“I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own.” (Habakkuk 1:6, NIV)

Habakkuk began his book concerned that somehow God was absent from the injustices we see around us. He rightfully questions what even our own eyes see, that the righteous seem to suffer at the hand of the wicked far too often.  So, Habakkuk calls out to the Lord, and the Lord answers him and tells him to look out at the nations because He is soon going to act.  Habakkuk has to be feeling pretty good that the Lord is promising that justice will be dished out upon the wicked, and that God is going to act very soon.

But then the Lord does the unthinkable.  He tells Habakkuk that He is going to use the godless and evil Babylonians to do his bidding.  Once again, Habakkuk’s sense of justice is going to be aroused.  How/why in the world would God use a nation more evil than Israel to punish Israel for their shortcomings?  We will talk more about this tomorrow, but this is where we find ourselves in a mess when we say that God needs to make sense to us.  We think we can understand the big picture when we live in sequential moments of the present.  We do not have a full knowledge of the past.  We certainly do not know what the future holds, but God is fully aware of both.  Both the past and the future are like the present to Him. Just like Habakkuk, we find ourselves lost and confused as to what God is doing in our lives.

The key for us is NOT to understand God. It is to trust God. It is to trust that He has a plan, and that the plan is for our good. In all things He is moving His Kingdom forward, and we must trust and move forward with it. Habakkuk could never have understood what God was going to do with Israel while they were captives in Babylon. He could not have understood what God was going to do in the life of Nebuchadnezzar. We know some of the “rest of the story” because God tells it to us in His Word.

Today, let’s trust and rely upon the Word of God even if our senses and the world around us would have us believe otherwise. Let’s trust that He knows better than we do.

Peace!

Pastor Tom

www.firmlyrooted.church