Why God Is Silent

13“Your words have been stout against me,” says Yahweh. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against you?’ 14You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God;’ and ‘What profit is it that we have followed his instructions, and that we have walked mournfully before Yahweh of Armies? 15Now we call the proud happy; yes, those who work wickedness are built up; yes, they tempt God, and escape.’

In this world, decisions have to be made several times a day. A judge rules by the law; the elderly judge by the experience of their years; a scholar by knowledge; and God judges and decides by the standard of sin. How a matter is handled, and the conclusion reached, differ according to the standard used, and people may judge differently depending on their character and knowledge, their ability and wisdom.

The shape of our life also changes according to the character we live with. For that reason, as long as we live, we must labor to cast off our faults and strive to learn from the strengths of others. Those who admit their wrongs and know how to give up their faults grow in good character as the years go by.

We can see that good character also has a great influence on faith. Whether their faith is great or small, people of good character are not easily swayed by the world’s temptations, and so they do not readily betray God. Those with a good heart accept the word of truth without doubting. They give their attention to the word because they know that if they simply live by it, they can live upright and honest lives without great effort. A faith built on such good character is not something Satan can easily tear down.

Everyone has a temperament of their own. Some are sensitive and some lazy; some are selfless and some selfish. Some rejoice over small things, and some are deeply troubled by small things. To grow these faults, which only we ourselves know, into good character, there is no way but patience and effort. If we are not to let what we consider our weaknesses show, we must keep bringing ourselves into submission to build up honesty and diligence, gentleness and righteousness. As we repeat this process, before we know it our poor temperament comes to be covered by good character, and good words and deeds come without effort. When we have such good character, we can serve as mature believers who do not betray God, and we can lead those around us to faith.

In the hearts of those who strive to live by the word there is the fruit of salvation; the hearts of those who live with no regard for the word cannot help but be full of sin. People may dress up the outside to look as if they have faith, but God looks on the heart, and so he is never deceived by anyone.

Six times God called the people of Israel to repent, but they did not realize how great a sin they were committing, and so they threw away God’s grace like garbage. This is what almighty Yahweh said to the priests and the people.

First, God said he loved his people, but they sneered and asked how he had loved them. Simply living in the world without hardship was itself God’s grace, yet they thought they lived by their own strength and ability, and so they mocked him, asking how he had ever loved them. I hope you will not forget that to remain where you are now is itself God’s grace.

Second, God said that he was their father, yet they neither honored nor feared him; and they replied by asking how they had despised his name. Being God’s people is a blessing in itself, yet they dared to offer God polluted bread and sacrifices with spots and blemishes, and still they denied their sin. To live by the word is to honor the Lord’s name; their lives, indistinguishable from those of the world, were themselves contempt for God’s name.

Third, they wearied God by divorcing, marrying foreign wives, and living immorally, and still they asked how they had wearied Yahweh. When children do not live as children should, their parents suffer. In the same way God watched his people defy his word and live in immorality, yet they gave no thought at all to his pain.

Fourth, to a people who lived no differently from the world, God said that if they would first return to him, he would return to them. Then they, who loved the world, asked how they should return. For God’s people to seek out those possessed by spirits to have their fortunes told, to be lured by Satan into adultery, to refuse to acknowledge God’s almighty power, and to swear falsely — all this was itself the sin of leaving God. Yet they had no thought even of giving up such wicked ways.

Fifth, when God asked whether a man would rob God, they asked in return how they could have robbed him. Had they lived by the law, they would have realized that everything they had was given by God, and they would not have robbed him. The tithes and offerings by which they could have shown their faith as God’s people, they spent as they pleased; and because they did not recognize this as sin, they said they had never robbed God.

Sixth, when God said that their words had been stout against him, they talked back, asking what they had spoken against him. The very thought that they believed in God well was itself the sin of opposing him; yet they did not grasp the heart of God, who was pointing out that sin, and they went on to commit a greater one. Faith in God is not a way to do well in the world, yet when their lives did not prosper, they said that fasting and repenting were in vain and complained that believing in God brought them nothing special. Of course, it is painful to see God’s people suffer. But the sufferings of believers are training for the eternal Kingdom, and so there is still hope in them, while the sufferings of the world are simply suffering in vain.

God had made his heart known, yet the wicked set out to confuse the people by saying, “No matter how wickedly we live, God does not judge us.” At first the people feared God and did not believe them, but little by little they began to think the wicked might be right. Such thoughts are possible only for those who do not rely wholly on God. Watching the people of the world who did not believe in God prosper more than they did, the people said it was vain to serve God. They could say that because they looked to the world rather than to the eternal Kingdom. The priests and the people must have thought that keeping the law was faith, but what God wanted was true faith and a life of obedience. They likely offered sacrifices as a matter of form, and repented as well. But a faith that, after repenting, again offers spotted and blemished sacrifices and keeps repeating the sin of mingling with the world cannot be forgiven.

Devotion and obedience without sincerity are a pretended faith; only a faith born again of truth and the Spirit becomes the faith God accepts. There are certainly people in the world who do not believe in God and grow rich without much effort. But God’s people, who know that God created the world not for this world’s sake but for the eternal Kingdom, must not judge by what is seen. The Holy Spirit dwells in us and is leading us to heaven; if we waver at the temptations of the world and of Satan and make light of God’s word, we will surely be judged. We must not forget that when our life ends, we will stand before God. If we remember that, standing before the judgment seat, we will give an account with our own tongue of how we lived, we will not keep talking back to God at every turn as the Israelites did.

God made his will known many times, but because they did not fear him, they did not understand why he spoke as he did. The love he poured out in choosing Israel as his own people was a grace far beyond anything human beings could bear, yet because of their evil nature they had no intention of repenting.

When sin is repeated, fear disappears, as in a heart seared by a hot iron, and when many people sin together, all sense of alarm about sin fades. This is why surroundings matter, and why sin is so dreadful. God gave them chance after chance to turn back, but as they grew numb to sin, they stopped believing even in the judgment to come. Each time, God raised up prophets and made them declare his will, but the people not only refused to listen to the prophets; they even killed them.

Habakkuk 1:13

13You who have purer eyes than to see evil, and who cannot look on perversity, why do you tolerate those who deal treacherously, and keep silent when the wicked swallows up the man who is more righteous than he,

At that time Judah, after the death of King Josiah, fell into disorder and confusion, and the nation was slowly tilting like a house built on sand. As the people were steeped in evil, injustice, and violence, they lost even any sense of guilt. In those days, the harder the righteous tried to live righteously, the more they were persecuted by the wicked, and the prophet Habakkuk grieved to see it. Distressed by what he saw, Habakkuk cried out, asking why the wicked prospered and the righteous were persecuted, but God was silent toward his prayer. Then he complained, asking why God did not answer the prayer he was crying out for his nation and his people.

Until then Judah had enjoyed God’s complete protection. When the attacks of the nations ceased and peace came, they sinned in order to live better still, and in doing so they persecuted the righteous who pointed out their sin. The Judah that now hears Habakkuk’s rebuke is no different from the people hearing the rebuke of the prophet Malachi. Because God stayed silent even when they sinned like this, they went on freely committing the wicked sin of mocking not only the righteous but God himself. But God kept silent all along not because he did not know of their wicked lives; he was waiting for the time of judgment. When their sin had come to the full, God knew the time for judgment had come, and he told the prophet Habakkuk that he would use Babylon as the instrument to judge Judah. Then Habakkuk prayed again, asking how God could allow the wicked to attack his own people. Habakkuk thought that Judah, corrupt though it was, was still better than a pagan nation that did not know God, and this conviction made him say that God’s judgment was not right. He did not know that in God’s sight the sin of corrupt Judah and the sin of the pagan nations were the same.

God described Babylon, which would be the rod for Judah, like this: they are feared and dreaded; their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves; their horses are swifter than leopards and more fierce than the evening wolves; they fly like an eagle that hurries to devour. God, who had kept silent while he watched corrupt Judah, had been preparing this terrifying Babylon as his rod. Not suffering for the price of sin does not mean being forgiven. We must take care, because the moment God lifts his hand, suffering comes.

Babylon was so cunning and base that it treated the strong kindly but showed its greedy nature the moment it sensed weakness. When we see God using such cunning people as a rod for his own people, we can tell how badly Judah had defiled God’s name. Given countless opportunities, they refused to repent and were destroyed in the end.

Habakkuk 3:16

16I heard, and my body trembled. My lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness enters into my bones, and I tremble in my place, because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble, for the coming up of the people who invade us.

Here the anguish of Habakkuk, who knew that cruel Babylon would attack, comes through vividly. Until now they had been able to live at ease because God had been a great wall around them, holding back the attacks of the pagan nations. Yet once Judah no longer worried about food and clothing, they craved the world and sinned through pleasure, immorality, and idolatry. Had they served God as king and kept their faith when he gave them peace, they would have received greater blessing; but they went on sinning until judgment came.

Anyone will collapse in an instant when God withdraws his grace. Habakkuk cried out for repentance because he knew that when God is angry, people are thrown into hopeless circumstances with no opportunity to repent and almost no way out. Aware that the peace they now enjoyed would vanish once Babylon invaded, Habakkuk was in such anguish that it felt as if his bones were rotting with fear. Yet he also understood that unless Judah went through such suffering, it would never return to God.

Habakkuk cried out to Judah to sin against God no more, but they would not listen. He pleaded with them to repent because no one knew when God, who watched their corruption and still kept silent, would break out in anger. Had they listened when Habakkuk called them to turn back, they would not have been trampled by people as cruel as the Babylonians. Habakkuk believed Judah deserved judgment, yet he prayed that God would hold back the Babylonian invasion. But since he knew that Judah would not turn back unless it suffered, he finally prayed that God’s will be done.

Friends, the prayers of the righteous have their limits. However much Habakkuk helped them through prayer, his prayer could not prevent Judah’s downfall unless Judah repented. Intercession can powerfully help the restoration of those who repent, but it cannot change the life of someone who will not turn from sin and is heading toward judgment and ruin.

Habakkuk 3:2

2Yahweh, I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, Yahweh. Renew your work in the middle of the years. In the middle of the years make it known. In wrath, you remember mercy.

Now and then I see Habakkuk’s prayer, asking the Lord to renew his work in the middle of the years, hanging in a frame in a church or a home. People must hang it there as a prayer that their church or home will be revived within a few years, but I think they can use it that way only because they do not know what led Habakkuk to pray it. What Habakkuk called the Lord’s work was, sadly, the destruction of corrupt Judah by Babylon. He knew that God was judging Judah because he loved Judah deeply, and so he said that though he was afraid and in anguish, he was waiting for the judgment. He knew that it was God’s will for Judah to repent, return, and live as God’s children, even if it suffered at Babylon’s hands.

He believed that justice would be fully carried out in that judgment. As the word says, the righteous can live only by faith; and Habakkuk’s faith was this: even through suffering, if only they could be saved, he could give thanks. He could make such a confession because his faith looked to the eternal Kingdom.

The people now under the prophet Malachi’s rebuke were likewise saying, when God kept silent, something outrageous: that they could see with their own eyes the proud being happy and those who work wickedness being built up. Because judgment did not fall right away when they did evil, they mocked the God who went on keeping silent and had no thought at all of returning to him. God brings to light every deed done in darkness as if under the noonday sun, yet because suffering did not come immediately, they rushed further and further toward evil.

Reality may perhaps seem to prove them right. In this world a person can sin and still amass great wealth, and live a corrupt life and still live long. But because that very thing is a sin that breaks God’s silence, such a person will certainly be judged through someone as cruel as Babylon. When people commit murder or the sin of robbing God, and judgment does not come at once, they may feel as though they have deceived God completely. But we must know that once he lifts his hand in judgment, there is no opportunity left. God’s people too sometimes find they are not afraid to sin, or that the words of fools sound wise to them. As the confession goes, the righteous will live by faith. May you never forget that only those who have eyes to see and ears to hear how worthless the wisdom of fools is can live by the word.

God kept asking them questions to turn them back. He told them that he loved them; that he was their father, yet they did not honor or fear him; that they had wearied him by divorcing, marrying foreign wives, and living immorally; that if they returned to him, he would return to them; and he asked whether a man would rob God, and told them not to oppose him with their stout words. Listening to all these words, we can see that he remains silent, patient to the end, because he wants to forgive. We know this because he is telling them that if they fear him, there is still time.

Friends, we must listen to the longing in God’s voice, because we are frail sinners: if the God who gave us life were to take back our life, if the God who gave us wealth were to take back our wealth, if the God who gave us the people we love were to take all of it away, we would have nowhere to fall but into darkness.

Because sin is always judged, we must cover our evil nature with holy character and seize the opportunity God has given us. Let us turn to God before we become, like the foolish, dead trees without fruit and are cut down.