No! Not That! (Habakkuk) Series

Jill Briscoe, a pastor’s wife and author, talks about babysitting one of their three, 3-year-old grandchildren several years ago. In their family, they had twins and a single birth all within 24 hours. They called them Search, Destroy, and Demolition. She was babysitting Demolition.

As Jill waved goodbye to his parents, he looked perfectly all right. She read him a chapter out of his favorite book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Then she put him to bed and went to sleep.

In the middle of the night, she said, “I felt a little hand, and I turned on the light. I looked at Drew: chicken pox from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.”

“Nana,” he said, “Me's having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Why should some things like this happen to I?” (Jill Briscoe, “In the Father's Arms,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 141; www.PreachingToday.com).

A lot of people are like Drew. They cannot believe that God would allow terrible, horrible things happen to nice people like them. So, what do you do when you have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, or several days like that? What do you do when God seems silent, or worse, when God’s ways confuse you?

Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to the Old Testament book of Habakkuk. It’s towards the end of the Old Testament, the 5th book from the end, the book of Habakkuk, where the prophet Habakkuk is confused about what God is doing in his day.

Habakkuk 1:1-4 The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted (ESV).

Habakkuk complains that God refuses to deal with the violence and injustice in Judah, his home country. The wicked get away with murder and God is silent. So, God responds to Habakkuk.

Habakkuk 1:5-11 “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves; their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle swift to devour. They all come for violence, all their faces forward. They gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their god!” (ESV)

God tells Habakkuk that He is sending the “dreaded and fearsome” Chaldeans (a.k.a. the Babylonians) to punish Judah for her violence and injustice. This leads to Habakkuk’s second complaint.

Habakkuk 1:12 Are you not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof (ESV).

Habakkuk cannot believe that God would use the Chaldeans to punish Judah, because they are more violent and evil than Judah ever was. Besides, using such evil people seems to go against God’s character.

Habakkuk 1:13 You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? (ESV)

Habakkuk cannot believe that “the everlastingly preeminent Yahweh, the absolutely Holy One, the immutably permanent Rock, [would] utilize so wicked a people to administer discipline on Judah” (J. Ronold Blue, The Bible Kowledge Commentary). God’s ways just don’t make sense to Habakkuk. Then he describes how helpless people are in light of Babylonian aggression—like fish caught in a net.

Habakkuk 1:14-17 You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever? (ESV)