Who Can Say to Him, “What Are You Doing?” No. 2

God’s ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9), and it is important that we give that truth due consideration. Humans have very finite knowledge—very finite—and God’s wisdom is infinite. Think what it took to create everything in the universe—all the minutiae in the microscopic world, etc. etc. And think of the wisdom it takes to providentially oversee six and a half billion people every day. Reader, don’t be terribly surprised if you don’t always, or EVER, understand what God is doing in this world, or in your own life.

The Bible provides plenty of examples of God working in mysterious ways—mysterious to us. I’d like to provide several examples in this series of studies, based upon a verse in Job 9:12, “Who can say to Him, 'What are You doing?'”

1. Habakkuk’s enigma. We rob ourselves, literally rob ourselves, of spiritual treasure by our failure to study the Old Testament prophets. I’m seriously considering starting another blog, just to analyze those writings (anyone interested?). Habakkuk’s book is small, only three chapters, but very rich. He wrote in the late 7th century B.C. (that would be from 620-600 or so). He was a godly man and he was greatly distressed with the wickedness he saw around him in Judah. And he complained to God about it in verses 2-4 of chapter one. In effect, “Lord, how long are you going to put up with this wickedness?” A lot of us are asking the same thing about America today.

God replies in verses 5-11, telling the prophet that He is about to do something: “For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, A bitter and hasty nation which marches through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs.” The “Chaldeans” are another name for the Babylonians, who, near the end of the 7th century, invaded Judah and began to haul the people off into 70 years of Babylonian captivity. In 586, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, and razed the city itself. This is all recorded in other locations in the Old Testament. So, punishment, in the form of invasion, destruction, and captivity by the Babylonians, was indeed forthcoming upon Judah.

But this didn’t solve Habakkuk’s dilemma at all. It didn’t make sense to him. In verse 13, he said to God, “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he?” In other words, “Now, wait a minute, Lord. We’re bad, but we’re not as bad as those people. How can you use a people, Babylon, who are more ungodly than we are to punish us?” It would be like some devout person in America asking God when He was going to punish the wickedness of, say, Nashville, Tennessee. And God responding, “I’m fixing to, I’m going to send San Francisco on them.”

This didn’t compute to Habakkuk, and it doesn’t compute to us. The Babylonians were in worse need of divine wrath than Judah was. How could God use Babylon for such a mission? And that’s what Habakkuk asked Jehovah.

And the answer? Habakkuk 2:4—“the just shall live by his faith.” In other words, “Habakkuk, you let Me take care of it. You don’t have to understand, your duty is just to trust Me.” God does go on to tell the prophet in that chapter that the Babylonians will surely be punished in the end, but for the moment, God’s plan is to use them in divine retribution on His people. It may be incomprehensible to us, but again, our job is to trust God whether we understand what He is doing or not. He knows what He is doing, and thus, “The LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him” (2:20).

The prophecy of Habakkuk ends with, to me, one of the most beautiful doxologies anywhere in the Bible: “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (3:17-18). It doesn’t matter what happens, Habakkuk had learned his lesson—He will trust in the God of his salvation.

2. The ignorant Assyrians. About 120 or so before Habakkuk wrote, Isaiah told of the coming destruction on the northern kingdom of Israel by the then great empire, Assyria. In one sense it’s almost comical to read what the prophet writes in Isaiah 10:5-7: “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hand is My indignation. I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath I will give him charge, to seize the spoil, to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Yet he does not mean so, nor does his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy, and cut off not a few nations.” Notice, Assyria is the “rod of [God’s] anger,” Assyria’s “staff” is God’s indignation. Again, God is using a foreign power to punish His people (Isaiah, unlike Habakkuk, doesn’t question it). But what’s interesting here is that Assyria didn’t even KNOW God was using her (no doubt Babylon didn’t, either). Verse 7: “Yet he (Assyria) does not mean so, nor does his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy.” All Assyria wanted to do was plunder, kill, rape, expand its empire; those people had no idea that God was using them for His own purposes. Folks, we just don’t know what God is doing, when He is going to do it, or why He does things a certain way. We do know that God is just, that sin will be punished. But we don’t know God’s means or His time frame. As He told Habakkuk, “the just shall live by his faith.”

The aim of these first two points—and this series will continue—is to help us understand that we must not think we can fully comprehend the ways of God. We do not know what He is doing. Now it is important to understand that we can know certain principles of His actions—obedience will be blessed, sin will be punished. But the how, when, and where is totally up to God and totally beyond our comprehension. Many such blessings and punishments might be reserved for eternity. That doesn’t sit too well with us because we see so much injustice in the world and can’t figure out why God lets it happen. But “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

“God, what are you doing?” We may never figure it out on this earth. And, truthfully, in many instances, it may not even be any of our business.