Habakkuk 1:4 The wicked hem in the righteous so that justice is perverted. 

These words seem so current. 

Habakkuk 1:13a Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. 

This verse has often been quoted to explain that God turned His back on Jesus at the cross,  that God could not look at evil.  But that word "look", " (Hebrew word, "raah") means "to have respect for or approve".  Of course God does not approve of evil, but we cannot use this verse to say that God abandoned Jesus at the cross.  In fact there are many verses that say just the opposite.

Several verses in the first chapter of Habakkuk mention sacrificing to the net, burning incense to the dragnet.  These are words that refer to a person who loves his job and all the things he can buy so much that he has made his job his god.  This is an example of an idol that we can worship. An idol, for us today, does not necessarily take the form of a carved image as the prophets wrote about.

I had written a side note in the reading for today beside the verse, "Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!". I wrote these words - "Las Vegas - we were here on August 5, 2000" as a stopping place for our airline connections back to Indianapolis. And who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?  

Habakkuk 3 contains this verse, "God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran."

We were intrigued with these two places and did some research. Teman is a place where the Edomites were found. Mount Paran is also listed in Deuteronomy 33:2, so we went there. Quite interesting what we found.

And he said: Jehovah came from Sinai and rose up from Seir to them. He shone forth from Mount Paran, and He came with ten thousands of saints. From His right went a fiery law for them.

Of course we've read that before, but obviously it didn't sink in. When God delivered the commandments to Moses, He was accompanied by ten thousand angels. There is also a reference to this in Acts 7:53. You are the people who received Moses' Teachings, which were put into effect by angels. But you haven't obeyed those teachings." Hmmm...

A line from the Chronological Bible commentary is … “evil, wherever it is found, always bears within it the seeds of its own destruction.”  That's God's plan.

In reading the book of Habakkuk one thing comes through loud and clear. God allows some terrible things to happen to fulfill His purposes. But He continually gives humanity a choice. How are we to choose if there is only good and no evil from which to choose?

The process of winemaking illustrates the point. A vintner will pour the juice of crushed grapes into a clean container. According to his recipe he will add a certain amount of sugar to the grape juice. If nothing else is added to the recipe there will be no wine. It will eventually be only vinegar. In order for the grape juice to make wine, another element must be added to the recipe and that element is yeast. Yeast is an agitating force in the making of wine just as evil is an agitating force in the human  condition. The vintner separates the dregs from the good wine at the end of the winemaking process. Our struggles between good and evil on the earth are nothing more than the fermentation of the plan of redemption. Whether we live in a condition of eternal death or eternal life depends on how we react to the yeast that God puts into our lives.

God gives us the choice. What will we choose? Kind of takes us back to the reference in Acts7:53  about obeying God's teaching.

Habakkuk 2:2-3
Then the Lord replied, 'Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.  For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false.  Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.

This is another classic example of layered prophecies, then, now, and in our future.  God has an appointed time for everything.  Delay (something we perceive) is always in God's time.  His time doesn't change, we may perceive it as a delay.

Habakkuk in speaking of wicked and unrighteous men says, "...Because he is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied..."
If we personify death it appears that death is never satisfied.  It keeps taking people.

In chapter 2 Habakkuk pronounces several "woes", but right in the middle we find a beam of sunshine among dark clouds.  "For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." 

And yet another beam of sunshine, "But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him." 

Habakkuk has a great prayer in Chapter 3 verse 1 that is so applicable for our country right now.  Maybe a prayer we should pray daily!
Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord.  Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.

Habakkuk ends with a note of warning but also of hope.
Habakkuk 3:17-18
Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

Literally, a fulfillment for the nation of Judah and what people will experience in the Day of the Lord.  Spiritually speaking, no matter how impoverished we may be physically, our hope is in the spiritual.  We can take joy in the God of our salvation!