Habakkuk 1:12-15 NLT
[12] “O Lord my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal— surely you do not plan to wipe us out? O Lord, our Rock, you have sent these Babylonians to correct us, to punish us for our many sins. [13] But you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil. Will you wink at their treachery? Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they? [14] Are we only fish to be caught and killed? Are we only sea creatures that have no leader? [15] Must we be strung up on their hooks and caught in their nets while they rejoice and celebrate?”

Poor Habakkuk! He just couldn’t keep up with God. First, he had to process God’s incomprehensible plan to raise up and permit a godless nation to overrun his people. Now he has to come to terms with a contradiction in the very nature of God. If God is holy, how can He use ungodly idolators to fulfill His purposes?

Since God patiently responded to Habakkuk’s questions, it seems that He didn’t consider Habakkuk’s questions arrogant or impertinent. He had something important to teach His distressed prophet about the wisdom of His ways. He responded to Habakkuk’s honesty by taking him step by step through His actions to a place of understanding and personal faith.

Let’s consider Habakkuk’s second question. How can a holy God use ungodly instruments for His purposes? God’s answer, which we will see in our next meditation, opens up a new perspective on God’s sovereignty.

For the moment, we must consider God’s relationship with evil. Evil people with their evil deeds impact our lives every day. Some of us live with them; we work with them; we bump into them in the course of our day; they are around us everywhere. They govern our nation and are bent on inflicting their ungodly decisions on all the people. Where is God in all this?

The story of Job will help us gain a true perspective of God’s use of evil. First, God never tolerates the evil in people. He has no part in it. He is holy, utterly separated from evil people’s thoughts, actions and behaviour. God never tempts us to do wrong.

James 1:13-15 NLT
[13] “And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. [14] Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. [15] These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.”

Our sinful behaviour comes out of our sinful nature…our desires, our choices, our actions but…

Evil has inescapable consequences and evil people will reap them…and the consequences we suffer are not God’s fault.

However, God uses what evil people do, either to us or by us, to corall us into thinking and learning differently about sin. In His wisdom, God works, IN ALL THINGS, for our good.

What an astonishing revelation! How riveting to realise that not even our sin, heinous as it might be, is wasted in our lives. We learn more from what we have done wrong than what we have done right. God weaves our sinful behaviour and its consequences into the tapestry of our lives, the dark threads forming a contrast and revealing the magnitude of His mercy and grace.

Can you see the difference between God causing sin and God using sin in the lives of people? Since He is holy…utterly separate from sin, and demands holiness on us if we are ever to approach Him and be acceptable to Him, He took action to ensure that unholy humans would be transformed by His grace from sinners to saints.

No, Habakkuk, God’s action by raising up and using the ruthless Babylonian army was never a denial of His stance against sin but rather the evidence of His sovereign mercy. Without His drastic intervention to turn His people from their idolatrous ways, the Jews would have perished in their sin. He was preparing them for the moment when He Himself would break into history in the form of a tiny human baby to deal with sin though never part of it.

God’s reassurances regarding the mystery of His ways would lead Habakkuk, step by step, into a new perspective and a new way of handling life’s seemingly insoluble dilemmas.

To be continued…