One of the most favorite
pastimes of the human race is complaining.
The voicing of complaints is such an elementary component of our
collective psyche that it almost defies historical investigation because of how
vast in scope the spectrum of human complaints runs. In a speech in November of 1969, President
Richard Nixon described what he called a “silent majority” of Americans. What he meant by this was a large group of
people who did not join in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, who were not
participants in the counter cultural hippie movement of the time, and did not
typically express their views publicly.
Opposed to this silent majority is what came to be known as the “vocal
minority”. This group of people is
different in every way. They express
their views repeatedly, publicly, and forcibly.
And they are active in demonstrations against those cultural mores they
disagree with. In the context of these
sociological opposites an interesting pattern began to emerge. Namely, the vocal minority is seen as almost
universally negative. Most Internet
forums have special places for people to voice complaints about whatever product
or area of interest the forum was designed for.
And invariably, these complaint sub-forums are brimming with folks
unhappy about this, or dissatisfied with that, or campaigning for the other.
Care must be taken, however, not to be unfair in our
treatment on this subject. Complaining
or complaints are neutral words by themselves.
Complain simply means “expressing dissatisfaction or annoyance about a
state of affairs or an event”. That
expression of dissatisfaction is not necessarily wrong and doesn’t have to be
negative. It is when humans get ahold of
this concept or behavioral paradigm that things tend to go downhill in a hurry,
as described above.
Modern psychology has attempted to explain this
curiosity of human behavior. The
“negativity bias” is a term developed by psychologists which says that, “even
when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (e.g. unpleasant
thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a
greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than do neutral or
positive things.” Clifford Nass is a
professor of communication at Stanford University. He says that leaning toward negativity is a
general tendency for everyone. His
explanation for this is that the brain handles positive and negative
information in different hemispheres. He
goes on to say that negative emotions generally involve more thinking, and the
information is processed more thoroughly than positive ones. The result is that when people have negative
experiences they tend to think more about them and use stronger words to
describe them.
Modern scientific efforts to understand and explain
human psychology notwithstanding, as the authoritative source on humanity and
authored by its creator, the Bible provides, while certainly not as technical
of an explanation as a scientific journal, a much more fundamental description
which pierces straight through to the root of the issue in a manner that
scientific endeavors cannot possibly hope to match. Specifically, according to the Biblical
record mankind's tendency to complain is rooted in one thing; sin.
Sin can be defined as the complete antithesis of God's
character. It is the willful violation
of His moral law which reflects His attributes.
It is the intentional elevation of oneself to a higher level of
importance and exaltation than God. To
put it another way, as it pertains to this discussion, sin is the state of
selfishly desiring to possess something that is not currently possessed. We can see this in Isaiah 14:12-14 with the
five “I wills” of Satan:
·
“I
will ascend to heaven”
·
“I
will raise my throne above the stars of God”
·
“I
will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north”
·
“I
will ascend above the heights of the clouds”
·
“I
will make myself like the Most High”
In each case, the item that Satan desired was
something he did not currently have. His
lust for these things led to his willful rebellion against God and his exile
from Heaven. Fast forward to the Garden
of Eden in Genesis 3. Scripture records
that when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a
delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took
from its fruit and ate.” The same
pattern existed with Adam and Eve as with Satan before them. They lusted after the taste of the food
available from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in spite of the fact
that that they had ample sources of delectable food all around them. They lusted after the pleasing appearance of
the fruit which grew from the tree, in spite of the fact that, as a product of
God's creative work which He deemed “very good” the Garden of Eden was
obviously filled from end to end with beautiful flora and fauna on a scale we
can hardly imagine. And they desired to
obtain more knowledge for themselves, in spite of the fact that as the first
humans, prior to any genetic corruption in human DNA, they would have possessed
more raw intelligence than any person since then, with the exception of Jesus. The Apostle John sums up this trifecta of
impurity in 1 John 2:16 as follows: the lust of the flesh and the lust of
the eyes and the boastful pride of life.
Satan, Adam, Eve, and every other person who has existed since then,
again excepting Jesus, has followed the same pattern of desire for that which
they do not currently possess. We can
see this in popular cultural euphemisms such as “the grass is always greener”,
which means that to our sin ravaged eyes, the things which others possess, in
this case represented by grass, tend to appear more pleasing, or greener, to us
than our own. This lasts until we
actually come to own that which we lusted after. At that point the item loses its luster and
suddenly something else appears greener, or more beautiful, or more successful,
or more useful, or more enjoyable, etc.
Furthermore, the Bible is replete with descriptions of
those who became dissatisfied with what they had and sinfully complained about
it. Perhaps the most striking example of
this phenomenon is the Hebrews who were led out of Egypt by Moses under God's
direction to be forged into the nation of Israel. Their record of complaint against Moses and
against the Lord began almost before the dust of Egypt had fallen from their
sandals, when Pharaoh and his army drew near to re-capture them as they camped
along the shore of the Red Sea. We pick
up the account in Exodus 14:10 – As Pharaoh drew near, the sons of Israel
looked, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they became
very frightened; so the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord. Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there
were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the
wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in
this way, bringing us out of Egypt? Is
this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, 'Leave us alone that
we may serve the Egyptians'? For it
would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the
wilderness.” The fear of the people
and their desire for that which they did not have, namely clear and present
physical safety, prompted them to sin by complaining against God and
distrusting His provision for them. In
the familiar account God saves the Israelites through the parting of the Red
Sea and the subsequent destruction of the Egyptian army. Yet only three days later, at Marah, they
took up their lament once again in 14:23 – When they came to Marah, they
could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter; therefore it was
named Marah. So the people grumbled at
Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”
In this case the people desired once again what they did not have, clean
water, and complained about it. This
theme recurred about a month later in the wilderness of Sin (a remarkably
ironic name), recorded for us in 16:2 – The whole congregation of the sons
of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The sons of Israel said to them, “Would that
we had died by the Lord's hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of
meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this
wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” Now it was food on the table of the
people's desire and complaint. In a
seemingly never ending litany of objections, the Israelites continued this
trend at Rephidim in Exodus 17:1-7, Mount Sinai in 32:1, Taberah in Numbers
11:1-6, and finally culminating at Kadesh with their rebellion and refusal to
enter Canaan in Numbers 14:1-4.
Lest we think that it was only the common Hebrew who
bathed in the filthy waters of lustful desire for what they didn't have, the
leaders of Israel also fell prey to this disease of sin fueled
complaining. Numbers 12:1-2 tell how
Aaron and Miriam eventually rose up in jealousy against Moses and the authority
he had been granted by God. And even
Moses himself, one who spoke with God face to face yet was still shackled by
sin, began to feel oppressed and victimized in Numbers 11:10 where he had the
audacity to complain against God for giving him charge of the people of Israel.
Even the need for Moses to function as the leader of
the people and to judge them, which his father-in-law Jethro counseled him
about in Exodus chapter 18, was fueled by the basic inability of sinfully
complaining mankind to govern himself. A
judge becomes unnecessary and irrelevant in the absence of disputes. James Madison, one of the founding fathers of
the United States and our fourth president, said “If men were angels, no
government would be necessary.”
In view of this human tendency to perpetually
complain, we come to the book of Habakkuk.
In this small book of prophecy we find an astonishing treasure; nothing
less than an instruction manual on how to voice complaints not sinfully, but
righteously. The book opens in verse 1 of chapter 1 with the
following sentence:
The oracle which Habakkuk the
prophet saw.
And now a
parenthesis is needed. Although this is
a seemingly simple sentence, there is one word in it which bears further
consideration and requires that we not skip past it without pause. That word is oracle. This is an interesting term because it has a
multiplicity of meanings; more so than most.
In pagan mythology an oracle included the answer of a god to an inquiry
made regarding something of importance, the deity or demi-god who actually gave
the answers, and the location where these answers were given. The classic example of this is the Oracle at
Delphi in ancient Greek culture which encompassed all three of those
elements. But in a biblical sense, an
oracle most commonly refers specifically to, as Webster phrases it, “the
communications, revelations, or messages delivered by God to prophets. And since the prophets in Israel tended to
write these messages down, their prophetic writings in turn bear the moniker of
oracles. In a broader sense, the entire
written revelation of God, comprised of the 66 books of the cannon of
scripture, could all be said to be the oracles of God.
This much is probably somewhat
apparent from the context in which the word appears in Habakkuk 1:1 above. But what is perhaps not so obvious is the
hidden meaning behind it. This meaning
only emerges after considering the Hebrew etymology of the word which is
translated into English as oracle. That
word is “massa”, pronounced
mas-saw’. It means a load or a
burden. This communication that Habakkuk
received from God was not just any old message.
It was a missive which had weight and depth. It induced sobriety and carried with it a
heavy burden of responsibility to communicate it accurately. It was and is the specific divine revelation
of the transcendent creator God of the universe.
What’s the point? We in our modern hubris, exaggerated
self-importance,
and lofty educational standards can have a dangerous tendency to play fast and
loose with those portions of the word of God which, on the surface, appear to
be less interesting or more tedious than others. Test yourself on this. Ask this question right now in the quiet of
your own mind. Would I prefer to read
James or Leviticus? What excites me
more, the genealogies in Matthew or the sermon on the mount in Matthew? Please don’t misunderstand. Various portions of scripture are at
different times in our lives more or less specifically relevant to what we are
currently experiencing. But we should
take care lest we treat with a cavalier attitude any portion of scripture. Not a single “jot or tittle” as Jesus put it,
meaning small details, will pass away or is in some sense less important or
relevant than any other. If indeed it is
all the words of God then it is all equally holy. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve
heard Christians make offhand disparaging remarks about the aforementioned
Leviticus. It seems that in Christendom
few people want to even read Leviticus much less teach it or be taught from
it. And I fear a similar attitude could
be and sometimes is applied to a book such as Habakkuk. It’s short, only three chapters long. It’s buried in the midst of the so called
Minor Prophets. They are referred to as
minor based on the size of their printed writings. But I think sometimes people misconstrue the
meaning of minor so as to apply it to the content of their writings as well as
the length. This should not be so. As we begin to move into the book of Habakkuk
we should fully expect that its substance will be powerfully transformative for
the “renewing of our minds” (Rom. 12:2).
With that exaggerated pause out of the way, we can
proceed with the next verses of this pint sized titan of truth. Verses 2 and 3 read thusly:
How
long, O Lord, will I call for help,
And
You will not hear?
I
cry out to You, “Violence!”
Yet
You do not save.
Why
do You make me see iniquity,
And
cause me to look on wickedness?
Yes,
destruction and violence are before me;
Strife
exists and contention arises.
Undoubtedly, you read those words with a fair amount
of detachment. It is all too easy to
apply a clinical view to scripture that sterilizes it of its context and white
washes it of emotion. This is especially
true for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a developed country
which is relatively free from direct, physical religious persecution. But recall to mind part one of this
series. Paint in your mind’s eye once
again the horrific imagery associated with worship of Baal, Asherah, and Moloch. Put yourself one more time in the shoes of
Habakkuk the prophet, as the bile rose in his throat upon seeing one of the
earthen mounds built to honor Asherah with rampant fornication, as he saw the
giant metal statue of Moloch in the Valley of Hinnom and recalled what was done
there, and as he passed by a high place consecrated to Baal. The entire point of the preceding prologue to
the book of Habakkuk was to put us in a place where we might in some small way
be able to envision what the prophet experienced. Now go back and read the text of verses 2 and
3 again, but this time with the depth of emotion which Habakkuk might have
had. When he cried out “Violence!” to
the Lord it was not a philosophical soap box he was standing on. The violence was real, it was pervasive, and
it was utterly detestable. When the
prophet says that he saw iniquity and looked on wickedness the level of
depravity he was referring to were on such a level so as to make the words he
used inadequate to describe it.
But notice that there is an element here to Habakkuk’s
distress which is almost alien to us, it is so seldom a component of our own
heartaches. Look at where Habakkuk
places the responsibility for what he is observing:
Why
do You make me see iniquity,
And
cause me to look on wickedness?
Even in the midst of mental and
emotional anguish we can scarcely imagine, he did not forget to give credit
where credit was due. Habakkuk owned up
to the truth of God’s sovereignty even in this most evil of times. He recognized that although his pain was deep
and his torment unbearable, it was God alone who was responsible for putting
him through it. He does not say that God
is the author of the evil he was witnessing.
But he does acknowledge that God is allowing him to be subjected to
it. This is a principle that Habakkuk
would have known well as a student of the scriptures, as he most likely was as
a man committed to the role of prophet of God and entrusted with the heavy
burden of receiving God’s oracles. In
that capacity he had probably read the oracles of Isaiah, long dead at the time
Habakkuk lived. Isaiah writes in chapter
43, verse 25 of the book which bears his name: “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own
sake, and I will not remember your sins.”
And he elaborates even further and more comprehensively in 46:9-11
when he writes: “Remember the former
things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is
no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times
things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I
will accomplish all My good pleasure’; Calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of My purpose from a far country.
Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it. Even if Habakkuk had somehow missed what
Isaiah wrote he surely was familiar with the Torah. In Deuteronomy 32:39 Moses writes: ‘See now that I, I am He, and there is no
god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, and
there is no one who can deliver from My hand. This truth that God is in complete control,
that so many in modern Christian society would argue against and discredit, was
one embraced fully by Habakkuk, even as he endured things which most of us in
our quiet cultured lives haven’t come close to touching.
So then, perhaps it should not be
surprising to find in Habakkuk 1:4 what the source of the prophet’s concerns
was:
Therefore the law is ignored
And
justice is never upheld.
For
the wicked surround the righteous;
Therefore
justice comes out perverted.
Habakkuk’s primary concern with
everything he was seeing, hearing, and experiencing of the evils of the
Canaanite religions was not the human cost involved. Rather, it was the violation of God’s
law. There are two reasons that we know
it was specifically God’s law that Habakkuk was referring to. One, quite simply, it cannot logically be
anything else. When Israel was founded
as a nation its form of government was a theocracy. This means that leadership was performed by
priests who ruled in the name of God. In
the case of Israel this meant specifically the Levitical priesthood. It was this context in which the Mosaic Law
was given. This set of laws,
approximately 613 in number, functioned for the nation of Israel just as the
Constitution functions for the United States.
And although Israel had by this time strayed far from that set of laws,
there is nothing else that a prophet like Habakkuk would have had in mind when
he wrote the word law. The second reason
we know it was the Mosaic Law that Habakkuk had in mind is this. There is a general Hebrew word for laws. But that is not what was used in Habakkuk
1:4. The Hebrew term which is translated
law here in Habakkuk is literally the word towrah,
which we know as Torah and is an explicit reference to the first five books of
the Hebrew Scriptures where the Law was given and recorded. So there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever
that what Habakkuk was upset about was the corruption and violation of God’s
law which by extension automatically includes His character since the law was
and is an extension of His nature. In
effect, what Habakkuk was complaining about was that God’s reputation was being
destroyed!
The final piece of the prophet’s
concern is his perception of why this corruption of God’s law is
happening. He says:
For the wicked surround the righteous;
Therefore
justice comes out perverted.
Consider how Habakkuk and others
like him of the faithful remnant of Israel must have felt in the midst of the
heathen idolatry being promulgated by their fellow Hebrews. They were quite literally the righteous
surrounded by the wicked, as he says here.
Human nature is such that anyone who goes against the flow, questions
the establishment, or seeks change tends to be marginalized by society. Sometimes the rebel has no merit in his
rebellion. But at other times it is
society that has no merit in its norms.
Such a case existed in Israel at the end of the 7th century
B.C. God says in Jeremiah 32:30 that the
sons of Israel and Judah “have been
doing only evil in My sight from their youth; for the sons of Israel have been
only provoking Me to anger by the work of their hands,” declares the Lord. With this kind of environment all around
him Habakkuk would have undoubtedly felt the oppression and the persecution of
his countrymen. They would have had very
little tolerance for anyone who proclaimed to them the evil of their ways. And although we have no record of any
specific persecution that Habakkuk endured, there is an extensive record of the
trials and tribulations that Jeremiah, his contemporary, went through for the
sake of the word of the Lord. Case in
point is the verse referenced just above, which bluntly calls to attention the
ungodly history of Judah that would have been hateful to the ears of those who
were guilty of the offenses described.
So from Habakkuk’s perspective, evil ruled the day, righteousness was
small and insignificant, and it appeared God was doing nothing to protect his
own honor. Is it then any wonder that
Habakkuk was so dismayed?
No, it seems quite fitting for
the prophet to feel the way he did. What
is astonishing is that, as stated before, the focus of his attention was
primarily on the Lord’s law and not his own petty discomforts. Most people would have been unable to look
past their own noses to see the bigger picture of the glory of God being
tarnished. And in fact, scripture
presents us with not only an example of just this sort of typical human
reaction, but it does so with someone right out of Habakkuk’s own time
period. This is priceless, because it
paints not just a competing picture of two different reactions, but ones that
were prompted by the exact same set of conditions and pressures.
Jeremiah chapter 45 is a short
interlude seemingly tossed into the middle of the prophetic battles that take
place throughout most of the rest of the book.
In it we find a message from God through Jeremiah to a man named
Baruch. Baruch was Jeremiah’s secretary
during part of his career. He took
dictation from Jeremiah, was his confidant, and was entrusted with God’s word. But in chapter 45 we find Baruch apparently
feeling sorry for himself. We don’t know
for sure what the problem was. But we
have a clue in verse 1 of the chapter: This
is the message which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah,
when he had written down these words in a book at Jeremiah’s dictation, in the
fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah…
To understand this sentence and the context surrounding it we need
to back up to chapter 36. We know this
chapter is describing the same time frame because it opens with “In the fourth year of Jehoiakim…” It then goes on to explain how Jeremiah
dictated the words of the Lord to Baruch, who recorded them in a scroll. Then Jeremiah, who was restricted by King
Jehoiakim from entering the temple, asked Baruch to go in his stead and read
publicly from the scroll. This public reading
did not take place until the following year.
But when it occurred great was the consternation of the court officials
who heard it. They knew the probable
reaction from the king, so they advised Jeremiah and Baruch to hide
themselves. Their fears were proven
correct because when the scroll was read to Jehoiakim he burned it and ordered
for the prophet and his accomplice to be arrested. What was in the scroll that was so hateful to
the ears of the king? Chapter 36, verse
1 gives the answer: this word came to
Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Take a scroll and write on it all the words
which I have spoken to you concerning Israel and concerning Judah, and
concerning all the nations, from the day I first spoke to you, from the days of
Josiah, even to this day.” So in
effect, what it was that Baruch wrote down on the scroll and read was the
entire book of Jeremiah, at least the portion that had been completed by that
point. Even a cursory reading of
Jeremiah reveals that at every turn he was condemning the king and the people
for their idolatry and urging them to repent and return to the Lord. A convicting message rarely sits well with
those experiencing the conviction.
So Jeremiah and
Baruch had to hide themselves and live in fear.
We don’t know everything else that happened to them, but as mentioned
earlier undoubtedly it was not a pleasant time to be a servant of the Lord in
the midst of a nation giving itself wholesale to the Canaante gods. It seems most probable that it was this
persecution that he and Jeremiah were under from the king that was getting
Baruch down. But regardless of the
details, Baruch’s response was much different than Habakkuk’s, as recorded in
verse 3: ‘You said, “Ah, woe is me! For the Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am
weary with my groaning and have found no rest.”’ Look at the contrast between the object
of Baruch’s complaint and the obect of Habakkuk’s complaint. Baruch was focused on himself and his own
comforts. Habakkuk instead chose to
focus on the Lord’s honor and righteous laws which were being compromised. Going back to our description from before,
Baruch displayed the standard human response to negative stimuli. He lusted after something he did not
currently possess, in this case comfort and a pain free life, and chose to
complain about it.
How many of us, in similar
circumstances, would act like Baruch?
The historical and biblical evidence is against us. The patterns of our own lives convict us. We know exactly how we are most likely to
react. It is certain that our typical
response would be internally focused. It
is all too likely that we would choose the way of self-interest rather than the
way of God’s honor. Philippians 2:14
teaches us to “do everything without
grumbling or disputing.” And in
response the Christian longs to cry out “Oh God, how?” Sin is pervasive and invasive. It is like a skim of rancid oil on the
surface of a cool and clear spring of fresh water. In order to get to the water we have to come
into contact with the oil. Sin corrupts
every fiber of our being. We are ready
to surrender to it at the slightest provocation. We happily lock arms with sin at the most
innocuous violation of our perceived rights and privileges. When we are offended, or ignored, or
slighted, or inconvenienced, or interrupted, or awoken, or delayed, or worked,
or disputed we all too often jump right back into bed with the evil of our
flesh. Again the Christian exclaims “My
Lord and my God, how can I do this? How
can I fight this? It’s impossible!” And in response God graciously provides the answer to our dilemma even here in
this Old Testament book of prophecy, prior to the incarnation of Christ and the
New Covenant of grace. Stay with us as
we plumb the depths of God’s truth and we seek after the answers together.
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