One of my favorite stories when I was little was the book, “The Little Engine that Could.” I remember hearing that story over and over again as a child, and I’ve also read it to my own children. It’s about a small engine that accomplishes a seemingly impossible task, pulling a load of toys to the top of the mountain, by repeating over and over, “I think I can, I think I can.” It’s a good story. We often give up too soon, and by perseverance and determination we can accomplish surprising things.
But, like any story, the moral can be taken too far. It’s one thing to say that we can often accomplish more than we think if we persevere with faith and determination; it’s another thing altogether to say that we can accomplish anything we set our minds on. A lot of the hype I hear about sports today seems to be based on the assumption that if you believe in yourself you can do anything. Losing is the result of not believing strongly enough. Several years ago, when I was working in human services, I was sent to a motivational seminar. The speaker was very upbeat and cheerful (as well as being one of the most hopelessly shallow human beings I’ve ever encountered), and his basic assumption was that we can do whatever we set our minds to, as long as we believe in ourselves.
G.K. Chesterton has an interesting discussion about this idea. Here’s what he says: “Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, ‘That man will get on; he believes in himself.’ And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written ‘Hanwell.’ [Hanwell was a London institution for the mentally ill.] I said to him, ‘Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.’ He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. ‘Yes, there are,’ I retorted, ‘and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter [a morally reprehensible person]. Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief...: the man who has it has ‘Hanwell’ written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus’” (Orthodoxy, pp. 9-10). These verses in chapter 2 of Habakkuk are written about people who believe thoroughly in themselves.
In our last sermon we saw that Habakkuk is wrestling with the problem of God’s justice. How can God make use of these wicked people, the Babylonians, to execute His justice? How does this fit with what we know to be true of Him? God gives Habakkuk an answer in the early part of the chapter, and part of the answer is this: although He is not carrying out His judgment immediately, He will do so in the future. A day of perfect justice is coming, in God’s own time and according to His perfect wisdom. Because of this, resisting His will, refusing to submit to His lordship, is foolish and self-destructive. Those who persist in this direction are on a collision course with reality. No matter how strenuously they believe in themselves, they’re going in a direction which is certain to fail miserably.
The first thing to notice is that these people are making false claims about themselves. These are people who delight in using power over others, but the power they’re using is not their own and one day it will be taken from them. The strength they are misusing has been given to them by God, but soon He’s going to take it away, and then everything they’ve done will crumble. Listen to verse 13: “Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?” They have a certain amount of freedom to misuse the gifts they’ve been given, but they don’t have control over the final outcome.
Everything we have in this life has been entrusted to us by God, and He’s going to call us to account one day for how we’ve used it. He’s entrusted us with the ability to influence others, and He entrusts some of us with a limited amount of power, but these are dangerous gifts. First of all, for a definition of power. It’s helpful to distinguish between power and authority. Power is primarily related to ability, and authority is primarily related to right. Authority is the right to command. If I say that someone has authority, I am saying that he has the right to give me a command, and to expect me to obey. If someone, in the rightful exercise of authority, gives me an order, I am obligated morally to obey.
Power, by contrast, is the ability to coerce. It’s the ability to make people do what I want. It’s the ability to compel people, contrary to their will, to obey my wishes. Both power and authority come from God, and He alone possesses both absolutely. To us humans, He gives limited authority and a degree of power. Human authority is always limited, and our use of power must always be limited by our God‑given authority.
The problem is that we have the ability to do things that we have no right to do. Strong people have the ability to bully those who are weaker. That’s what the Chaldeans were doing to all the other nations in the region. The rich and powerful have the ability to oppress the poor. This is a misuse of power; it’s an ability that one has no right to use. But power is not evil in itself. A mother has the authority to tell a small child not to run into the street, and if the child tries to do so anyway, she has the right to forcibly stop him. This is a legitimate exercise of power. If she then throws the child to the ground and starts kicking him, she has exceeded the bounds of her authority and is now misusing her superior strength. The police have the right to forcibly stop a person who is committing a crime, but if they take him back to the station and torture him, they have exceeded their authority. They may have the ability to do so, but they do not have the right.
So this is an important principle to hold onto: power must always be limited by authority, and power that is divorced from legitimate authority is always wrong. It’s also important to remind ourselves often that power, even when it’s legitimate, is a dangerous thing. We very easily become corrupted by it. George Whitefield, the great evangelist, says this about the temptation to power: “I find a love of power sometimes intoxicates even God’s own dear children, and makes them to mistake passion for zeal and an overbearing spirit for an authority given them from above. For my own part, I find it much easier to obey than to govern, and that it is much safer to be trodden under foot than to have it in one’s power to serve others so” (quoted by Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 2, p. 339). The temptation to exercise absolute power is the temptation Satan used on Eve: the temptation to be like God. We need to be always aware of the tremendous power of this temptation. The Babylonians, at the point in history that Habakkuk is describing, have become intoxicated with the lust for power. It’s corrupted them and dehumanized them. They’ve forgotten who they are as human beings, and they’ve begun to do things that they have no right to do. In abusing their power, they’re making false claims about themselves. They’ve forgotten that they are creatures who will one day be called to account for this power with which they’ve been entrusted.
The second thing is that they’re making false assumptions about the future. They’re assuming that things will always be as they are now, and that they can do things that will enable them to stay in control. They’re grasping for security by oppressing others: “Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin!” Here it is in the New Living Translation: “You believe your wealth will buy security, putting your families beyond the reach of danger.”
The problem with that way of thinking is that the world is headed in a direction that they are unaware of. They think the current arrangement is just the way the world is; that this arrangement, in which it’s possible for one nation to lord it over others and to become rich by oppressing and stealing from those who are weaker, will continue forever. But this situation is temporary; things are ultimately headed in a different direction: “Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
One of the most dangerous mistakes we can make, in looking at the condition of the world, is to assume that things will always be this way. The world is in an abnormal state. Things are not the way God created them to be. Sin has brought corruption into the world; oppression and tyranny are part of the world because people want to be like God. But this situation will not continue forever. The One the Babylonians are resisting is the One whose presence is going to fill the earth with overflowing abundance in the future. They’re resisting the lordship of the One who “accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will” (Ephesians 1:11). This One whose lordship they’re resisting is going to fill the earth with His glory; what will happen to them then?
The third thing to notice is that they’re making false assumptions about God. They’re trusting in gods that don’t exist at all: “Of what value is an idol, since a man has carved it? Or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak. Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’ Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it.” They’re putting their trust in an illusion, in gods that simply don’t exist; and soon the illusion is going to be taken away. The reality is stated in verse 20: “But the Lord is in his holy temple.” All the time that they are worshiping and serving false gods, the living God is exalted in His holy temple. He’s the One who gave them the power they’ve been abusing, but they’re giving the credit to these gods that don’t exist at all. These false gods are going to let them down, and they are going to be called to give account to God their creator, the One whose lordship they’ve rejected.
This passage divides up into five sections, each pronouncing condemnation on some aspect of the Babylonian nation. The last section, vv. 18-20, condemns their idolatry. Why have they become such evil, oppressive people? Partly because they’ve been worshiping gods made in their own image. The living God, who created us, confronts us with our sinfulness and calls us to repentance; but idols made in our own image affirm the worst things about us. They permit us to go on in our self-destructive ways; they tell us that everything is going to be fine. Here’s a good description of idolatry: “Pagans take that which is simply found within their nature; and taking what is as the measure of what is good, they represent it to themselves and make of it a god: man as the measure of all things” (Jeffrey Burke Satinover, “Jungians and Gnostics,” in First Things, October 1994, p. 44). They make gods in their own image, like the Babylonians. And here’s how it works out in practice: “In thus spiritualizing the instincts, pagan worship therefore tends naturally to the violent, the hedonistic, and the orgiastic. Pagan religious ritual arouses the instincts, especially sexuality and aggression, to the keenest possible pitch.... Violent intoxication, temple prostitution, the ritual slaughter of enemies, self-mutilation, even child sacrifice: all these historical phenomena can be understood not as pathological, but as predictable end-points to the unfettering of human nature” (Ibid.). The Babylonians became like they were by worshiping gods made in their own image, gods that affirmed the worst things about them, rather than calling them to repentance.
Those who resist God’s lordship are on a collision course with reality; they’re on a foolish, self-destructive course. They can’t possibly succeed. They’re trying to go against the grain of reality: the truth about themselves; the truth about the certain direction of the future; and the truth about God, the Creator of all things. Habakkuk’s series of woes ends with idolatry, because being deceived about God, worshiping idols, leads us to be deceived in all the other areas. So, if we don’t want to become like them, we need to begin by examining our assumptions about God. Are we bowing before God, the Creator and Lord of the universe, or are we manufacturing gods in our own image? Have we created a comfortable god, who tells us only things we want to hear, who affirms all the things we want to do, or are we bowing before the One who calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him? We may not be bowing before gods of wood or stone, but if we’ve created a safe, comfortable god, who only tells us things we want to hear, we’ve become idolaters. We’ve found a respectable way to evade God’s lordship in our lives; and we won’t succeed any more than the ancient Babylonians did. A false god will corrupt every area of our lives and will destroy us in the end.
We’re faced with two alternatives. We can invent gods that make it easy for us, for now, to live for ourselves, grasping after whatever we think will make us happy. But we’ll destroy ourselves in the end. And even in the meantime we’ll find, again and again, that these things are not what we were hoping for. St. Augustine was right: our hearts are restless until they find rest in Him. So the only real solution is to surrender to His lordship and seek Him. This is the conclusion the author of Ecclesiastes reaches near the end of his book: “Honor and enjoy your Creator while you’re still young, Before the years take their toll and your vigor wanes, Before your vision dims and the world blurs And the winter years keep you close to the fire” (12:1-2, The Message). Or this, from Hosea the prophet: “Come, let us return to the Lord! He has torn us in pieces; now he will heal us. He has injured us; now he will bandage our wounds. In just a short time, he will restore us so we can live in his presence. Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring” (6:1-3, NLT).
And that’s where Habakkuk, after all his questioning and struggling, leads us in the final chapter: “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.” Why can he say this? Because he knows things the Babylonians don’t know. He knows the truth about God, about himself, and about the future that this God is going to bring about: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” In the meantime, because we also know the truth, let’s press on to know this true, living God. Let’s make it the business of our lives to know Him and to walk under His lordship.
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