Northeast Presbyterian Church

Let’s pull out Proverbs 14:34, Lord! “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.” Now, Lord, I want You to remember that! Do you see that Habakkuk is questioning the Lord? “Prophecy is taking the form of the interrogative mood” is the comment of one commentator on Habakkuk. How can a holy God operate this way? Lord, I am just trying to figure You out. What makes You tick?

I want to understand Your motivation, especially considering the means and methodology You are adopting. So, “O Lord, are You not from everlasting?” One of the great surprises is what Hab says next in vs. 12: “My God, my Holy One, we will not die!” I suspect Hab cannot believe his own words about the longevity of God’s people! You can find translations that substitute: “You will not die!” And, those substitutions are there even though not one single Hebrew manuscript is available that says “You!” They all say “we!” Hab somehow recognizes that the Lord is using the Chaldeans to “execute judgment” and to “punish” God’s people, but not to eradicate them; not to “wipe them off the face of the earth!”

Here is what I would say about vs. 13: Hab is discovering that he has been wrong about the Lord; Hab is in the midst of discovering that the Lord’s eyes are not to pure to look on evil; that the Lord’s holiness can indeed “tolerate the treacherous.” See, what Hab is discovering is that the Lord’s holiness does not trump His love. No, the Lord’s love for His creation trumps holiness. As a matter of fact, the Lord’s love trumps everything. God’s love covers “a multitude of sins.”

And, this is something that is hard for God’s people to fathom. The elder brother in the prodigal son story was dumbfounded that the Father’s love for the prodigal could be so graceful and forgiving. Hab realized that God’s people, Israel, deserved to die. At least, if it happened to Israel, it should happen to Judah.

Certainly, the Lord expects us to be righteous and holy. Even Jesus says that we should be holy as our Heavenly Father is holy. He even tells us that we should be “perfect!” But, Hab is still discovering what Jesus reveals. Righteousness is not relative. It’s not a matter of God grading on a curve.

Hab cannot comprehend that God would use an instrument so wicked to “swallow up those more righteous than themselves!” Do you see that Hab is still trying to eat from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil?” So am I and so are you! All of us are!

Father, we cannot figure out the problem of evil; we cannot tolerate it when we see it in others. How can You? The bigger question that we don’t want to address is “how You can tolerate the evil in us?” And, Father, the gospel is that You so love the world. The answer is that You want forgiving love to lead us to repentant love and forgiving love. So, Father, help us to get on the road to forgiving repentance ourselves.