Of Tweezers and Trusting God - Nick Napier
Have you ever noticed that when a child gets a splinter and you bring out tweezers (or worse—straight pin) suddenly, to them, you are some maniacal barbarian who has never really loved them anyway? Instead of trusting you to do what is best, they will question you, ask to see your supervisor, lodge complaints, question your qualifications, and ask where you got your credentials to keep you from doing what is best for them. To them, metal pinchers and needle and alcohol or peroxide are all more painful and threatening and present more danger to their current comfort level than a little tiny piece of wood in their finger. Yet, you know that the thing which they might be comfortable with for now—that splinter—if left untreated can bring them more harm than the affliction of the tweezers; it can bring infection and greater pain, and in some cases even death. But parents, out of love for their children and a desire for what is best, are even willing to bring pain (even that which is scary to them) for the overall well-being and ultimate good of the child.
That is something of the picture that we have here in Habakkuk. Habakkuk has come to the Lord with a burden. He has seen the wickedness in Judah and has asked the Lord to do something about it. And, in verse five of chapter one, the Lord tells Habakkuk that He is, in fact, about to do something. He is going to send the Chaldeans in to take Judah into captivity—and, to Habakkuk, the cure sounds like something that is worse than the disease Habakkuk sees. So, he asks God, in essence, "Why on earth would you use those far more wicked than Judah to judge Judah?" In other words, he's questioning the Lord like a child who is looking at the splinter in his hand and the tweezers in his father's hand, and he thinks the tweezers are worse than the infection causing splinter.
So, what can we learn from Habakkuk here? What does Habakkuk teach us as we look around and sometimes wonder what God is doing?
Habakkuk teaches us to cling to God's promises in the midst of our doubts.
In verse 12, Habakkuk is responding after he has been brought face-to-face with what is perhaps one of the most difficult providences—an invading army of ruthless warriors is coming into Judah to lay it waste. And even as the Lord has revealed this to him, he is thrust into the only place of safety there is—the promises of God. Verse twelve of Habakkuk one keys us into this. "Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? we shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction." After six verses of pure terror. Six verses describing the fierceness of the Chaldeans, Habakkuk says, "Judah will not die; this is just a corrective." How can he say this? Because he knows God's promise. That He will be a God to His people and not utterly cast them off. Faith is viewing difficult providence and those things hard to understand through the lens of God’s promise; that all that He is doing is for your good—for the good of His people.
Two biblical illustrations should suffice. We often view the world with only our "seeing eyes" like Asaph in the beginning of Psalm 73. We look around and see what looks like the wicked only prospering. And so, we fail to look at the world with our "hearing eyes"—that is, the eyes of faith; the eyes that hear God's promises and view the world through them, in spite of circumstances. So, we go to the Word and means of grace, and view the latter end (cf. 73:17).
When the proverbial tweezers of God's surgical providence come, instead of doubting God's love for us or His qualifications, we must be those who exercise the logic of faith. We must like Abraham, view our circumstances through the lens of God's promise and not the unpleasant moment of circumstance. God finally gave the son of promise to Abraham—and then told him to slay him (Genesis 22). But, like Abraham, we must think if God has promised, and even though this trial I’m enduring is difficult; the Lord is obviously able to and going to raise Isaac from the dead. Since the promise of God is that Isaac is to be the son of inheritance—he can only inherit if God raises him, so that must be what He is going to do. (Hebrews 11:17-19) To Abraham's natural eyes, this would have been impossible to see; he would have seen God as some barbarian whom he couldn’t trust. But, through the eyes of faith God must be doing something he couldn't have comprehended naturally, and so it must be better!
So, here, Habakkuk reasons in v.12, that since God has promised not to cast off his people, and he knew of God's mercy and deliverance from of old—then the coming havoc of the Chaldeans is not for Israel's ultimate destruction (no matter what my earthly eyes see) but is for her good; it is discipline unto reconciliation. It is for her good, no matter how painful the circumstance is right now. So faith teaches us, in the words of Thomas Willcox, to "Judge not Christ's love by providences, but by promises."
Habakkuk teaches us to recall God's Character in the midst of our doubts.
He begins just there in V.13, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil,
and canst not look on iniquity." Why does Habakkuk call out to God, and bring up His character? To do so will reveal to you and remind you of the nature of His work in you (in His people). In the middle of what seems to be earth moving, world shattering circumstances, we must pause to recall who God is. We are so tainted by our sinful hearts that we often think of God as being "like us." My reactions are often lashing out in anger and are often emotionally fraught, and so I assume that God's is the same. But if we recall who God is and His character (see Exodus 34:6-7), we are forced to come face-to-face with His holiness. He's holy in all that He does; holy in anger; holy in mercy. So, what he brings to us is brought not in seething rage, but in perfect, exacting fatherly discipline (He doesn't discipline like an enraged sinful man, but as a judicially holy Father). We remember His character, and that He is working all things to a glorious end. We remember that He will deal justly. But most importantly, we remember that our experience isn’t the measure of goodness, He is.
Habakkuk says, “Lord, these people are way, WAY, W.A.Y. worse than your people. How can you use them in judgment?” Isn’t that what we say—what we instinctively think? That we must understand all that He is doing in order for it to be good? That is the exact opposite of walking by faith—it is, instead, walking with my own understanding as the height of what is good.
If you are like me, you tend to view your circumstances—things that are happening in “that moment” to be the measure of God’s love for you. Instead of remembering His character—His goodness, mercy, and love for me—I simply note the current pain of the situation, and then look around to see those who are "worse" than me prospering or getting the very thing I have been longing for and praying for. In that moment, I say with Asaph, "as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped.For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." In my mind, this is not how things “should be.” I am measuring God’s love by circumstance, instead of who He is and what he’s doing. In that, I fail to view the big picture.
However, in that moment, we need to remember that that is the very nature of the spiritual surgery that the Lord performs. In that very moment that He is lovingly and skillfully removing something far worse than a splinter. He is wielding His "tweezers" with surgical precision to remove from us something far worse than the pain of here-&-now, but He is making us into the image of His Son by removing those far deadlier remnants of sin.
So, even when our circumstances are painful, and wicked people prosper against us, we need to remember God uses sin sinlessly, and for the good of His people. All that happens to you, happens as His children, not as His enemies.
Habakkuk teaches us to watch and wait in the midst of our doubts.
How is he going to respond? He has seen some difficult realities—the sins of Judah and the discipline that is coming from the hand of the Lord—and so He has to cling to God's promises and remember God's character. With that, he has nothing left to do but to watch and wait upon the Lord in faith. "I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved." He doesn't give up and join Babylon (everywhere and throughout the Scripture a picture of the world), but entrusts himself to the Lord.
Also notice that Habakkuk doesn’t just see the wickedness of Judah, then see that which is going to happen and say God must not exist, or call into doubt His goodness. Instead in both cases he RUNS to God; he brings his complaint, lodges it, and expects God to do something. He will not let go, until God answers. Then when God does answer and Habakkuk doesn’t like it, he launches into more seeking God and answers from Him. It is as Flavel says in Keeping the Heart, "Whatever be the ground of one's distress, it should drive him to, not from God" (94).
So, we get to 2:1 and Habakkuk has to wait. It's as if he says, "God, I know your promises, and I know your character—so I will trust you and wait and see what you are doing." And note that it is not until he has wrestled with God in chapter one and been made to wait in chapter 2, that he gets to rest and worship in chapter 3. The reality is that most of us think that faith should be easy—that if it’s real that we shouldn’t have to wrestle—but we forget that we have been corrupted by sins in our very minds and affections, and so we must be renewed in our minds (Rom12:1), and that is why the Lord often makes us wrestle before we rest (like Jacob).
What do we do with this text? We let it remind us that the Lord’s work in, for, and around us is far beyond what we merely see and experience in our circumstances. His plan is nearly unfathomable to our finite and fallen minds. It is only by faith that we are able to walk in light of these truths. He is preparing and fitting us for eternity; so what we experience here, though painful, though hard to understand at times, when seen with the eyes of faith that cling to God’s promises, recalls his character, and waits upon him, causes us to say with the Psalmist, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted;
that I might learn thy statutes. The law of thy mouth is better unto me
than thousands of gold and silver." Or if we're in the midst of struggle and pain, let us cling to His promises, recall His character, and wait upon Him. He will answer in His time. And in it all, we know that He is doing a work with His "tweezers" removing from us that which is most dangerous to us.