God, Why Are the Bad Guys Winning?

"You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?" (Habakkuk 1:13, English Standard Version)

Have you ever asked someone to do something for you and have them do something totally unexpected?  For example, let's say you tell your boss that you want new and exciting job opportunities, and instead of promoting you, he fires you.  If you can understand this, then you can understand a little of what the prophet Habakkuk was going through.  We're in the middle of a brief survey of the book of Habakkuk.  In our first look, we saw the Prophet crying out to God regarding the gross sin and injustice taking place in the nation of Judah.  Habakkuk was asking for God to do something.  Now, as the old saying goes, we need to be careful what we ask for.

In the next section, we see God's reply to the Prophet.  God tells Habakkuk that what He is about to do would bring wonder and amazement to Habakkuk; it would be something beyond his imagination.  What God was doing was raising up the Chaldeans as His tool of judgment on Judah.  Now this is nothing new in God's economy.  He has used nations to judge other nations before.  Israel was His chosen instrument to bring judgment on the Canaanites after over 400 years of sin and debauchery.  God similarly raised up Cyrus the Persian to bring judgment on the Babylonians (cf. Isaiah 45:1).

Here's the catch, the Chaldeans were worse sinners than the people of Judah.  Think about how this must have bothered Habakkuk.  Imagine standing trial for breaking and entering.  Now suppose that the judge passing down the sentence of your crime was a convicted murderer.  Would this bother you?  Well, it certainly bothered Habakkuk that the people God was using to judge Judah's sins were worse sinners by comparison.  In this passage, the Prophet makes a statement about God's character, and based on that statement, a question concerning God's methods.

1. God's character ("You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong").  Habakkuk cannot comprehend what God is doing.  The only thing he can do is go back to basics; which, in this case, is his knowledge of God's character.  The Prophet tries to reconcile what is going on with God's holiness.  Holiness is the prime attribute of God's character.  It is the only attribute that is constantly praised by the heavenly chorus (cf. Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8).  God, as holy, cannot have anything to do with evil.  One sin was enough to curse the entire human race because it was an offense to God's holiness.  Read the book of Leviticus (yes, I'm serious!), and you will see the theme of God's holiness throughout the book.  All of the elaborate rituals in that book were designed to ensure the proper awe and reverence of God's holiness.  God is absolutely and completely holy!

2. God's methods ("Why do you idly look at traitors and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?").  Now the obvious question on everyone's lips is:  If God is so holy, why is He using people more wicked to punish His chosen people?  And the answer is...I don't know!  God never gives us a direct answer to that question.  As noted last time, God is sovereign and He does what He pleases.  Isaiah 55:8-9 says: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."  God doesn't always choose to answer the "why" type questions.  He is God and we are not, and we have to be OK with that.  You may ask, "How can I be OK with that?"  I'll answer that next time, but for now understand that God is never obligated to answer to us.  As the apostle Paul says, "But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?  Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why have you made me like this?'" (Romans 9:20).

Application time.  How do we apply this lesson to our lives?  First off, I think Habakkuk took the right approach.  We must, like he did, go back to our knowledge of God and His character.  Where do we get this knowledge?  From the Bible.  People whose faith crumbles at the first sign of adversity are usually the ones who haven't spent enough time in God's book.  First Corinthians 10:6 tells us that the stories in the Old Testament are there as examples for us.  Consider the story of Joseph.  Here is a man who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, wrongly accused by Potiphar's wife because Joseph wouldn't commit adultery with her, completely forgotten by Pharaoh’s servant when he was released from jail, and yet he never lost his faith in God.  At the end of the whole ordeal when he was confronting the very brothers who began his ordeal, he saw the hand of God in all that was happening.  Joseph makes this amazing statement, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20).  Joseph had no clue what was going to happen to him, but he never lost faith because he knew God's character.  God only does good.

Secondly, we must have faith in God's methods.  In Jeremiah 29:11, the Prophet says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." If you're a child of God, then you have a promise from God that the things that are happening in your life are ultimately for your good. God is sovereign and He is orchestrating events for His purposes which are for our good and for His glory.  If things don't make sense, as they didn't for Habakkuk, trust God and have faith.

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