The God Who Sees Evil and Deals With It

Habakkuk has heard the response of the Lord to his initial complaint but is once again unsatisfied. We are going to look at the remainder of the first chapter but I want to note something regarding this complaint and all of the complaints that are made in this book. Nothing that is stated by Habakkuk is false. Everything that he says is coated in truth when it comes to the character of God.

Read Habakkuk 1:12-2:20

We will begin with truths about God and His nature, then we will turn to the response from the Lord in how we ought to respond to what goes on in the world, and finally we will see the specific consequences that the Lord assigns to the Babylonians. First,

Evil Does Not Mesh with Holiness

Nehemiah points out two attributes of God in this opening question. He first notes that God is everlasting. In pointing out that God has no beginning and no end, He recognizes the importance of God having ordaining judgment for the people of God. While it still does not seem to be the right thing at this point, Habakkuk is accepting of the situation. It is true that what God has put into motion is good even if it does not make any sense to us. Yet, this truth of the everlasting nature of God’s judgment is not the point of the end of this chapter.

We look to the second attribute that is highlighted here, the holiness of God. “My holy one” is such a fitting title for God because it encapsulates all that God is. He is holy, or set apart, because He is everlasting. He is holy because of His unconditional love. He is holy because of His forgiving nature for those who confess sin. It seems like just a word to describe God, but Habakkuk doubles down on the holiness of God in verse 13.

He talks of how it is against the nature of God to allow evil to run rampant. It is because of the seemingly unchecked evil of the Babylonians that he asks how God could just sit back and allow them to act in this way toward the righteous.

Verses 14-17 describe the way in which the Babylonians gather up people in violence as an expert fisherman gathers fish in a net. He certainly understands the unchecked violence but cannot understand how the holiness of God sits with the evil of the people He has chosen to overcome the people of God.

While it comes in the form of a complaint, we ought to remember the truth that God will not allow evil to go unchecked. It may go on for quite a while and seem as though God is sitting back, idly allowing this to happen. But just as God did not allow the merciless killing by the Babylonians to continue, He will not allow our evil or evil done to us to go unchecked.

Next, we will see the response of the Lord to Habakkuk.

The Righteous Will Trust in God by Faith

Chapter 2 begins with a statement from Habakkuk that can be summarized by the fact that he takes his responsibility as a prophet of the Lord seriously and believes that the Lord will respond in due time. Notice that he says he will look out and see which points to the command from chapter for the prophet to “look among the nations and see”.

It’s also important to note that Habakkuk understands that there should always be a response of some sort when God speaks to His people.

The Lord’s answer begins again with a command for the prophet to write down what is being told to him. The purpose of passing this along is that the righteous who hear of the coming judgment might flee. He explains in verse 3 that the vision is coming and will be true. He will not delay for those who refuse to hear that this is coming.

The Lord then turns to those who have acted in evil, whether it be God’s covenant people or those He has chosen to exact His judgment. It is those who are full of pride in themselves that will witness this judgment first hand. What comes at the end of verse 4 is a timeless truth that we must take seriously.

There are those who are puffed up, “but the righteous shall live by his faith.” May we continue to live with our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord to guide our lives. Our belief in Him, whether it be His judgment, holiness, or love, must motivate us to continue to look forward at the work of the Lord around us.

The Lord’s answer continues in verse 5 as He centers on the coming punishment for those who “gathers for himself all nations. The arrogance of the Babylonians does not exclude them from being used by God but just because they will be used does not mean that they will not go unpunished. The remainder of the chapter spells out the

Consequences for Those That are Evil

I want to give a little context for these five woes that are listed. We need to keep in mind here that these consequences are specific to the Chaldeans and do not necessarily apply to all those who act in evil. What we will see essentially in each of these five subpoints is that those who act in evil will always face consequences. It should also be noted that each of these begin with, except for one, the word woe. The idea of ‘woe’ is an exclamation used to get the attention of those who are listening. We see Jesus give various ‘woes’ to pharisees and others in the gospels. It is a warning that should be taken with seriousness.

First, we see in verses 6 through 8

The Plunderer will be plundered

It has already been noted that the Babylonians are a swift army who are not in the habit of taking prisoners. They are swift to attack and conquer. The warning is for the one “who heaps up what is not his own” in verse 6. Those who are in debt to them will rise up and make them tremble. The result is that they themselves will be plundered by the ones who remain of the nations they have distributed out violence to.

The scriptures speak often on the idea of taking what does not belong to you. In this case, the Lord will cause these Babylonians to be captured themselves and they will endure a violence that is similar to that which they handed out to other nations.

Next, in verses 9 through 11 , we see

The Secure will be vulnerable

Verse 9 describes a “nest on high” that provides safety. Because of their shame, the very structure that provides safety will betray them.

There is a great deal of truth in this for those who find their security and delight in anything that is not of God. We lean so often on our own prideful gain of money, wisdom, and many other things when we ought to only ever lean on the Lord.

When a person turns to anything but God for security, they will surely be struck down by that very thing. After all, our God is a jealous God who desires to be worshiped alone.

The third woe is that (12-14)

The civilized will meet the glory of the Lord

This seems like a positive thing until we actually read verses 12 through 14. God describes a people who have built a civilization on blood. Yet, this civilization has been structured of nothing. What once was a mighty city will meet what verse 14 describes as “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord”. We can see that this fills the earth just as the waters cover the sea. In other words, it is far reaching. But what does this mean for such a civilization? We can simply understand that a city built on the blood of other men will have a great fall when it encounters the glory of God, which is far greater than any power known to man.

The destruction in Nagasaki, Japan following the atomic bomb in 1945 was devastating, with somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 fatalities as a result. But such destruction doesn’t compare to the glory of God. It is His wrath that the nations will be truly taken aback by.

The fourth woe is focused on the fact that the Babylonians had no shame.

The shameless will meet violence

These people provide such an amount of violence that the Lord says their neighbors became drunk on it. Such action has no shame. Yet, in His justice, God will give them a taste of their own medicine, only from a being that has no limit of power. This punishment will overwhelm the peoples. While they once had no shame, they will soon be overwhelmed by shame.

These first four woes contain the type of justice that is expected from our God. But the final woe points us back to placing God at the point in our lives where He belongs.

The idolatrous will be powerless

This warning begins with a rhetorical question, where the answer is obvious. What good does it do to place an idol in your life that teaches nothing but lies? The maker of this idol trusts in himself when he constructs an idol who is unable to speak. If Babylon had not been a people who held so closely to their own idols, they would not have been categorized by the evil that we have read about. Each of the previous warnings would have been unnecessary.

Wow. This warning is made specifically for the Babylonians but I believe it is important for every person here. The idols we construct in our own lives exist only for lies. We lie to ourselves when we place these idols above God. We lie to others when we point them to the object of our affection. When we construct an idol for ourselves, we have to awaken it. We have to tell it to rise up and serve us.

It is dead. I don’t know what sort of idol you have in your life that has been lying to you but there is no breath in it at all.

But I don’t just come here to reprimand those of us who have fallen into idolatry. I have come to point us to a better way. The Lord is in His holy temple. He does not need to be awakened! He does not need to be told to rise. He reigns over all!

And when we gaze upon His glory, we are silenced.

So, what does this mean for us? Well, we must first keep in mind that our God is eternal and holy. He cannot gaze upon evil and will not stand idly by. For the one who is here and is calling out to God, keep in mind that the righteous will live by faith! And for those who may be living with some sort of idol, I want to simply invite you to seek the Lord here today. Come to the altar and lay the idol down before the Lord and leave it there.