge all evil (6-20)
Habakkuk complained that God was going to use the Babylonians to punish the people of Judah. Habakkuk could not understand how God would use the wicked to swallow up people who were less wicked than they were. It didn’t seem just! But God shows Habakkuk what will happen to the Babylonians. He might use them for his purposes but their evil will not go unpunished. In a series of five woes we hear of the Babylonians fate. These words are given in the form of a taunt song that the victims will sing when they see their oppressors face what is due to them. They may describe the fate of a Babylonian empire in the past; they surely also point us ahead to the final day of judgement. Martyn Lloyd Jones writes, “The principle for us to hold on to is that God is over all . . . Your worldly man may make a fortune by evil business methods and arrive at the top. But see the end of the ungodly! Look at him dying upon his bed; see him buried in a grave, and think of the doom and woe that are his destiny! We should feel sorry for the ungodly that they are fools enough to become drunk on temporal success. Their end is fixed.’
Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion. The Babylonians pillaged and made themselves wealthy by extortion. Their lives have centred upon personal greed. But the tables will be turned, their debtors will suddenly arise, they will tremble and they will become the victim. The plunderer will be plundered. They will face judgement for the fact that they had treated other people’s lives cheaply in search of personal gain. Throughout the generations empires have exploited weaker states. God notices! Empires have claimed that they would last for ever but in the providence of God they all come to an end. Indeed in the end it will only be God’s kingdom that will endure for ever!
Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high to escape the clutches of ruin. The picture is of a bird building an inaccessible nest. The Babylonians thought that their empire was untouchable. While people may think that they will get away with what they have done, no one will! Even those who think they have covered their tracks will one day have everything exposed. It may seem that people practice evil with impunity but one day they will face God’s judgement.
Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime! Has not the LORD Almighty determined that the people’s labour is only fuel for the fire, that nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea—‘One day God will act in a decisive way in his world, he will remove everything and everyone that refuses to acknowledge him and he will remake his world in perfection . . . One day God will be finally honoured as he ought to be. Human life will be finally renewed, unspoilt by either sin or the consequences of sin. One day the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’ (Matthew Brailsford).
Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbours, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze at their naked bodies. This seems to relate to the humiliation of those that are conquered. Those who have sought to shame others will find themselves shamed. The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory. In the Bible the cup is a symbol of divine retribution. Remember Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, ‘Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’—Jesus experienced the cup of God’s wrath that we might be spared it!
Woe to him who says to wood ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’ In our relativistic age it is improper to criticise someone else’s religion. The Bible has no such qualms. The Babylonians idols were nothing. They were simply worthless creations of human hands. Before we think of idolatry being something limited to other cultures remember that the Apostle Paul wrote of greed which is idolatry (Col. 3:5). We live in a highly idolatrous society and we must be careful not to practice this form of idolatry.
But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him. The Lord alone in the living God! He is God of all the earth. One day all nations and all people will have to give account to him. While the corrupt and violent may prosper and triumph that will come to an end! Silence is commanded ‘so that everyone will consider his awesome nature and realise his sovereignty over all creation’ (ESV Study Bible).
Conclusion
Habakkuk wanted to know how God could allow the evil Babylonians be instruments of his judgement. God points out that the he would deal with the Babylonians. Indeed the Persians overthrew them in 539 BC. The judgement does not stop there. There will be a future day of judgement when the Son of God has returned, when all evil will addressed, and when the earth will be filled with the glory of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Imagine it is a cold night in April 1912. You are a passenger on the Titanic. Now there were three levels for the different social classes on that boat. The boat contained a great assortment of people. But in the coming hours there would only be two categories of people. There would be the saved and the lost. Which of those two categories you were in puts everything else in perspective. Indeed nothing else much matters. The Bible continuously presents us with an equally stark division.
You see there are only two ways that we can listen to these verses.
We can be among the righteous that live by faith—admitting our guilt, enthroning Christ as our king, living a life of trusting him and delighting in the fact that Jesus experienced the cup of God’s wrath that we would not be condemned. You are among the saved! Indeed aware of God’s coming judgement we are to run with it, we are to share this news with other people that they too might be prepared.
Or will we be people who know the awful truth of the word woe personally? We can depend upon wealth, financial security or power but one day we will face the cup of God’s wrath ourselves. So many people live for the now with no thought of the eternal future! Those who refuse to turn to God in faith will experience divine retribution for all the evil that they have done. They are the lost!
May God’s judgement be something that brings us comfort as we see all evil being dealt with, rather than something we experience with trembling as we face the consequences of our evil, having refused God’s mercy!
I am not suggesting that we treat God without reverence. I am saying that we need learn about prayer from people like Habakkuk, Job and the psalmists. They were willing to cry out to God. They brought their aching hearts to him. They asked ‘How Long, O Lord?’ God is big enough for our questions and gracious enough to listen to our complaints!
It’s around 600 BC. Habakkuk lived in Judah, a kingdom that was in unique covenant relationship with God. Yet these people ignored God’s law—they are like those today who claim to be Christians but won’t submit their thinking to the clear teaching of the Bible. They were corrupt and violent. So Habakkuk wanted to know ‘When are you going to step in and stop the rot?’ This first complaint was that God appears to do nothing. These people are dishonouring his name and God is not doing anything about it.
When God answers Habakkuk the prophet is totally shaken and his second complaint is that God seems to be about to do the wrong thing. God was not only going to remove the wicked from the land; he was going to remove everyone from the land, and use the ruthless Babylonians to do it! This flies in the face of what Habakkuk understands about God and he asks more questions, including ‘how could you use such a wicked people to fulfil your purposes?’
At the beginning of chapter 2 Habakkuk is standing like a guard in the watchtower of the city awaiting God’s answer. Then the LORD replied.
God has revealed his plan (2-3)
God tells Habakkuk to write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. God reveals his truth to Habakkuk. Indeed God has revealed himself and his ways right throughout the Bible. Where our thinking is at odds with the Bible’s revelation we must realign our thoughts. As we grasp God’s truth in the Bible we are to run with it—God’s words are to be shared. Sometimes people will tell you something beginning ‘just between you and me . . .’ God’s word is the opposite of that—it is for sharing, we are gossip the gospel, we are to ask God for the opportunity and the courage to share what he was shown to us. Christian truth is not private truth!
For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and not delay. In our instant generation it might seem that God acts very slowly but he does act in his time. God would stop the rot and judge Judah fourteen years later. Sixty-one years later he would judge the ruthless Babylonians. We still await Jesus’ return and the final day of judgement when he will set every matter straight.
We are to trust him (4-5)
God will stop the rot. He will punish evil. Indeed, on his day of judgement, he will justly repay people for all the evil that they have done. Of course, that leaves us with a problem: ‘what about the evil that we have done—what about the fact that we too are guilty of sin?’ Verse 4 gives us the grounds for our hope.
See, he [referring to Babylonia in general and their king in particular] is puffed up. Being puffed up refers to proud people who rely upon themselves. His desires are not upright—but the righteous shall live by faith. In this context faith means trusting God’s promises. Faith believes something because God says it. Habakkuk was to know the Babylonians would be overthrown simply because God had said it. Faith knows there will be a day of judgement because it is foretold in God’s word. Faith is confident that God will forgive the sins of those who turn to Christ because that is what God has promised. Faith knows that God’s people will live in a new earth and a new heaven because that has been promised too.
This phrase ‘the righteous shall live by faith’ is picked up in the New Testament (e.g. Gal. 3:11) to teach that God’s people are saved by grace. Grace is God’s free, unmerited, unearned and undeserved favour. As we take God at his word, trusting in his promise to forgive those who turn to Jesus, we need not fear the coming day of judgement. On the cross Christ dealt with our sins and we can now know what it is to be counted righteous.
The New Testament also quotes this verse in describing the sort of life we should live (Heb. 10:38-39). We are to live a life of deepening trust in God. We are to continue to cling to his promises and our hope is to be based on his faithfulness even when life is dark and confusing. We do not have all the answers to all the questions that the pains of life throw up at us but we have been shown enough of God in his word to know that he is good and trustworthy. We are not promised a life free from suffering and pain but because of Christ we have a living and eternal hope.
Right throughout the Bible humanity is divided into one of two categories. These are not categories that are based upon our wealth, our reputation or our appearance. These are categories based on our relationship with God. It is about being saved or lost. It tells us that there are only two ways to live. In verse 4 it is the difference between being puffed up—that is self-righteous and independent of God’s mercy, or living by faith—being made righteous through faith and depending on God’s mercy.
He will judge all evil (6-20)
Habakkuk complained that God was going to use the Babylonians to punish the people of Judah. Habakkuk could not understand how God would use the wicked to swallow up people who were less wicked than they were. It didn’t seem just! But God shows Habakkuk what will happen to the Babylonians. He might use them for his purposes but their evil will not go unpunished. In a series of five woes we hear of the Babylonians fate. These words are given in the form of a taunt song that the victims will sing when they see their oppressors face what is due to them. They may describe the fate of a Babylonian empire in the past; they surely also point us ahead to the final day of judgement. Martyn Lloyd Jones writes, “The principle for us to hold on to is that God is over all . . . Your worldly man may make a fortune by evil business methods and arrive at the top. But see the end of the ungodly! Look at him dying upon his bed; see him buried in a grave, and think of the doom and woe that are his destiny! We should feel sorry for the ungodly that they are fools enough to become drunk on temporal success. Their end is fixed.’
Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion. The Babylonians pillaged and made themselves wealthy by extortion. Their lives have centred upon personal greed. But the tables will be turned, their debtors will suddenly arise, they will tremble and they will become the victim. The plunderer will be plundered. They will face judgement for the fact that they had treated other people’s lives cheaply in search of personal gain. Throughout the generations empires have exploited weaker states. God notices! Empires have claimed that they would last for ever but in the providence of God they all come to an end. Indeed in the end it will only be God’s kingdom that will endure for ever!
Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high to escape the clutches of ruin. The picture is of a bird building an inaccessible nest. The Babylonians thought that their empire was untouchable. While people may think that they will get away with what they have done, no one will! Even those who think they have covered their tracks will one day have everything exposed. It may seem that people practice evil with impunity but one day they will face God’s judgement.
Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime! Has not the LORD Almighty determined that the people’s labour is only fuel for the fire, that nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea—‘One day God will act in a decisive way in his world, he will remove everything and everyone that refuses to acknowledge him and he will remake his world in perfection . . . One day God will be finally honoured as he ought to be. Human life will be finally renewed, unspoilt by either sin or the consequences of sin. One day the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’ (Matthew Brailsford).
Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbours, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze at their naked bodies. This seems to relate to the humiliation of those that are conquered. Those who have sought to shame others will find themselves shamed. The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory. In the Bible the cup is a symbol of divine retribution. Remember Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, ‘Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’—Jesus experienced the cup of God’s wrath that we might be spared it!
Woe to him who says to wood ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’ In our relativistic age it is improper to criticise someone else’s religion. The Bible has no such qualms. The Babylonians idols were nothing. They were simply worthless creations of human hands. Before we think of idolatry being something limited to other cultures remember that the Apostle Paul wrote of greed which is idolatry (Col. 3:5). We live in a highly idolatrous society and we must be careful not to practice this form of idolatry.
But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him. The Lord alone in the living God! He is God of all the earth. One day all nations and all people will have to give account to him. While the corrupt and violent may prosper and triumph that will come to an end! Silence is commanded ‘so that everyone will consider his awesome nature and realise his sovereignty over all creation’ (ESV Study Bible).
Conclusion
Habakkuk wanted to know how God could allow the evil Babylonians be instruments of his judgement. God points out that the he would deal with the Babylonians. Indeed the Persians overthrew them in 539 BC. The judgement does not stop there. There will be a future day of judgement when the Son of God has returned, when all evil will addressed, and when the earth will be filled with the glory of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Imagine it is a cold night in April 1912. You are a passenger on the Titanic. Now there were three levels for the different social classes on that boat. The boat contained a great assortment of people. But in the coming hours there would only be two categories of people. There would be the saved and the lost. Which of those two categories you were in puts everything else in perspective. Indeed nothing else much matters. The Bible continuously presents us with an equally stark division.
You see there are only two ways that we can listen to these verses.
We can be among the righteous that live by faith—admitting our guilt, enthroning Christ as our king, living a life of trusting him and delighting in the fact that Jesus experienced the cup of God’s wrath that we would not be condemned. You are among the saved! Indeed aware of God’s coming judgement we are to run with it, we are to share this news with other people that they too might be prepared.
Or will we be people who know the awful truth of the word woe personally? We can depend upon wealth, financial security or power but one day we will face the cup of God’s wrath ourselves. So many people live for the now with no thought of the eternal future! Those who refuse to turn to God in faith will experience divine retribution for all the evil that they have done. They are the lost!
May God’s judgement be something that brings us comfort as we see all evil being dealt with, rather than something we experience with trembling as we face the consequences of our evil, having refused God’s mercy!
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