Where to turn when things keep getting worse

Posted at Reformation Scotland:

We comfort ourselves sometimes with the thought that things can’t get much worse. The problem is that things often do get worse. Decision-makers in society continue to make worse decisions and don’t seem to learn from their own or other people’s mistakes. The UK’s recent dramatic relaxation of the law to protect the unborn and their mothers in England and Wales is an example of something that is flagrantly morally wrong and self-evidently harmful, yet presented with fanatical assurance as something compassionate and helpful. In George Hutcheson’s view, once people get in the habit of rejecting God’s way, it sets them on such a self-destructive path that they often don’t even notice the signs that things are going badly. Nothing can get through to them that they need to change course. George Hutcheson was reflecting on the terrible distress that the prophet Habakkuk experienced as he witnessed the societal breakdown in his own times. Habakkuk cried out in desperation to God to please make the injustice and violence stop. Whereas we would normally expect a happy ending in which God answers His servant’s prayer, God’s shocking response to Habakkuk was that things were going to get very much worse, simply as the righteous consequence of the people’s wilful rebellion and flagrant sinning. As the following updated extract shows, instead of comforting ourselves with how “things” usually work out for the best, we need to lift our eyes and our hearts to the covenant-keeping God, whose holiness and power is infinite. His faithfulness is such that we can appeal to His mercy merely as such, without needing to point to any positive developments or encouraging signs. We can rely on his faithfulness and his justice as we increase our efforts to share the gospel and a godly way of life.

His cry

In the first chapter of his prophecy, Habakkuk begins by expostulating with God, speaking in his own name and the name of the godly. “O Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! Even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!” (Hab. 1:2) With the generality of the people being so desperately wicked, why does the Lord in His patience still bear with them, and take no course to vindicate His own glory, or abate this deluge of sin one way or other?

Habakkuk brings in various considerations. For one thing, he has worked so hard with these people, but to no purpose. Instead, with their injustice swelling up and breaking out in open violence, he had been forced for a long time to cry to God against them. Yet his prayer was not regarded, neither were the oppressed saved from violence, and Habakkuk finds this so strange.

We are not to understand this as if Habakkuk were quarrelling with God, nor as if he didn’t care about this people (later on in his prophecy he evidences great tender-heartedness toward them). Instead, the problem is that he has worked among them for so long, and pleaded with God for so long for some success to his ministry, yet he finds that iniquity still abounds, to the dishonour of God, and oppression of the godly. Not so much out of any hatred against them, but rather out of zeal to God’s honour, hatred of sin, and pity toward the oppressed, Habakkuk complains that there was no redress of this, and that God was not stopping the course of sin, either by amending them or by correcting them.

The iniquities which Habakkuk mentions are especially sins against the second table of the law (commandments 5 to 10, setting out our duties towards each other). The duties of the second table are a touchstone, by which we can test the sincerity of those who profess to be true believers within the visible church. Equally, when people once reveal their unsoundness by breaking these commandments, they may readily come to a very great height in such sins. Here, they had come to the extremity of “violence” among themselves.

The iniquity of a visible church may come to such heights that those who would normally want to stand in the gap to plead with God on the people’s behalf may be ready, if not to cry against them, yet to submit if God were to send judgements. Habakkuk is so hard pressed, with how their sin dishonours God, and oppresses the godly, that he cries that God would one way or other stop the course of their iniquity.

The godly, and especially those who are called to carry the Lord’s word to His people, have to factor into their expectations, not a smooth and easy life, but a life of wrestling under much humbling, toil and vexation. That was Habakkuk’s lot here, and the lot of the godly, in whose name he complains. Yet the best way to make people’s endeavours in their calling effectual (especially those who are employed in dealing with souls) is to be much with God in prayer. Cries to God are our best weapons against sin.

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