“Look among the nations and watch – be utterly astonished! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you.” Habakkuk 1:5
When Habakkuk sought the Lord concerning the violence and injustice of his day, especially that which was prevalent in Israel at the time, as the people in general had turned their backs on the Lord, and were pursuing their own godless ways, like the nations around them, the Lord answered him very truthfully and forthrightly. He told Habakkuk to “look among the nations (the unbelieving nations),” in particular concerning the Chaldeans whose army was coming to invade and conquer Israel. The Lord made it very clear that, though the Chaldeans were a very violent and ruthless enemy, yet the empty, and false, righteousness of His own people who had a knowledge of Him and His ways, but rejected both, would be judged by the coming invasion of those who were more wicked than Israel. The cry of Habakkuk was an appeal to the everlasting “Lord my God, my Holy One.” He reaffirmed God’s words concerning the Chaldeans, as being those who were appointed for “judgment,” for the “correction” of the people. The times were “disastrous,” and pitiful, for Israel had gone too far in her rebellion against the God who had brought her out of Egypt. How would the prophet Habakkuk pray in a time like this? What could he possibly grasp of truth and mercy in a time when the tidal way of judgment and suffering would soon be upon the nation?
This man Habakkuk, like other prophets and godly men and women mentioned in the Bible, would seriously, and emphatically take his stand to not only seek the Lord, but to find Him. He thus wrote: “I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart and watch to see what He (God) will say to me, and what I will answer when I am corrected.” (Hab. 2:1) Here is a man who is God’s man, though moved by the terribleness of the overwhelming flood of God’s corrective measures, who will honestly seek to hear from God what He will say on the matter. Habakkuk knows that the only thing that matters in a time like this is the word of God, His specific word for the moment and hour, for in Him alone is the power to bring blessing out of a disaster. It is then that the Lord makes it clear that which is of supreme importance, not only to Habakkuk, but to the people. God told Habakkuk: “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may RUN who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” (2:2,3) The Lord then goes on to reveal the difference between the proud man, the arrogant individual “whose soul is not right within him,” and the one who is just, or righteous in the sight of God. The singular truth which brings great light to this whole narrative, and is a fundamental truth found throughout the testimony of Scripture is this: “The just shall live by faith.” It is by faith in God, in Christ, that a man can be justified before God. Only by faith can he receive from God the perfect gift of righteousness to be justified.
God will use this truth of justification by faith to give eternal hope to any and every individual who will choose God’s way to be saved. The man who believes unto justification, believes also that one day “…the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.” (2:14) There is hope in this certainty, especially when God is a God of mercy, who even in wrath remembers mercy.
Habakkuk concludes his book with a declaration of hope, “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation,”…”God is my strength.”
Dear Father, Show is Thy mercy. In Jesus’ name, Amen.