Devotional thoughts (Monday through Thursday mornings) from the pastor of Exeter Presbyterian Church in Exeter, NH // Sunday Worship 10:30am // 73 Winter Street
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Habakkuk 2
We have many questions for the Lord.We cannot expect that all of those questions will be answered right away.It is part of the glory of God to conceal some things, just as it is part of His glory to reveal other things.Habakkuk had a question for the Lord concerning the wickedness of God’s covenant people.The answer that He received was a surprising revelation; that the Lord was preparing a powerful nation to bring destruction upon His own people.This led to a second question from the prophet, one which He brought before the Lord at the end of the prior chapter.Could it possibly be that God would use a people that were more wicked than Judah as the agents of His wrath against His own beloved nation?Could this be the end of God’s story of working with the descendants of Jacob?As the second chapter of this brief book begins, we find the prophet waiting for the Lord’s answer to this provocative question.Habakkuk began with a concern about the unrighteousness of the people.Now, based on the Lord’s answer, He seems to be wondering about whether God’s plans could really be right, for they seemed so very wrong.
The Lord’s answer to this second concern is one of the most important revelations given in the history of God’s dealings with mankind.It is quoted by the Apostle Paul in a pivotal section of his letter to the church in Rome.Like many of the Lord’s answers to us, it will not satisfy all of our curiosities.As we have said, it is part of the glory of the Lord to conceal.Yet He has revealed what we need to know.In giving His answer, God emphasizes the importance of the words He is about to say.It is clear that this is an answer that is not only about the crisis with the Babylonians.It is a vision that goes beyond that moment to a later time in the history of salvation.His answer is this: “The righteous shall live by his faith.”
The righteous man is enabled to trust God through all kinds of circumstances that may seem to accuse the Almighty.Yes, the Lord has noticed the depravity of His people.Yes, the Lord is using a more depraved nation to discipline them.Yes, God is perfectly aware that such a plan seems questionable to Habakkuk and to other observers, and to those who would place themselves in the position of being judges of God.The righteous man will trust the Lord, and will remember that it is the Lord who is the Judge of all the earth, not the earth which is the judge of the Lord.The Judge of all the earth will do what is right, though we may not see the rightness of it, nor perhaps appreciate the beauty of it immediately.At just the right time the Lord will do just the right thing.Until that time, the righteous are called to wait, to believe, and thus to live.
The Lord knows all about drunken, greedy, and arrogant men and nations.He knows His plans to overrule their proud boasts.He knows that such people must eventually pay for their wickedness.As they have done to others, they will they will have done to them.They imagine that all will be well for them forever, but their day will come.They will be plundered and destroyed.God knows about the wickedness of the Babylonians.The Lord intends to have no rivals in the age that is coming.Beyond the time of the Law will be the age of the gospel, when the message of the Lord’s glory will be taken to every corner of the earth.But beyond that age will come an age of a new heaven and a new earth.In that final resurrection age, it will be a complete and undeniable fact that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”This is what the righteous man must hear and believe.The efforts of the wicked to win their own victory over decay by their own might will eventually come to nothing.God will win every battle.Therefore the righteous can live by faith now.
The Lord is not taken in by Gentile idolatry.He knows about their religion and their brutality.The things they are so impressed with in themselves will not be their glory in the Day of Judgment, but their shame.Every proud boast will be put to silence before the Lord of Hosts when He comes with resurrection power.The Lord’s heavenly temple will be in the midst of mankind, and all the earth will keep silence before Him.
This kind of overwhelming revelation is what we need to take to heart every day of our lives, lest we believe the lies of those who would impress us with their creaturely abilities and smooth words.None of us could stand in the coming Day of Judgment if it were not for the righteousness of Christ credited to our account?It is the great fact of biblical religion that the righteous will live by faith in Him who has become for us our righteousness, and who has borne the weight of the Day of Judgment that was surely coming against us.
As we see Jesus in the Word and consider that He came to us not with proud boasts, but with amazing humility, we should be able to accept the fact that the way to lasting glory is not through the oppression of the weak or through the applause of the many.To all appearances Christ died on the cross as a weak man who had been abandoned by everyone.Never before has there been such an unlikely source of power for mankind as this one son of David facing an unjust sentence of death.Yet our assessment of Him with the eyes of flesh would be so very wrong.That man on the cross was there for us.He was and is both the wisdom and the power of God for us.We must not be surprised that there are many things about this life that we do not understand.If we want to really live, we should trust in God, and believe His promises.His Son died to bring us a life that no earthly power could ever take away from us, and all earthly powers will one day be judged by Him.
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