HABAKKUK had complained that God seemed to be indifferent to his prayer and supplication, and we saw last time that his prayer was not all that it ought to have been, but he had prayed from his heart, and now God responds to his prayer. The answer God gives is both startling and upsetting. It is one of those occasions when our preconceived understandings of God are upset, leaving God's people troubled and surprised.

The main lesson here is that God does hear our prayers, but he answers them in accordance with his sovereign will, and according to his preconceived plan and purpose. Let us seek to understand the truths revealed here.

THE ANSWER.

First we need to listen to the words of Scripture and get into our thoughts and minds the exact answer which God gave to Habakkuk.

Habakkuk was told that God was going to raise up the Babylonian nation and give them power and authority to come and sweep across the land of Israel, and thoroughly defeat and subjugate the people of Israel. We know from history that this actually took place, and the people of Israel were defeated and carried into Babylon as slaves.

God warns Habakkuk that he will not like this answer to his prayer, and it would be totally contrary to what Habakkuk hoped for, and meant when he prayed. Habakkuk knew Israel had sinned, and he expresses his total abhorrence of the way Israel was behaving. Habakkuk also expresses his shame at the offence all this sin in Israel brought before God, but he plainly still believes that God would not let his people go, and that they were his people, and although God may well chastise them, yet he would bring them back to himself in repentance. Habakkuk did not doubt this even when he was complaining to God that God was not intervening to bring the people back to himself.

In the light of all this expectation on behalf of Habakkuk God drops this bombshell. God acknowledges that it will be a bombshell to Habakkuk. God acknowledges that what he tells Habakkuk he is going to do will utterly amaze him, and something Habakkuk would not believe. But nonetheless that this is what he was going to do.

The amazement was confounded because not only was God going to cease the relationship with Israel on which Habakkuk depended, but he was going to use a nation who seemingly had no right to be used because it was a vile, arrogant, violent, cruel and sinful. To human wisdom, and even to the righteous prophet, this seemed contrary to what a holy and loving God would do. Yet this is what God was telling Habakkuk he was going to do; and we know from the history of the Old Testament that this is what God actually did, for the Babylonian empire overcame Israel, and the people were carried off into exile in Babylon for 70 years.

LEARNING FROM GOD'S ACTION.

The question is as to how we should react to this revelation, and as to what we learn from this action of God.

The first thing we learn is that God's grace can not be taken for granted. God's grace, his unmerited favour to sinners, is wonderful and abounding, and is the source of all God's action of love in salvation. Grace was behind God's action in sending his only begotten Son into the world to be our Saviour; to take our nature and then in the place of sinners to bear the punishment for sin, and so make it possible for God justly to forgive all sinners who put their trust only in Jesus as their sin-bearer and Saviour. Wondrous grace this is for it saves wretched sinners like us. It was this grace that taught our hearts to fear God and his wrath against sin; and it was this grace that relieved these fears by giving us sinners the gift of repentance for sin, and faith in Jesus Christ.

God's grace is offered freely to all sinners, and was offered continually to Israel in the days of the prophets. However this revelation to Habakkuk tells us that grace when spurned is not granted forever. A time comes when God's patience in calling people to receive his grace is ended when there is constant rejection of his love, and sinful presumption on his grace, and then God says there is an end, and final judgement is the result. This was what Habakkuk was being told. This is what we have been learning in our studies in Amos. God's patience with Israel was massive, but when they refused to turn back to God, final judgement fell. This is what Jesus taught in the parable of the tenants in the vineyard. The master of the vineyard sent servants to receive of the produce of the vineyard and then his only Son, but the tenants rejected all these overtures, and so Jesus tells us that the owner of the vineyard came and took the vineyard away from the false tenants, and gave it to the care of others.

There is great danger in the visible church continuing in rejection of the truth of God's revealed word in the Bible. History has evidence that churches that once flourished, are now extinct. Jesus warned the churches in Asian in Revelation 2 and 3 that if they did not repent he would remove their candlestick altogether, and this happened. The church today needs to examine its life in the light of this Biblical revelation. The reaction of the wider church today to such a revelation as is given here to Habakkuk is to reject the revelation and claim that Habakkuk had got things wrong, for a God of love would never do a thing like this. So sinful human beings in their own wisdom reject the wisdom of God, and call down God's judgement unless there is a turning back to God's revelation in the Bible.

The next lesson we learn is that God's ways are not our ways, and the only way to proceed is to act like Habakkuk was brought to act, and humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and receive his word with faith and obedience. Even if we have difficulties, and find the Bible revelation hard, the way forward is to still bow before the revelation, and in faith seek from God more light. Rejection is not the way. We must bow in obedience to God's sovereign will.

There is also a powerful and encouraging revelation here for all faithful believers. We see here that God is in control of the world. History unfolds according to his sovereign will. Nations, even godless nations, are in the end subject to his will. They do evil by their own will and responsibility, but God is overall and history moves according to his eternal purpose. What is so comforting and re-assuring is the fact that God is acting in history to fulfil his eternal purpose of salvation through Jesus Christ, and so all true believers may rest in peace in the turmoil of the earth, being assured that he is working all things for the good of his faithful people.

The fact is that God's purposes of grace were not entirely forgotten even in this terrible judgement to be brought on Israel. God revealed that after 70 years he would bring his people back from captivity, and we know from history that his purpose in Christ as the Saviour of the world was in no way threatened. Christ came as God had promised and his word predicted.

This passage also reveals that the judgement of God on sin and sinners is a reality. Grace is offered for our salvation, but if grace is rejected judgement will fall. There is going to be a final judgement at the end of the world, where Christ will separate the righteous, his believing people, from the wicked, the rest of this unbelieving world, and the wicked will go away into eternal punishment, and the righteous to eternal life (Matthew 25: 46). The church needs to be like Habakkuk and all the prophets of old and warn people to fly from the wrath of God to come. How dreadful it is that the church has ceased to believe in the wrath of God and so fails to call people to come to Christ that they may be saved from the wrath to come.

CONCLUSION.

As God's people what should be our response to this revelation of God given to Habakkuk? There is only one right way, and that is to humble ourselves under the might hand of God, and receive this revelation with obedient faith. Only in this way will our response be right, and that we will walk and live in the blessing of God.