The Oracle to Habakkuk, Part 5: Holy Eyesight

An emotion that is common to the human experience is shame.  Most, if not all of us, have had an experience at some point in our lives wherein we felt singled out, marked, maligned, and marginalized due to a number of different possible reasons.  Perhaps a character trait was different than the norm which resulted in unwanted attention.  Maybe a mistake of word or deed was made that brought about a feeling of foolishness.  Possibly we in our pride drew attention to ourselves for the purpose of showing off and then it backfired and we failed spectacularly in front of our self-made audience.  There are as many variations of this theme as the day is long.  But without a doubt the worst type of shame is when we are caught by another in the act of doing something we’re not supposed to.  Society has developed multiple pop culture references to this phenomenon such as being caught “red-handed” and “with your hand in the cookie jar”.  One has only to spend a few minutes around children to see this tableau play itself out.  The child knows he is not allowed to play with Daddy’s tools.  He knows he has been punished in the past as a warning.  But the urge to do that which is wrong, driven by the sin within him, is so strong, that eventually he gives in.  And in the course of playing he breaks one of the tools.  Then Dad walks in and catches him.  The shame, embarrassment, and fear are overwhelming for the child.  While for the father it’s just another day in the life of a parent.  But let’s suppose for a moment that the child in our example is older; a teenager.  And he commits a crime that is of an exponentially larger magnitude; stealing his dad’s car, losing control of it, crashing into another vehicle, and causing a death.  Unlike the tools, this sinful act is of such a heinous nature that his Father has never encountered it before, nor did it enter his mind that his son would ever do such a thing.  As he arrives at the police station the father experiences a feeling of shame that threatens to overwhelm him and he averts his eyes from onlookers in embarrassment.  Only this time, it isn’t on behalf of himself; it’s for another.  As we will see when we begin to examine Habakkuk 1:13, this is a tiny fraction of what God experiences on a daily basis when He observes the lives of His human creations. 

We briefly looked at God’s holiness in the last chapter because Habakkuk references it in verse 12 of Habakkuk 1 when he says to the Lord “my Holy One”.  But at the time I only mentioned it in passing.  The reason is that this issue, the holiness of God and the cause and effect of what happens when His holiness comes up against a sinful and fallen world, is of such a fundamental nature that it rightly deserves its own chapter.  Let’s consider the text:

                        Your eyes are too pure to approve evil;

                        And You cannot look on wickedness with favor.

A short sentence; only two lines long.  It is a masterpiece of simplicity.  Yet the truth it contains produces massive philosophical and theological ramifications.  In an effort to think this through as fully as possible we will consider two questions and four implications that arise from this statement of Habakkuk’s.

The first question is this: Can God really not look on evil and is this truly what verse 13 is saying?  To figure that out we need to study the translation.  It is surprisingly difficult to properly interpret due to the vast disparities that occur between Hebrew and English.  The original language uses grammatical constructs such as symbolism and figurative speech to convey its meaning.  This necessitates the consideration of what we already know about God from other biblical locations where He has revealed things about Himself that are relevant to this passage. 

For example, the first phrase is “Your eyes are too pure”.  This is the Hebrew ‘ayin.  A technical definition of this is simply eye.  So why do the translators add the bit about purity?  The reason is that the usage of ‘ayin in scripture tells another tale.  The context of locations it is used denote aspects of mental and spiritual faculties or a reasoned consideration of something.  Thus when we see ‘ayin in the Bible it is used to describe how someone thought or perceived.  In 2 Chronicles 30 Hezekiah summons all Israel to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.  Verse 4 of that chapter says “Thus the thing was right in the sight of the king and all the assembly.”  It’s the same word, meaning sight, but it conveys how the people thought and felt about the idea.  On the other hand, we have a passage such as Proverbs 6:12-13: A worthless person, a wicked man, is the one who walks with a perverse mouth, who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet, who points with his fingers”.  Here we have the exact same word but it is describing something completely different; a man who considers and reasons and comes to the conclusion that it is best to do evil.  The word ‘ayin itself is neutral.  We have to consider who it is being applied to so as to determine its meaning.  In the case of Habakkuk 1:13, with the object being God, care must be given to determine what God has revealed of His character and how it applies here. 

Fortunately, verse 12 already laid the ground work for us with the reference to “my Holy One”.  But to expand upon that there is perhaps no better passage to underscore and define God’s holiness than Isaiah 6:1-8.  This is a long passage but I am going to embed the entire thing here because it is critically important for a proper understanding of what it means that God is holy.  In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.  Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  And one called out to another and said “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.”  And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.  Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined!  Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”  Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs.  He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”

This is a tremendous scene, almost beyond imagining.  There are three themes I want to focus on.  First is the Seraphim, or Seraphs.  Isaiah records that they possessed six wings.  Two of the wings covered their faces, two covered their feet, and with two they flew.  The question that immediately jumps to mind is this.  What is the significance of the wings covering their faces and feet?  Consider this, these Seraphs were obviously supernatural and angelic in nature.  The Hebrew literally means “burning one”, perhaps indicating that they had some sort of fiery appearance.  But their awe-inspiring appearance and flaming demeanor paled in comparison to the majestic splendor and consuming fire that is the Lord of Hosts.  Because of this vast disparity between the Seraphs and their maker, they covered their faces both in reverence and to partially shield themselves from the brilliance that is God.  Remember Moses, who spent weeks on Mount Sinai in the presence of the Lord.  When he came down from the mountain it is recorded that “the skin of his face shone” (Exodus 34:29).  Just being in close proximity to God caused him to reflect a portion of divine radiance.  Furthermore, of the Seraphs we also read that they covered their feet with another pair of wings.  The feet here probably symbolize the whole lower half of their bodies.  The idea is that, again due to the unimaginable exposure to the glory of God, these heavenly creatures wanted to cover themselves and their lower parts in a gesture of humility.  They recognized their inferiority and this caused an instinctive response.  Also notice that in verse 4 it states that the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of the Seraphs.  These creatures, full of a form of glory themselves, were possessed of a power of speech that caused a trembling in the materials that the throne room was made out of.  And these were just the servants!  Imagine when God Himself speaks!  Hebrews 12:26 informs us that: His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN.”  When the Lord God Almighty opens His mouth creation springs forth and the foundations of reality vibrate like a tuning fork.

Now look at Isaiah’s response.  He is utterly flummoxed by what he is seeing and hearing.  It is overwhelming his senses.  He is probably having difficulty breathing.  His mind is reeling.  His legs turn to jelly and his knees buckle.  He probably desperately wishes he could flee from the splendor on display before him.  But since he can’t, he does the only thing he can possibly think of to do in this situation; he falls flat on his face and cries out in distress.  He pronounces a woe upon himself, which means grief, sorrow, misery, or a heavy calamity.  In the Hebrew mindset this was just about as strong of an expression of emotion as one could make.  Then he says “I am undone”.  This doesn’t just mean messed up or out of sorts or any other casual modern descriptions we might casually assign to it.  It means literally to be destroyed, to cease to exist, to be unmade.  Why was Isaiah’s reaction so strong?  It was because he became fully aware, perhaps for the first time in his life, of what it means that God is holy.  He is over and above all else that exists.  He is better than everything else.  He is more intelligent than everything else.  He is more pure than everything else.  He is more just, and loving, and patient, and merciful, and every single other attribute He possesses than everything else.  This is what it means that He is holy.  And Isaiah didn’t just “know” this.  He really got it!  It went from head knowledge to practical experience for him in the blink of an eye.

What was the solution to Isaiah’s dilemma?  One of the Seraphs flew to him and placed a burning coal on his mouth.  And the Seraph said “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”  At this point we have to stop and say hold on.  Isaiah was still the same man.  He was still sinful.  He was still not even in the same ballpark as God in terms of holiness.  Nor will he ever be, as demonstrated by the Seraphs.  So how in the world does a burning coal do anything to absolve sin?  It doesn’t, and that’s the point.  The coal is merely a symbolic representation, mostly for Isaiah’s benefit, to demonstrate to him that the only way to become even remotely acceptable to God is to be purified by a process that is difficult and painful.  We are so far below and removed from who God is that it is not a quick and painless process to be restored to any form of harmony with Him.  The real driver here in the forgiveness of Isaiah’s sins is purely the grace and mercy of God.  It is purely His whim, if you will, that enables anyone to be cleansed of their iniquity.  And in an amazing twist, the holiness of God is demonstrated all the more even in this act of absolution of a creature whose very presence is unacceptable to His holiness in the first place.

With that in mind, here in Habakkuk 1:13 it is understood that ‘ayin is used to denote God’s righteous, holy character and the conflict between that character and the witnessing of evil.  Thus the translators of our modern English Bibles rightly say “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil”.

The second phrase in this verse is “and You cannot look on wickedness with favor.”  This is an oddity and one that applies even more specifically to our question.  Namely, whether God is truly incapable of anything.  There is a host of evidence in the Bible which seems to be contrary to this verse.  In Genesis 18:14 God says to Abraham in response to Sarah’s incredulity over bearing a child in her old age: “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?”  Jeremiah continues this refrain in 32:17 of his book: “Ah Lord God!  Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm!  Nothing is too difficult for You”.  And Jesus picks up the same theme in Mark 10:27 when He responds to His disciples after they express concern over whether any person can be saved: Looking at them, Jesus said, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”  With these and more passages which demonstrate God’s great power, how then can Habakkuk say “You cannot look on wickedness with favor.”  The answer is actually quite simple.  But first we need to define a better question.  If there is anything that God cannot do, why can He not do it?  Scripture actually records in a couple of different places specific examples of this idea of God being unable to do something.  Here in Habakkuk is one.  A second can be found in Titus 1:2 where Paul writes: God, who cannot lie…  So honestly the issue is not whether any action exists that God cannot do.  It is a biblical fact that this is true.  What we need to understand is why He cannot do them.

Let’s think this through for a minute.  If you could stop being you, for even an instant, then who would you be in that instant?  Would you be a non-entity?  Would you be a new person?  If you are a non-entity what happened to the original you?  Was it destroyed?  Was it placed in some sort of imaginary holding tank?  If you go back to being you after the instant has passed, are you the original you or a new copy of you?  How about if, during that instant, you were a new person?  Where did that person come from?  Was it created?  Who created it?  Obviously, these questions have no answer because they are philosophical black holes.  But they do serve one purpose; to demonstrate the sheer lunacy of going down this path. 

The point is this.  God cannot stop being God any more than you can stop being you.  God’s quality of being God is bound up in who He is, His attributes, His preferences, His attitudes, His will, etc.  God is the only uncreated moral absolute in the universe.  All else is under the umbrella of His creative act.  His existence is infinite, completely unconstrained by the bounds of time and space.  If God could simply choose to stop being God then He would not be God because Malachi 3:6 teaches us: “For I, the Lord, do not change”.  And a God who has the potential to not be a God is not a real God.  To be sure, man in his hubris has concocted over the millennia ideas of humans attaining godhood, with the accompanying potential to lose that godhood.  But this is a fantasy with no historical or philosophical basis in reality.

Elaborating further, we have already looked at passages which demonstrate that God is holy.  One aspect of His holiness is perfection.  Psalm 18:30 says it this way: As for God, His way is blameless.  Hosea 14:9 presents a variation of the same theme: For the ways of the Lord are right.  God is perfectly good and pure and without flaw.  This is what it means for Him to be holy.  If His character is perfect then it has no need or capacity for change.  Perfection cannot be improved upon or it is not perfection.

Bringing this all together, we are left with the following realization.  If God’s character is perfect with no need for change, and changing or altering His character would necessitate Him to stop being who He is, and if God cannot stop being God without not being God in the first place, then it follows logically that God cannot change who He is.  This is why He cannot go against His own nature.  And this is why He cannot look on evil, or lie, or stop being just, or stop loving, etc.

The second question to consider from Habakkuk 1:13 is this: Did God create evil?  We know that evil exists.  We know now that God cannot look on it, condone it, approve of it, or countenance it.  But where did it come from?  John 1:3 says: All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.  Isn’t evil considered “a thing”?  And if so, then according to John didn’t it come from God?  The short answer is no.  The long answer is as follows.

First we need to define evil.  Evil is, quite simply, that which is not God.  The Hebrew word for evil means to be unjust or injurious, to defraud.  Noah Webster defined evil in two flavors, natural and moral.  Of the first he said “Natural evil is anything which produces pain, distress, loss or calamity, or which in any way disturbs the peace, impairs the happiness, or destroys the perfection of natural beings.”  When God surveyed His work of creation in Genesis 1:31 He proclaimed that it “was very good.”  It was without flaw in its original state.  So according to Webster’s definition a thing which interrupts or damages that original state is evil.  Of his second variety of evil he said the following: “Moral evil is any deviation of a moral agent from the rules of conduct prescribed to him by God, or by legitimate human authority; or it is any violation of the plain principles of justice and rectitude.  This last portion of Webster’s definition is significant.  He says that these principles of justice and rectitude are “plain”.  The Apostle Paul would agree with him.  For Romans 1:19 reveals: that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  He made it known to them through what has been made, meaning creation, which displays God’s “eternal power and divine nature” (verse 20).  And if by chance someone could escape the revelation of God in nature, they can by no means escape the revelation of God within their own souls.  Romans 2:14-15 makes this clear: For when the Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.  When someone commits a crime, in spite of any protestations of innocence on their part, regardless of any lack of evidence against them, they know their guilt because their own heart condemns them.  No matter how suppressed a person’s conscience is through repeated disuse and sin, on some foundational level, they feel the weight of their infraction.  It is not necessary to have a degree in Psychology to be sure of this quintessential fact.  The one who designed the human brain says it is so.  Therefore it is so.

This then, is evil.  It is either the physical damaging of that which God has created or the moral violation of that which God has decreed.

Now, having defined evil, it is necessary to state emphatically: God did not create it.  We have already seen that He is perfectly good and without flaw.  Flaws cannot come from flawlessness.  However, God did create something completely unique in the universe; an image of Himself.  And it is this image, called man, which presents a conundrum.  Let us consider the first man, Adam.  Adam is a representation of God but he is not God.  He has some of God’s attributes without God’s infinity.  He has a form of God’s ability to reason and think without God’s perfected version which we call omniscience.  He has a form of God’s ability to exist without God’s perfected version which we call omnipresence.  He has a form of God’s ability to exert power and force without God’s perfected version which we call omnipotence.  So what do we have in this first man?  We have a semi-autonomous, or partially self-willed, moral agent.  This agent is an image of God but due to his lack of perfected being is capable of expression that is not consistent with God’s character.  God created this agent who possesses sentience and who can reason and emote in imitation of God.  And in so doing He introduced the possibility into the universe of something that looks similar to Himself yet acts contrary to His nature.  If this created moral agent does in fact move in a direction opposite God then evil is born.

So what we can say is this; God did not create evil.  He created the possibility that evil could exist by introducing something that could potentially contradict who He is.  God did create all things.  However, evil is not a thing.  It is the absence of a thing; namely, the nature of God.

But here’s the rub and it is the first implication from what we have considered above.  Although God did not create evil and is so completely opposed to it that He cannot even look upon it; we most definitely can look upon it.  Not only do we look at it, but we flirt with it, fantasize about it, and wallow in it.  This is because our natures, unlike God, are contaminated with that which is opposite to God’s nature.  So we are saddled with a fundamental inability to ascribe to the issue of God’s holiness the weight and gravity that it is due.  No matter the magnitude of the evil that we gaze upon it is impossible for us to put it in the proper perspective or to accurately consider the contrast between that which we are seeing (or doing) and how God sees it.  Our tendency is to marginalize the issue in our own minds and suppress it in our choices.  Here is an example.  In Genesis 6:5 we read a condemning and ultimately damning description of mankind: Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  Think about that for a minute.  Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  Not some of man’s intentions.  Not part of the time.  All of his thoughts and intentions all of the time.  I think when most people read that verse the thoughts that come to mind are of crimes which seem particularly heinous to us: rape, murder, theft, slavery, extortion, prostitution, corruption, etc.  But wait a moment.  Recall to mind our definition of evil.  Evil is not limited to a list of crimes such as the one you just read.  Evil is simply defined as that which is not God.  As we stated above, evil is the natural destruction of that which He has created or the moral violation of that which He has decreed.  That includes anger, jealousy, impatience, lust, laziness, and gluttony.  It includes every conceivable thought and action that is in any way, shape, or form contrary to the Bible.  In Romans 1:28-31 Paul gives us a list of things that match the definition of evil that is so comprehensive in its scope that none of us can claim exemption: And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;

The reason we tend to treat lightly this subject of evil and assign it to those things most of us do not engage in is because our pride drives us to view our own hearts are more righteous than they truly are.  So we, in our subconscious minds, ascribe greater significance to those types of sins we don’t think we will ever commit.  Now to be sure, murder as a destruction of one of God’s image bearers and a violation of the sanctity of the life He breathed out is a greater degree of evil than, say, impatience.  But in terms of guilt before God and separation from His holiness there is no distinction between the two.

Here is a simple graphic that might help to illustrate these principles. 

  

1. God cannot look upon sin
2. Man’s relation to sin flows unrestricted both ways
3. Because of this, man can look upon God only imperfectly and brokenly without a full understanding of His holiness

This brings us to our second implication.  We in our self-righteous hubris need to understand that the only reason we “civilized” folks don’t engage in some of the aforementioned sins which are a greater degree of evil is that God restrains us.  Don’t believe me?  In Genesis 20 we find the account of Abraham, Sarah, and Abimilech.  Abraham, because of Sarah’s beauty, was afraid of being killed by someone more powerful than he in order to take Sarah as a wife.  So he let the lie be known that she was his sister rather than his spouse.  Abimilech, the King of Gerar, does in fact have Sarah brought to his harem.  But before he can have sexual relations with her God comes to him in a dream and advises him that he is a dead man because of taking Sarah.  Abimilech professes his innocence of wrongdoing.  And it is at this point that God tells him: “Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.  It was God who restrained Abimilech from the personal disaster that his unwitting sin would have brought him.  Solomon underscores this point when he says in Proverbs 21:1: The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes.  So before you congratulate yourself that you are not like other men as the Pharisee did in Luke 18:11, remember that it is purely by God’s grace that you have only gone as far as you already have down the rabbit hole of evil.

And now for our third implication.  This will quite possibly be the most difficult to come to terms with.  As Habakkuk stated in verse 13, God is so pure that He cannot even look upon evil, let alone condone it.  But it gets even worse than that.  God is so horrified by sin that it disgusts Him.  It sickens Him.  It angers Him.  And as we began this chapter with the father and son example, it shames Him.  The Lord uses extremely graphic and obscene language to describe the depths of His loathing of sin and evil.  One of the most shocking examples of this can be found in Ezekiel chapter 23.  There He tells an allegorical tale of two sisters, named Oholah and Oholibah.  These sisters represent Samaria, or the north kingdom of Israel, and Jerusalem, or the south kingdom of Judah, respectively.  God says that Oholah acted like a whore while she was supposed to belong to Him.  He says that she lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians.  The tale goes on to say that Oholah defiled herself with their idols, allowed men to have sex with her, handle her breasts, and ravish her.  As a result, God continues, He gave Oholah into the hands of her lovers, the Assyrians.  They proceeded to strip her naked, capture her sons and daughters, and kill her with the sword.

The story is sickening enough already.  And all bonds of decency and decorum shout at us to stop reading.  But the sordid tale gets worse.  You see, Oholibah, the sister of Oholah, saw what had happened to her sister.  Yet in spite of that she became more corrupt in her lust than her sister was.  And her whorings were worse than the whorings of her sister.  Not only did Oholibah lust after the Assyrians but she longed for the Chaldeans as well.  God says that the Babylonians came to Oholibah’s bed and defiled her sexually.  Eventually she became disgusted with her lovers.  Yet she still, against all wisdom, continued to increase her abominations.  She continued to lust after her paramours who, the Lord says, had genitals as large as donkeys and whose emissions were as strong as that of stallions.

And it is in verse 18 that God makes an utterly chilling judgment.  He says: “then I became disgusted with her, as I had become disgusted with her sister.”  It made God sick, figuratively speaking, to look at what Israel and Judah had done.  This was His chosen people, who He had specifically called out from the nations of the world, cared for, guarded, and loved.  He raised them from infants into a strong and mighty nation.  And they repaid His loving kindness by spitting in His face and stealing His glory from what they thought was “behind His back”. 

God is repulsed and nauseated by sin.  Proverbs 6:16-19 says that the Lord hates sin, that it is an abomination to Him.  But wait, our sanctimonious hearts cry out, that passage says there are only seven sins which fall under this special category of God’s hatred.  So if I can just stay off that list then I’ll be ok, right?  Not so fast.  Verse 18 adds this to the list: feet that run rapidly to evil.  With that one phrase God just neatly eviscerated the pious arrogance of every person who has ever lived, from Adam on down.  Because we have already clarified quite conclusively that all you have to do in order to qualify as committing evil is to do anything at all that is contrary to God.  Bingo!  That means all of us.  So to bring it full circle and hopefully deliver a sucker punch to the sinful gut of us all; God is disgusted, sickened, repulsed, and nauseated by your sinfulness.  That is exactly why He used such crude and profane language to describe Israel and Judah.  He knows perfectly well that we tend to white wash our sin.  And he wanted us to be shocked into stillness so that, perchance, we might be able to hear His Holy Spirit convicting us of sin.

And it is in the stillness of our discomfort, our dismay, our depression, that we come to our fourth and final implication.  When we begin to understand the crushing depth of despair we should rightfully be driven to by the terrible realization of the full weight of God’s holiness and our un-holiness, then there is a corresponding emotion that must accompany that unhappiness.  Namely, the purest, sweetest, most sublime joy it is humanly possible to experience.  Why?  Because even in the face of the awful reality of how much God is disgusted with us on a regular basis, He loves us still.  He loves us so much, in fact, that He went to such lengths to get us back that it literally took thousands of years for His plans to come to fruition.  The Bible is absolutely loaded with professions of God’s love for us.  It’s a bit like throwing a dart at a dartboard.  You can’t help but land somewhere that communicates the love of God for His creations.  Here is a partial list:

1. John 3:16 – God loved the world so much that he gave His only Son
2. Romans 5:8 – God shows His love for us in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners
3. Galatians 2:20 – The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me
4. Ephesians 2:4-5 – God made us alive with Christ because of His great love
5. 1 John 4:9-11 – Because God loved us enough to make His son the scapegoat for our sins, we ought also to love one another
6. Zephaniah 3:17 – God will quiet us (calm us) with His love
7. 1 John 4:7-8 – God is love
8. 1 Peter 5:6-7 – Cast all anxieties on God because He cares for you
9. Job 34:19 – God regards all people equally regardless of their station in life
10. Psalm 86:15 – God abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness

This list could have extended off the bottom of the page.  But I think the point has been made.  God’s love for us is unbelievable because it is in spite of how much He despises the sins that we commit and how much He is disgusted by us when we give in to temptation.  Again, as in the last chapter, we are obligated to cry out “Who. Is. This. God?”  How can He possibly retain such unfathomable love for us while at the same time possessing such unfathomable hatred for sin?  The answer eludes us because it is wrapped up in that which makes God, God, and us not.  At the end of the day we simply have to fall on our knees in thankfulness for His loving kindness.  With the Psalmist in 136:26 we should cry out: “Give thanks to the God of Heaven, for His loving-kindness is everlasting.”  And with Paul in Colossians 2:6-7 we should be “overflowing with gratitude”.  May it ever be so.

The Oracle to Habakkuk, Part 4: Mind Frame

“Mind Frame” is not a phrase in English.  The correct saying is “frame of mind”.  But proper grammar aside, the idea remains the same.  Namely, a mental attitude or outlook on something.  In this case, as it applies specifically to Habakkuk, we are talking about the lenses through which our prophet perceived the world around him.  The framework around the pictures he saw in his mind's eye.  The foundation upon which his world view was built.  This is absolutely critical to analyze because it impacts our ability to understand where Habakkuk was coming from and why he responded to God the way he did.  Taking that line of reasoning to its inevitable conclusion, if we determine that Habakkuk's frame of mind was God honoring, then it can serve as a guide for constructing our own mental attitudes and world views.

We have already touched on this issue, albeit briefly, in chapter 2.  There we considered Habakkuk's initial complaint to God about the depravity and evil he was witnessing which were perverting God's nature and allowing justice to be subverted.  We recognized that the prophet's motives were pure, in that he was most primarily concerned with God's glory rather than his own comfort.  And we acknowledged that, in chapter 1 verse 3, he understood that the Lord was in control of the events transpiring in Judah at the time.  In that verse he asked “Why do You make me see iniquity, and cause me to look on wickedness?”  Habakkuk was clear in his view that even though what he was witnessing was beyond the pale of the most unimaginable evils we can conceive in our minds, God was still God and was choosing to both allow it to continue and allow His prophet to witness it.  Habakkuk’s concern wasn’t over whether things were spiraling out of God’s control.  His frustration stemmed from the fact that he didn’t understand what in the world God was doing.  It appeared as if He was calmly standing by while Jehoiakim and most of the rest of Judah dragged His holy name through the mud.

This gave us our first clue into Habakkuk’s psyche, or his frame of mind.  But it is not until here in verse 12, after God’s initial response that we looked at in the last chapter, that the building blocks are revealed that came together in Habakkuk’s mind to construct his perspective.  These foundation stones take the form of seven attributes of the Lord, all of them appearing in 1:12 and then one of the points fleshed out more fully in verse 13.  The qualities that the prophet saw in his God and how those characteristics interacted with the “events on the ground”, so to speak, are what informed his understanding of how he should respond in the face of circumstances that were frankly beyond his ability to fully comprehend, which God alluded to in verse five when He said that Habakkuk “would not believe if you were told.” 

We are going to take two chapters to examine these seven points because the implications of who God is that are revealed are so monumental and expansive that we dare not give this less attention than that.  The human tendency is to rush through scripture, sub-consciously processing each word with a pre-conceived assumption of its meaning based on past education or experiences, ignoring the words we deem less consequential, and arriving at a conclusion with far too much conceit and far too little care.  It should not be this way.  David, the probable author of Psalm 119 says in verse 15, in consideration of God, that he will “meditate on Your precepts and regard Your ways.”  This means to think extensively about who God is.  It means to drink deeply from scripture and dwell upon what it says.  It means to take each contemplation of God’s nature and carefully turn it, rotate it, flip it, and weigh it to look at Him from all possible angles.  This is completely impossible to do without a significant investment of time.  Time which our fast paced ultra-modern society demands that we throw at other pursuits in a vain and ultimately soul quenching quest to keep up with the human obligations we placed upon ourselves. 

This is woefully insufficient when it comes to studying the transcendent creator of the universe.  And it’s not simply because He arbitrarily demands our attention.  It is true that He does, but that insistence upon His own pre-eminence is not some sort of random requirement that he throws at us on a whim that is disconnected from reality.  God demands that we meditate upon who He is because who He is demands meditation.  Micah 7:18 puts it this way: Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession?  He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unchanging love.  The key element of that verse is the very beginning.  Namely, “who is a God like our God?”  As Paul puts it in Romans 11:33-34: Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?  Who is this God that we serve?  Paul says that His mind is infinite in the previous passage.  In the verses of Romans 11 just prior to that he reveals that God’s plan of redemption and inter-weaving of the Jews and Gentiles is so Machiavellian, or convoluted and incomprehensible, that it elicits the response Paul gives in 33-34.  His presence is literally earth shaking, in the case of Mount Sinai in Exodus 19.  He dwells in unapproachable light, Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:16.  Yet He is gentle enough to weep over the pain people feel at the death of a loved one, as recorded in John 11:35.  Peter reveals in 1 Peter 3:9 that His patience is so incredibly flawless that He does not want people to perish.  And Isaiah 53 tells us that His love is of such magnitude that He crushed His own son and caused Him to bear our iniquities.  Like the prophet Micah we must cry out once again “Who is this God?”

That is why we must invest time and energy into a consideration of the Lord.  We wouldn’t go into a course on Calculus and expect to come out in 10 minutes with a complete knowledge of that mathematical discipline.  Granted, most of us wouldn’t go anywhere near a course on Calculus in the first place!  But the principle is sound.  That which is weighty requires a significant human investment in order to comprehend it.  And God is the weightiest subject in all of eternity past, present, and future.  So we will slow down now for the next two chapters and carefully labor over ascertaining what it was that Habakkuk saw about His God who is our God and what that revelation says about both the prophet’s perspective and what our perspective should be.

But before we begin to explore these seven revelations of who God is, we need to understand that by all human reasoning Habakkuk should be fuming right about now.  Think about it.  He is witnessing the death of his country.  The spiritual and social fabric of Judah is ripping apart right in front of his face.  He remembers the glory days of Josiah’s kingship, when the sanctity of the temple was once again respected, the reverence due to God was instituted on a governmental level, and the people were benefiting from having society run the way God designed which always works better.  With those memories brimming behind his tear filled eyes, the chaos running rampant now must have been especially bitter and galling.  So he cries out to God in desperation.  It doesn’t seem like God is doing anything to save His law from destruction and restore justice.  The state of affairs in his country doesn’t make any sense at all to Habakkuk.  And he voices this concern to the Lord, expectant of a response from His creator.

But the response God just gave in verses 5 through 11 of chapter 1 cannot possibly be what Habakkuk was hoping for.  I have no doubt that what he had in mind was for God to work some mysterious change of heart in the king which would then bring about spiritual reforms at the governmental level.  We humans are nothing if not predictable.  Our imaginations are often limited to our own experiences, incapable of thinking outside the box to come up with something beyond ourselves.  Habakkuk had witnessed a similar solution to Judah’s problems before with Josiah.  So it would have been natural for him to assume that that was the optimal resolution that was called for here.  Imagine how he must have felt to have God essentially yank the rug out from under his feet.  Instead of bringing justice through an internal process which preserved the integrity of the country, God said He was going to restore righteousness by using a pagan, godless, evil, and unclean nation.  He was going to use Babylon to exact punishment on Israel.  Although the specifics of this course of action are not revealed in God’s response, the implication is clear: the Jews are going to be abused, defiled, tormented, and ultimately culled by a foreign power.  At some level in Habakkuk’s mind had to be a response of “What!?  Are you kidding me!? Say it isn’t so Lord!”

To put this in perspective think about the United States in the 21^st century.  Those of us who hold allegiance to the Bible as the only authoritative source of absolute truth seem to be getting fewer as time marches on, even among professing evangelicals.  This country was founded by Christians and non-Christians who shared a respect and reverence for the word of God as well as a shared assumption that it was the guide they should follow for how to build a successful and prosperous country.  But we have systematically worked, for about 150 years, to extricate God from the bedrock of our society.  Mention of Him has been eliminated from our universities.  Acknowledgement of His creative work has been stripped from our textbooks.  His special revelation in the Bible has been gutted from our Law school curriculums so that each successive generation of law makers, law interpreters, and constitutional guardians ground themselves more than ever on human rather than divine wisdom.  And the media have greased the slopes with liberal humanist agendas so that this atheistic boulder can slide downward ever faster.

In response to this spiritual decline many in Christendom decry, protest, and bemoan, often rightly so.  We cry out to God just as Habakkuk did to change our nation.  To bring our country back to Him.  To stop His moral law from being perverted and His justice from being destroyed.  Again, this is exactly the same complaint Habakkuk had.  And I suspect that most of those modern day Habakkuks, when they pray for national deliverance, have in mind a renovation of the moral and spiritual culture of the United States which springs forth from within.  I seriously doubt there is nary a thought given to any other means by which God might choose to discipline this country.  I’m sure you can see where this is going.  What if He chose to deliver justice through means of a foreign power; China perhaps?  What would our response be?  What was Habakkuk’s?

Amazingly, rather than the expected man centered response of dismay, we find Habakkuk in verse 12 begin his reply with a series of declarations describing his view of God.  The first is this:

                        Are You not from everlasting,

                        O Lord, my God, my Holy One?

This is of course a rhetorical question.  Such an inquiry is not really a question at all, but a statement.  And what a statement it is!  Habakkuk draws from his knowledge of scripture to call attention to four characteristics of God in this single sentence.

The first divine aspect we see is bound up in the word everlasting.  But it’s not quite the notion we might at first think it is.  The translation into English in most bibles, frankly, leaves something to be desired.  Our immediate instinct would be to assume that Habakkuk is describing God’s eternal existence.  But the Hebrew word for perpetual, ancient, of long duration, or forever is different than what is used here.  The word here, qedem, instead has the idea of that which is before or in front of.  Consider the context of its usage in the Psalms:

·         Psalm 44:1 – O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us the work that You did in their days, in the days of old.

·         Psalm 68:33 – To Him who rides upon the highest heavens, which are from ancient times; behold, He speaks forth with His voice, a mighty voice.

·         Psalm 74:2 – Remember Your congregation, which You have purchased of old, which You have redeemed to be the tribe of Your inheritance;

·         Psalm 77:11 – I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.

As we can see, qedem still has reference to times long past and long durations, but there is a unique twist where it refers not just to an ancient time, but to an ancient time when the Lord did something.  The idea is a remembrance of His saving works, the ways in which He manifested His power, and His faithful presence.  An additional usage of qedem is “from the east”, as seen in Genesis 3:24: So He drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the Cherubim.  But the context of Habakkuk 1:12, which we will see shortly, makes it clear that the prophet is specifically referring to God’s historical collection of works.  So what he is doing is calling to remembrance, probably for his own benefit as much as God’s, that He is a faithful God who will not abandon His people.  This makes the prophet’s comment very personal and real as opposed to a clinical recitation of facts.

Furthermore, notice that all of Habakkuk’s understanding of God’s work throughout Israel’s history would have come primarily through the study and internalizing of scripture.  The Jews were the keepers of the oracles, or the heavy and burdensome tidings, of God.  As such they obviously kept them on record for education and worship.  Excepting the periods when various scrolls were temporarily lost, such as prior to Josiah discovering the Torah in the temple, the Old Testament scriptures would have been available to a Jewish prophet.  This is significant because it is primarily the storing up of scripture in our minds that guards us from sin.  David puts it this way in Psalm 119:11: Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You.   Habakkuk was simply putting this principle into practice and using it to call to remembrance what he knew of God’s character, specifically His saving might, and how it applied to this situation.

Following this reminder Habakkuk proceeds to catalog three specific qualities of God’s nature that we will consider as points two through four of our list of divine aspects on display here.  These are not just three different ways to say God that Habakkuk tosses in for the sake of variety.  There is meaning and import behind the words he chose.

First he refers to God as “O Lord”.  English translations of Lord from the New Testament usually come from the Greek word kurios, meaning master.  The equivalent word in Hebrew is adonai.  But that is not what Habakkuk used here.  He is instead using the actual name of God, Yahweh, unpronounceable in Hebrew and often substituted with adonai out of respect.  This was the name given by God to Jacob at Bethel in Genesis 28:13: He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac.”  Usage of His personal name was how God got through to Jacob that He was the same deity who had communicated with his forebears.  So Habakkuk was calling God literally by name, or as close as he could safely come to it.  This was a personal and intimate communication for him.  It was not a cold and unfeeling taskmaster he was crying out to but a real, living, cherished person who was being addressed.  Habakkuk’s choice of how to address his God tracks consistently with the context of qedem mentioned above.

It is also noteworthy because speaking to God by the name He has given to us rather than a moniker humans have assigned to Him indicates a spirit of response rather than assertion.  In other words, Habakkuk was reacting to what God reveals of Himself rather than attempting to fit God into his own faulty perception.  Jesus illustrates this attitude beautifully in Luke 12:35-40: “Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps lit.  Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast, so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes and knocks.  Blessed are those slaves whom the master will find on the alert when he comes; truly I say to you, that he will gird himself to serve, and have them recline at the table, and will come up and wait on them.”  Habakkuk’s mental posture of readiness and response is the same that Jesus taught and that we are expected to have.

Second he says “my God”.  This English translation is the Hebrew word elohim.  Similar to the way in which we use god to refer to the general concept of deity but God with a capital G to refer to the true and living God, the Jewish people before us developed a method of specifying their God.  The Hebrew word el means god in the generic sense.  But usage of elohim indicates that an Israelite is meaning their God individually.  The point here is that Yahweh is unique.  He is an individual with no comparison and no competition.  He is without equal, Habakkuk knew that, and he is making that clear in this passage with the words he used.

The final way in which Habakkuk addresses God is as “my Holy One”.  This is the Hebrew word qadowsh.  Fortunately, it means the same in English as it does in the original language: sacred, holy, set apart.  We will explore this concept more in the next chapter.  But for now it is sufficient to acknowledge that Habakkuk is calling into view the holiness of God.

To summarize what we have established to this point, the prophet begins his second round of oration with a magnificent recognition of God's nature that is densely packed with theology.  Within two sentences he points out that God has a history of providing for His people which stretches back into ancient times, He is a personal and sentient being, He is completely unique and without equal, and He is fully pure and set apart from the profanity of the world Habakkuk lived in.  Would that our prayers were as rich, as deep, as informed, and as heartfelt as this!  But Habakkuk doesn't stop there.  He follows up this description of God with a bombshell of a statement that we might be prone to miss:

                        We will not die.

Now this is a very curious phrase and it serves as our fifth point of God’s character that Habakkuk offers up for consideration.  The phrase mirrors very closely the wisdom of Solomon found in Proverbs 23:13: Do not hold back discipline from the child, although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.  Upon further investigation it seems that this parallel has merit because the Hebrew word used is identical.  With this symmetry established the question that arises is “what is Habakkuk getting at here by quoting Solomon?”  To determine that we need to figure out exactly what the king had in mind when he penned those words three and a half centuries prior to Habakkuk’s time.

The typical modern usage of the phrase “he (or we) will not die” is “it won’t kill you.”  As in, “It won’t kill you to clean up your bedroom” or “Eating your dinner won’t kill you.”  Obviously, the connotation here is of a parental nature.  But the conceptual idea spreads beyond that.  The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche popularized the following phrase in the 19^th century: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”  What Nietzche had in mind was a sort of rugged male individualism that encouraged standing firm in the face of adversity and weathering the storms of life.  This saying and the associated implications have filtered down into the psyche of modern western civilization in the century following Nietzche’s death to the extent that it has become a staple of popular culture.  A cursory search on the Internet reveals a plethora of opinions, analyses, and advertisements all predicated upon this singular phrase.  Because of this mass dissemination into the general consciousness even we in the Christian church have fallen under its sway.  So when we come to a passage such as Habakkuk 1:12 or Proverbs 23:13 our natural tendency is to read it with a negative connotation which revolves on death and pain.  For example, “God, Your discipline isn’t going to kill us, so we need to just suck it up and take it.”  But is this type of thinking really what first Solomon, later Habakkuk, and ultimately the Holy Spirit had in mind?

A fuller look at Proverbs 23:13 reveals the fallacy of our modern thinking.  Do not hold back discipline from the child, although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.  You shall strike him with the rod and rescue his soul from Sheol.  Whoa!  That is a complete 180 degree switch from the aforementioned cultural perception I believe we probably bring to this text.  God is not saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.  He is in fact saying “My discipline as well as parental discipline under my authority, far from bringing death, actually gives life.”  The idea is that, in complete harmony with the Biblical record, humanity is lost in slavery to sin and alienated from God through disobedience.  We can see this plainly in the classic passage Romans 3:23: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  God is the only source of life, which the Apostle John makes clear in 5:25-26 of his gospel: Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.  For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.  In point of fact, it is His very breath that gives life as we looked at in chapter 1.  Therefore, if we desire to have life it has to come from God and in order to get back into harmony and communion with God, so as to receive that life, we must have correction from our disobedient propensity.  This statement is the complete opposite of a negative connotation which revolves on death and pain.  It is instead a positive connotation which revolves on life and pleasure.

Now let’s go back and paraphrase Habakkuk’s statement.  “Yahweh, You have demonstrated Your providence, faithfulness, and love over centuries of caring for my people which stretches all the way back into ancient times.  You are my Elohim; the personal, living, and active God of my fathers.  You are morally pure, unswervingly righteous, and transcendentally set apart from all of creation.  Because of this I know that your correction will preserve us and give us life!”  Wow!  This scripture is absolutely loaded with depth to the point that the pages of our Bibles seem to groan with the weight of the truth contained in the ink stamped upon them.  As we looked at earlier in the chapter, we dare not tread lightly with God’s holy word.  His breath, which 1 Timothy 3:16 says all scripture flows from, is the same breath which gave life to Adam’s lifeless shell of flesh.  And it is the same breath which offers eternal life to us today.  We trifle with it at our peril.

After this towering God centered opening, it should come as no surprise to us that Habakkuk’s next two sentences are unified in their elevation of the divine and their demotion of the profane:

                        You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge;

                        And You, O Rock, have established them to correct.

Habakkuk finally gets back to the topic at hand with these statements; namely, the Babylonians.  But even here where he discusses the situation of the impending Chaldean conquest, he still doggedly couches it in the context of what God is doing rather than the “events on the ground”, so to speak.  He recognizes that it is God alone who is the instigator here.  It is not the motivations of Nebuchadnezzar or the Babylonian Empire that is responsible for what is coming.  In fact, Habakkuk actually goes so far as to link these future events to the restoration of justice in Israel that he originally was concerned about back in verse 4.  He does this by using two distinct expressions.  We will consider them separately as points 6 and 7 of our investigation of God’s nature.

“Appointed them to judge”, although a phrase in English, is actually translated from the single Hebrew word mishpat.  It means literally a judgment or ordinance, perhaps the act of deciding a case.  It is used most commonly as a legal term in the Old Testament.  And where its use is not overtly associated with the concept of law it is understood as either having some type of official association or dealing with the concept of justice.  Isaiah 28:6 uses mishpat to describe someone who makes judicial decisions.  Exodus 23:6 uses it to convey the idea of upholding justice for the poor.  Leviticus 9:16 describes Aaron in his high priestly role and uses mishpat to point to the regulations he was required to follow.  And Psalm 72:2 sets up an expectation of fair and equitable arrangements between litigants by using mishpat.  And to drive the point home of exactly what was in Habakkuk’s mind, it is the exact same word that he used in the aforementioned verse 4 when he said: “and justice is never carried out” and “For this reason justice is perverted.”  So there is zero doubt about the prophet’s meaning here.  He complained to God about justice not being done.  God responded that He was raising up the Babylonians to be His instruments that would restore justice from its perverted and corrupted state.  So Habakkuk replies with an acknowledgement that re-states what God has already told him in a sixth testament of who God is.

Then to further back up his point he tackles the project of pointing to God’s being for the seventh time and affirming His actions again, but this time from a different angle.  Our second phrase from the latter half of verse 12 is “have established them to correct.”  The construction of this sequence comes from just two Hebrew and one Aramaic words.  Suwm means to ordain, that is to officially invest with authority in a role.  Yacad has an idea of a foundation or a baseline.  Yakach is synonymous with reproof or rebuke.  The reason I point out the original language here is not to give an introductory lesson into ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, which I am not equipped to do anyhow.  Rather, it is striking that in the original writings there is no pronoun “them”.  It is translated into English that way to aid us in reading the scriptures.  But when Habakkuk wrote these words what he was literally saying was this: “God, you have ordained the foundation of your reproof.”  Why is this relevant?  Because once again we see this exact same pattern of placing the focus of attention upon God rather than man.

With that being said, it is interesting to note the moniker that Habakkuk attaches to God in this sentence.  He calls Him “his Rock”.  An alternative translation could be “protector”.  The idea is that God is preserving and caring for His people even in the midst of their punishment.  Habakkuk is, even in the process of realizing that discipline is coming, continuing to point back to God with every sentence he “breathes out”.  To coin a recent popular phrase, it is as if Yahweh was the very “air that Habakkuk breathed.”

With these two proclamations Habakkuk is confirming in his own mind the truth of what God has said and his acceptance of that truth.  He is settling it as a surety and making it official to himself by repeating it back to the Lord.  This is, quite frankly, identical to the process of confession that God expects all of us to go through.  1 John 1:9 teaches that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  To properly understand this verse we need to gain a clear understanding of the word confess.  Noah Webster defines it as follows: To own, avow or acknowledge; publicly to declare a belief in and adherence to.  As you can see, confess is not strictly tied to sin.  Anything can be confessed, if one publicly declares belief in it.  This is exactly what was meant by Jesus in Matthew 10:32 when He said “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My father who is in heaven.” 

With this in mind when we consider the prospect of confessing our sins to God we need to understand that it is the act of avowing before Him that we are sinners in need of His forgiveness that He is looking for.  Obviously He knows our hearts and whether we are truly repentant or not.  And so the question might arise in our minds of why we need to bother with “making it official” with the Lord in the sense of formally confessing to Him.  But this is not a valid argument and stems from a human desire to avoid responsibility.  There is a certain almost imperceptible and undefinable quality to a formal confession; whether it is made public with fellow Christians or whether it is private with just God.  The willingness to humble oneself in penitence through the act of confessing is an indicator of whether true repentance has occurred in the first place.  In other words, if you are unwilling to confess your sin to God then you never repented for it in the first place.

It is this similar principle we see here with Habakkuk’s confession of what God has told him.  Although sin is not in the picture here, the prophet confesses the truth of God’s word by repeating it back to Him as an expression of worship.  This can be seen as the ultimate culmination of this masterful piece of adoring God centered adulation.  And it is at its core the heart of worship.  God knows all things.  Therefore He knows perfectly well His own qualities.  But He still desires us to repeat or reflect those qualities back to Him in the act of worship because in the doing of it we are forced, if worshiping properly “in spirit and truth”, to come to terms with that which we are reflecting.  It is this realization of God’s greatness, in the quiet of our own minds, which forms the heart and soul of true worship.  And that is exactly what Habakkuk is doing in verse 12; worshiping.

We discussed back in chapter 2 the fact that Habakkuk was squarely and firmly oriented toward God even in the midst of his complaint.  And I said at the time that this is the correct and Biblical way to voice a concern.  But we left the question of how to get to a place of being able to do that for another day.  This is that day.  What we see here in verse 12 of chapter 1 is exactly how the prophet was able to maintain such a high view of God and low view of man even in the midst of his distress.  He achieved this with a dogged, unyielding allegiance to the intentional incorporation of God’s attributes, God’s historical track record, God’s essence, and God’s actions into every aspect of how he thought and lived.  He did this through seven distinct and separate references to what he understood of God’s character, as follows:

1. God is an eternal being who has a history of interceding on behalf of His people.
2. God is a personal being who is living and active.
3. God is a totally unique and incomparable being who must be recognized as being real where all others are false.
4. God is a pure and transcendent being who dwells outside of time, space, and all of creation.
5. God is a life giving being from whom all life flows and for those who are out of harmony with Him, His correction and reproof is necessary to achieve restoration and taste of that life.
6. God is a righteous being who will see justice done with whatever implements seem best to Him to utilize.
7. God is a protective being who will super intend the establishment of His corrective policies.

These seven points that Habakkuk managed to pack into a single verse make one thing abundantly clear.  The glasses through which Habakkuk’s worldview was formed were framed with God’s past and the lenses were constructed out of God’s present.  God’s being resonated with every thought and intention of Habakkuk’s heart that is available to us in scripture.  Undoubtedly he was just as sinful of a person as the rest of us are so it is taken as writ that he didn’t always achieve this level of devotion.  But through the power of the Holy Spirit, who was living and active in these Old Testament prophets just as much as He is in us today, and for our edification 2700 years later, Habakkuk got it right this time.  We would do well to follow his lead.