O LORD, I have heard of what you have done, and I am filled with awe. Now do again in our times the great deeds you used to do. Be merciful, even when You are angry. Habakkuk 3: 2, Good News Bible.
O LORD, how excellent is Your name in all the earth! We ask that Your mercy will be shed abroad in our hearts and lives as we sit to study Your Word. This we ask in the blessed name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
To the prophet Habakkuk, and the people of Israel, all may have seemed lost – hopeless. After he spoke to God, things, at first, may have appeared even darker, when God responded by saying, ” ‘ “ Look among the nations and watch— Be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you. For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation which marches through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful; their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. . . “They all come for violence; their faces are set like the east wind. They gather captives like sand. . . ” ‘ ” (5-7, 9).
The prophet had asked God to, “do again in [his time] the great deeds you used to do.” God responds, “I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you.” Sometimes the answers we receive from the LORD are not the answers we were expecting, nor the answers we want to hear. The prophet had heard that it was God who fought their battles. He had heard that, even after they had sinned, because of His great love, God always “came through” for them. In other words, though He was angry with them, He showed them mercy! This time, God is telling him, “I am going to raise up against you, an enemy nation who is ruthless, cruel, and whose only ambition, is to take other nations captive!” This message bore no resemblance to the messages of the past! Had God changed? Was He not the same God of his forefathers? The prophet is perplexed, but he will not keep his perplexity to himself. He will go to God, the only source of peace, and seek an answer to his dilemma. That is always a good idea:
“Are You not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, You have appointed them for judgment; O Rock, You have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he” (12, 13)? Notice how the prophet begins this second half of the dialogue with His Maker, “Are You not the same God ‘from everlasting . . . ?’ ” Does it sound somewhat like the question asked by John the Baptist, “Are You the One we were looking for . . . (Matthew 11: 3)?
But the prophet does not stop there. He goes on to testify of what he knows about God! Testifying of God’s leading in the past, increases our faith in Him, in the present! “You are not going to leave us at the mercy of these warriors. You will only use them to punish us. You are too holy to be unjust” (my paraphrasing). And then, as if pondering what he had just declared, he adds the question: “Why do You allow the unrighteous to deal this way with Your people” (my paraphrasing)?
Whenever you and I are struggling between what we have heard about God, what we are seeing of God, and what we have experienced of God, let us, by His grace, rest on our experience. That is what is real to us. That is what we have tasted of the Lord (Psalm 34: 8)! There is where we have proven the Lord, for ourselves!
The psalmist did not say, “I have heard from people who were young, and now are old, that they have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor His seed begging bread” (Psalm 37: 25). No, he said I have never seen it happen! Jesus did not tell the disciples of John the Baptist, to ask His disciples, if He was the One who was to come. He made them see for themselves, that He was indeed, the One, by the works, that they were witnessing!
Your parents experience is not what is going to decide your faith in God. The testimony of your parents is not good enough! You need to behold Him for yourself! You need to hear Him for yourself! You need to know Him for yourself! Then you can say, for yourself, that, “His mercy endures forever” (Psalm 106: 1)!
We will continue.