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Chapter 12

ILLUMINATION

Luke 4:16-30, Isaiah 61:1-3 

From 687 B.C. over a life-time to 2009 A.D.

A Matter of Understanding

HABAKKUK

WHY, WHY, why do the wicked rule ? this has long been a question. In Habakkuk lies an answer of power and resource, summoned from truth, like a heat-seeking missile, reaching the gravamen of human complaint with the Lord's own perspective.

The question is not uncommon.  As Poole puts it: it deals with

"the seeming unequalness of the proceedings of God in the government of the world, in which the good suffer evil, and the evil rejoice in prosperity; the more righteous are afflicted, and the more unrighteous prosper; nay, the worst domineer over the best, among men."

Let us go to the scene in which the prophet Habakkuk lived.

The sins of Judah, God told the prophet, would be punished by Babylon. As to those of Israel, the split part of the nation to the North, these were already savagely punished by Assyria, who had even transported the whole people out of their land, and resettled another people in it, to become the 'Samaritans' after their capital. This capital city of the former segment of Israel had itself for long been a scene of gross idolatry, in a pungent and provocative manner, in which golden CALVES, symbol of Egyptian idolatry (in the context of their divinely ordered escape from slavery in that land, and Aaron's making of such creatures, for idolatry, during Moses' time of revelation from God on the Mount); and they now had it all to themselves ... except that they were not there to enjoy it, being destitute of land, and spread across the earth.

As Jeremiah was inspired to write (10:11): "The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under their heavens." Matter demonstrably CANNOT be induced even to make new information, and what has been given, as with all information, by due and relevant process, the data inscribed in symbolic format to represent knowledgeably oriented dispositions and directions, so that this can be conveyed either to a mind or in a program oriented to mind, this can simply be teased this way or that by minds, knowing their milieu. Mind however is the matter of mind, and the chatter of matter is not even relevant. This is simply and verifiably the way it is, and all else is besotted imagination, founded on nothing and contrary to everything.

When you come however to other gods than those of materialism (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7 which explodes it more systematically), and there are many sorts dependent on the imagination and conceptual transfers of mankind, who has been made capable in this mental-imaginative-initiative-contriving-logic-sensitive area and arena, they all have similar liability. They cannot do anything. You can work for an examination and pass; but simply dreaming about questions and answers is neither scientific nor able to achieve any good purpose. Work relates to attainments, whether of God or man. Luck does not because it cannot invent anything systematic, since it depends on its very absence.

Thus the gods, mental, psychic, spiritesque (a needful word for due mockery of quackery, such as the Bible delivers) productions, these become grotesque in this, that they do not save. Save ? asks perhaps some querulous child of the concocted culture of this Age. Yes, save. If you are drowning the term perhaps would not seem too far removed ... Save me! you cry. If you are drowning in disorderly finances, a current occupation, Deliver me! you cry, or save me from this turmoil of figures and exotic developments. It is not too difficult to comprehend.

For any god to save anyone, it has to have the capacity to do so. For this you need:

	1) that it is there, extant, not a shadow of the imagination, shoved into some irrational spot, without ground or basis - the case with all gods except the God who made us and matter and mind and the synthesis called man, which has the advantage of being a logical necessity (cf. SMR).
	2) that it has the relevant power - in a financial crisis, both funds and function in those realms of thought would help, plus of course, a dedicated will to help...
	3) that this power is not subjectible to other and contrary powers which would or could annul its work.

Dreams (cf. Jeremiah 23) do not have this power. They do not suffice when one wants to be saved from or for something, or both. If they were in fact not dreams but vision, and if the vision were not wish or wandering mentality, but supplied with factual orientation, and if it did not fail to ascend to the proponent of information and its Creator, of heaven and earth and its Maker, to the Redeemer, and His word, then that would change things. But then, to return to Jeremiah, this would be in fact to invoke the God who DID make the heaven and the earth, and it is of course this God who has the wisdom and the power, and as we delightedly find out from Him and His word and deeds, the desire to do it. As however with many in authority, and many not for that matter, He has His own ways.

This should occasion no surprise: even your accountant has his, or a teacher. God has ways which however are fundamentally in tune with the method of our creation, since He did it, and with the need of our salvation, since He understands it, and it is after all, Himself who can supply it. Others lack some or all of the necessary ingredients.

Let us then return to Habakkuk, and his plaint, his mournful sorrow, indeed more than this, his deliberately evocative and not far from provocative approach to God the Ruler over all His own works, which happen to be the only ones there are, except for those of His agencies which obey Him, or His creatures who very often do not, but have in any case, only a derivative dynamic, and are limited in time and space, in place and face, in authority and in dominion, for all their chilling panoramas of pretension, which go with Mao, Stalin and Hitler, and the other black stars of history, to their graves as to others.

Habakkuk was churning. WHY all this ?

It must be remembered at all times that the sins of Israel AT THIS LEVEL, were a taunt to their Saviour, a poking of the tongue to their Lord and a treachery to the One who both loved them and fought for them. He had delivered them from a practical mess, slavery in Egypt and led them to the moment of their cowardice, when despite many marvels, wonders and miracles to aid them on their way to the so long promised land, they refused to enter it! How many to this day are not in essence any different. They come to the point of accepting by faith the redemption in Christ Jesus, and draw back, affrighted, sullen spirits sodden with fear, or passions alight with persistent inflammability. It was sad then, it is sad now. They paid then (40 years of wandering in the wilderness), and they pay now, except they repent (eternity in the wilderness).

Thus despite their deliverance around 1400 B.C., the (residue of) land of Israel was busy sinning against God, mercy and truth, peace and grace some 700 years later.

A few hundred years of rebellion,  populated with not a few ruthless rulers and too often conformable priests and not too resistant people might be thought ... enough ? even by those who love patient and merciful kindness; and that is precisely what they had, from say 900 or more B.C. till about 700 B.C..

The case then, now turned to Judah, the rump, or if you prefer, the central unit of Israel, that had been left with Benjamin, when 10 of the twelve tribes seceded at the time of Solomon's son, Rehoboam, whose flaunted youthful self-aggrandisement was one of the best possible examples of how to be both boorish and undiplomatic, unthankful and anti-social, bucolic and animated by pride in one surging output. It cost him most of the kingdom.

As time went on, though there were revivals and some good kings, increasingly things fell, until Hezekiah, a profoundly merciful, kindly and benevolent king, and a godly one to a point (though he made his mistakes) reigned; and in that time,  wonders of righteousness were to be seen, of mercy and of grace, of strength and remarkable wealth (II Chronicles 29ff.). His reign reminds one not a little of the USA during the period, say, 1880-1915, when revivals could be virtually national in power and product.

What happened to Judah after that is rather reminiscent of what has happened to the USA since the most gross of departures from the word of God have become infectious, fractious, epidemic and now almost pandemic in the nation. Now to add a trillion to its indebtedness, perhaps to atheist, Communist China, is a mere passage of events. If the borrower is not always servant to the lender, yet the trend is clear enough. Vassalage can come by degrees.

So was it in Judah. After the wonderful revival of real - and not merely seeming - religion in King Hezekiah's day, a time of return to the word and wonder and power and faith in God, the God of the nation, of the Bible, there came so vast a calamity that it is hard to believe it COULD have happened; but history is like that, if you are not careful: for it has often caught individuals and nations ... napping.

Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, a king at 12 years of age, become a veritable monster of evil, idolatry and folly, child burning in the fires of idolatry being just one of his negative accomplishments (II Kings 21:6, Habakkuk 1:6), and so great was his folly that from inheriting a kingdom of grace and power, he became captive to the King of Assyria, having first been a vassal of that power.

These last two facts are indeed attested in the archeologically discovered prism of Esar-Haddon, King of Assyria. In prison, we read in II Chronicles 33:11ff., in a foreign land, the flagrantly immoral King Manasseh humbled himself, sought the Lord and was released. After that, he tried a turn at righteous things in his land; but so great had been the rehabilitation of idols, after the purging of Hezekiah, his father, and Manasseh's unethical, cruel, all but incredibly gross living as king, that the Lord from this point made sure and even more obtrusively obvious, that  the downfall of the nation was to come. It would be (as of course it was, the prophecies of God are like that),  at the hands of Babylon (II Kings 21:11ff.). Indeed, this had been in mind for some time (as you see in Isaiah 13, along with the future deliverance from it, which Jeremiah in Ch. 25 predicted correctly would occur after 70 years of exile for the nation, Judah); and it came.

Why then this historical résumé ? It is because it seems likely that it was during the reign of THIS king, namely Manasseh, that the prophet Habakkuk lived.

WHY ? then, why, he addressed the Lord, why am I "caused to behold grievance" ? Why does he so speak ? It was statedly because (Berkeley Version of the Old Testament)

"violence and oppression are before me; strife and contention keep on rising.
In the presence of this, the law is slack and justice is not at all applied;
for the wicked encircle the righteous, hence justice goes forth perverted."

God has the matter in hand.

"Be astounded," He tells the prophet, in reply,
"be amazed!
for I am doing a work in your day which you would not believe, if it were told you.
Behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans {Babylonians}, a fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs. Dreadful and terrible they are; their judgment and dignity proceed from themselves...

"At Kings they scoff; deriding princes, laughing at every stronghold,
and piling up earth, they take them. 
Then they sweep like the wind and pass on;
but they are guilty men, for their might is their god."

While this penalty for folly is very apt, crushing those who crush, showing injustice by an invader to those who showed it to those within their own land, when they could, yet this too troubles the prophet, who has the marvellous nearness to God, so that as he calls, He replies, and as he muses, He instructs (cf. Psalm 145:17-21).

Blessed the man therefore who so waits on the Lord; for though the formal revelation from God to man, is utterly finished in authorised word (cf. SMR Appendix D), yet the enlightenment of spirit is available to those who wait upon Him: for His word teaches and His Spirit intimates; for it is a living relationship. From this, one arises in strength, soaring on wings as of an eagle (cf. Isaiah 40:27ff., Ephesians 1:13-20). While some freely imagine they receive new revelations as sure as the Bible, or containing new principial data for mankind, especially in Pentecostal circles, others imagine that God does not FULFIL His promises of illumination, WITHIN the Biblical context. They appear to assume that He does not provide whatever He offers, including wisdom and light in answer to faith (cf. James 1, and Acts 16 illustrations). Thus, as so often, the two barren, anti-biblical extremes contend, but neither does justice to the truth, which is both cherishing and wonderful, complete and sure, written and active.

Thus did Hudson Taylor, like the Small Woman, Gladys Aylward), KNOW that the site for service was China; and indeed, the former was SO sure that when the vessel conveying him to China, as a young man, was being moved towards rocks in tempestuous conditions, there was no doubt that he would be delivered, for how ELSE COULD he get there. Again, when he was near death from plague in London when training as a doctor, there was no room for doubt: sent, he must get where sent, since God is Almighty and knows both His own mind and history to come for ever (Isaiah 46:10). Indeed, as this prophetic passage in Isaiah shows us, He even DECLARES the end from the beginning, who warned Nebuchadnezzar of his coming downfall and Belshazzar of his fate.

As to Hudson Taylor, being a dead pre-missionary would not serve; but he would, being so sent, and he DID. Moreover,  how amazingly fruitful was that service, at one time some 600 missionaries working in China in the organisation which followed from the Lord's blessing on his initial work, over time.

With Habakkuk, however, we have the vastly additional blessing, that the word of God which answered his queries is the very authorised word of God through his chosen prophet to mankind, a formal unveiling of His mind to one and to all, to be kept for instruction, prediction, orientation and information while earth remains (after that, the Christians seeing God face to face, come into direct knowledge as in I Corinthians 13, but it is all the same God, whether in the literary photograph in the Bible, or direct). Thus did the prophecy of Habakkuk take its place in the canon, in terms of the prophetic appointment for which God had in this Old Covenant provided (Deuteronomy 13, 18:15ff.). It is in the latter verses that we learn from Moses' day, of the prophet above all, to be obeyed utterly, the coming Messiah.

Thus Habakkuk in his plaint to God, showed his abhorrence of the place and power of evil, inequity and corruption, and being told of the coming national judgment at the hand of a vicious, invasive nation, seemed still concerned, for here was more violence and evil.

Thus the prophet, it appears (1:12ff.), saw in this punishment of Judah by the arising nation of power, Babylon, a terrible terror once more. The very principle of allowing such "unfaithful ones"  to act, while the wicked "swallows up the man more righteous than he" is abhorrent to him, or at least more than he can readily bring himself even to regard at all. WHY, WHY! How awful it is, he resumes! People catch people as man catches fish, and then, when the wicked overthrows the righteous, sacks his wealth, why then the wicked profligate worships his net: that is, gives worship to those gods of ostentation, wealth, power, violence and vileness, those naturalistic powers that appeal and which he uses, as if it is all settled nicely in the sink of iniquity, to which some eau do cologne is added, while he engages in his follies of hand and spirit, rapacity and immorality!

God then, in reply,  moves past the coming judgment on the cited sins of the nation to which Habakkuk had first referred. While Habakkuk stands still to find what God will say (an excellent idea! - 2:1, though not so when someone makes this an excuse for speaking without authority in the very name of God!), the Lord answers in a way far more profound and all-embracing. "Write the vision!" the Lord commands. It is to be made plain on tables, so that those who read it may run with it, ready ambassadors of light.

The "vision", the things to be, are not to be immediate. They will come, both in detail and in direction, so that the Babylonian matter itself is now merely the immediate foreground. But whether short or long, be the time of the evil empire of the day (in that case, Assyria to be replaced by Babylon, as in ours, that of Hitler to be replaced by that of Stalin, the former for some 10 years, the latter for a little more than 70), the message was this: WAIT for the work of God. "Wait for it," says the Lord of the vision, of the historical and principial actions to come from His hand in His rule over this earth, "because it will surely come, it will not tarry."

The vision will come, the plan will be consummated, the program will complete its phases and the ultimate judgments of God to overturn the parodies, the blights, the trial period, the illuminations of prior history will give way to final account, and this will not be ambiguous, not only sensational in fact, but terminal.

In other words, there will be no 'unfortunate delays' while elements of what is offered do not happen. What is to be, this comes in its various stages, all governed by God; and what is to be the end of it, this too will come in its consummative conclusion to all.

THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY HIS FAITH: PRELUDE

Having stressed this certitude, saying it is for an appointed time (and Daniel had the death of the Messiah for an APPOINTED time set forth in detail ^*1   in Ch. 5, *2 above), the Lord then unveils the principle in view.

"Behold, his soul that is lifted up is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith."

You may lift up your own soul, spirit, life, self, as if it were a banner (like Mao and his little red book of such ridiculous arrogance because of such manifest impotence), but while you may seem on this earth to stand very high, your SOUL is not so high, indeed it is not even straight. You are in such a case, merely waving a CROOKED THING, a grotesque piece of vanity and arrogance, pride and folly, like a dunce going about in a school Class, waving his simplistic answer before each student, while many know what the actual answer is, and marvel at his incompetent unsophistication, as if he had left his head in the locker room and forgotten to take it with him.

In contrast to such things - highly relevant to the plaint of Habakkuk, who had been citing the violent, the self-assured, the wicked ravishers and the wily scorners who have no greater desire than to grab and conquer, seize and praise the gods of lust and power - God has another standard entirely. "The JUST shall live by his FAITH."

The contrast is intense,  universal and absolute. We have been hearing Habakkuk's lament to the effect that injustice, inequity, horror, cruelty, aggressive usurpers, exploiters, cunning craftsmen of evil have receive exaltation or confirmation or profit or a mixture, and his exclamation that God being of purer eyes than to look on as if regardless to such things, to give them any stature or status before His perfect and pure presence, the thing is a challenge to the mind of the prophet; and he seeks an answer from the Lord, an understanding.

First, God shows that the answer is coming. He does not derail, if you will, the train in order to give the passengers a break, though He has mercies of a prodigious character to be exhibited  both in what He does not and does do, in the interim, as we see illustrated in the books of Kings and Chronicles, in individual cases and with the nation (Man in Retrospect, in Prospect and in Bold Relief, Chs. 4 and   5). You see more of this overview in the study on Elijah and Elisha.

More generally, the case is as the Book of Habakkuk makes so very clear, one of divine action at and in chosen manners, as the Lord delivers rebukes to the misuse of liberty, itself the precondition of love WHICH GOD IS (I John 4:7ff.). From these actions, results accrue at various levels. God does not make of life a private sanctum, as if in front of a quasi-divine computer, He works things out and does not bother to have them happen.

Rather, He is INTENSIVELY insistent on history, on happenings, on tests and trials, and SHOWING and not just knowing, and showing to MAN and not just to some, and this in the most spectacularly clear fashion, just what He is about. None can claim, That was Your inside information which does not really prove the point that faith in the Lord exists even in the most unfavourable circumstances and hence is real (as Job shows).

The proof of singular, spiritual faith in the Singular God, the trinity, is shown in so many glories of overcoming evil and securing good, so many sacrificial heartinesses, so many divine interventions, that even the blind might wince at the impact of light. Nor can any of scientific approach claim in universalising cynicism,  that love is a selfish-module, with enlightened self-interest the 'real' motivational force, as indicated in the same book. Love and hate, truth and lie, warping and display, all abound. God's own sacrificial action in essential format, in Christ, deployed the infinite for the finite, that He who has all power and needs nothing, might give what has nothing but needs everything in its place.

All will be demonstrated and not merely remonstrated (cf. Ephesians 3:10), and that not only to man (as in Ezekiel  36:36, 37:28, Romans 11:25ff.) but to heavenly powers as well (cf. Ephesians 3:10). Nor is it only on earth that the willingness to pardon of God extends, but to the heavens also (Colossians 1:19ff.). The love of God is like that, permitting no obstacle to its light and no obstruction to its release, being pure and uncrampled, charitable and uncrimped, vast and unvitiated.

If truth is to be, it is to be shown. God is light, and so all must be shown which is pertinent to man and to his plight and his salvation, his knowledge and his understanding; but this in such a mode that he is not aware as through an opera program, at the individual level, of how the test is to come or be administered. If he were, it would be not test at all, and God DOES and WILL test (cf. II Chronicles 32: 31, Jeremiah 51:9, Hosea 7:1, I Peter 1:7, Job 1-3,19, Genesis 3); for there is nothing secret that will not be revealed, and there will to eternity NO chance for ANYONE to make it appear that rigors of reality were avoided. The 'cloud of witnesses' of which Hebrews 11 speaks, they are like a universe of its own, with the stars of spiritual pilgrims for the Lord, shining with a joy that nothing will ever dim.

There is no respect of persons with God; and while those whom He has redeemed will never be lost (Romans 8:29ff.), and He foreknew them works apart before all time (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 9), so they in turn, they showed the colours of the faith they gained not in hidden valleys, but wherever the trial came. If some of the greatest failed here or there, yet they arose, for the righteous may fall, yes seven times, yet the Lord arises to deliver, as a father his child, and to pardon in pity, but not without effect!

Consider this survey from Thy Word is Wonderful Ch. 1...

THE POINT OF HISTORY FOR REALISATION

 

With Christ, there was no need of heavy campaign funds, for His election was not to a wealthy political position, but to the Cross. There was no need of contrived publicity, for His was election to degradation, His elevation to the pit. Yet His mission exceeded that of all kings and counsellors, being not for a moment but eternity, and those who followed Him in faith, these inhabit not the place of security on earth, but a place in the kingdom of heaven, which this earth neither can nor will imitate, until at last He returns to exhibit what He declared, not only in power, but in appearance! Then it will show what His saints already know, and His Sermon on the Mount has declared, better than self-service, national pride, or international delusions: the way for man.

Into history Christ was poured like molten metal, glowing with incandescent wonder, yet like zephyrs He came, giving rest. Whether in power or purity, in strength or in vulnerability used to secure victory, He used time as as template and space as a pen, to inscribe His name as the truth beyond the stars and for all time. Without Him, history would not only be impoverished, but meaningless; God would be a liar; truth would be forfeit and hope for man would be zero. But what is impossible, is not to be found, and what is certain, is to be discovered in history as it flowed to Him through the prophets of His coming, by Him in the Cross, and He flowed over it like a vast breath of oxygen, to stir its dying embers, if by any means any flaming, might be taken and kept, turned into eternal flame when the hearth was gone (Psalm 104:4).

In history is the experience of truth under contest, the expression of truth under rejection, the impact of truth by counsel, amid aliens, the assault on truth by militants; and it stands while all else falls, the Cross in its weakness outdistancing the flurry of arms and pride while force collapses and pride wilts (cf. I Corinthians 1).

As God put man into history,

	to test and to shatter deceit in spiritual realms and impressionable hearts,
	to teach and display,
	to prove and to demonstrate,
	to remonstrate and to reveal,
	to give to experience under fire the reality of life,
	to expose the weakness of human might even when it seems insuperable,
	to prove in passing time the woeful falsities of the self-appointed 'wise',
	to exhibit truth that none could falsify, the very light of eternity  in the phase of what is temporary,

	to manifest that it is more than power which rules, for it is wisdom not fools,
	to put to death the slanders of the faithless by the endurance of faith,
	to show purity and love in contrast with devilish insinuations, as in Job*4,
	to show that it is not power and privilege which prevails, as if 'nature' were king, but love in life, since God is king,

so did He come Himself into history, to leave for all time to watch,  the ultimate in practicality in His own Person as Messiah. So has God used history to preach past all cavil the realities that test exhibits, both in man, as actor in the drama of life, and later of God Himself as the incarnate exponent and Saviour, a glorious combination of example for inspiration and Redeemer for restitution that man might live, and not die amidst his confusions and profusions and spiritual contusions. 
 

As to the Lord's own sojourn in flesh: Murder could not subdue Him, nor any word. Disease could only yield to His command and death was subject to Him. He even made a new day of rest, in His resurrection^*5 , and indeed what rest COULD there be until He rose, or was there for the troubled disciples, and what but worship COULD result when He arising, came to His own. Indeed, this His rest is what this world can never match, meet or even understand.

Man who would excommunicate history as too foul, does not understand that it is to exhibit

	that sin is foul and truth is glorious;
	that peace is illusory without God and patience is required, not the erratic solecisms of self-will;
	that sin MEANS suffering and its exposure and remedy cannot remove it, but
	that God bore more than all and offered restoration of life to all, removing sin’s guilt in Christ’s own removal (I Peter 2:22-24), His resurrection our warrant; and
	that He loses none, having foreknown His own.

 

AS THE REMEDY IN HISTORY, He Himself delivers from a depth that is bottomless to rebellion to a height that is wonderful, where faith believes Him (Hosea 13:14, 14:1ff.). The only problem is this: the absence of faith. No orphan except by willfulness (John 14:18), it is man who is the alien, not from space, but through severance from God (Ephesians 4:17-19). Alienation needs reconciliation and for this, offence must be covered by Christ’s blood (Romans 3:23ff.).  Righteous wrath is propitiated by due payment, the Cross the site (Romans 1-3).

Why is this so dire ? It is because God has DONE the works of creation and redemption: we no more create our salvation than the earth! It is faith in Him, allied to a personal repentance not least for thinking little or ill of Him who is our Head and beginning, the ground of destiny, which is needed, not nostrums and philosophies of proud presumption and empty assumption! 

Man has sinned, God has rebuked him, entered this world and demonstrated the basis of the Gospel with power, and exhibited the results of sin with the loathsomeness of its depiction on Himself, as sin-bearer on the Cross. Man has made history and God has shown man in this same history, the rewards of folly and the way home. ALL responsibility is that of man, and if man does not come to receive the living Christ, and His word which is His, the depths are not for the burial of his sins, but the burial of his ‘sacred self’, too rich to become poor and repenting, be saved.

As to the depth of it, for everyone who receives Him, He has that covered no less than the breadth and the height^*6 (Colossians 1:19ff., Ephesians 1:4, 1:10-11 cf. The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 8, Ch. 4 , Beauty of Holiness ... Ch. 2,  ). The name upon Him is Faithful and True.

In such ways, man can reach the very incandescence of guilt, and the zenith of horror, that he not only sins, and so requires for deliverance the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ - not to mention the 30  years of preliminary humiliation of deity, for Jesus  to live as common man - but sins once more in rejecting this pardon; and then, he frequently sins a third time in slandering God by making it appear that it is HIS fault, that HE is not sufficiently merciful, when HIS is the voluntary receipt of the very pang, poignancy, guilt and horror of sin, that its account be settled, its dynamic divested and its destiny removed! This threefold sin, of first committal, rejection of redemption and slander of the service of the Saviour,  Jesus Christ - and there is no Saviour but God Himself as in Isaiah 43:10-11, 45:22ff. - becomes a free pass to hell.

The good news however is this, that even then, the one who repents of ALL sin and seeks deliverance from its name, power and dominion, spirit and horror, is given a free pass to peace in Christ upon believing in His name, and to victory through whatever trials, of whatever rigours and these not without both meaning and message, savour and testimony to truth.

The just will  LIVE by FAITH in the God than whom there is no other Saviour, and it is by HIS grant, gift, grace and mercy, HIS alone, not some concoction or synthesis, that they are to live; and this, it is out of the mercy of HIS heart, and not something else, far less of this world with its evils, or sin and its clamour or ridiculous self-confidence in the midst of infinity. It is by this KIND of faith, faith in the absolute Deity revealed, not concealed, in the Saviour and not the helper merely, the source for the course of life and not a suggestion box, the Father of all mercies and comfort, and not some naturalistic proposition, selfish program or production of man, his heart, imagination or concern: it is by this faith in that God, the objective God as the object of faith,  the One who does what it takes and He alone, that man can live (as in Psalm 32).

It is He who gives pardon, mercy, hope, power, strength, acceptance, moral purity, purging and humility where it belongs, in man, man as alive in the only Source, his Creator, which this construction can allow in order to be what it is created to be: as righteous through the gift of righteousness that comes from God alone, filled with a goodness that is like a river of life, accepted by a kindness that does not at all like frustration, vanity and pride, which distort the reality of truth. Paul refers to this very verse so beautifully as the Lord inspires him, as seen in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11.

How beautifully do all the scriptures, the words of God fit together, lucidity with reinforcement, lordly majesty with lowliness, exhortation with entire dependability, a heart of love seeking good, not like many a bureaucrat, ensconed in power, unwilling to be so much serviceable as free from demonstrable criticism. Old and New Testament are like left and right hand, the one passing on  to the other, the other gratified, proceeding in sublime concourse. Truth, it is like that.

Having then clarified the position from various scriptures, and pondered some part of the depth of these things, we return to Habakkuk 2. The just shall live by his faith.

THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY HIS FAITH:

LIVING BY FAITH! WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT

1) Historical Sights and Sites

The Lord, in Habakkuk 1:11 notes the worship of the God of power, the change of mind as one rendering puts it, the reliance of wicked persons,  by spirit on the spirit of power and gain. That is intolerable. Truth is averse to it, reality detests it, it is empirically nonsense. What servile god of pumped up quasi-power is this which neither creates nor judges, but acts in a current of current power, like a fallen electricity line jabbing the atmosphere with its atmospherics of flashing thrust! It has no pedigree, no institution, and is certainly not, like the true God, eternal in unlimited ways; for whatever is subject to limits is a consequence of the power to limit, and is preceded causatively by it; but God has no limits, being the ground of all limits and eternal. Without His eternity, nothing in total place could ever produce anything, and only because of His place is anything ever able to be produced.

Naturalistic power, psychic or other, this is mere throbbing of jungle drums, adventitious and atmospheric, but sickly in unspirituality because of mood and mode,  and mere romancing.

NOT in that way, with guile and affront, craftiness and pride, force and feebleness of raging spirit, with vaunting weakness groping for strength, not with asthenic minds and foolish hearts is this universe built. To imagine so is to invite such judgments as were to come to Judah, as God pointed out in 1:6, and Isaiah in 13, yes and Jeremiah in 50-51 in parallel, showed to be coming for Babylon.

Why was this ? It was to come for the one to be used to correct Judah, who excelled however in indiscriminate passion, namely Babylon. Here is Judah; the discipline ? Babylon. Trust in the evil and you are vulnerable to it.

Now comes the second part.

Here says Jeremiah is Babylon in ITS turn, the destroyer of Jerusalem. Discipline comes: eternal burial, destruction by the Medes, more than debilitation, than humiliation: devastation. THAT, it is the discipline for self-vaunting, arrogant Babylon, mistress of religions, having none that counts.

So it was to be (Isaiah 14:9-23, Jeremiah 50:33-45, 51:37-43). If Judah was punished by it, yet its very arrogant heartlessness in the process is the ground of its own utter abhorrence and contemptibility which HISTORY WILL SHOW (as it has done!). Its hanging gardens are hung indeed! Such was the trend of the response of the Lord both to Judah's sustained, chronic and national sin, and to that of the rampaging Babylon.

Such was the rebuke likewise to other empires, such as Assyria (Nahum) and Egypt, given a special lowly post for the rest of its once mighty career (Ezekiel 29:15ff.),  and this latter case,  in the midst of a moral condemnation and exhortation to all, one of great depth and considerable length through the prophet Ezekiel (29-31). It is highly instructive to read. There is no feebleness in the God of creation and redemption, from which these words come; and if man is mighty in self-arrogations, God is almighty without need of acclaim. He speaks; He does (cf. Isaiah 14:27). People have often sought to overturn the word of God, but they never succeed because it is impossible, like gaining the square root of minus one.

Thus the disciplines came, in the midst of long persevering divine compassion and patience, forbearance which being interpreted as weakness (cf. Malachi 2:17, Zephaniah 2:12), reached its term; and judgments accrued.

The case of Judah, one where many of God's own people were in the nation mixed with various varieties of spiritual fraud, where at the last there were few to find (cf. Jeremiah 5), however was one of exceptional mercy. Consider it now.

If Judah likewise is to receive its come-uppance for centuries of hypocrisy in no mean measure on the part of many a ruler and generation to a large extent, then fortunate is that people (in whom dwelt many of the saints of the Lord), that its correction (colossal as it has been) is only IN MEASURE. Disaster is not as with Babylon, Nineveh, Sodom and Tyre^*2.  For Israel, indeed, historically placed as a site for the blessing of all nations and the coming of the Messiah (Genesis 12, 15, 17, Micah 5),  its continuance is guaranteed in both Testaments. This people stays, in or out of their country, and to this they were to be and now duly and truly have been brought back (cf. SMR Appendix A). In time, indeed, the whole earth departs, but in the meantime, God has things to say and do, linking the former to the latter with a divine and gracious zeal both in word of promise (Matthew 5:17ff.), and historical premise and premises! (cf. Luke 21:24).

When this world goes ? then  eternal life has a new housing, a new heavens and a new earth created,  as in Isaiah 65, Revelation 20-21.

Meanwhile, as to that limitation on Israel's discipline, vast though it was to be and has been, one has but to consult (Jeremiah 30:11ff., 46:29ff., and Ezekiel 36-39 with Micah 7).

2) The Prophetic Word Itself

In VIEW of all these divinely elected ways of governing this world of FREEDOM which enables lust and sin and love alike, and enough of it to SHOW what sin is made of, what evil is really like and what life can be alone, if it is to be eternal, even this now available only as a grant to the damaged goods left (Romans 6:23): God then has this prescription at which we have begun to look, found in Habakkuk 2:4:

"Look, his soul is puffed up, it is not upright in him.

But the just shall live by his faith."

How then is this contrast to be interpreted ? It is vastly condemned to be uplifted in one's life, to trust in some power of nature or self, head or heart, idol or other, some emblem or imagination with the powers of the creation of God. This is at length inveighed against. The correct way is then in the very terms, as seen above in emphasis, of error rebuttal, made apparent in truth recital. Puffed up ? OUT. Uplifted in heart ? GONE. Worshipping gods of power, of forces ? Ludicrous, a necrotic spiritual pastime. What then ?

It is not by his gods of the imagination but by his faith that the righteous man (by total contrast with those just considered on the evil side of things) is to live. Himself ? forget it; his gods ? an abomination. By his faith ? But of course, and rest assured that as with all that in creation is alive and in the image of God, it will be tested! (cf. Psalm 11:4-7):

"The Lord tests the righteous..."

Indeed, imagery of insight takes it further: His eyes behold, His eyelids try ... He makes exacting tests, in a way, perhaps, rather reminiscent of wind-tunnel work on an airplane.

The just then shall live by his faith. Immediately the contrast is made at the individual level, of one besotted with spirits or other alien 'life-styles' (2:5ff.). Evil awaits such a man, as a serpent; and the unjust, violence is his lair, and in it is he placed. It now moves to the essential evil, precisely as in Ezekiel 29, and as in the case of Jesus' rebuke to Simon Peter (Matthew 16), when He told Satan to get behind!

There appears now before us in 2:9 -11, a man, a being, a person of accumulating evil and rapacity. As this personalising and typifying of evil comes into sight (as even more clearly in Job Ch. 1), we see the opposite to the just man living by his faith.

Here in a concentrate of evil, we see the OTHER way, the man who lives in evil through his evil with an eye to the resources of and for evil.

How then shall the just live, as we consider the case of this verse crammed in between these preliminary and succeeding presentations, its context ? It is clear.

You do NOT trust in self, power of  creation, of thought, of circumstance, of social opportunity. This is not what you are to live by if you are not to be a renegade, a ruin, a spoliation of humanity, an excrescence morally and vitally, a debased human, a derelict in waiting for an appropriate end to an inappropriate life, lifted up, seemingly immune, in fact at the very height of vulnerability and the very margin of doom.

You DO trust in what is worthy of it, and this faith is to be in the opposite direction as consistently taught in the Bible in both Testaments, and in fact therefore, in the Lord (cf. Jeremiah 17:9ff.). Desperately wicked is the heart of man, says the prophet, so much so that he is led to expostulate, Who can know it ?

However,  the LORD knows it, and the condition is sure: 

"Cursed is the man who trust in man, and makes flesh his arm,
and whose heart departs from the LORD" (17:5).

On the other side,

"Blessed us the man who rusts in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters ... "

The waters are doubtless those of the Spirit of God (cf. John 4:14, 7:37). Such is the message to the point, in Psalm 2 as in Psalm 32; and through negative means, in Numbers 14:22ff., and in that vast rebuke to King Asa found in II Chronicles 16:7ff., one which however has implicit such a blessing to faith in the Lord, and those who PRACTICE it, that it has for this author, been a very cornucopia of blessing to ponder it, from the time one noticed it set up on a railway poster spot, in Sydney.

Moreover, you find the same implicit blessedness of trusting in the Lord in PRACTICE, in Isaiah 48:17ff., where what is lost by failure to do so, is spelled out with a pathos like that of Ophelia in her watery plight.

What then ? The righteous man does not gain his credentials from himself, or his imaginary powers be they spiritual or carnal or environmental or social or psychic or any other oddity. He does not live by any of this. He lives HIS FAITH IN THE LORD. It is not someone else's faith, and it is not faith placed in some other object. It is all personal and it is all subjectively scrutinisable and evaluable.

Not from himself or his designated appointees, real or imaginary, does the righteous man gain his status, his standing, his strength, his meaning and message in life, his force and power for good, his place in the good pleasure of the only God there is!  No, the entirety of his status in spirit, security in life, destiny from the One who has it in His own hand alone, of his endurance and of his blessedness, it comes by the medium of his faith, vested in the God of creation and of redemption as its OBJECT, a living object, who gives to this subjectivity of man, an objectivity which arises from truth!

There is the enlivening basis, the illuminative criterion and the explanation and answer to such problems as those which the prophet Habakkuk saw fit to place before the Lord.

3) The Personal Application

How does that answer then his concern ? It is a response that covers the points as follows, in no small measure.

1)

Hence, you do NOT look at some present emergency, or general horror emerging, and run away and spend 40 billion very smartly, or beggar the nation or your life, by hasty actions (a matter made clear in Isaiah 28:16).

You having faith, look with care at all the ingredients in such a style that no touch of panic, no hint of all eggs in some one human basket, no reliance on any system, theory or mock-up is yours. Instead you seek from the Lord what is the most wise, tested, sure, true and safe way, and follow it with a strength of purpose and an assurance of outcome which devolves on an intimate personal knowledge of God, and an insistence on being where, doing what, precisely, HE wants of YOU in the first place.

2)

When people threaten you, when circumstances erupt like a neighbourhood volcano, then you live by your faith. When society becomes immoral, as here, and increasingly seems to have an all but inveterate desire to at least equal the desolation of Sodom (both morally and eventually physically cf. Genesis 19); and when spiritual powers and forces decline in this earth, to the predicted and now apparent extent that most major churches of onetime steadfastness have become either so white-anted with counter-cultural accretions or infested with alien viruses of disfaith, then you do not seek to excuse them, but separate and continue with the Lord (as in II Corinthians 6:14ff., Romans 6:17ff., I Corinthians 6-7.

You then continue to live by your faith, in the Lord of power and purpose, truth and wisdom, peace and grace. You do not become content to be swallowed up in spirit or in any other way.

3)

Indeed, the case is as indicated in such events in the Old Testament as those found in Numbers 16, where the people were told to 'separate' from the assailants of the divine authority, and it is well they did, as the ground opened to swallow them up, a dire and immediate case in point, with a message included!

That is the directional and the value side of things, the moral and the spiritual zest required when knowing God, you ACT LIKE IT, by TRUSTING HIM, and therefore, following His word, like a map.

Thus you ACT on the FAITH in the LORD whose is all power, so that there is NO qualification to any of His sacred word, the Bible, that self-interpreting Book, where the Spirit of God from whom it came, moves the heart and mind to relish the reality it unveils, the self-revealing God of creation, redemption, salvation and sanctification: praise His name.

4)

There is however a more dramatic aspect to this matter. It has personal application, but also universal indication.

Thus the Lord proceeds to assure Habakkuk that "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." At once he proceeds to expose the contrast with the evil man. This is the typical procedure in this passage. Such patterns are of course in any writing, an aid to the understanding, and in good writing, a good aid.

4) A Pivotal Point

that Does not Disappoint in Word or World

Just before this assurance of what is to come, which means that the God of all goodness is, in His own way, to bring to pass not only a world filled with it, but with the knowledge of Himself without which such knowledge is impossible, and with His glory, without which the truth would be truncated: so that all having being exposed, all will then be consummated: He has another most significant statement.

It precedes this glory of 2:14, but it follows His vast contrast between evil and good, wisdom and folly, nature-trust, self-trust and trust in the God who made us, between His ways and those of evil, between His good thoughts and those who misuse liberty in order to provide a contesting kingdom of wickedness and violence, injustice and inequity (2:5-12). It is 2:13.

It is NOT MY WILL that the evil should do this, He insists (just as in Lamentations 3:33, He makes it clear that HE does not willingly afflict the children of men, but in context, rather seeks by patience and goodness to clear their tracks and make their way straight in mercy and persistence). This is NOT HIS OWN way.

If Habakkuk is concerned at one phase of the entire historical process, in the sagacity of the divine unfolding of reality to one and all in the earth as in heavenly places as we saw above, then it is not something which is basic IN GOD, which is his problem. This is the logical sequence.

Not so: it is "NOT OF THE LORD THAT THE PEOPLES LABOUR FOR FIRE; AND THE NATIONS WEARY THEMSELVES FOR NOTHING."  This comes to mean that man tends in vacuity of spirit and folly of mind, using all the evils which this prophecy exposes, often to construct ... kingdoms, objects, idols, merely so that they can be burnt up, stolen, ruined, become nothing, objects for the fire.

It is indeed an ugly thing; but it is not of the Lord. Man should never have done the evil; it is to him it is attributable, the evil of malice and malevolence; it is rebuked, but it is not of His own will that any of these little ones should perish (as Jesus said, shown in Matthew 18:14), or that any should indeed (II Peter 3:9, Colossians 1:19ff.); nor was at His desire that Jerusalem should perish (Matthew 23:37), to the point that Christ wept over  this deletion to come, this judgment to ensue, BECAUSE they WOULD NOT ensure deliverance by trusting in their divine Creator and deliverer, who had already so often delivered them

The Hebrew sentence starts simply with the word NOT, an most emphatic negation in setting, and in contrast to the things condemned for their own vanity. It is that HE is like that. The things enunciated have brought it on themselves, and there is no need or even propriety in the prophet being so like a plaintive, addressing the bar. NOT OF THE LORD that such things happen. Look deeper than on the surface, and elsewhere than to the One who having made FREEDOM, does not dismantle at once, lest it actually do what it has power to do, though no need!

Thus, in Habakkuk 2:11-12, God speaks of the inveterate immorality and its results: for the stone will CRY OUT against the shameful exploiters, cry out from the wall in which it is built; and the beams will cry out from the evilly constructed timbers, sounding off at the shame of the sham back of their erection. WOE! the Lord proceeds to announce, to building by bloodshed, construction by iniquity. That, agreed, it is horrendous, and it has its judgment, but, God declares: My work is not like that.

It is not of the Lord that such eloquence from timber has to creak out its unspoken condemnation, and bricks in walls, resound silently their shouts of shame. These things are the product of evil, but the word and work of the Lord is light. Not merely is this not of the Lord, that such sorts of things are done, but the reason why this can be seen so obtrusively is this.

SO contrary to Him is it, this free production of evil, that He has a plan which will eventually put the thing in its final light. The earth, in fact, by the will of this same God, who though permitting evil for a time in test and exhibition to all for all time of the nature of it and of His own goodness - His, whom the devil even sought to disrupt in heaven as in Revelation 12 - will be filled. With what then will it be filled ?

The earth will be filled with that direct knowledge past all evil surmise, that SIGHT in which the knowledge of the glory of God is pervasive. HOW much will it fill it ? In other words, will there be ANY compromise or admixture such as so jolted the joy of Habakkuk ? How much ? It will be FILLED to the uttermost point, with this knowledge of the glory of God who is NOTHING like that at all, whose goodness indeed stretches to mercy even to those who disharmonise, disrupt and spoil, so that people who are darkened for a time in counsel, might wonder and have conflict.

It will thus be filled with this knowledge of His purity and truth and peaceableness just as the waters pervasively cover the sea. A sea of puddles ? not likely. Waters flowing in their deep rills and thrills of wonder, in depths unthinkable, in currents innumerable, in coverage transcendent over little things: these will be the symbol for the pervasive overflowing of the impact of His glory filling the earth, yes and of the KNOWLEDGE of it in particular (cf. Isaiah 11:9, and in general 11:1-10, II Peter 3:13).

God DOES not have a heart or mind like that, which evil displays. It is not of the Lord that such things display their vanity, because of the moral inanity which preceded them. By contrast, the violent, encompassing man "heaps up for himself all peoples" (2:5), and against such a person they will indeed "take up a proverb against him, and a taunting riddle against him" - woe to him!

But it is not of the Lord of hosts that the people thus labour only for the fires of ruin, of the aggressors; for firstly, the Lord is going to fill the earth with His own knowledge to such an extent that you will SEE for yourself, when it is not rebuke and discipline, but exposure of His own heart, what it is: for it is glory indeed, and in Him is no impurity whatsoever (as in Deuteronomy 32:4, II Samuel 23:1-4, James 1:17, II Timothy 6:16, Titus 1:3).

Nor is this all, for as in Habakkuk 3, the Lord is willing to show revival, the renewal in the heart in the intense realisation of His utter purity; for it is NOT of the Lord that construction is for mere destruction, but rather of those intemperate evils which call it forth, as sun withers herbs. The purity of the Lord is envisioned in this Chapter 4, and His ways do not change (3:3,6), so that His anger indeed comes to its final unleashing when the earth submits to concluding and conclusive judgment (3:12ff.), the Lord providing salvation through His Messiah, that magnificence and munificence of His mercy (as in Isaiah 53-55).

Thus in the end, with all preludes of mercy and discipline over, the house of the wicked, the structures of its lowering power, are laid bare to the foundation (3:13). Their day comes; patience as in a scientific experiment (result known to the lecturer, and later seen by the student), enables performance and performance manifestation of the actual fact.

Habakkuk then realises, as Job in another situation, that with God are all the answers, and that premature and superficial judgments are as out of place as slime on flesh, grit in machinery or darkness in the midst of light.

Accordingly, the prophet now has a stability and strength, a resolution of the problem and that within his own heart, so that

"though the fig tree may not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines;

though the labour of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food;

though the flock may be cut of from the fold {as with Job},
and there be no herd in the stalls -

yet will I rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

The LORD God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer's feet, and He will make me walk on my high hills."

No, says Habakkuk 2:13, it is not of the Lord that nations go to great and extravagant works  that cost heavily in time and talent, only to find the whole thing ends in nothing (like the Twin Towers in the USA). THIS is not of the Lord. It is not that He seeks for such things, though He may for various reasons allow various nations or persons to inherit much vexation for vacuity, or trial for testing, indeed, rebuke for rebellion (such as did in fact occur in the USA when it began to make obscenity a pandemic, with same sex liaisons, desires for such things to become marriages, efforts to change morality and make a free-market morality). Nor was this all; nor is this a rebuke (as yet, alas) such as Europe suffered from 1939-1991, in some or most of its parts!

These things are not the plain course of the Lord's dealing, though of course as penalty, or exposure or rebuke or ground for meditation, He may admit such things to existence, not stopping the devilish dynamic or amoral machinations which naturally lead to them, but letting the world in its wickedness inherit some of the sum of wild disorder it invokes.

It is therefore exceedingly unfortunate than many translations^*3  insert words, here 'Is it ..." before NOT of the Lord, to make His most contextually strenuous, and indeed pivotal contrast, in line with His insistent, consistent and persistent use of this method in this prophetic book, a question. It is not there. Neither to be sure, is "It is..." Those words are merely for smoothness of flow. It actually says this,

"Not of the Lord of hosts that the peoples labour for fire,
and the nations weary themselves for nothing."

That is the bold explanation which needs no adornment whatever. Like a bill-board declaration or a mnemonic, but not a mantra, for this word of the Lord, it is to the heart from the heart, from depth to depth,

What then do we find ? It is this.

He at once gives a reason for this fact. FOR, He continues... this is WHY such a thing is NOT OF THE LORD, as the text explicitly declares, without inhibitive mark of any kind. Why then, what reason does the Lord give, for this statement, this fixture of fact, as ground or explication of it ?

Once more, it is this, and let us not miss it: that the world is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

How much do they cover the sea ? It is not basically an episodic matter, but an inherent one. They are LIKE that in that environment. That is precisely what the WATERS do relative to the SEA. They cover it.

In what way will this delightful knowledge of the REALITY (as distinct from the upsetting appearance of the current phase of things, perhaps in the day of Manasseh) relate to the Lord's disclaimer of such evils as these (resulting the vanity of the nation's efforts so often) ?

It is like this: NOT of HIM is such a thing. It is not His method, but sin's result; for when you come to HIS METHOD as such, and to HIS NATURE as such, and to HIS desire (as in Matthew 23::37 when He wept because Jerusalem WOULD NOT HEED HIM, and so would come to be destroyed, precisely), it is not of the heart, it is not of the vision. The school is not built for caning, nor for bad children; and it is decidedly and fixedly, emphatically and dramatically so. Whatever it asks for and may in due measure get, this is not what it is all about. So is this world not about such things from the heart and vision of the Lord.

Let us rehearse the matter.

HIS inherent beauty and equity is not seen in these disciplines or results of the raging ravages of sin which BURN by nature, as sin leads to sin, making for the very breeding of sin, with diligent and desperate liaisons,  so exposing its own ways  in a sort of polluted atmosphere at which Habakkuk is looking without adequate illumination as to the entire strategy.

It is not that HE, the LORD,  is like this. What then is He like and in what way WILL HIS REAL NATURE in its purity and truth be disclosed, as exhibit past these lamentable and mournful results of sin ?

It WILL BE SEEN, test concluded, when direct and pure, without contamination by the sins which breed rebuke and the tests within the domain of sinfulness, which distinguish courage and character from charades and pomp: when what ? It will be seen when He unveils the new situation after the Age has finished its Messianic program (the Messiah of salvation is noted in Habakkuk 3:6-13); when judgment has arrested the diseases, and long patience has dispersed further program for testing and availability, from within a world in sin.

NOT of the Lord is this sinful thing and this shame and shambles of evil vaunting itself; FOR, this being so, the thing that IS SO will appear in the end of the program WHEN the earth will glow with what HE has to show to a creation made free, fallen and now with redemption past, set to glow with His goodness. His triumph and His victory will be apparent, and His righteousness vindicated for all the Habakkuk protestations, and it will be seen and shown and known what is the actual glory of the Lord, direct and certifiable to one and to all, past all quibble and quarrel (cf. Isaiah 11, 65, Revelation 20).

So does the Lord bring light to Habakkuk as He did to Jeremiah (in Lamentations 3:33 and those understandings which went with it). The cases are quite parallel, as for that matter is that of Psalm 73, where similar themes are illuminated by the Lord in a similar fashion. It might APPEAR that evil is rawly riotous, but this is not so: it is contained, rebuked, exposed, made an educative treatise in history, made barren, made to seem meaningless to its practitioners when their lives are jammed, and is a matter of weeds awaiting the furnace.

Thus in Lamentations, in that same Chapter 3, in the parallel, we have this:

                     The Lord does not approve."

It is perfectly explicit: HE DOES NOT APPROVE ALL THIS. It is the result of sin, the result of liberty, the pre-condition of love, and it is shown in the light for all time, not for private and discrete little pats on the back, but in the fires of testing, the results foreknown and pre-secured in the sovereignty of God, but trialled in the clarity of His glory.

This therefore is not only a form of expository speech common in contrasting type in Habakkuk, but a type of speech and that in this very area of thought! Indeed, it is  to be found freely in the Bible, in which just this setting and admonition from the Lord, just this removal of misunderstanding mixed with positive statement of intent, is to be found.

Here then is light from the self-revealing Lord, and here is food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, consolation for the afflicted and assurance for those who suffer the vindictive vengeances of contemporary man, dark in mind, in spirit and in soul, soiled in heart, and yet to be pitied.

It is from this well that the Lord waits to disperse water, that He may be gracious (Isaiah 30:18 in context 15-22, 32:14ff., II Peter 3:9). Now why, as in Isaiah 30, did the Lord WAIT that He might be gracious ? It was because He is no dictator, though sovereign, but His mind is loving and gracious, so that since Israel at that time was being especially headstrong, wayward and wilful, He did not delete the good intended, but merely DISTANCED IT, and so WAITED that He might be gracious.

How glamorous was the wilfulness that refused Him in that case. Listen to it:

"For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:

'In returning and rest you will be saved; in quietness and in confidence will be your strength: and you were not willing.
But you said, No; for we will flee upon horses. Therefore will you flee.
And , We will ride upon the swift. Therefore will those who pursue you be swift.
One thousand will flee at the rebuke of one ... ' "

Thus did time act, and the Lord work, until the time was ripe. When the Gospel has surged throughout this world as it has nearly now done, then, the end will come; and it is in fact at this phase that the Lord will pour out the Spirit of grace and of supplications on Israel, so that they repent of the national action in crucifying Christ (Zechariah 12-13).

Here is an illustration of the positive purpose amid the existential thrill of evil and wilfulness, and the result of it, when chastening is done, and chasteness has come.

NOTES

*1

In Ch. 5, the following is noted concerning this prediction of the prophet Daniel.

There was as 70 year predicted exile for Judah, at the word of Jeremiah the prophet (as in Jeremiah 25), and there was an escalation of the duration of prophecy announced in Daniel 9, in which not 70 units but 70 sevens were to be accomplished. This was set for the fulfilment of prophecy, In this, everlasting righteousness would come, and as it goes on to tell, this would mean the cessation of animal sacrifice.

After 69 of these sevens of years, Messiah the prince was to be cut off, and there was to be nothing for Him (Daniel 9:26), a complete rejection and graceless horror awaiting this sacrificial victim, who became so both knowingly and willingly (Isaiah 49-55). It was in the middle of the 70th seven, that is some three and one half years later, that the Lord would put an end to the sacrificial offerings. Man might continue; God gave it no more place. That is the approximate length of the ministry of Jesus Christ. The prediction and its starting point is noted at Mini-Messages ... Ch. 10 as marked; and detail exposition of the entire prophecy is given in SMR pp.  886ff., and to be found in Highway of Holiness Ch. 4. This gave a death date as around A.D. 30, which meets the facts precisely.

It is the most astonishing arithmetic prediction, as far as one can discern it, of all time.

Just as God showed the date of the most important sacrifice of all time, on the part of the only Saviour for mankind for all time, one which would and does endure to this time as the ONLY WAY back to the Creator, and the only mode of gaining that mastery of mind and peace of spirit which truth brings, so He has refused to date the time of His second coming which has two chief components.

Thus first is His coming to secure His people from the growing conflagration now starting up in its uproarious flames (Matthew 24, II Thessalonians 2), and second that with His people, when He will judge, and demonstrate both to and in this world that very righteousness without allay or alloy, which Habakkuk so gravely sought. This world being not least a test, a laboratory exhibition of reality and a place for response to God, there is indeed a need to WAIT for the end of the Gospel Age; but then, as with all God's predictions, it will surely come. It is in fact better to view this waiting period as a journey, perhaps a train journey, in which as the repetitive little thumps over the passing rolling stock declare time is passing (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), so the stations passed en route declare that the end is near (cf. II Peter 1:19, 3:9).

*2

See on this: The Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 4.

*3

The Berkeley Version of the Bible, the work of a team,  is in many ways a most instructive product, most amazingly not now in print, as it seems, because of some action regarding copyright, that one has not as yet been able to plumb, in calling up publishers. It has here no addition of an interrogation at this verse, and simply presents it without interpretive addition:

"It is not of the Lord ..."  and so on. Praise God for that!