Introduction: Among the Old Testament prophets, the Prophet Habakkuk is most unique. Unlike the other prophets who declared God’s message to the people, Habakkuk dialogued with God about the people. Unlike the other prophets who predicted divine judgment, Habakkuk pleaded for it.

We are hard-pressed to find a more timely message among the ancient prophets for our day and time than the message of the Prophet Habakkuk. His message is as contemporary as our daily headlines, for he, like the spiritually astute and discerning of our day, saw this fallen world as a ticking black time bomb about to explode.  

Although the book of Habakkuk begins with the prophet complaining and interrogating God, it ends with his confidence in God and intercession to God. In this great book of the Old Testament, fear is transformed into faith, worry turns into worship, terror becomes trust, hangups are exchanged for hope, and anxiety gives way to adoration!

Habakkuk 1:1 — The book of Habakkuk contains the heavy burden the prophet bore, because of the solemn word divinely revealed to him to declare. Truly, the prophet's mantle is a weighty wrap for any man to wear.

The Hebrew word for “burden” can also be translated “oracle,” which means “a threatening message of impending doom.”

Habakkuk 1:3-4 — When the wicked restrict the righteous in proclaiming God's law, people are violently oppressed and justice vilely perverted.

"The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws, for all the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting of the precepts contained in the Bible." (Noah Webster) 

Habakkuk 1:5-11 — As shocking and inconceivable as it was to Habakkuk, God was going to chasten His own people with their contemptible and condemned enemies, the Babylonians, whose own condemnation would be made even more certain by their cruel savagery against God's Judah.

As shocking and inconceivable as it may be to contemporary Christians, God, according to the Apostle Paul, still uses our enemies to chasten and correct us. The only difference is, our enemy today is Beelzebub, not Babylon, which proves that even the devil is a pawn in the hand of Divine Providence, being wielded in this fallen world today to bring about God’s plans and purposes. (Acts 13:40-41; 1 Corinthians 5:5; 1 Peter 5:8)

As shocking and inconceivable as it may be to our country’s Christians, God, who used the enemies of ancient Judah to judge sinful Judah, can use the enemies of sinful America to judge us.

Habakkuk 1:12-17 — Having initially complained about God not meting out judgment, Habakkuk now complains about the means of God’s judgment. He no longer complains about God’s seeming indifference, but now about God’s seeming injustice, in His seemingly unseemly choice of the instrument of His judgment.

A sovereign God can use those worst than His own people to judge the wrongs of His own people, not only without compromising His own justice, but also to correct and chasten His chosen with the contemptible and condemned.

Habakkuk 2:1-20 — Since no evil escapes His judgment, God can judge the lesser evil of rebellious saints (Judah) with the greater evil of reprobate sinners (Babylon) without compromising His justice a jot.

Habakkuk 2:4 — The biblical doctrine of justification by faith championed by Paul was conceptualized by Habakkuk. (see also Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38 )

Habakkuk 2:4 — When your outlook elicits terror your up-look should elicit trust. This is the message of Habakkuk—“The just shall live by faith”

Habakkuk 2:14 — As the sea is filled with water, a day is coming when the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord and a populace possessing a firsthand familiarity with it.