Pure eyes.

Are You not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, You have appointed them for judgment; O Rock, You have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours A person more righteous than he? – Habakkuk 1v12-13

Poor Habakkuk. He looked around him and saw the miserable condition of Judah. It was a wicked and vile place. So God gave him a solution – He would send the Chaldeans to punish them!

But that didn’t make any sense – the Chaldeans were even more wicked than Israel!

What is a guy supposed to do when God isn’t making any sense? More on that tomorrow, but for now I want to look at a special part of the passage. It is a truth that is real even when we don't understand it. 'God is of purer eyes than the behold evil. God cannot look at wickedness.

It is precisely for this reason that God sent His Son to the cross and at that vital moment hid His face from His own Son. Because God is of 'purer eyes than to behold evil' Jesus could not sense the Father's face and cried out 'Why have you forsaken me?'

Not to long ago I read the novel 'The Help.' We are with Beth and Ronnie and last night the Armed Forces Network showed the film. Toward the end one of the maids has been fired for her role in writing the book about how black servants were treated in the Old South. As she leaves the little girl she cared for is pounding on the window screaming for her as she walks away.

That image reminds me of something of what it might be like to be forsaken. Man's sins separate him from the God who is too pure to look on evil. Man could never look to God for deliverance apart from the sacrifice of the Perfect One who accepted being forsaken for our sake.

Yes, God is too pure to look on evil, but He sent His Son to cover sin over so that we can have communion with Him.