Introduction

All you need to do is read the opening few verses of the prophet Habakkuk to realise that God has left his church a record of a man whose struggle is our struggle: a man who is wrestling with what he knows of God’s revealed will, God’s desires, God’s way, and yet with what he sees happening in the society, the nation, and the world around him. It does not seem to line up; it is hard for him to reconcile in his mind. We have this struggle in the Christian life, don’t we? The question of injustice, the question of violence, the question of why God does not act, why the heavens are silent when we believe they should shout in response. Why, God? Why? Habakkuk prays our prayers; he cries our tears; he thinks our thoughts; he makes our troubled complaint. Job 19:7 says, “Behold, I cry violence, but I get no answer; I shout for help, but there is no justice.”

This question applies in many ways for us as well. It is the question: why, God, could my marriage disintegrate the way it did? It is the question: why, God, have my children gone the way of the world? It is the question: why, God, did I lose my wife or husband so early in life? Why, God, is our society growing more and more hostile against you? Why, God, won’t you put an end to those who prey on the weak? Why, God, must your people suffer? Our lives are full of these “why” questions, and so we resonate with Habakkuk even in the first few verses.

There are two things that I want you to know about this book before we begin. First, we know so little directly about Habakkuk himself or his ministry, and yet this is perhaps what makes the book so timeless. It is almost deliberate, it is deliberate. You pick it up and immediately you find yourself slipping into the burden of the prophet, into his shoes. Secondly, you need to know that uniquely among the prophets, Habakkuk does not, in the text anyway, record any direct prophetic ministry to the people or to the king. He does not stand on the mountain or in the temple or in the streets and thunder his message in this book. Instead, as we unfold Habakkuk over the coming weeks, we are going to see a lament; we are going to see a back-and-forth dialogue with the Lord for the first two chapters. And then, in the third chapter, we have Habakkuk’s change of heart as he comes to accept all that God has responded to him, and worships the sovereign Creator of heaven and earth.

So it is my prayer, as we consider the message of the prophet, that we would see God’s message for us in our times, times in which the hour is very late, in which the creation, fast bound in sin, groans loudly and intensely, anticipating the return of Jesus Christ from heaven. But in the meantime, the purpose of this book for us, as Michael Barrett has said, is “to prove the sensibility of trusting God unconditionally.” That is the message of the book of Habakkuk.

God’s Unexpected Silence

So first of all, I want to bring before you a series of headings, and first to consider vv. 1-4: God’s unexpected silence. God’s unexpected silence. Now, I suppose if you were to ask an experienced pastor, someone who had been in ministry a long, long time, much longer than me, and you asked them, “What is the struggle or question you are most asked by the average Christian?”, that pastor’s answer, I suspect, might be that it is Christians wondering why so often God does not answer their prayers. Why does it feel like God is silent at times in my life? Why do things seem to get worse instead of getting better? Does the Lord not hear me?

And this is unexpected silence for the Christian because we read our Bibles and we are moved as we read of the great prayers of men and women. Think of the church who prayed for Peter and saw him released from prison miraculously. Think of Elijah, who prayed for rain after years of drought, or Hannah, who poured out her soul in anguish and received a son. Or Jehoshaphat, facing an overwhelming enemy and praying, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” Great prayers of the Scripture and great answers of God, so silence seems unexpected. Jesus himself teaches that prayer offered in faith will move mountains, an earnest call to us to pray for all things. Any Christian who prays has known God to answer them; that is for sure. But there are still those times when we really, really want him to work, to act on our behalf, to intervene, and yet it feels like we are praying into the wind and never reach the throne.

The prophet stands in your shoes here, and we see it in this language, don’t we? Look, he says, “How long, O Lord?” He is using the covenant name of God here, Yahweh. “O Yahweh of heaven and earth, O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” is his prayer. How long must I pray and feel like you do not hear me? I call out to you, but you do not answer. I pray for this people, this nation of yours, day and night, and yet will you not hear and act? He is not only crying out, “How long?”, but you will notice in v. 3 he is crying, “Why?” Why, God? Why are you making me wait on these things?

Now, I am going to tell you about what Habakkuk’s complaint really is about in a moment. But first, consider by way of application his crying out here. We have just seen that wrestling in anguish over no response in prayer is not just your burden and my burden, but it is even the prophet’s burden in Scripture. And so this means, brothers and sisters, that you must pray on through your adversity, and pray on in that which you are burdened concerning. Pray with a greater intensity, for even the prophets before you have prayed such through their silence from the heavens. If you know your prayer is in accordance with the truth of Scripture, then pray for your lost family. Pray for your broken government. Pray for your daily and seemingly insignificant needs.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “We all tend to prescribe the answers to our own prayers.” That is why it feels like the heavens are silent. We think our answers are better than God’s, because the saint’s prayer never falls short of the throne of grace. Our perception of silence on earth says nothing true of its resounding echo in the hallways of heaven. Luke 18:7 says, “Now, will not God bring about justice for his elect who cry to him day and night, and will he delay long over them?” The question is: will God find people praying in faith, or will they simply perceive him as silent?

But as to an explanation here of Habakkuk’s burden, you need to understand that these were days of spiritual, moral, and political decline in the southern kingdom of Judah. The Lord had long since exiled the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria as judgment, but Judah remained. They had more time. Jerusalem still had its Davidic king, that is, until the Lord warned through prophets such as Jeremiah and Zephaniah, contemporaries of Habakkuk, that their time for exile was upon them for their sins. The years of Habakkuk’s ministry are estimated from 612 to 605 BC, some 600 years before the coming of Christ, and the exile is about to begin for Judah. He is right there at this critical juncture in their history. His ministry overlaps with the reign of Josiah, the king of Judah, and then more importantly, that of Josiah’s wicked son, Eliakim. After Josiah’s death, the Egyptian pharaoh, Neco II, took political control in Judah. He made Eliakim king of Judah and renamed him Jehoiakim, which is what you will know him by in your Bibles.

So why was Habakkuk so troubled? Well, he is crying out to God about two things. Firstly, the godlessness that is overcoming the covenant nation, the godlessness. We see that here in vv. 3-4: “Why do you make me see iniquity and cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me; strife exists and contention arises.” You see, under Josiah, whom I mentioned earlier, Judah enjoyed something of an intense but short-lived spiritual revival, and then it was all quickly reversed within a generation.

Just to give you a glimpse of some of the reforms under Josiah. In 2 Kings 23 you will learn of the scrolls of the Law rediscovered. The Law was read; covenant allegiance was renewed by king and country. Pagan temple objects were removed and burned. Idolatrous priests were removed. Cultic practices from the nations that had come into Judah were destroyed. Idolatrous altars, pagan shrines, Jeroboam’s altar, all demolished. It was a renewal in Judah for the glory and honour of Yahweh. The Passover was reinstituted and celebrated. The people, the remnant of God, those who truly called upon the name of the Lord, would have been ecstatic: “Lord, you are at work!” But it was also short-lived, because in the end, the earlier sins of the wicked King Manasseh were now returning on Judah’s head in full effect.

So Josiah’s son Jehoiakim, in a single generation, undid those reforms. It shows you just how far things can move in a generation. The Scripture says, “Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Zebidah, the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah. He did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done.”

To give you two examples of Jehoiakim’s wickedness: there was another prophet who does not have a book in Scripture, but his name was Uriah, and he proclaimed God’s judgment against Jerusalem and Judah. Jehoiakim heard about this, and he sought Uriah’s life. Uriah fled to Egypt. The king sent men, he sent assassins, effectively, to bring Uriah back, and Jehoiakim cut him down in his presence; he killed him with a sword. Later, Jeremiah the prophet, whom you know in the Scripture, dictated God’s warnings to his scribe Baruch, who wrote them on a scroll. And when the king was just 30 years old, in his fifth year of reigning, Jehudi read the scroll aloud to the king from Jeremiah, and Jehoiakim cut off sections and threw them into the fire until the whole scroll was burned. This is the context of Habakkuk. This is the man who is on the throne of Judah. This is the man who is responsible for the outbreak of lawlessness in the nation and the falling away from Yahweh. And Habakkuk is crying out: “Lord, what has become of our nation? Why is your law not honoured? Why does wickedness prevail? Justice is perverted. The people have gone their own way. God, where are you?”

Before we hear God’s response beginning in v. 5, you know, we too can feel this kind of perplexity and inner struggle. Sure, you and I are not in theocratic Israel, but we might be perplexed by God’s inaction in our own lives, perhaps. Perhaps within our families, or perhaps as we look out at society and the world. Every year, our Prime Minister will give their State of the Nation address. Chris Luxon, last year in his speech, said, “Hope is on the horizon, and our potential is within our grasp.” The godly in this nation, the Christian who is attuned to God’s will and ways and plans in the Scripture, they ask the question: is it? Is hope really on the horizon? Aren’t we instead becoming increasingly more pagan as a nation? Our Prime Minister bows down to foreign idols for votes. The most unsafe place for children is in the womb. We create laws to punish the good and reward the evil. Are we not hastening our own judgment as a nation? We feel as Habakkuk felt.

Speaking of the nation in this way is one thing, but then of the church, the most important institution of God: what percentage of churches in our land today can you enter on any given Sunday morning and be assured that you will hear biblically ordered worship, gospel proclamation, and the sacraments rightly administered? What percentage? I shudder to think about it. And so we wonder: why, God? Why will you allow your church to sleep, to have so little gospel power in this land of New Zealand today? These are Habakkuk’s concerns; these are the concerns of the godly; these are in our prayers. Psalm 10:1 says, “Why do you stand afar off, O Lord? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”

God’s Unexpected Reply

Now let us consider God’s reply, which begins in v. 5: God’s unexpected reply, heading two. “Look among the nations. Observe. Be astonished. Wonder. Because I am doing something in your days you would not believe if you were told.” We noted already that Habakkuk is concerned about the internal corruptions of the nation. He feels that the end is near: “God, why won’t you act?” He looks internally. But then in vv. 5-11, as we have God’s first response, the first detail I want you to see here is that he says, “Habakkuk, I need you to look outside of Israel for a moment. Look among the nations. Then perhaps you will understand why, in fact, I am answering your cries, but in a way you do not expect.”

Look among the nations. Why does God say this? Well, it is so that Habakkuk would be reminded that God is not absent. In fact, Habakkuk needs to consider the big picture, the perspective that God has, he who holds the nations in his hands. So look among the nations and you will see just how far the scope of God’s sovereignty is extended. Psalm 22:28 says, “For the kingdom is the Lord’s and he rules over the nations.” Observe, Habakkuk; look and be astonished. “I am not absent; I am ever-present. You will see my hand and sovereign rule through all of the comings and goings of man, the rise and fall of nations.” You see, friends, Yahweh is not one who responds to man at whims, as if he were the puppet of man. The omniscient God is at the helm of human history and nations; he is so governing and directing all things according to his own will. “I am doing something in your days, Habakkuk.” Look out to the nations, and to us here in Southland and Woodlands, he is saying the same: “Do not think that I am absent. I am doing something in your days too.” Our perception of it may only be five percent of what it really is, but he is not asleep; you can be sure.

So, by application here, friends, I want you to understand that the advance of godlessness and evil, as we see in our own nation, where crime statistics are not getting better overall as we look back through our nation’s history, as we see these things increase, as we see the increase of godlessness and evil, it in no way equates to the absence of God’s attention and presence. God sees it; he knows about it. Psalm 10:14 says, “You have seen it, for you have beheld mischief and vexation, to take it into your hand.” God knows. He sees.

And that is another application here: never think that God has somehow lost his grip when you see the advance of godlessness in the world. Habakkuk was tempted to think that way, and we might as well in this present historical moment, in a world of political, social, and economic upheaval. Just look at what is happening in France right now. I saw a little bit about it on One News last night, and I am not sure they are exactly telling the whole picture either; it is much worse than it was portrayed in the news. But God is still at the helm. Get a wider view and see that he is sovereign; he remains in control. And somehow, though a mystery to us, he is not the author of evil, yet he governs over it and will use it for his own intended purpose of magnifying his holiness and divine attributes. This is what every believer needs to understand, even though God’s ways can defy belief at times.

There are a few other truths you need to understand here. The first lesson would be that the world, that is, the unbelieving world, is totally unaware of the part that it plays in God’s story of history. The world is oblivious to God’s rule; it does not acknowledge him. God is saying to Habakkuk that he is raising up the Chaldean people, that is, the Babylonians. They will be even more mighty than Egypt, than the Assyrians, and they will invade Judah. But do you think Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, knew at the time that he was being raised up by God? Do you think that he realised that he and his soldiers were the extension of the hands of judgment of God upon Judah? No, they did not know. And it is the same in every age. The king’s heart is like rivers of water in the hand of God, to direct as he pleases; unredeemed man is unaware of it. Daniel 2:20 says, “Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, for wisdom and power belong to him. It is he who changes the times and the epochs; he removes kings and establishes kings.”

Many Christians also have insufficient thinking on these things. The world obviously does not understand, but many Christians too get completely out of sorts with political angst about what party is doing what. They begin to think that the world revolves around the votes of liberal democracies and the dictates of dictators. But God says to us, “Observe; look among the nations. I am doing something you would not believe if I told you.” In other words, it is hard to know how God governs history, but he does. November’s election, coming soon in New Zealand, will fulfil the plans and purposes of God, whether a left, right, or centre government is formed; whether we are happy or sad about it, which we all will be one way or the other, his will will be done. That is not to minimise the need for us to speak truth to power, righteously casting our vote as we see it before us, but the result is in God’s plan, and he knows; he has purposes. No weapon forged against heaven shall prosper. We must continue sounding the gospel. Whether churches are 90 percent full or five percent full, the gospel is pre-eminent. Jesus alone will in the end show his name is stamped over all of human history.

Habakkuk was probably longing for Josiah’s days to return, for revival. We pray the same, don’t we, particularly as we get older? Now, you folk who sit in your seventies and your eighties, and you look back, perhaps you can remember a time of great spiritual renewal. The pews were full, the preaching was powerful, the worship was hot. And then it feels like it has just been slowly eroded away, and you begin to look with golden spectacles to the times past, and you just long for the past. Habakkuk might have felt the same, because he lived through Josiah’s reign; he lived through that renewal, and then he saw what Josiah’s son did as well, when he undid it all. But friends, we must look forward rather than backward, because God is in the future just as he was in the past. What is God doing now? What must I do to be faithful? What circumstance am I in where I can best be obedient to my King? We can mistake yesterday’s blessings for tomorrow’s expectation. God gives and he takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Ecclesiastes 7 tells us this: “Do not say, ‘Why is it that the former days were better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this.” May the Lord give us ears to hear these things.

God’s Unexpected Means

A final heading for you: God’s unexpected means, also vv. 6-11. The real crux of the matter is here. How does God answer Habakkuk? Well, we see God declares to him his unexpected means. I have mentioned the Chaldeans, that is, the Babylonians, already. But read particularly in v. 6; note: “For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous people who march throughout the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs.” The first detail is an obvious one: God states that he is behind the rise of a great pagan power. That is astonishing if you think about it: God is behind the rise of this pagan power. The Chaldeans will execute his purposes of judgment on Judah, and it is of God’s doing.

At the time of Habakkuk’s ministry, Assyria had been the great superpower in the region. The capital of Assyria was Nineveh. It was Nineveh to whom Jonah, generations prior, had gone and preached and seen revival for a generation. That was short-lived as well. Assyria grew in power; they exercised control; they carried away the northern kingdom at God’s decree; they carried away Israel. They were the power in the so-called Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. But to Nineveh’s southeast, the Babylonians were growing in power. Egypt, to the south of Judah, was really concerned about this, and so they tried to help Assyria to stave off the rise of the Babylonians, but the Babylonians only grew more ruthlessly powerful and asserted dominance. And then, in the year 612 BC, they conquered Nineveh, and it was the time of the Babylonian ascendancy. And then eventually, by 597 BC, they finally took control of Jerusalem and the deportations began. Here, in the early years of Babylonian ascendancy, God tells Habakkuk that he is bringing them up as a means of judgment. And that was an unexpected reply that Habakkuk was perhaps not ready for. Did you know that God could do that? That he governs nations? Did you know that his sovereignty is extended to such?

Look at how the Chaldeans are described: “Their horses are swifter than leopards. They are keener than wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping; their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour.” The Chaldean armies were known in this way. They were known for invading and conquering so swiftly that they would overtake their victims before they even knew what was happening; they were overcome. Their fierceness was their reputation. “All of them come for violence,” he says. “Their horde of faces moves forward. They collect their captives like sand.” Habakkuk was complaining about violence in Judah; God says that the violent are coming to take away the violent, effectively. The lawless are coming to overthrow the lawbreakers of my people. God says they mock at kings, and rulers are a laughing matter to them: “They laugh at every fortress and heap up rubble to capture it.” This is the extent of their power. The Chaldeans were known for piling up earth to construct siege ramps to breach walls. All of this is coming. “They collect captives like sand,” God says. It refers to the Babylonian continuation of what the Assyrians did, where they would humble and dissuade the people from an uprising by taking a lot of them back to their home empire and just keeping enough to keep things going, but to stave off any rising up against them. They would deport captives to their own land to deter rebellion.

And as we come to a close, I want you to look at v. 11 again, a remarkable little final comment that God adds to help Habakkuk; a remarkable statement. For all their ruthlessness outlined verse after verse there through vv. 5-11, although God has raised them, he remains able to hold them guilty for their own wickedness. Isn’t that amazing? He says, “Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on. But they will be held guilty, they whose power is their god.” Here is the tension: do not try to solve it; just accept it. God is, on the one hand, raising up the Babylonians, and on the other hand, he will bring them low in judgment in his own time, but he will use them for his own purposes. This is the great central dilemma of the Scripture for the believer, and it is how God cannot be the author of evil and yet so use evil for his own purposes and still hold man to account.

And the great example of this, there is an example here in Habakkuk, the great example is, of course, at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That moment of ultimate violence and corruption, when man crucified the Messiah, the most pure man who ever lived, was the greatest evil; and yet it was orchestrated by God for the greatest good: yours and mine, salvation. It shows that God’s sovereign hand extends even over the wicked scheming of man. God was there at the cross. Just read Acts 4 in Peter’s sermon: he says that the cross was predestined by the hand of God, and then he says at the same time to the men, to those Jews there, “You crucified him,” yet God did it. God is sovereign, friends, over evil, and our salvation is a testimony to that. They crucified the Darling of heaven, and yet by his sufferings we have our forgiveness, and God shows himself victorious.

As we close, what further application can we make? Firstly, that every human government is ultimately subject to God’s rule. So no matter what happens this coming election, whether it is a result that we perhaps all want or whether it is a result that we really don’t want, just remember that every human government is ultimately subject to God’s rule. Daniel 4:17 says, “The Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind, and he bestows it upon whom he wishes.” Secondly, know that history unfolds according to God’s sovereign plan. Isaiah 40 says, “My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.” Thirdly, friends, understand and finally: God rules over the nations to advance the purposes of his kingdom. Daniel 2:44 says, “The God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed... but it will itself endure.” It is the kingdom of Christ, and all things occur that this kingdom might be established. The question is: are we in that kingdom? Do we know the God of Habakkuk? And will we begin to put ourselves in Habakkuk’s shoes, and listen as God responds, and take to heart what he was saying, and realise that God is not silent? Look among the nations. Look to see his hand as he exercises his sovereign will.