Do Something, Lord

Scripture Reading: Habakkuk 1:1-4

The book of Habakkuk begins with Habakkuk’s first complaint to the Lord. He recounts the spiritual and moral degeneracy of the Jewish nation. They have become violent and wicked people. Making matters worse, the justice system is broken. The law, he says, “is paralyzed.” Whatever “justice” is dealt out, is “perverted,” a sham form of justice that serves men’s power, not good and righteousness.

But these problems weren’t at the heart of Habakkuk’s complaint. He complained that the Lord wasn’t doing anything about it. God, it seemed to Habakkuk, was sitting on His hands, and letting it go unchecked. It was a personal affront to Habakkuk because he had been passionately pleading for God to intervene and act. God, it seemed to the prophet, was unmoved by his prayers and unconcerned about the collapse of his nation.

God answers Habakkuk’s complaint. It wasn’t the answer he expected. God was doing something. He was preparing to use the Babylonians as his instrument of judgment on the people of Judah. The Chaldeans would soon be the sword of God’s discipline, slicing through the heart of the Jewish nation. They would be the bulldozer of God’s wrath, demolishing the capital city of Jerusalem, and Solomon’s Temple.

This was unthinkable to Habakkuk. How could a holy God use an unholy instrument like the Chaldeans? We get a hint at what was going on when God describes the Chaldeans as a “violent” people. Isn’t that the same word Habakkuk used to describe the Jews of Judah? It is. The Chaldean justice system is self-created (verse 7), much like the justice system Habakkuk describes in Judah.

Sin, whatever form it takes, when embraced and coddled like a pet poodle, becomes a rabid pit bull, turning on those who clutch it to their breast. The very sins Judah loved were going to fall hard upon them in form of a Babylonian invasion.

This is the point Paul is making, albeit in a different way, in Romans chapter one. His repeated phrase, “God gave them over,” describes exactly how “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” When people and/or nations resist the righteousness of God and refuse to acknowledge Him, at some point God removes His merciful restraint and allows them to do whatever perversion their wicked hearts desire. Those sins are destructive in and of themselves.

God is patient and merciful. He is slow to wrath. But without repentance, the day of judgment will come. Is God doing something about the rampant wickedness? Look at the self-destructive, and increasingly immoral sins of the land and ask yourself, “has God given us up to these things?” If the answer is yes then what you are witnessing is the “wrath of God being revealed from heaven.”