WE SHALL NOT DIE - Reading With the People of God #17Sample

Don’t Worry, Your Enemies Will Utterly Devastate You

The book of the prophet Habakkuk begins with a complaint that the prophet makes to God, as he observes the corruption and injustice in Judah and perceives that God is doing nothing about it. Today we will be reading God’s response to this complaint…. I don’t think it’s the response that he had hoped to receive. It essentially comes down to God telling the prophet that he is well aware of the injustice and idolatry that Judah has come to embrace and very soon, he will be allowing the Babylonians to utterly devastate them because of it. We know from the end of the book of 2 Kings that this is exactly what happens. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and the people of Judah were brought into exile in Babylon for many years.

Imagine if you, like Habakkuk, were receiving a word from the Lord you could hear audibly. You might complain to God about the corruption and injustice you see in our nation. You might ask God to do something about it. What if you then heard God respond to you by saying, “Don’t worry, that injustice won’t continue for long because I will raise up the Russians/Chinese/Iranians (pick your enemy), they are a violent people who will utterly devastate you.” What would you think? “Great, problem solved!” Probably not.

Habakkuk responds to this by basically saying: “hold up… but aren’t the Babylonians even more evil and corrupt than we are?” God responds to this by telling him that their judgment will come too, but for the time being, He will use them to deal with Judah’s sin. He also says that the “righteous shall live by his faith (2:4, ESV).”

World orders and nation-states as we know them may come and go, but God does not change. His promises are still the same, and in due course, after some time in exile, God allowed his people to return to the promised land. Our lives may take place in easy times or in hard times we simply don’t have the perspective to see how God is using the times we live in, but however they are, we know that living our lives in faithfulness and trust in the God who died for us is never wrong. It’s easy to feel a degree of defensiveness as the world around us becomes more secular, but we must remember that the God whom Habakkuk worshiped is a God whose promises won’t be thwarted.

G.K. Chesterton has been quoted as saying: “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

So don’t worry, your enemies may devastate you, but they do not have the final word.

Primer contributed by Wes Viau