God's Strange and Terrible Answer Text: Habakkuk 1:5-11
Introduction: When God Answers From the Whirlwind
We live in a sentimental age. When modern Christians pray, they often expect God to answer in ways that are comforting, tidy, and fit neatly within our preconceived notions of what a good and loving God ought to do. We want a God who is manageable, a God who solves our problems the way we would solve them if we had His power. We want a cosmic butler, not a sovereign King. But the God of the Bible is not a tame God. He is the God who answers out of the whirlwind.
The prophet Habakkuk is an honest man, a man wrestling with a problem that has troubled saints for millennia. He looks around at Judah and sees corruption, violence, and injustice. The law is paralyzed, and the wicked surround the righteous (Hab. 1:4). And so he does what a godly man is supposed to do. He cries out to God: "How long, O Lord?" This is not the cry of faithless despair, but the cry of faith in distress. He believes God is just, which is precisely why the apparent injustice is so vexing to him.
And God answers him. But the answer is not what Habakkuk expected. It is not a promise to send a revival, or to raise up a righteous king, or to gently correct His people. God's answer is terrifying. It is an answer that will make the prophet's ears tingle. God tells him that He is about to do something so astounding, so outside the normal categories, that no one would believe it even if they were told. And what is this unbelievable work? God is going to answer the injustice in Judah by unleashing an even greater, more brutal, and more rapacious force of injustice upon them. He is going to use a dirty stick to discipline His children. He is going to raise up the Chaldeans.
This is what Isaiah called God's "strange work" and His "alien task" (Is. 28:21). It is strange because God is taking up a wicked instrument to accomplish a holy purpose. It is alien because He is turning against His own covenant people. This is a hard providence, a severe mercy. And it is a foundational lesson for the people of God in every age. God is sovereign, not just over the good things, but over the bad things. He is sovereign over the Chaldeans. He is sovereign over the godless empires of our own day. He raises them up, and He casts them down. And if we are to have a faith that can withstand the storm, we must learn to trust Him not just in spite of these terrible providences, but in the midst of them.
The Text
"See among the nations! And look! Be also astonished! Be astounded! Because I am doing something in your days, You would not believe if it was recounted to you. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, That bitter and hasty nation Who walks on the breadth of the land To possess dwelling places which are not theirs. They are dreaded and feared; Their justice and exaltation come forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards And sharper than wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping; Their horsemen come from afar; They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour. All of them come for violence. Their horde of faces moves forward. And they gather captives like sand. And they mock at kings, And rulers are a laughing matter to them. They laugh at every fortress And heap up dirt and capture it. Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on. But they will be held guilty, They whose power is their god.”
(Habakkuk 1:5-11 LSB)
An Unbelievable Work (v. 5)
God begins His reply by commanding the prophet's absolute attention. This is not going to be a gentle whisper.
"See among the nations! And look! Be also astonished! Be astounded! Because I am doing something in your days, You would not believe if it was recounted to you." (Habakkuk 1:5)
God tells Habakkuk to look at the geopolitical landscape, to watch the evening news, because that is where His hand is at work. Our God is the Lord of history. He does not operate only in the realm of the spiritual and the private. He moves armies, topples thrones, and redraws maps. The command to "see among the nations" is a command to reject a pietistic, navel-gazing faith that is disconnected from the real world.
The work God is about to do will shatter all expectations. It will be unbelievable. The Apostle Paul quotes this very verse in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch when he is preaching the gospel (Acts 13:41). He warns the Jews not to be among the scoffers who disbelieve God's work of salvation through the crucified and risen Christ. The cross was God's ultimate "strange work," where He used the ultimate act of injustice to bring about the ultimate justice. In the same way, God's work of judgment here through Babylon is a precursor, a historical object lesson. God's methods are often shocking to us. They confound our wisdom and offend our sensibilities. This is because His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways. He is God, and we are not.
The Appointed Instrument (v. 6)
Here, God names the instrument of His judgment. It is the rising superpower of the ancient world.
"For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, That bitter and hasty nation Who walks on the breadth of the land To possess dwelling places which are not theirs." (Habakkuk 1:6)
Notice the first person pronoun: "I am raising up." The Chaldeans, or Babylonians, are not an accident of history. They are not a random force that has slipped God's leash. God is actively, personally, and sovereignly orchestrating their rise to power for His own purposes. Assyria was the axe God used to judge the northern kingdom of Israel (Is. 10:5), and now Babylon is the hammer He is forging to shatter Judah.
They are described in three ways. They are "bitter," meaning fierce and cruel. They are "hasty," meaning impetuous, swift, and relentless. And they are expansionistic, marching across the earth to seize what does not belong to them. This is a perfect description of a predatory empire. They are driven by greed and a lust for conquest. And yet, behind their sinful motivations, stands the holy purpose of God. God uses the sins of the Babylonians to judge the sins of Judah. This does not make God the author of sin, any more than a judge is guilty of murder when he sentences a criminal to be executed by a sinful executioner. God remains perfectly holy while ordaining and directing the sinful acts of men to accomplish His righteous ends.
A Law Unto Themselves (v. 7-8)
The description of this terrifying force continues, emphasizing their arrogance and their raw, animalistic power.
"They are dreaded and feared; Their justice and exaltation come forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards And sharper than wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping; Their horsemen come from afar; They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour." (Habakkuk 1:7-8)
The Chaldeans are a force of raw terror. But the key phrase here is that "Their justice and exaltation come forth from themselves." This is the very definition of secular humanism. They are their own source of law, their own standard of right and wrong. Might makes right. They do not appeal to a transcendent lawgiver; their will is law. This is the essence of all tyranny. When man makes himself the ultimate authority, the result is not freedom, but dread and fear for everyone else.
Their military might is described with a series of terrifying similes drawn from the world of predators. Their cavalry is faster than the leopard, the quickest sprinter. They are "sharper" or fiercer than wolves hunting at dusk, when they are most hungry and dangerous. They move with the speed and single-minded purpose of an eagle diving on its prey. This is not a disciplined, orderly army. This is a force of nature, a whirlwind of destruction. And God is the one who has unleashed it.
The Character of Conquest (v. 9-10)
Their purpose is singular, their success is total, and their attitude is one of complete contempt for all other authorities.
"All of them come for violence. Their horde of faces moves forward. And they gather captives like sand. And they mock at kings, And rulers are a laughing matter to them. They laugh at every fortress And heap up dirt and capture it." (Habakkuk 1:9-10)
Their goal is simple: "violence." The Hebrew word is hamas, the same word used to describe the condition of the world before the flood (Gen. 6:11). This is a destructive, lawless violence. Their advance is inexorable, like a desert wind, and they sweep up prisoners in such numbers that they are like grains of sand on the seashore. This is total war, total conquest.
And in their conquest, they are utterly contemptuous of all human authority. Kings are a joke to them. Fortified cities are a laughing matter. They simply pile up earthen ramps against the walls and take them. This is a picture of absolute, arrogant power that recognizes no equal and no obstacle. They are the playground bully on a geopolitical scale. This is what man becomes when he rejects the fear of the Lord. He becomes a creature who must be feared by all.
The Fatal Sin (v. 11)
The final verse of God's answer provides both a description of their fleeting nature and the theological diagnosis of their core sin.
"Then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on. But they will be held guilty, They whose power is their god.” (Habakkuk 1:11)
Like the wind, their empire will be powerful, but it will also be transient. They will "pass on." Empires rise and empires fall. God is the Lord of history, and He sets the boundaries of their dominion. But even as God uses them, He does not excuse them. They "will be held guilty." God's ordination of their actions for His own purposes does not absolve them of their moral responsibility for the wickedness of those actions.
And here is the root of their guilt, the very heart of their rebellion. Their power is their god. The Chaldeans look at their own military strength, their own strategic genius, their own national might, and they worship it. They deify themselves. This is the original sin of the Garden, the desire to be as God. It is the sin of Babel. It is the sin of every proud nation and every arrogant tyrant who has ever lived. They mistake the instrument for the agent. They think the axe is swinging itself. And for this idolatry, this deification of creaturely power, they will be judged.
The Hammer Will Be Broken
This is a hard word for Habakkuk, and it is a hard word for us. God's answer to the problem of evil in His own house is to send a far more wicked evil to clean house. This is profoundly unsettling. And it is meant to be. It is meant to drive us out of our shallow, sentimental comfort zones and onto the bedrock of God's absolute sovereignty.
God is in control. He is in control of the decay within the church, and He is in control of the pagan sledgehammer He is raising up to deal with it. He is not wringing His hands. He has a plan. And that plan includes using the Chaldeans of this world, the bitter and hasty nations, the arrogant powers who make their own might their god.
But this passage contains a hidden promise, a promise that will become the central theme of the rest of the book. The Chaldeans will be held guilty. The hammer will itself be broken. The dirty stick will be thrown into the fire. God's justice is not mocked. He will deal with the sins of His people, and then He will deal with the instruments He used to do it. The Chaldeans had their day, and then they were swept away. Babylon rose, and Babylon fell. The Roman empire rose, and the Roman empire fell. The Soviet Union rose, and the Soviet Union fell. Every empire built on the idolatry of its own power will eventually crumble to dust before the throne of the one true God.
This is why the central lesson of this book, which God will reveal to Habakkuk in the next chapter, is that "the just shall live by his faith" (Hab. 2:4). When God is doing His strange work, when the world seems to be given over to brutal and arrogant powers, when you cannot make sense of the headlines, the righteous man is not called to despair. He is called to believe. He is called to trust that the Lord of history knows exactly what He is doing, and that in His own time, He will make all things right. He will judge His people, He will judge the nations, and He will establish His kingdom, a kingdom that shall have no end.