Habakkuk and the Problem of Evil

Scripture: Habakkuk 1

Sermon: Habakkuk and the Problem of Evil

Topics: evil, prayer, dialogue, complaint, courtroom, faith

Preached: September 16, 2018

Rev. Mike Abma

Preamble

Today we will be listening to Habakkuk.

Habakkuk lived

during hard times in Judah.

Judah was caught in the vise-grip of

Egypt to the south and Assyria to the north.

Habakkuk,

a citizen of Judah, this member of a small, weak, poor country,

cries for relief.

In a way,

his circumstances are so opposite of ours.

We belong to a big, strong, wealthy country.

And that is one of the reasons we will be singing the song we plan to sing after this sermon: Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

That song captures the reality that we are called

to bless the Lord

whether we are from a land of plenty or a land of scarcity;

whether we are privileged, or whether we are in pain;

whether we are flourishing, or whether we are floundering.

Even though our reality is so much different that Habakkuk’s,

the truth is, even we can be bothered greatly by the evil in the world.

Recently I was listening to an interview on the NPR program Fresh Air.

The host, Terry Gross,

was interviewing John Oliver

the British comedian who hosts the television show

Last Week Tonight.

Near the end of the interview

Terry Gross asks John Oliver if he attended church as a child.

Oliver said he attended regularly when he was 11-12.

But then some bad things happened.

Some fellow students in his school died rather suddenly and unexpectedly.

A beloved Uncle also passed away.

It was a tough time.

John Oliver said he looked to the church to give him some answers.

But he felt like he was kind of brushed off by the church

with answers like,

“Well, that’s just God’s will”, or something like that.

Oliver exclaimed, “You just can’t say it’s God’s will.

That’s not good enough.

So I said to my parents when I was a young teen,

“I’m done. I’m out. No more church.”

I was not a rebellious kid.

It was more like there was nothing there for me,

nothing to help me get through what I was going through.”

PROBLEM OF EVIL

What John Oliver was struggling with

is something we all struggle with

at some point in our lives.

Evil rears its ugly head.

Something terrible happens,

perhaps someone we love dies,

and we ask God why?

Why did God allow this evil, the wickedness, to happen?

In many ways,

this is the heart of Habakkuk’s complaint to God.

I want to get to the amazing end of this prophet’s message —

which is the actual text for this evening —

but the only honest and Biblically fair way of doing that

is by actually taking the textual road that gets us there.

In other words, I want to go through this whole book first.

Maybe not word for word

but at least, theme by theme.

You see,

Habakkuk is a dialogue.

You might even call it a debate between

Habakkuk and God himself.

In most of the prophets

the direction is downward:

the prophet is delivering God’s message to the people.

But in Habakkuk

the direction is the opposite way, it is upward:

the prophet is delivering the people’s message to God.

So why not turn to chapter 1 to follow how this dialogue unfolds.

For your benefit,

I will be putting the text on the screen

and I will be putting it in Script or Dialogue Form

clearly indicating who is saying what

because that makes all the difference.

As I said at the beginning,

Habakkuk lived in a time of violence.

Judah and Jerusalem were being squeezed

by the Assyrian Empire to the north.

and the Egyptian Empire to the south.

Judah and Jerusalem were suffering.

Most were left poor, hungry, tired, hopeless.

And so Habakkuk bangs on the door of heaven demanding an answer.

He is pretty tough on God.

This is Habakkuk’s opening Complaint.

Habakkuk’s Complaint: How Long, O Lord? 1: 1-4

² O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,

and you will not listen?

Or cry to you ‘Violence!’

and you will not save?

³ Why do you make me see wrongdoing

and look at trouble?

Destruction and violence are before me;

strife and contention arise.

⁴ So the law becomes slack

and justice never prevails.

The wicked surround the righteous—

therefore judgement comes forth perverted.

LORD’S RESPONSE The Babylonians are Coming 1:5-11

God gives Habbakuk this answer.

God was rousing a new Empire,

the Chaldean Empire or Babylonian Empire in the East.

It was about to come rampaging through their territory with horses and armies.

No one would be able to stand up to their power and might.

Here is what God says:

⁵ Look at the nations, and see!

Be astonished! Be astounded!

For a work is being done in your days

that you would not believe if you were told.

⁶ For I am rousing the Chaldeans,

that fierce and impetuous nation,

who march through the breadth of the earth

to seize dwellings not their own.

⁷ Dread and fearsome are they;

their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.

⁸ Their horses are swifter than leopards,

more menacing than wolves at dusk;

their horses charge.

Their horsemen come from far away;

they fly like an eagle swift to devour.

⁹ They all come for violence,

with faces pressing^* forward;

they gather captives like sand.

¹⁰ At kings they scoff,

and of rulers they make sport.

They laugh at every fortress,

and heap up earth to take it.

¹¹ Then they sweep by like the wind;

they transgress and become guilty;

their own might is their god!

Habakkuk’s Complaint: Is This Justice? 1:12 – 2:1

Habakkuk is somewhat shocked by this answer.

He wanted God to act.

But he is shocked that God is rousing the Babylonians.

¹² Are you not from of old,

O Lord my God, my Holy One?

You^* shall not die.

O Lord, you have marked them for judgement;

and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.

¹³ Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,

and you cannot look on wrongdoing;

why do you look on the treacherous,

and are silent when the wicked swallow

those more righteous than they?

¹⁴ You have made people like the fish of the sea,

like crawling things that have no ruler.

¹⁵ The enemy^* brings all of them up with a hook;

he drags them out with his net,

he gathers them in his seine;

so he rejoices and exults.

¹⁶ Therefore he sacrifices to his net

and makes offerings to his seine;

for by them his portion is lavish,

and his food is rich.

¹⁷ Is he then to keep on emptying his net,

and destroying nations without mercy?

2I will stand at my watch-post,

and station myself on the rampart;

I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,

and what he^* will answer concerning my complaint.

Are you catching the gist of Habakkuk’s second complaint?

Habakkuk cries for justice, and for God to act.

God says he is acting – he is rousing the Babylonians.

Suddenly Habakkuk is taken aback.

If the Babylonians are going to wipe out everybody,

what about the righteous?

Would the good be destroyed

with the wicked?

Would the good and the bad be swallowed by this new power in the land?

Would this empire simply gather everyone in their net and drag them all down?

Where was the justice in that?

Suddenly Habakkuk is worried, very worried:

It sounded like the cure was going to be worse than the disease!

But Habakkuk is willing to wait, to listen, to hear what God would say.

GOD’S ANSWER — WOE TO THE WICKED 2:2-20

God gives a rather long answer that stretches to the end of chapter 2.

We will not read the whole chapter,

But let me point out the highlights.

2:2-5 this is the preamble, so to speak.

Here God admits that the forces of wickedness and death and destruction

are insatiable – they devour and devour and devour.

But then in 2:6-19

God issues a series of Woes or Warning against the Wicked.

2:6 Alas, for you who heap up what is not your own!

Meaning all those who plunder and exploit and rob others

and rely on wealth to protect them.

They will reap what they sow.

2:9 Alas, for you who get evil gain for your houses,

setting your nest on high,

to be safe from the reach of harm.

Meaning all those people who use all their resources simply to protect

themselves – their own safety is their greatest concern.

Whatever walls you try build, they will not save you.

2:12 Alas, for you who build a town by bloodshed

and found a city on iniquity!

Meaning all those people who use violence and bullying to build their lives.

They’re efforts will get them nothing.

2:15 Alas for you who make your neighbors drink,

pouring out your wrath until they are drunk,

in order to gaze on their nakedness!

Meaning, everyone who tries lift themselves up, by pushing another down;

Everyone who tries gain honor by shaming another.

They will be forced to drink their own medicine.

2: 19 The last Alas is in verse 19.

Alas for you who say to the wood, Wake Up!”

to silent stone, “Rouse yourself!”

Can it teach?

See, it is gold and silver plated,

and there is no breath in it.

Here we have a general word of disgust against all idols.

Anything that people cling to other than the Lord God is an idol.

The Final verse 2:20 acts like a gavel coming down in the heavenly courtroom:

BOOM

But the Lord is in this holy temple;

Let all the earth keep silence before him!

Now think a moment.

To whom are all these ‘Alases’ being spoken?

To whom are all these Woes given?

To Assyria, the old threat?

To Babylon, the new threat?

To the evil within Judah and Jerusalem itself?

To All of the Above?

After the BOOM in the heavenly courtroom of 2:20 there is a moment of deafening silence.

There is a sense that Habakkuk realizes that

it isn’t only the Assyrians and Babylonians who are guilty.

The people of Judah and Jerusalem

are guilty too,

Habakkuk realizes he has no leverage over God.

He has no basis to complain against God.

HABAKKUK WHISPERS

And so, what does he do?

Habakkuk whispers his final prayer. 3:2

O Lord, I have heard of your renown,

And I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work.

In our own time revive it.

In our own time make it known;

In wrath may you remember mercy.

May you remember mercy….

And so begins a long prayer in which Habakkuk

very poetically recalls the mercy of God shown to Israel long, long ago

when they were slaves in Egypt,

and when God unleashed torrents of water

to save his people from the grip of wickedness.

What a MIGHTY DELIVERANCE that was!

But then Habakkuk

is brought back to the present

and the troubles of the present.

It is as if he hears the Babylonian hordes in the distance.

His heart is filled with dread.

3:16

I hear, and tremble within;

My lips quiver at the sound.

Rottenness enters into my bones,

And my steps tremble beneath me.

I wait quietly for the day of calamity

to come upon the people who attack us.

3: 17-19 At this moment everything seems lost.

His end is near.

The Babylonians are about to take over everyone

and destroy almost everything.

To use words of the New Testament

he was hard-pressed on every side.

He was perplexed.

He was persecuted.

He was about to be struck down.

The darkness of night

was about to enshroud him.

By all appearances,

evil and wickedness were about to win the day.

HABAKKUK’S FINAL AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

So how does Habakkuk end his prayer?

Let me simply say,

Habakkuk ends his prayer

in the only way we can face wickedness,

in the only way we can confront evil,

in the only way we can persevere through suffering.

He ends in such a way

that evil does not have the last word,

and wickedness does not have the upper hand.

He ends his prayer

in a way

that anticipates the horror and

the darkness of the cross,

yet also the glory and triumph of the resurrection.

LISTEN

HABAKKUK’S PRAYER ENDED 3:17-19

Though the fig tree does not blossom,

and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails

and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold

and there is no herd in the stalls,

¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord;

I will exult in the God of my salvation.

¹⁹ God, the Lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

and makes me tread upon the heights.

^*

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

AMEN