Thursday 3rd August
Read Habakkuk 3:8-10
“Were you angry with the rivers, Lord?
Was your wrath against the streams?
Did you rage against the sea
when you rode your horses
and your chariots to victory?
9 You uncovered your bow,
you called for many arrows.
You split the earth with rivers;
10 the mountains saw you and writhed.
Torrents of water swept by;
the deep roared
and lifted its waves on high.” (NIVUK)
The Lord is on the march. But against whom is he marching (v5-7)?
There is a sense in this psalm that one should be careful what one asks for. Often when we pray and ask God to intervene in a circumstance or grief we ask with specific ideas in our own mind as to what the right response from God should look like. But, in the fictional words of CS Lewis, ‘Aslan is not a tame lion’…
When you invite God’s presence into any situation it is foolish to presume to know how He will respond. In asking God to be righteous, act justly and judge the wicked, like Habakkuk, we have a fixed idea as to who is righteous and who is wicked! We don’t often place ourselves amongst the wicked. But when God marches He does not show favourites. His very presence results in tumult. Creation itself writhes and quakes and the waters rise up and roar (v9-10).
This psalm does not have a ‘happily ever after’ ending. God is marching and His people will feel His wrath, as, in turn, will those who have marched against them. There is no escape. There is only the plea at the beginning of the psalm that God will ‘in wrath remember mercy’ (v2). For it is not the mountains or waters that God is marching against, though they tremble and writhe at His passing, it is the wicked in all their many forms.
The most complete picture of the terrible consequences of calling upon God to judge the wicked are described in three sobering chapters of Revelation (17-19).
“One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters…15Then the angel said to me, ‘The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages.” (Revelation 17:1,15) (NIVUK)
Aslan is not a tame lion at all…
