Live by Faith

Habakkuk 1:12-2:5

¹²Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.

¹³You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

¹⁴You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler.

¹⁵He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad.

¹⁶Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich.

¹⁷Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?

^2:1I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

²And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.

³For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.

⁴“Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

⁵“Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol; like death he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples.”

These kinds of passages are what give the prophets a reputation for being difficult. If you read through this section of Habakkuk and experienced no confusion or questions, you’re amazing. My first read through here cause me to think, “what?” Perhaps the lesson here is that that I need to withhold judgment upon those who complain that, “the Bible is too hard.” I guess, in some places, it is.

Anyway, this is the passage with which we are presented today, so we march in with our questions! First, we keep the context in place. Habakkuk stands in the midst of a time of great turmoil for Israel. Their brothers from the Northern Kingdom have long since been swept off by the Assyrians (125 years earlier), lost forever as slaves into a harsh world. Now, because of their own idolatry, Judah faces a similar fate. God looks down upon their lifestyle and plans for Babylon to do the same to them as befell their brethren (although their captivity would last only 70 years). Habakkuk looks at God and asks some tough questions. Why would He allow a people who have absolutely no regard for Yahweh to conquer His people? There is no righteousness in the Babylonians, and yet God allows them to thrive and even vanquish the Hebrews. Habakkuk admits that God’s people have not been faithful to Him. But the Babylonians have been worse! They have credited their superior army and their own wits as the champions here. Little do they know; the God of all Creation has allowed them their victory. They are being used as instruments of judgment in God’s hands.

It is interesting here that God is using the world stage to accomplish His plan, as He always does. God is not a respecter ethnicity, but instead of righteousness.

God does not divide us humankind into Chaldeans and Judeans but draws the line between the person whose soul is not upright (4), who is inflamed by wine, puffed up with arrogance, driven on by greed, the autonomous satisfier of himself (5), and the person who is righteous, that is, living before the God of the covenant on the terms of the covenant. The one shall fail in the midst of his doing, his active and energetic gathering-in and collecting for himself; the other shall live and shall live by faith, by holding firm in, and clinging to, the God whose ways he cannot understand but can accept, by quietly waiting for the day when the conclusion of all God’s ways will make their salutary rightness clear.

Roehrs, W. H., & Franzmann, M. H. ©1998. Concordia self-study Commentary. (Vol. 1, p. 637). St. Louis, MO: CPH.

There is some dispute among commentators regarding the time frame in which Habakkuk writes these words. It is possible that these few chapters were written over a long period of time – several years. Some believe he wrote the first few verses – that initial conversation with God – before the Babylonians came through and carried the people off and then wrote the last part of the book after that had become a reality. Or, it may have all been written before these events took place as a prophecy. Either way, the story remains true and the events did indeed happen as told by several of the prophets. Since that is the case, we do well to remember a few things about the nature of prophecy.

There are four such characteristics of prophecies received through visions that will nurture the faith of God’s people:

1.  Prophecy is for an appointed time. “The revelation awaits” means either that this is the way the Lord deals with his people before the time of fulfillment comes, or that prophecy always has a set time of fulfillment that it refers to, even if that time is known only to the Lord. To put it another way, there is an appointed time for the prophecy’s fulfillment, a time determined and fixed by the Lord.

2.  Prophecy cannot wait for (literally, “pants for”) its fulfillment to come. This refers, no doubt, to the longing of God’s Old Testament people to see the fulfillment of prophecy, as Saint Peter reveals: “Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (1 Peter 1:10, 11).

3.  Prophecy from the Lord proclaims only that which will truly take place in the future. Prophecy from the Lord is never an end in itself. It is always dependable and is a sure foundation for the believer’s confidence.

4.  Though fulfillment may not come immediately, it will not fail to come at precisely the time that the Lord has set for it.

It is most important that children of faith in all ages understand and take these characteristics of prophecy to heart. These are foundational truths that support the faith of God’s people of all times. They are as important for Christians to know and cling to today as they were for the people of Habakkuk’s time.

Westendorf, J. J. ©2000. Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah (pp. 116–117). Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Pub. House.

The true center of this passage lies in the words “but the righteous shall live by his faith.” That is as true today as the day Habakkuk wrote it down. These words are so powerful, Paul quotes them in Romans. The Babylonians lived by their own power and might, counting on their own strength to move them into “greatness.” But even they were conquered by the Medo/Persian Empire (who were defeated by the Greeks, who were defeated by the Romans ...  you get the idea). There is only one Kingdom that remains forever and that is the Kingdom of God. It remains forever because it was won by the blood of Jesus Christ. Nothing will ever defeat this Kingdom and we are a part of it in Jesus Christ for the righteous shall live by faith.