DO NOT MESS WITH GOD
Sun and moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spear. In wrath you strode through the earth and in anger you threshed the nations. You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you stripped him from head to foot. With his own spear you pierced his head when his warriors stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though about to devour the wretched who were hiding. You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the great waters (Hab. 3: 11-15).
Of whom was the prophet speaking here?
In graphic, vivid, poetic language and with emotional ecstasy he described God’s victory over the Pharaoh and the land of Egypt. God swept through the land with plague after plague, stripping away everything in which the godless Egyptians put their confidence. Using the powers of the natural world, He destroyed their agriculture, their livestock, their infrastructure and finally their firstborn because Pharaoh refused to honour Him and obey His instruction.
God, invisible though He is, is not to be trifled with. He is unstoppable in His wrath against those who defy Him and destroy His people but he is also unstoppable in His mercy towards those who fear Him. This is the amazing thing about our God. When the Bible describes Him as “for” those who fear Him it means that He bends all His energies and provides all His resources to support those who honour Him and uphold His cause.
When puny man takes God on, he gets more than he bargained for. Pharaoh tried it and lost. By the time God was finished with him, his land was in tatters, his people in disarray and his once mighty army lifeless corpses floating in the Red Sea. God defended His people as fiercely as a mother bear her cubs by destroying those who came against them.
Sennacherib, ruler of Assyria, the cruellest and most violent nation on earth, tried to swallow up little Israel in the days of Hezekiah and Isaiah and came off worst. He challenged God and God took him on, leaving his 186,000-strong army lying dead in their encampment outside Jerusalem. Sennacherib himself perished at the hands of his own sons while he worshipped his idol god.
Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon, thought he was God and demanded worship or else . . . Three young Hebrew men refused to bow down to his image and paid for their disobedience by being thrown into a seven-times-heated oven. Instead of burning, though, their ropes burned and they walked freely in the fire in the company of their God. Nebuchadnezzar had to admit defeat and call them out because they were indestructible in the presence of God.
Goliath, giant warrior champion of the Philistines, tried it too and lost his head in the effort. Stripling teenager David, not even a seasoned soldier but a keeper of sheep, accepted his challenge and, unarmed except for a sling and a stone, sank a pebble into the forehead of the challenger, leaving him face down in the dirt and as dead as a doornail.
Make no mistake, when God is for His people, He is for us. No matter how badly things go for us when the world takes us on, we shall come up trumps in the end. We have the many stories in the God’s history book and the many promises of God that evil will never overcome God or His people.
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8: 31).
God is just. He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fie with His powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ 2 Thess. 1: 6-8).
Reminiscing led Habakkuk to go on to an expression of confidence that has echoed down the ages. More of that tomorrow . . .
Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.