Can God use Evil to Accomplish His Purposes: A Study in Habakkuk 1

In Christian & non-Christian circles, the question often arises about evil in our world & if God can really use evil to accomplish His purposes. Let me briefly explain the question of evil. Many people will say that God created evil. But it must be pointed out that evil is not a thing. Evil is like more of an intrusion, such as rust. You can't create rust, but as iron corrodes, rust will form. In the same way, God created man with freewill. Through his choices, man decided to use the freewill given to him by God to commit evil. That doesn't make God the author of evil. You could say that God created man with the potential to commit evil, but man actualized it when he sinned. It had to be that way. Otherwise, man would just be a robot with no choice, but to bow down & serve God & the relationship would not be a genuine one as man would not truly love God with all his heart, soul, mind & strength. Maybe in another post, we can go further into the origins of evil.

For this post I want to look at the question: can God use evil to accomplish His purposes? To answer this question, I thought we would look at the first chapter of the Book of Habakkuk. Please read the chapter. If you do not have a Bible, you can look it up on http://www.crosswalk.com/ or http://www.biblegateway.com/.

Just to give a quick background to the chapter, Habakkuk was an Old Testament prophet, who prophesied during the final days of the Assyrian Empire. If you know anything about the kings of Israel & Judah from the books of 1 Kings-2 Chronicles, then you are familiar with the reign of wicked kings in the land of Israel & Judah under whose reign the nation was engrossed in idolatry & wickedness. However, King Josiah lead the nation in national repentance & back to God. However, after King Josiah died (609 B.C), the nation quickly reverted back to their evil ways. This is time period in which the book of Habakkuk takes place.

In verses 1-4, Habakkuk is pouring out his complaint before God, that Judah has turned away from Him and that God has not responded in His righteousness, holiness and wrath. The main charges named against Judah were violence, iniquity, wickedness, destruction, strife & contention, the law was ignored and justice was perverted. Does that remind you of anyplace else...maybe even our country.

In verses 5-11, God responds to Habakkuk's complaint. In Habakkuk's temporal vision, he could only see the wickedness around him and what appeared to be God's indifference to it. We should never assume that because God has not judged wickedness, that He is indifferent to it. Because God is holy, He hates sin and He will ultimately judge it in His way & in His timing. He is patient & longsuffering in extending His grace and giving the wicked time to repent. However, if they reject His kindness and common grace, they are merely storing up wrath for themselves in the day of judgment according to Romans 2:5, which states: "But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God". God views things in light of eternity. He is not pushed for time because He is not limited by time. He has eternal purposes to accomplish His sovereign plan. God is not a tit-for-tat kind of God, waiting for us to mess up so that He can wipe us out. Rather, He accomplishes everything in His perfect timing and will, even giving us time to repent. It all fits (even His longsuffering) in His sovereign plan.

While all this wickedness was going on in Judah, God knew all along what their punishment would be, in fact He set it up. The Babylonians had been marching and conquering surrounding lands: in 612 B.C, they captured Nineveh, Haran in 609 B.C and Carchemish in 605 B.C. Little did Judah know that the Babylonians were headed their way! A Habakkuk was prophesying, King Nebuchadnezzar was being raised to power. He would be the king who would lead the strike against Judah. Nebuchadnezzar's father, Nabopolassar ascended to power in 626 B.C and Nebuchadnezzar, the oldest son, took over the role of King of Babylon after his father's death on August 15, 605 B.C. The stage was being set unbeknowst to Habbakuk or the rest of Judah. God is asserting to Habakkuk that He has everything under control and that Judah's sin has not gone unnoticed. He is sovereignly behind the scenes working it out so that Babylon would capture Judah so that ultimately Judah would turn back to the God of their salvation.

In verses 12-17, Habakkuk responds to God's verdict. Habakkuk initially cried out inquiring when God was going to rebuke Judah for their rebellion. God has now revealed to Habakkuk that He will use the Babylonians to punish Judah. This presents a perplexing dilemma for Habakkuk. He knows that the Babylonians are a far more wicked people than Judah. This didn't make sense to Habakkuk at all. In verses 12 & 13 he declares, "12 Are You not from everlasting, O LORD, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. You, O LORD, have appointed them to judge; And You, O Rock, have established them to correct. 13 Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, And You can not look on wickedness with favor. Why do You look with favor on those who deal treacherously? Why are You silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they?" Here, the "them" & the "they" and "the wicked" that Habakkuk is referring to are the Babylonians. Habakkuk declares that God is eternal and holy and righteous and by His very nature, He can't look upon sin with approval. In Habakkuk's mind, by using the Babylonians to chastise Judah, God was in essence giving His approval and favor to Babylon. This was the likely interpretation because during the days of the conquest when coming into the Promised Land, as a result of God's hand of favor, Judah was about to defeat mighty armies in order to take possession of the land that God had given to them. So Habakkuk was in a sense thinking that God has removed His hand from Judah and had now adopted Babylon as His covenant people. But he could not reconcile God's holiness with His partnership with such a wicked people. So Habakkuk spends verses 14-17 pointing out to God how wicked the Babylonians were (as if God didn't already know). He assumes that either God didn't know these things or that He has made an uninformed decision that is going against His nature.

We must always remember that God's attributes never change according to Malachi 3:6. Anything that God does or says, though it may seem contradictory to us, is always in agreement with His nature. In our finite minds, we try to judge God by our own standards. For instance, we try to hold God's love to our standard of touchy, feely love and therefore when God chastises us out of love, we assume that He is not being loving even though Hebrews 12:6 says: "That whom the Lord loves He disciplines". Habakkuk mistakenly associated God's usage of Babylon to capture Judah as God's approval of Babylon. God had previously (verse 11b) told Habakkuk that Babylon will still be held guilty. It reads, "But they will still be held guilty, they whose strength is their god". So God is still going to judge Babylon because their strength was their god. The Babylonians were known for their rampant idol worship. They worshipped gods that they had created with their own hands in their own likeness and image and they trusted in themselves as the source for their military and political greatness . In fact, in Daniel 4:30, we see the scene where Nebuchadnezzar is walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon and it reads: "The king reflected and said, 'Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?" The Babylonian's self-sufficiency and idolatry was their own destruction. God was going to use Babylon to accomplish His own purpose.

God does and can use evil people and their actions by turning it around for overall good. This does not mean that God condones evil or that He does not hate it, it just means that rather than let an evil situation jut end in utter tragedy, He will accomplish good out of it. He even uses evil people who think that they are acting alone that they are merely doing their own good pleasure. Because God is omniscient, He knows the evil intent of man's heart and in His foreknowledge, He knows the evil that man will do. So rather than violating man's freewill, God takes man's actions and accomplishes a good result of it all. This was exactly the case with the Babylonians. Even though God was using their evil actions to punish Judah, they were still storing up wrath for themselves and they would not go unpunished because they were still acting out of their own freewill. This is a very difficult topic and it's hard to comprehend how God can use evil for good, while at the same time allowing man freewill. That's why He's God and we're not and just because something is incomprehensible to us, doesn't mean it isn't so. We must remember the words in Genesis 18:25: "Shall not the Judge of the earth do what is right?". also, Romans 9:14 says that there is no injustice with God. It should also be pointed out that in His longsuffering, God does allow man to pursue their sinful desires. Even while they are indulged in sin, God's kindness is still leading them to repentance (Romans 2:4,5). The book of Habakkuk was written somewhere around 609 B.C and the Babylonians did not invade Jerusalem until 597 B.C. So God was warning Habakkuk some 12 or so years before they would be captured. Not to mention, the prophet, Jeremiah, had started prophesying about 18 years before Habakkuk warning Judah to repent because the Babylonian captivity was coming. Ultimately, God gets the glory because He was giving both Judah and Babylon time to repent. Though Judah, did not repent, God used the 70 years of captivity to turn their hearts back to Him. After the captivity, God allowed a remnant to return back to Jerusalem, where they rebuilt the city and dedicated themselves back to the Lord as a nation. In the meantime, the Babylonians had been overthrown and destroyed by the Medo-Persian Empire (538 B.C), and they would never again recover. So God used the time of captivity to restore His covenant people and ensured that Babylon would no longer be a threat to them. Psalm 137 was written during the time of the Babylonian captivity. It reveals how as the people were captives in a foreign land, they longed for the days that they were home and that they could praise the Lord in freedom. As they observed their present conditions, they were repentant and longed for home. Sometimes,we must go through a period of captivity so that we can truly appreciate and see the error of our ways and the grace of God. Verses 1 of Psalm 137 reads :"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion". Can't you hear the somber repentance in their song? After their return from captivity, there is another psalm recorded. The sadness and grief is gone and now the people are rejoicing because they have been restored to God. Psalm 126 reads: " 1When the LORD brought back the captive ones of Zion, We were like those who dream. 2Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with joyful shouting; Then they said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them" 3The LORD has done great things for us; We are glad. 4Restore our captivity, O LORD; As the streams in the South. 5Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting. 6He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him". As we read the testimony of Judah's disobedience, the Babylonian captivity of Judah, Babylon's fall & Judah's restoration, we see the providential hand of God & how He does and can use evil to accomplish His purposes.