Habakkuk 2: The Righteous Will Live by Faith When God Seems Slow

Introduction

"How long, Yahweh?" Maybe you have asked yourself a similar question. Glenn, a preacher at the Église Évangélique Baptiste de Strasbourg, admits that he has too. In this message, he walks through the book of Habakkuk, one of the twelve minor prophets that people rarely read, except to quote a verse or two picked up in the New Testament.

Habakkuk is only three chapters long. It is essentially a dialogue between the prophet and God. A contemporary of Jeremiah, Habakkuk prophesies shortly before the exile of the people of Judah to Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar, at a time when social injustice is blatant and many ignore God's law.

At the heart of the book is a sentence that the New Testament will take up: "The righteous will live because of his faith." For Glenn, this faith is first of all a question: "What is your vision of time?"

Outline of the Message

1. The Right to Ask God "How Long?"

Habakkuk complains: "Destruction and violence are before me." The law is no longer respected, and judgments are corrupt. In short, evil triumphs over good (Habakkuk 1:2-4).
Behind his words lie other questions: what is the point of being righteous if God lets evil win? What is the point of keeping his law if the unjust come out on top?
The first encouraging message: the righteous, which includes us when we put our trust in Jesus, have the right to ask God this kind of question. He welcomes them.
When evil seems to prevail and it goes on and on, Glenn nevertheless advises avoiding the question "why?" "It seems to me that God answers the question 'What do you want me to do?' much more often than the question 'Why?'"

2. An Answer That Disturbs

Habakkuk has the privilege of hearing God answer: "You will be astounded, for I am going to accomplish a work in your time." But this work is the coming of the Chaldeans, "that bitter and hasty nation" (Habakkuk 1:5-11).
It is not at all the answer he hoped for. He would have liked to hear: "It will be all right, I will settle every injustice, and you will be the prophet who wakes them up."
The prophet protests: "Your eyes are far too pure to bear the sight of evil" (Habakkuk 1:13). Why send a people worse than Judah? "Your solution to violence is more violence." God's answer only raises even more whys.
The text also reminds us that we are quick to see evil in others and slow to see it in ourselves. Glenn cites a statistic he heard at the Alpha course: 97% of drivers think they drive better than average.
God's answer turns the question back on us: have you lived a perfectly righteous life before me? We stand before an absolutely holy God, who has every right to question us too.

3. The Righteous Will Live by Faith

In chapter 2, Habakkuk climbs up to his watch post: "I will look out to see what he will say to me" (Habakkuk 2:1). The nature of a watchman is to look for a long time without knowing whether anything will happen.
The prophet now expects a personal answer, "something that is for me," and not a theological lecture on every ins and outs of God's plan.
God tells him to write the vision on tablets: it concerns an appointed time. "Though it takes time, wait for it; because it will surely come" (Habakkuk 2:2-3).
Glenn sees a lesson in relativity here: "Einstein was quite right." To us, God often seems to be slow. But his name is Yahweh, the eternal one, and that is not the same scale of reference. In reality, he is never late.
"The righteous will live because of his faith" (Habakkuk 2:4). Faith in what? "The confidence that God will act in his time." Faith means seeing things as far as God does, from his perspective. It is in this faith that lasts that uprightness of heart is revealed, and it always goes hand in hand with patience.
The New Testament quotes this verse from the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation (Hebrews 10:38). Put positively: God takes pleasure in the one who says, "If my heavenly Father says so, it will be all right."

4. Faith Goes Hand in Hand with Faithfulness

Glenn has also been waiting for things for a long time. He has seen God act in some situations, and others get worse. These verses challenge him: walk by sight, with an answer right away, or by faith, for the long haul?
The Hebrew word translated "faith" also means faithfulness. If we believe that God will act, we will keep praying to him and serving him faithfully, whatever the situation.
For five or six years, as president of the local association of churches, he has organized prayer meetings for leaders. At first, a dozen people came, then fewer and fewer. One Tuesday, only four were there, and he thought about cancelling everything. One participant thanked him for keeping these meetings going. Twenty minutes later, a woman arrived: "I felt I had to come."
He recalls the words of Jonathan: there is no restraint on Yahweh to save by many or by few (1 Samuel 14:6). And he quotes Woody Allen: 80% of success is just showing up. "Sometimes, coming to church is an act of faith, of faithfulness."
In short, God asks his prophet: "Are you willing to be the creature and let me be the creator?" Like a parent who has to tell a child: "You will understand later. Do you trust me?"
The story of the swimming pool: a father in the water says to his son at the edge of the pool: "Jump into my arms, I will catch you." The child refuses, he is afraid. "It hurts. Why don't you trust me?" God is our daddy.
If we sulk in the face of God's answer, we enter a vicious circle: we drift away, we hear him less, our trust goes down. If we say, "I would have liked something else, but I accept," we enter a virtuous circle and grow in trust.

5. Where Is God Calling You to Walk by Faith?

Work, studies, family, marriage: somewhere, God is calling you to live in "confident uncertainty." Life is full of uncertainties, right down to the morning tram.
Glenn has had to walk by faith for his family and his marriage, and God stepped in. Even today, in an area he does not name, God is calling him to move forward without even seeing the tightrope: "You just have to put one foot in front of the other."
There are also collective challenges of faith. Together with the church council, the church sensed the need to revitalize its witness. Small groups remain the main place of evangelism, but an Alpha course is being launched.
The energy will first be directed toward prayer, with times of fasting and prayer, because only God can prepare the ground of hearts. Each person can ask: "Lord, is there someone I can invite?" At least half of the congregation could invite someone, and everyone can pray.

6. Evil Will Be Defeated

In the rest of chapter 2, God pronounces five woes to say one thing: evil will be defeated. The one who comes to strike down Judah will in turn be struck down (Habakkuk 2:5-8).
Woe to the one who grabs more and more, to the dishonest person who finds security in money ("the stones will cry out"), to the violent who crush others, to the one who gets his neighbor drunk, and to the idolaters who worship what they have made. Today, we can put our technology or our creativity in the place of an idol.
At the center, the heart of the message: "The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh, as the waters cover the floor of the sea" (Habakkuk 2:14). Everything will be made new, and there will be no more room for injustice. Violence always turns against the one who practices it.
"Yahweh, for his part, is in his holy temple: let the whole world fall silent before him!" (Habakkuk 2:20). This is not a "be quiet": God welcomed all of his prophet's questions. It is the silence of respect before the one who will always surpass our understanding.
The New Testament says it another way, in a text Glenn often returns to: "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God" (Romans 8:28-29). The good is becoming like Jesus. The man who wrote these lines was whipped, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and left for dead: he knew what he was talking about.

7. From Complaint to Joy

In chapter 3, Habakkuk prays: "O Yahweh, I have heard what you have just proclaimed, and I am afraid of your work. [...] In your wrath, remember to be merciful!" (Habakkuk 3:2). In other words: I do not like your answer, but carry out your will, only show compassion.
He moves from questioning to intercession, then to praise, and finally to proclamation. In verses 13 and 14, he speaks in the past tense about what has not yet happened: "You set out to deliver your people." "That is faith."
Living by faith is what we do every time we carry a big prayer request. And if it is not for us, there is always someone around us in crisis. A speaker at the church weekend, a father of five children, none of whom walk with the Lord, remains confident in his prayers. A brother in the church prayed for forty years for his family, and good things are happening there.
"Your Kingdom come" (Matthew 6:10): this prayer will remain ours until the visible return of Christ. In the meantime, let us pray faithfully.
On prayer, Glenn does not believe in a password that would open the gates of heaven: "The only technique is authenticity." He distinguishes proclamation born of deep conviction, like Peter at the temple (Acts 3:6), the imitation of a formula, which looks like magic, and a middle path: proclaiming in order to stir up your own faith.
He admits to living in the tension of the "already and not yet": the kingdom is here, but not yet fully, and he has never seen anyone answered 100% of the time. Recently, he prayed with more confidence than usual for a person who was suffering. The next day, all of their pain had gone. "I have not found the magic formula," but he wants to grow in faith.
Habakkuk is still trembling before what is coming: he must wait for the day of distress (Habakkuk 3:16). The fig tree will not blossom, the vine will yield nothing, the fields will produce no more, and the flocks will vanish (Habakkuk 3:17).
And yet: "I will exult with joy because of the God who saves me. Yahweh, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of deer" (Habakkuk 3:18-19). Even if everything goes the opposite way from what I want, I will be joyful anyway.
Glenn brings up photos of ibex on dizzying rock faces, surefooted above the precipices: "This is how I will be. I will walk by faith."
It is also the faith of the psalmist, read in his morning readings: "It is in God alone that, in stillness, I find rest: my salvation comes from him"; "Find rest, my soul, in God alone, in stillness; my hope comes from him"; "People of mine, trust in him at all times; pour out your heart to him" (Psalm 62:1, 5, 8).
Waiting for God also means expecting him: not a passive waiting ("we'll see"), but a faithful waiting, glad of who God is for us.

Key Takeaways

You have the right to ask God "how long?" He welcomes your questions, but the question "What do you want me to do?" is often more useful than "why?"
Faith is the confidence that God will act in his time. He is never late, even when he seems to be slow.
Faith and faithfulness go together: keep praying, serving, and showing up, even when little seems to move.
Accepting God's answer without understanding it leads into a virtuous circle of trust. Sulking leads into a vicious circle.
Like Habakkuk, you can move from complaint to praise and rejoice in God, even when circumstances have not yet changed.

Personal Application

In what situation are you asking "how long?" right now? Can you turn your "why" into "Lord, what do you want me to do?"
Which answer from God do you find hard to accept? Are you ready to tell him: "I would have liked something else, but I accept"?
Where is God calling you to step into the unknown this week: work, studies, family, marriage?
For whom around you can you exercise faith in prayer, faithfully, even if nothing seems to move?
Have you put your life entirely in the hands of Jesus? It is the starting point of all faith.

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "the righteous will live by his faith" mean in Habakkuk 2:4?

For Glenn, the faith Habakkuk speaks of is the confidence that God will act in his time. It is a matter of vision of time: seeing things as far as God does, from his perspective. The Hebrew word also means faithfulness, so faith always goes hand in hand with patience.

Is it okay to ask God "how long?"

Yes. The book of Habakkuk shows that the righteous have the right to ask God this kind of question, and that he welcomes them. Glenn nevertheless advises against getting locked into "why": God more often answers the question "What do you want me to do?"

How does Habakkuk react at the end of his book?

He moves from complaint to intercession, then to praise and proclamation. Even if the fig tree no longer blossoms and the fields produce nothing, he rejoices because of the God who saves him. Yahweh is his strength and makes his feet like the feet of deer on the high places.