Habakkuk 1:11-13 They sweep past like the wind and are gone. But they are deeply guilty, for their own strength is their god." 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? (NLT)
from the Works of Martyn Lloyd-Jones
By Let us follow [Habbakuk] as he applies this method* to the two major problems that troubled him ...
(a) God is eternal. After stating his difficulty the prophet declares, 'Art thou not from everlasting?' (1:12). You see, he is laying down a proposition. He is forgetting for a moment the immediate problem, and asking himself what it was he was sure of about God ... He had just said (1:11) that the Chaldeans, flushed with success, imputed their power to their god; and ... he began to think, 'Their god — what is their god? Just something they have made themselves (cf. Isaiah 46). God ... the everlasting God ... is not like the gods whom men worship ... He is God from eternity to eternity ... He has preceded history; He has created history. His throne is above the world and outside time. He reigns in eternity, the everlasting God.'
(b) God is self-existent ... the eternal I AM ... The name 'I AM that I AM' means, 'I am the Absolute, the self-existent One'. Here is a second vital principle. God is not in any sense dependent upon anything that happens in the world ... Not only is He not dependent upon the world, but He need never have created it had He not willed to do so. The tremendous truth concerning the Trinity is that an eternally self-existent life resides in the Godhead — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Here again is wonderful reassurance ... The problem begins to fade.
(c) God is holy ... utterly, absolutely righteous and holy, 'a consuming fire'. 'God is light and in him is no darkness at all.' And the moment you consider Scriptures like that you are forced to ask, 'Can the Lord of the earth do that which is unrighteous?' Such a thing is unthinkable.
(d) God is almighty ... The God who created the whole world out of nothing, who said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, has absolute power; He has illimitable might. He is 'The Rock'.
(continued on March 4)
*December 20, pp. 25-28.
From Fear to Faith, pp. 28-30
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