“O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” Habakkuk 1:2
February 7, 2024
The prophet Habakkuk had two problems. He has cried out to God. “Why must the righteous suffer, while the wicked flourish?” Does God not care? Evil is everywhere. Injustice marches on unabated. Has God forgotten that in His land His glory was to dwell? God breaks the silence and reveals to Habakkuk what He was about to do. The entire book of Habakkuk unfolds how God’s judgment was to fall on Israel. But there is another dimension to God’s silence. The sin of the covenant community had made God’s silence necessary. Though our nation is not a theocracy like that of Israel in the Old Testament, yet we have proclaimed on our currency, “In God we trust.” Really? Woe to those who give lip service to the Supreme Ruler of the universe and mock Him at the same time. His judgment breaks out by turning us over to our defiance of God’s moral law. Mark it down. Almighty God’s seeming silence toward the sins of our land is only the calm of patience before the storm of judgment.
H
“O loving and faithful God, how long will your silence endure as we ignore you. It is also an awful thought that I could break fellowship with you in my tolerance of unconfessed sin. May the slender thread of obedience to you not be broken.”