Audio
Religious institutions have abandoned the Scriptures and
become corrupt. The government has become hostile to God and those who are put
their faith in Him. Genuine believers are despised and outcast in a society where
they were once the majority. Systemic injustice feeds the unchecked spread of
violence and moral decay. Sexual sin is tolerated, even celebrated, publicly.
The foundations of society are crumbling. In the East, a well-organized force
of brutal terrorism arises to destroy by force whatever stands in its way of
world domination.
This is not a summary of the stories from this morning’s
newscasts, but instead it is a brief glimpse at the prevailing conditions of
the tiny nation of Judah
2,600 years ago. In those deplorable conditions, there lives a prophet named
Habakkuk. For some time, he has cried out to his fellow countrymen in the name
of God, and they have turned a deaf ear to him. Together with an oppressed
minority of the righteous in the land, they have turned their cries heavenward,
asking God to do something about the
situation. For a long time, there has been no answer. In despair, the prophet
has asked God how long it will be until he hears them and answers. He has asked
God that question that rolls off of our lips so easily in troubled times:
“Why?” And God answered the prophet in a surprising way.
In verses 5-11, which we examined last week, we saw how God
said that He was already at work in the situation. The way in which He was
working, however, was surprising. The Lord said in verse 5, “I am doing
something in your days – you would not believe if you were told.” But He told
him anyway, saying that He was raising up the Chaldeans (better known to us as
the Babylonians) to come in violently and take the people of Judah away into captivity. It must
have sounded to Habakkuk like the cure was worse than the disease! He was
burdened about what he saw in his own culture, but what the Lord showed him was
about to happen burdened him all the more. This message from God in verses 5-11
is, in part, the burden which he
speaks of in the very first verse.
Things were not going the way Habakkuk wished they would.
And God’s answer seems only to make matters worse. Bad news was followed by
worse news. But Habakkuk did not let these things push him away from his God;
rather he pressed into God by faith to reaffirm his convictions, to voice his
questions, and to wait for God’s answer.
I suppose it was about a year ago that I felt led to preach
this book of Habakkuk after we finished the Gospel of John, and I remember
thinking, “Well, Habakkuk is pretty relevant to our day and time.” I could have
never imagined how much more relevant
this book would become over the ensuing year. It is as if our times have caught
up with our text to make this prophetic book read as if it were hot off the
press. As I was writing these very words on Thursday, video and pictures
scrolled across my computer monitor from the funerals of Philando Castile and the officers killed in Dallas , and news began to break of the horrific attack in Nice , France Turkey ,
and then Baton Rouge .
And of course, added to these are a multitude of other tragedies and turmoils
that surround us on a daily basis. There will be new ones before this day is
out.
I have mentioned before that Habakkuk has an infinite
advantage over us in that the Lord has given him specific revelation about what
is to come for his nation. We do not have that. We have no certain means of
determining if an act that occurs today is divine judgment against sin, or if
it is just another expression of that sin working its way out in the world. We
do not know what will become of our nation, our denomination, our congregation,
or our situation. Only God knows that, and He has not revealed it to us. So we
can make neither declarations nor predictions. But, what we can be are students
of the history of God’s dealings with men and nations, and from that we can find
parallels and precedents that should both encourage and alarm us, equipping us
to respond in mature faith to the troubled times in which we live.
Habakkuk, like many of his fellow prophets, was familiar
with the ways of the Lord and the state of the world. He knew about the nations
that surrounded his own and how they conducted themselves on the stage of global
affairs. He knew about his own nation and leaders. But more importantly he knew
God – who God was, what God said, and how God acted in the world. He was like
those sons of Issachar, of whom it was said in 1 Chronicles 12:32 were, “men
who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do.” May God help
each of us to be so described! May God help us to understand the times in which
we live, and the ways in which He works, that we might advise one another, our
own culture, and anyone who will give ear to our words, how we must live and
what we must do in light of what is going on around us. Habakkuk helps us in
this regard, for he shows us how to be people of faith in troubled times. There
are three requirements, and we find them here in our text.
I. We must articulate the convictions on which our faith
rests (1:12-13a).
Recently I watched a movie entitled “The Finest Hours” about
an extremely dangerous and improbable rescue mission that the U. S. Coast Guard
performed on an oil tanker that had been ripped in half by a storm off the
coast of Boston
in 1952. The heroism and bravery of a small crew on a small craft saved the
lives of more than 30 men aboard that tanker, but the movie also shows the
heroic efforts of the tanker’s senior surviving engineer to put the ship in a
place where the crew could be rescued. As the ship was rapidly taking on water,
Ray Sybert ordered the men to forcibly steer the rear half of the ship to run
aground on a sandbar where they would stop drifting and could wait for their
rescue.[1]
There are times in our lives and in the broader picture of
national and global affairs when we feel as if the storms have broken loose
everything that was fastened down. In those moments, we must find some solid
rock upon which to run our faith aground in order to stabilize ourselves
against the wind and the waves. And that shoal of security is in the unshakable
convictions that we hold from God’s Word about the truth of His unchangeable
nature. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “We must … remind ourselves of those things of
which we are absolutely certain, things which are entirely beyond doubt. Write
them down and say to yourself: ‘In this terrible and perplexing situation in
which I find myself, here at least is solid ground.’”[2]
That is where Habakkuk turns in the midst of his troubles. The
report that he has just received from the Lord about what is coming upon Judah has sent
him reeling. But, Habakkuk anchors himself on his unshakable convictions about
who the Lord is and what the Lord has said. Using four distinct titles for God,
Habakkuk calls out to Him as Lord, God, Holy One, and Rock.
All of these titles are steeped in Hebrew biblical
tradition. In verse 12, the word “Lord” may contain all capital letters in your
English Bibles. Many versions employ this in order to indicate that the
underlying Hebrew word is the divine name “YHWH.” This is the name by which God
revealed Himself to Moses, when He said “I am that I am.” Habakkuk was not
calling out to some unknown deity, but to the one true God who had revealed
Himself and acted in history on behalf of His people, Israel . The
name Elohim, translated as “God,” harkens back to the very first verse of the
Bible where Elohim is said to have created the heavens and the earth. The very
mention of this name evokes the idea of unlimited power and timelessness. Thus,
Habakkuk can say of this God that He is “from everlasting.” He has no beginning
or end. All of history, all of the present, all of the future, exists before
Him instantaneously as one eternal “now.” He knows the end from the beginning.
He preceded Israel ’s
history, and Babylon ’s
as well, and He will exist unchanged when all else passes away.
Habakkuk calls Him
“Holy One,” which speaks of God’s transcendence. He is not like us, but wholly
other, and is of infinite purity and righteousness. Because He is the “Holy
One,” Habakkuk says in verse 13, “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and
you cannot look on wickedness.” Then, he calls Him, “Rock.” As the Rock, God is
unchanging, strong, and steadfast. Nothing moves or shakes Him, therefore those
who are being moved and shaken about can anchor themselves to Him for refuge.
Not only does Habakkuk rest in the knowledge of who this God
is, but he rests secure in personal relationship with Him. Each of these divine
names is preceded by either the vocative expression “O” or the personal
possessive pronoun “my.” This God, Habakkuk can claim to be “my God.” The Holy
One is “my Holy One.” The anchor of the prophet’s personal relationship with
Him holds fast in the midst of the storm that surrounds him, and when he calls
upon Him as his own God and Holy One, he can do so with the vocative utterance,
“O Lord, O Rock,” knowing that God attends to his cries with care and concern
and will answer his prayers.
Notice how this conviction about God’s nature informs
Habakkuk’s convictions about God’s ways. There is much that he does not
understand, much that is uncertain, but based on all that he knows about God’s
nature, Habakkuk is able to say with confidence, “We will not die.” He is not
arguing with God here. God never said they would all die. He said that the
Chaldeans were coming for violence and would collect captives. But Habakkuk
knows that God has spoken concerning the future of His people Israel with
unchangeable promise because this is a God who cannot lie, who does not change,
and will not go back on His word. In Genesis 17, God promised to Abraham and
his descendants had been brought into an everlasting covenant. He renewed that
covenant with Isaac and Jacob, and to Jacob He said, “I am with you and will
keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land” (Gen 26:15).
Those promises were renewed through Moses and crystallized with David, from
whom the Lord said a descendant would come who would have an everlasting
kingdom forever established by God Himself (2 Sam 7:12-19). Habakkuk is merely
taking God at His Word. He is saying, in essence, “Whatever the Babylonians
might do to us, they cannot and will not exterminate us, because You, O Lord,
have given us promises that You will never break! This will not be our end. As
a nation, we will not die, even though we will be carried away. You will
preserve a remnant for Yourself because You are the Holy One, my Lord, the one
true God, who is an unchanging and steadfast Rock!”
So, that means that whatever it is that this God has allowed
or orchestrated to occur will serve ultimately to further His purpose. Habakkuk
therefore can conclude, based on his convictions about who God is and what God
has said, that the invasion of the Babylonians will ultimately prove to be for
the nation’s good and God’s glory. “You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge;
and You, O Rock, have established them to correct.” By this foreign power, God
was disciplining His people just as He had long before promised to do when they
turned away from Him (Dt 28:25-50). He was correcting them from their errors of
idolatry, injustice and immorality and exercising judgment on the very evils
about which Habakkuk had been crying out for a long time (vv2-4).
In troubled times, such as those in which we now live, we
must follow the example of Habakkuk and articulate the convictions on which our
faith rests. We must remind ourselves and declare to God and those around us that
we know Him to be faithful, all-powerful, sovereign and steadfast, eternal and
unchanging, completely pure and infinitely holy, and relentless in the
promotion of His own glory and the holiness of His people. Therefore, none of
His promises will fail, and all that transpires in our lives falls within the
arena of His providential care for us, ultimately serving His good purposes. Times
will be difficult, even and perhaps especially for the children of God in this
fallen world. But we will not die! God has made unbreakable promises to His
own, individually and collectively. Jesus has said that He is building His
church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, and that whoever
believes in Him will live even if we die. Calvin said, “Except then we be fully
persuaded, that God by His secret providence regulates all these confusions,
Satan will a hundred times a day, yea every moment, shake that confidence which
ought to repose in God.”[3] As
Lloyd-Jones said, “It is a great thing to reassure your soul with those things
that are beyond dispute.”[4]
So, in troubled times, people of faith articulate the
convictions on which our faith rests. That’s the first thing. But now secondly,
we see …
II. We must acknowledge the assumptions by which our faith
is rocked (1:13b-17).
Having stated the things which he is confident concerning
God, Habakkuk proceeds to launch a new series of four questions. These are
questions which he finds impossible to square with his conviction about who God
is and what He has spoken. We understand how that feels, don’t we. We know all
these things to be true, but those truths seem only to exacerbate our confusion
and disillusionment. So we have deep questions that we long to ask God, just as
Habakkuk did. And friends, I want you to know that God welcomes those
questions. He is not intimidated by our hardest questions. He already knows
what they are, so He invites you to lay them out before Him. But, as we do
that, we may find that there are mistaken assumptions beneath our questions,
and those mistaken assumptions are what is rocking our faith in troubled times.
Habakkuk’s first question is “Why do You look with favor on
those who deal treacherously?” It is rooted in his confident assertion stated
in verse 12 that the eyes of the Lord are too pure to approve evil and that He
cannot look on wickedness with favor. So, why is He doing it now with the
Babylonians? Verses 15 and 16 depict in vivid detail the horrors of Babylon ’s terrorism. In
verse 14, he likens Israel
to the fish of the sea, but then likens Babylon
to ruthless fishermen. They “bring all of them up with a hook, drag them away
with their net, and gather them together in their fishing net.” Archaeology has
shown us that these are not mere metaphors. Quite literally, the Babylonians
were known to drag their captives off by hooks through their lips. One famous
inscription depicts the gods of Babylon ’s
pantheon carrying captives in a net.[5]
Habakkuk wonders aloud before the Lord how He could possibly approve of such
malicious cruelty. But it is a mistaken assumption that the Lord approves of
such or looks upon it with favor. The Lord has already declared in verse 11
that He will hold them guilty for their atrocities. Just because He has a plan
to use them in His purposes of chastening Israel does not mean that He
blindly approves of all that they do. Their day of reckoning will come, but
first, God has a use for them. He uses us too, but that doesn’t mean that He
approves of everything we do. He is sovereign and can use whatever tool He
chooses to accomplish His work.
In the second question, Habakkuk asks, “Why are You silent
when the wicked swallow up those more righteous then they?” There are two
mistaken assumptions here. The first one is obvious. “Why are You silent?” Had
God not just spoken? There are seven verses immediately preceding this passage
in which God outlines all that He is doing clearly. Habakkuk has just expressed
his confidence in what God has spoken! But how quickly we forget that God has
spoken and what He has said when we are faced with troubled times. As the
hymnwriter says, “What more can He say than to you He has said?”
The second mistaken assumption in that second question
concerns the nature of Habakkuk’s own people, indeed human nature in general.
He says that “the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they.”
Previously, Habakkuk had cried out against the wickedness of his own people,
indicting them for violence, iniquity, destruction, strife, contention,
injustice and a disregard for the Word of God. He knew that his people were not
righteous. But he appeals to a sliding scale here, insisting that they are more righteous than the Babylonians. The
problem with that appeal is that such a sliding scale as this does not exist in
the halls of God’s justice. It is a quick and easy thing to instinctively claim
the moral high ground when we are pushed into a corner, but doing so betrays a
fundamental misunderstanding of the human condition. Consider the indictment of
the entire human race found in the language of the Psalms that Paul weaves
together in Romans 3:10-12 –
There
is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none
who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless;
there is none who does good, there is not even one.
Like it or not, “all sin is the same before God. We may
speak of certain people being more wicked or more unrighteous than others; but
God declares that ‘there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3:22-23).”[6] If
God were to use a righteous people to execute His purposes in the world, it
would have had to have been His chosen nation. But when that nation becomes
unrighteous in itself, “upon whom may God rely to execute judgment justly?”[7] The
standard of righteousness is God’s own righteousness, who said, “You shall be
holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:2). We all fall short of it, so
there is no ground to gain by appealing to some bell curve that does not exist.
When you think that you hold a superior position morally to anyone else, you
have fallen into a mistaken assumption that will rock your faith when times
become troubled.
In Habakkuk’s third question, he asks, “Why have You made
men like the fish of the sea, like creeping things without a ruler over them?”
And then he proceeds to describe the cruelties of the Babylonian fishing fleet
with their hooks and nets. Again here we find two mistaken assumptions
underlying this question. The first one is that this is all God’s fault. “Why
have You made men to be like this?” Oh no, this is not how God made men. This
is how sin has made men. This is how sinful men have made themselves. God is
orchestrating these events, but Judah
is reaping what she has sown in her own rebellion against God. Like Adam, who
said when he sinned that it was the fault of “the woman You gave me,” we are
quick to lay the blame for our misfortunes at God’s feet, when often we are
being forced to lie upon a bed of our own making.
The second mistaken assumption is that God has made men like
those with no ruler over them. The idea is that the people have no leader, no
protector, no one to guide them and deliver them from their trouble. Habakkuk
said this to God – and with a straight face! The fact is that the nation of Judah ,
just as the entire human race, has turned away from the One ruler who could
lead, protect, guide and deliver us from our troubles. In ancient Israel , there
was no king but God alone. But the nation said, “We want a king like all the
other nations have,” and that is exactly what they got. Calamity ensued
because, in the words of the Lord, “they have rejected Me from being king over
them” (1 Sam 8:4-7). Today we find ourselves on the brink of despair as we
consider the pathetic options set before us for this coming presidential
election. We may cry out to God and say, “Why have You made us like a people
with no ruler?” And should the Lord not say to us, “Why have you not looked to Me to be that leader?”
The final question of the prophet occurs in verse 17: “Will
they therefore empty their net and continually slay nations without sparing?”
Furthering the fishing analogy, the picture is of those who come to shore, dump
their catch out of their nets, and go right back out to fill them again. Will Babylon do this with
their captives forever? Will there be no end to the malicious inhumanity of
their terrorism? There is, yet again, an underlying mistaken assumption. That
assumption is one that we often make in troubled times – that things will never
change, there will be no end to the troubles, and that ultimately there is no
hope for a better day to come. This is the condition of the soul that we call despair. When the weight of this fallen
world presses in upon us, we are prone to forget that there is a weight of
glory beyond all comparison that is to come (2 Cor 4:17). Like Habakkuk, at
times our perspective becomes too confined to our immediate circumstances and
we lose sight of the promises and providences of our God. The Christian may
become many discouraged, disillusioned, and even depressed in this world filled
with sin and suffering. But the one thing that we must never allow to happen in
our hearts is to fall into despair because when all else is shaken loose from
the moorings, we have an unshakable hope. Though all is not right in the world,
though terrible things may happen to us without explanation or reason, there is
coming a day when all wrongs will be made right, a day of reckoning when the
guilty will be called to account in the perfect judgment of God, and justice
will be served in a way that the corrupted systems of this world could never
render it. To abandon hope in troubled times is to allow our faith to be rocked
by a mistaken assumption.
So, if you feel your faith beginning to falter and questions
beginning to arise in your heart and mind, voice them to God. Lay your soul
bare before Him, and in so doing, examine your questions and concerns honestly
to see if there are any mistaken assumptions underlying your questions. It may well
be that your faith is being rocked, not by what God has revealed, but by what
you have mistakenly assumed to be true, which He has never declared or
promised. That’s the second requirement for people of faith in troubled times.
We articulate the convictions on which our faith rests and we acknowledge the
assumptions by which our faith is rocked. There is one more found here in the
first verse of Chapter 2.
III. We must anticipate the answers by which our faith is
restored (2:1).
With all that is going on in the world and in our nation, we
are hearing a lot of people saying that it is time for us all to “speak up.”
There is surely a time to speak up, but just as surely there is a time to shut
up, and wisdom is knowing the difference between the two. D. A. Carson has
said, “Sometimes the most godly thing a mouth may do is keep silent.”[8]
And, having expressed his unshakable convictions and aired his perplexing
questions, Habakkuk has arrived at that moment where talking ceases and
listening begins. He says in 2:1, “I will stand on my guard post and station
myself on the rampart; And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me,
and how I may reply when I am reproved.”
Genuine faith knows that God will have the final word, and
it waits in expectation for that word to come. Habakkuk has bared his soul
before the Lord, and now he waits. Notice his humility as he says that he not
only expects a word from the Lord, but even a reproof from Him. He knows that
his thinking on some of these matters has gone awry. He doesn’t plead with God
to come around to his way of thinking, but rather expects that the Lord will
correct his misunderstandings and mistaken assumptions and bring him around at
last to His way of thinking! We see the Psalmist go through this very thing in
Psalm 73. This is the fundamental difference between the cynic and the faithful
believer. The cynic refuses to believe under any circumstance, while the
believer refuses to deny under any circumstance. Where faith is perplexed, the
cynic leans on his own understanding and concludes that the Lord cannot answer.
The believer, on the other hand, plants himself firmly and refuses to move
until the Lord’s answer comes.
As the text unfolds, we will discover how the Lord responds
and reproves His prophet. But as history has unfolded, the Lord has shown us an
even clearer answer to the concerns of Habakkuk’s heart – concerns that are
shared by all people of faith who find themselves in troubled times. What
Habakkuk wants is for the Lord to come down from heaven and deal with the
wicked in hand-to-hand combat. What the Lord did was something that would not
have been believed even if it had been told. He came down from heaven and put
Himself face-to-face with the wicked, and they murdered Him on the cross of Calvary . On that day, for the only time in history, the
question could be genuinely asked, “Why are You silent when the wicked swallow
up Him who is more righteous than they?” Habakkuk’s cry of “my God, why?” is
drowned out by the louder cry of the Lord Jesus on the cross, “My God, My God,
why have You forsaken Me?” It was in that moment of His death that that the
fullness of mankind’s wickedness, violence, injustice and immorality met with
the fullness of perfect justice and wrath. As our substitutionary sacrifice,
Jesus received in Himself what we deserve for our sins and our treason against
the rightful reign of God. And because He did, and subsequently arose
victoriously over sin and death, those who have faith in Him can say with a
more solid conviction, “We will not die!” Jesus has promised life everlasting
to those who trust in Him, and removes their wickedness and grants to them His
own righteousness in exchange. Covered in that righteousness, we await the
appointed day which is fixed on the timetable of God and known only to Him,
when He will return as Judge and King to vindicate the cause of His saints and
pass verdict on all unrighteousness and injustice. Until that day comes, we cry
out to Him, “How long, O Lord!” as we see the terror and trouble of our times.
And we wait on the watchtower in faith for Him to declare that the day has
come.
[1] This
detail may have been embellished for the film, as historical reports do not
mention it.
[2] D.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, From Fear to Faith (Nottingham:
Inter-Varsity, 1953), 25.
[3] John
Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets: Habakkuk, Zephaniah,
Haggai (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950), 42.
[4]
Lloyd-Jones, 25.
[5] O.
Palmer Robertson, The Books of Nahum,
Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (New International Commentary on the Old Testament;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 162-163.
[6] David
Prior, The Message of Joel, Micah, &
Habakkuk (Bible Speaks Today; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998),
223.
[7] James
Bruckner, The NIV Application Commentary:
Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah (Grand
Rapids : Zondervan, 2004), 217.
[8] http://www.challies.com/a-la-carte/a-la-carte-june-7.
Accessed July 14, 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment