Habakkuk (Letter 35, Larry Crabb’s 66 Love Letters)

Never ignore our struggle with how God does things. Ask every question that rises in our heart as we live in this world. But prepare ourself to struggle even more with His response. We must stumble in confusion before we dance with joy.

Habakkuk saw problems in the church of his day like for example in today’s Christianity:

• surface worship that provides excitement but no power to change;
• recognition-hungry spiritual leaders who remain blind to their insecurity-driven ministry and, there, are unable to call people to tru brokenness;
• cheapening views of the cross that reduce Christ’s death to an affirmation of people’s value and a call to similarly affirm others;
• a postmodern revision of Christianity into a kingdom-building story told on a foundation of either truth-denying uncertainty or unknowable truth-resulting in a religion of moral flexibility that weakens the demands of holiness;
• a pride-enhancing emphasis on size, activity, and celebrity that corrupts church into a merely inspiring event and moves it away from a supernatural opportunity to know God, and to know oneself and others with a painful realism that drives God’s people to ever-deepening dependence and trust.

Habakkuk prayed for brokenness in his people and revival through His Spirit. He saw neither.

Only those who struggle in confusion and wait in hope will be strengthened to struggle well and to wait with confidence.

Book Name: HABAKKUK – From Ray Stedman

Click here for entire Bible Summary from Ray Stedman

HABAKKUK: History is in God’s Hands

The name Habakkuk means “embracer,” not in the romantic sense, but in a comforting sense and this is a great book of comfort.

Why, Habakkuk says, does he have to cry “Violence!” and hear no answer? Here is the great problem of unanswered prayer. Here is a man who is disturbed about his nation. He sees everything going wrong. The people are living in wickedness; there is unrest, violence, injustice and oppression throughout the land. Those who have the responsibility to correct this do nothing about it.

He has been praying about his problem. But he does not get any answer. So his perplexed heart in bewilderment cries out, “Lord,
how long do I have to keep this up, crying out to you like this? You do nothing about it. I have been watching for a change, watching for an outbreak of revival, watching for something to happen, yet nothing happens. How long must I continue?”

But now God answers Habakkuk. The amazing thing about this prophecy is that it is not addressed to the people at all. Rather, this is a dialogue between a man and God. That is why it is so up-to-date. Every one of us is named Habakkuk and each of us faces this problem from time to time.

But here is a little nation that is beginning to rise up in world history and God says to the prophet, “I am behind this. These people are a very strange people. They are bitter, hostile, ruthless and cold-blooded. They are going to be as powerful as any nation on earth has ever been and they will sweep through lands conquering every thing, and it will look as though nothing can stop them. These people will not have any god at the center of their life. They believe that their own might is their god, and they trust in their own
strength. I am behind the rise of this people, and this is the answer to your prayer.”

The poet, William Cowper, said, “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.” And the ways of God are full of mystery to us. We have to recognize that there are times when we just cannot understand how God is moving. It does not seem to make sense, and the instruments he chooses are sometimes so out of the ordinary.

Now that was the problem that afflicted Habakkuk. He was puzzled by this strange silence and then when he heard how God was moving, he could not understand that either. But now he does a very wise thing and the next section of this book is a most important passage because it tells us how to handle this kind of a problem. One of the great needs in our Christian life is to understand the method of approaching problems like this. There are four very simple steps and as we go on you will see how the prophet follows them through:

• First of all, stop and think. Do not react emotionally to the problem.
• Second, restate to yourself the basic things you know about God.
• Then, take what you know about the character of God and bring it to bear on the problem.
• And, finally, if you have not come to an answer, leave the rest with faith in God and ask him to show it to you.

First, he thinks about is that the God he knows is an everlasting God, greater than any span of human events.

Second, the prophet reminds himself that God is the self-existent one because he uses a very special name for God, LORD.

Third, Habakkuk reminds himself of the holiness of God: “My Holy One.” Now, what does holiness mean? Holiness is “wholeness,”
“completeness,” it is being “a whole person.” It means essentially that God is consistent, never anything different.
After the prophet reminds himself that God has made a covenant with Abraham. They will not be eliminated.

“Now I understand why you are raising up the Chaldeans; it is your way of waking my people up to their folly, to their awful stupidity in turning away from you.

“Now,” he says, “I can see how you are raising up this nation to punish these people, but I don’t understand this. Despite the wickedness of my own people, they are not as bad as these Chaldeans.
And since he does not know what to do, he follows the fourth step; he just leaves the problem with God.

So at this point many people say, “If God won’t explain to me what he is going to do, I can’t believe in him any longer.”
But the prophet says, “Well, I don’t understand, but then you are mightier than I, and I will just wait for you to reveal it to me.”

This is the word that lit a fire in the heart of Martin Luther, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Either we face it in faith depending upon God, or we face it in unbelief depending upon our own ability to reason out everything.

The very thing in which they trust will prove to be their downfall. Their very gods will overthrow them.” And he pronounces five woes on these people

• Woe to the man who lives by the philosophy, “I will get everything I can and it doesn’t matter how I do it.”
• Woe to the fellow who is devoting all his efforts towards being secure and safe in his old age. God says that he will find the foundations pulled out from under him and everything he has invested himself in will be swept away.
• Woe to those who trust in violence to achieve what they want.
• Woe to the man who creates fear in those around him in order to rule over them, and to gain from them.
• Woe to the man who trusts in a false god, who thinks that the forces around him are able to control him, give him life and fulfill his desires.

Though the problem remains and the pressure is still there, there can be a strengthening of the inner man that makes the heart rejoice and be glad even in the midst of the difficulty.

That is what Habakkuk discovered. “The Lord himself,” he says, “is my strength.” That is the great secret of a Christian. Not that God takes the problem away. The world is desperately trying to find a way to get rid of the problem. But God has ordained that the problems shall remain. “In the world you have tribulation,” Jesus said, “but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” (John 16:33 RSV).

HABAKKUK – David Jeremiah (Understanding the 66 Books of the Bible)

Key thought: When we don’t like the way our world is shaping up, we’re in the best possible place to learn how the righteous live by faith.

Key Verse: Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food … yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. Habakkuk 3:17-18

Key Action: We must live by faith, not by sight, trusting God fully even when everything seems to fail around us.