FIRST COMPLAINT
Chapter 1:2-4
One would expect that the people of God, Israel, having received the perfect law of God, enjoying the privilege of a priesthood acceptable in His presence, and great material and spiritual blessings and unfailing promises of blessings, would be exemplary in justice, righteousness and integrity. God wanted Israel to demonstrate to other people His glory and holiness, so that they would follow its example and also worship Him.
But Israel was repeatedly involved in idolatry, and at the time of Habakkuk only two tribes remained with autonomy in the Promised Land. There was a revival under King Josiah in 622/1 BC, but Habakkuk saw that its moral and spiritual condition had again fallen a lot. The ungodly (who do not fear God) prevailed over the godly (who fear and obey God). Justice was perverted; there was violence, disputes, litigation.
Habakkuk told God that He was refusing to answer his prayers, because in his view, God said or did nothing to save the situation. He was not sorry that this was the situation of the nations around him, but that the very people of God should be found so, and he was perplexed, probably because he felt that the Lord should take further steps to correct the people, as He so often had done before.
Like the people of Israel, the Church of Christ in its long history, has also gone through long and frequent periods of infidelity, heresy, apostasy, divisions, such as prophesied in Revelation. The light of Christian witness is still reaching the more remote areas, but is fading in countries where it shone most little more than a century ago.
The world in which we find ourselves is still in darkness, like the gentiles who surrounded Israel. It is the darkness of godlessness and wickedness of men who reject God and suppress the truth by their wickedness because "what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools...” (Romans 1:19-22 NKJ). When they do not use images of wood or stone, as in antiquity, their madness leads them to believe in atheist evolutionism, suppressing the genesis of the Bible and making the whole message of the Gospel to be a lie.
Like Habakkuk, we will not stop in considerations of what we see in the heathen world around us, but we sympathize with Habakkuk when he "saw" the scene of God's people of his time, as a similar scene appears in front of us when we look at Christ's church today in the same light. Churches that call themselves evangelical Christians are permeated with the same things as the Israel of his time: lawlessness, violence, quarrels, disputes, to which we can add unbelief, greed, deceit and other things.
We know that Christ wants the church to present itself "glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and blameless" cleansed by the washing of water by the Word (Ephesians 5:26, 27). We wish to see holiness and purity in the lives of those who take to themselves the name of "Christians", and even declare themselves to be proclaimers of the Gospel, but we are perplexed by what is happening.
We must recognize that we ourselves are still far from attaining the holiness desired by our Saviour. Our faith is in danger of being shaken. Let us not allow our faith to fade, but, conscious of our own lack of holiness, let us do our part to wash and cleanse ourselves and move on to the target with the power of the Holy Spirit in us.
Habakkuk acted praying God to do something - he wanted God's intervention to correct His people, as he had done numerous times before. To begin the book, he complains: "O LORD, how long shall I cry, and You will not hear?" Not an accusation, but the strengthening of a request for which he wanted an urgent solution. He wanted relief for his distress. The situation seemed desperate to him.
Have we also cried out to God seeing the deplorable situation in which His people, belonging to the Church of Christ, are found in our time? We feel that the regenerating power of the Gospel, never as available as now with the publication of the Holy Scriptures in most languages at affordable prices, and the missionary effort to reach the most isolated tribes, is having little manifestation by the very people of God. During the great persecutions of the past, this regeneration shone, producing great teachers and evangelists with consecrated lives of which we still remember several centuries later.
Perhaps, like Habakkuk, we believe that God does not hear our cry to revive and restore His church in our times. Let's see what we can learn from the example of the response that Habakkuk received from God.
R David Jones
2 O LORD, how long shall I cry, And You will not hear? Even cry out to You, "Violence!" And You will not save.
3 Why do You show me iniquity, And cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me; There is strife, and contention arises.
4 Therefore the law is powerless, And justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore perverse judgment proceeds.
Habakkuk chapter 1, verses 2 to 4