Remember this and stand firm,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it. | Isaiah 46:8–11
As God responds to the lament of the prophet Habakkuk, He does it from a divine perspective (as He should). The problem with this is that human beings are so used to an earthly view that the heavenly sounds jarring. When God tells the prophet that He is raising up the Chaldeans to rebuke His people, we wonder along with Habakkuk how this could be comforting; yet God states it as good news.
One of the means to understanding this from God’s perspective is to view the moment through the lens of the end. As God says to Isaiah above:
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done
He is referring to the fact that He is above and outside of time, so He doesn’t experience the unfolding of history the way that we do; one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter 3:8). This does not just mean that time moves quicker or more slowly, but that to God: time is woven together. It all connects to Him. He acts with the entire span of time in mind.
We cannot see the world this way, but we can accept the promises that God has given and the assurance of things not yet seen. When we do, we are able to use future events to put the present into context. I touched on this in the sermon: if we know that we will have victory in the end, it changes the way we suffer and fight along the way. That we will live in perfection forever takes the sting off of whatever we may be struggling through now.
Our hope for what is to come is based on what God has done. We don’t just assume that He will do good things in the future or that He can reverse the effects of sin. He has done this in the past, which gives us confidence that he will do as He has promised. The more that we dwell on all that He has done (and give Him credit for all of our blessings), the deeper our trust in Him is. The greatest act of power, redemption and grace is the gospel. When we dwell on the fact that God rescued us from death and applied His righteousness to us, through Jesus Christ – that He so loved the world that He sacrificed on our behalf – the rest of our life becomes an act of worship to Him. We now live by the law of Christ (1 Corinthians 9:21), asking in every situation: what would bring glory to God? The recognition of all that God has done for us becomes the reason behind all we do.
The gospel pushes us as a motivation, while the New Heavens and the New Earth pulls us forward, keeping us from getting stuck in the struggles of this life. When we lament, like Habakkuk does here, it tends to be asking God to work in a specific way in this specific moment. His answer to us, like it is to His prophet, is to pull back and to show the span of time. To show that He created the world and has been actively involved in it; He shows us that the end of His plan is to bring ALL THINGS back into perfect balance. He promises:
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.
The moment that we live and experience is just one small part of God’s plan. We may struggle to find the hope in our allotted time, but we know our life has value, because the author of the plan says so. Rather than trying to fix it ourselves, or demand that God do what we think best, we should learn to rest in Him. This allows His victorious purpose to define us. He is carrying us – both pushing and pulling – until we obtain the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls (1 Peter 1:9). This life is difficult, but when we are sure that God is working for our good, we can operate out of confidence rather than fear.