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Prophets and Kings
Within the lifetime of some who were even then making inquiry re-
garding the future, He would miraculously shape the affairs of the
ruling nations of earth and bring the Babylonians into the ascendancy.
These Chaldeans, “terrible and dreadful,” were to fall suddenly upon
the land of Judah as a divinely appointed scourge.
Verse 7
. The princes
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of Judah and the fairest of the people were to be carried captive to
Babylon; the Judean cities and villages and the cultivated fields were
to be laid waste; nothing was to be spared.
Confident that even in this terrible judgment the purpose of God
for His people would in some way be fulfilled, Habakkuk bowed
in submission to the revealed will of Jehovah. “Art Thou not from
everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One?” he exclaimed. And
then, his faith reaching out beyond the forbidding prospect of the
immediate future, and laying fast hold on the precious promises that
reveal God’s love for His trusting children, the prophet added, “We
shall not die.”
Verse 12
. With this declaration of faith he rested his case,
and that of every believing Israelite, in the hands of a compassionate
God.
This was not Habakkuk’s only experience in the exercise of strong
faith. On one occasion, when meditating concerning the future, he
said, “I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will
watch to see what He will say unto me.” Graciously the Lord answered
him: “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run
that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the
end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it
will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his soul which is lifted up
is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.”
Habakkuk
2:1-4
.
The faith that strengthened Habakkuk and all the holy and the just
in those days of deep trial was the same faith that sustains God’s people
today. In the darkest hours, under circumstances the most forbidding,
the Christian believer may keep his soul stayed upon the source of
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all light and power. Day by day, through faith in God, his hope and
courage may be renewed. “The just shall live by his faith.” In the
service of God there need be no despondency, no wavering, no fear.
The Lord will more than fulfill the highest expectations of those who
put their trust in Him. He will give them the wisdom their varied
necessities demand.