The chief end of man, says the often quoted Westminster
Catechism, is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. This is the highest purpose
to which we can aspire; it is the answer to the immortal question, “What is the
meaning of life?” Each of us has been given life by our Creator as a gift, and
we are to use that gift in the exercise of bringing glory to God and enjoying
Him in the intimacy of a personal relationship. It sounds quite simple doesn’t
it? But in the world of real human experience, we find that nearly everything
is at odds with this purpose. The world is so infected with sin that it lures
and beckons us to defy this purpose. We ourselves, in our sinful nature – our flesh – are also corrupted by sin, so
that our desires run counter to the glory of God and the enjoyment of Him. And
of course, we have a great spiritual enemy, the devil, who is constantly at
work seeking to persuade and tempt us to abandon the course of glorifying and
enjoying God. We are fallen people in a fallen world. And that makes this
seemingly simple purpose of life much more difficult to attain in real
experience. In Jesus Christ, we are called to be in the world but not of the
world. We are here, in this fallen world, as agents of reconciliation and
transformation to bring glory to God through our lives and our work for Him in
the midst of this world’s corruption. But we are to be on guard, lest we
ourselves become corrupted by the ways of this fallen world. In this world, we
are surrounded by people and things. God’s word is clear that we are to love
people and use things to bring Him glory. But the world and the devil are
always appealing to the sinfulness of our flesh to turn that upside down – to
love things and use people to acquire them, that we might glorify ourselves
instead of our Maker.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire that had burst onto the scene of
world history during Habakkuk’s time is an example of this. Nabopolasser was
perhaps initially motivated by noble ambitions to shake off the oppression of
the Assyrian Empire. He united the Chaldean people and formed a strong military
to secure independence. Soon enough, however, those ambitions became corrupted.
He and his son Nebuchadnezzar began to advance against other nations, conquering,
looting, torturing, and enslaving them simply because they could. No one in the
world could stop them. In the meticulous providence of God, the uprising of the
Babylonian Empire came at a time when God could use them to bring about the
well-deserved judgment upon His own people. With the Northern Kingdom of Israel
having already fallen to the Assyrians a century before, the Southern Kingdom
of Judah had followed in their destructive ways. Injustice, idolatry and
immorality were rampant among a people who had been established to bring glory
to the God who had called them out for Himself, redeemed them from bondage and
established them for Himself in a land that He gave them. In a short time, they
would be steam-rolled by the Babylonians. But Babylon would not escape the judgment of God
themselves. Though God used them, He did not endorse their methods or their
motives. Babylon
was building an empire of self-aggrandizement, and they were breaking the backs
of innocent people to do so. They would answer for it eventually in the perfect
timing of God.
Our text today is the third of five proclamations of
judgment issued against Babylon .
The Lord said that the day was coming in which all the plundered nations who
had fallen prey to Babylon
would rise up and sing taunt-songs against them. Each one begins with a word of
“Woe.” We’ve discussed two of them in previous weeks. This is the third. In
these taunt-songs, Babylon
is mocked by the words of its victims, who give voice to the condemnation of
God Himself.
With the passage of two and a half millennia, the world has
changed a great deal. But in the words of the 19th Century French
satirist Alphonse Karr, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Oppressive geopolitical regimes still assert themselves by force on the world
stage, exploiting weaker nations and minority peoples for their own
advancement. Corrupt justice systems allow the strong to victimize the weak,
often meaning that the wicked triumph over the good. Crooked leaders build massive
corporations by taking advantage of the most vulnerable. And unscrupulous
individuals acquire for themselves great wealth and luxury by trampling others
underfoot. In our own nation, we regularly find ourselves in the voting booth
trying to decide between what we consider “the lesser of two evils,” knowing
that whichever candidate wins will mean bad news for a sizeable number of our
fellow citizens. The causes of righteousness and justice are being trampled
underfoot within the halls of so-called justice. Those who would speak for God
are bullied into silence with threats and intimidation. And the freedoms on
which our lives have been built to this point are evaporating before our eyes.
Like Habakkuk, we cry out, “How long?” And it seems that there is no word from
God.
Ah, but there is a word from God. As we examine His word, we
find that today is not the only day we have and this world is not the only
world there is. There is a better day and a better world promised to those who
hold fast to God by faith in Jesus Christ. And for those who do not, a more
dreadful world and more dreadful day is promised. God told Habakkuk that the
vision He was giving him was “yet for the appointed time,” and that he must
“wait for it; for it will certainly come” (2:3). And though that day did not
come in its fullness in Habakkuk’s lifetime, and it has yet to come in fullness
to this point in time, it will certainly come, according to the Lord’s own
word. And so the righteous continue to live by faith, trusting that none of
God’s words fall to the ground unfulfilled.
So here in this passage, we have not one, but three words
from God that we must cling to as we await the fulfillment of God’s promises.
These are words of things to come.
I. A word of condemnation: Woe to the bloody builders! (v12)
There are a lot of so-called experts out there who write a
lot of stuff about ministry, preaching, church growth, and things like that.
And over the last couple of decades, they have been advising that we need to
get away from preaching about things like wrath, judgment, condemnation and
hell. They say that those subjects are too offensive, and not what people want
to hear. Maybe you feel that way yourself. But if so, I want to challenge you
to examine that feeling for a moment. I want to suggest to you that subjects
like these are not offensive or off-putting at all, but are in fact something
that we desperately long to know are real and true.
Think of it this way. Let’s say that there has been a
horrible act of terrorism committed that has affected many innocent people, and
the perpetrator of that act is still on the loose. Do we not find ourselves
glued to the television and the internet, anxiously awaiting news that the
terrorist has been apprehended? And when they are brought to trial, do we not
follow with great interest to see that justice has been served? The more hurt
and brokenness we experience in this world, the more we long to know that God
is going to do something to make the wrongs right. And the Bible has promised that
He will. And when He does, it will involve those very subjects that so many
claim that they do not want to hear about here and now: wrath, judgment,
condemnation, and hell.
In the case of our text, this is God’s message to Babylon . It is a word of
condemnation. “Woe to the bloody builders!” Verse 12 says, “Woe to him who
builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with violence.” In the imagery
and writings of the ancient Babylonians that survives to this day, two things
are evident about them. They loved to build things, and they were violently
cruel toward the inhabitants of the lands that they conquered. The two were
related, as conquered people were either killed or taken away into captivity,
with many enslaved in forced labor for Babylon ’s
lavish construction projects. And all of the buildings, monuments, and cities
across the Babylonian Empire were constructed for a twofold reason: (A) to
honor the perverse idols of Babylonian religion, and (B) to memorialize the
names of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, the kings who had them built. It was
an act of idol-worship and an act of self-worship, and it was all carried out
by the backbreaking labor of enslaved peoples, financed by the treasures that
had been pillaged from bloody battles in foreign lands.
While people around the world would marvel at Babylon ’s impressive
architectural and engineering feats, the Lord was not impressed. As Theo
Laetsch put it so well, the Lord “saw only the blood of untold numbers of
people who were slaughtered in ruthless warfare in order to obtain the means
which made these buildings possible. He saw only the iniquity, the perversity,
the crookedness of the builders.”[1]
Because human beings are created in the image of God, He takes very seriously
how people treat one another. And the blood that gives life to man is
considered by God to be very sacred. God’s law was clear: “Whoever sheds man’s
blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man”
(Gen 9:6). From the first shedding of human blood recorded in the Bible, in
Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, we learn that innocent blood has a voice
that cries out to God for justice to be served. God said to Cain, “The voice of
your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground” (Gen 4:10). In the wake of
Babylon ’s terroristic campaign, there was a
mighty choir of voices crying out from the pools of shed blood for justice to
be served upon Babylon .
And God heard it. Thus He proclaims that there can be nothing for Babylon but “Woe.”
This word, “Woe,” is the promise of a curse and
condemnation. And that is what is coming for Babylon . Moreover, it is coming for every
nation, every enterprise, every tyrant, and every greedy individual who
tramples innocent life underfoot, oppressing the weak and disregarding the
image of God in man in order to secure wealth, power, fame, and luxury for
themselves. This word of condemnation applies to all who pursue such things in
such ways as the Babylonians did. Woe to the bloody builders!
Following this word of condemnation, we find …
II. A word of explanation: Fueling the fires of futility! (v13)
We began our service today with a reading of Psalm 2. The
Psalmist asks, “Why are the nations in an uproar?” The New King James wording
is perhaps more familiar: “Why do the nations rage?” Why are “the peoples
devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers
take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let
us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!’” Does this not
sound like the daily news? Nations in an uproar, raging against one another;
kings and rulers taking bold stands to liberate themselves and their people
from the restraints that God Himself has put in place on civil and moral
issues. Our own nation is aptly described in these words. But notice the calm
assurance by which the Psalmist says, “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the
Lord scoffs at them.”
While godless people and godless regimes seem to prosper in
the world in our day, as they seemed to in Habakkuk’s day, the righteous live
by faith that none of this escapes the notice of a holy God who is enthroned
above all of this mess and is doing something about it – even when what He is
doing about it escapes our notice or our understanding. Remember that the
Lord’s first words to Habakkuk in Chapter 1 were these: “I am doing something
in your days – You would not believe if you were told” (1:5). And He still is.
He is enthroned above all powers, all nations, all corporations and individuals,
and when they posture themselves against Him in rebellion, He cannot but laugh
at their feeble efforts.
The Psalmist says, “the peoples [are] devising a vain
thing.” That word vain is the same
word that is used in Habakkuk 2:13 – “the nations grow weary for nothing.” All of Babylon ’s efforts to build for themselves an
empire, great cities, impressive monuments, amounts ultimately to nothing. The same word is used in Psalm
127:1 – “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” Anything built in this world apart from the
Lord’s pleasure and purpose is but a passing vapor of vanity. The rhetorical
question is asked in verse 13, “Is it not from the Lord of hosts that the
peoples toil for fire?” In other words, all that the godless empire builders of
this world are amassing for themselves in their unjust oppression, in their
violence and bloodshed, is only fuel for the fire of judgment. It will all burn
in the end. None of it will last.
How do we know this? Because the Lord has ordained it! “Is
it not from the Lord?” It is indeed. God has hard wired this universe to bring
glory to Himself. All that does not bring Him glory will go up in the fire of
His judgment, and the smoke that rises will in itself bring Him glory. As Ron
Blue writes, Babylon’s “carefully hewn stones would serve as the altar, and
their ornately carved wood as the kindling for the giant sacrificial fire that
would leave Babylon in ashes.”[2]
And so it is with all who, like Babylon , build for themselves personal,
professional, or political empires with no regard for others or for the Lord
who is their Creator and Judge, and the Defender of the vulnerable and
oppressed. All that is done that does not ultimately serve His purposes proves
to be only fuel for the fires of futility. It will not last. Within a century
of Babylon ’s
meteoric rise, they were wiped off the stage of history. Others have come like
them, and still others will yet, be they individuals, governments, or other
structures and systems. The word of explanation that is given here is that all
such efforts are condemned because they amount to nothing in the eyes of the
Lord – nothing but fuel for the fire.
How tragic it would be to spend our lives and resources
building for ourselves reputations, careers, lifestyles, or monuments that will
be reduced to ashes that God might be glorified in the burning of them. He has
providentially arranged it to be certain and inescapable.
Now finally we come to a third word here:
III. A word of expectation: A future filled with pervasive
praise! (v14)
What is the world coming to? That is a question we want to
ask every day as we see unsettling events unfold around us. We look at
unfathomable court rulings, global terrorism, systemic injustice, political
corruption, an absolute vacuum of moral leadership, and we want to throw up our
hands in despair and say, “What is the world coming to?” Well, my friends,
there is good news. The world is coming to the ultimate and eternal praise of
Jesus Christ. This is the reason why the Christian can sleep at night. We know
that there is a God enthroned above all of this, who laughs at the raging of
the nations, who will set the torch to all that goes against His ultimate
purposes and ignite it in a flame of judgment and then the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Presently, the earth may be filled with the crimes of men. Presently, it may be
filled with bloodshed, violence, and corruption. But a day is coming – God has
promised it – when the knowledge of His glory will be known by every person on
the planet.
A hundred years before Habakkuk’s time, when the Assyrians
were committing the same atrocities as the Babylonians, Isaiah the prophet said
something similar. In Isaiah 11, against the dark backdrop of Assyrian
oppression, God spoke through him declaring that a shoot would spring from the
stem of Jesse – that is, a descendant of David the King was coming. And the
Spirit of the Lord would rest upon Him, and He would judge the poor with
righteousness, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth. And a
rod would come forth from His mouth with which He will strike the earth, and
with the breath of His lips the wicked would be slain. In that day, God
promised through Isaiah, “They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy
mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea. Then in that day the nations will resort to the root of Jesse,
who will stand as a signal for the peoples; and His resting place will be
glorious” (11:9-10).
God’s glory – the weighty magnificence of His character, the
intrinsic honor that is uniquely His, the radiant splendor of His person – is
going to be fully known. All that God has been doing in human history has been
building toward this day. Everything He has done, everything that He is doing
or will do, is to demonstrate His glory in the earth in the last day.
Everything that has run counter to His glory will be consumed in the fire of
judgment, and at last, all people will know His ultimate and everlasting glory!
The Hebrew word for “knowledge” means far more than the
acquisition of information. It is an experiential relationship. In that day,
every living thing on the planet will have a personal, experiential, and
relational knowledge of God’s glory. God spoke through Jeremiah of that day,
saying, “I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach
again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, …
for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jer
31:33-34).
How long O Lord? How long until that glory breaks forth in
the world? Look at the darkened skies and behold, the first shafts of light
have broken in already. When Jesus Christ was born, angels attended His birth
proclaiming, “Glory to God in the Highest!” (Lk 2:14). And when He returns, He
says, “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great
glory” (Lk 21:27). Revelation 11:15 tells us that in that day, “The kingdom of
the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will
reign forever and ever.” And a voice will be heard, declaring “Fallen, fallen is
Babylon the
great!” (17:5). The Babylonian Empire that dominated the world in Habakkuk’s
day is already long gone, but other Babylons will rise, and they too will fall.
And the warning goes forth from heaven, “Come out of her, my people, so that
you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues; for her sins
have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. … For
this reason in one day her plagues will come, … and she will be burned up with
fire; for the Lord God who judges her is strong” (18:4-5, 8). And then we read
that after these things, the voice of a great multitude in heaven begins to
say,
Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and
power belong to our God; because His judgments are true and righteous; … Give
praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and
the great … Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. … He has a
name written, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Rev 19:1-2, 5, 16).
How do we go on living by faith in a world gone haywire, in
a world where violence, injustice, oppression, and corruption prevail? Because
we know that these words have been unchangeably declared and decreed by the
sovereign God of the universe. A word of condemnation against all the bloody builders
who erect for themselves monuments of idolatry on the backs of their victims. A
word of explanation that all of their efforts and accomplishments will only
fuel the fires of their judgment. And this wonderful word of expectation that
the whole world will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as
the waters cover the sea!
What have you been building in your life? Have you loved
people and used things to bring glory to God? Or have you used people to
acquire things to bring glory to yourself? The Lord has promised that it will
all burn. Turn to Him in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ to save you from
that fire, and set you free to live in the knowledge of His everlasting glory.
That day is coming. If you are a believer in Christ, God never promised you
that this world and these days would always be good. But He did promise that a
better day and a better world are coming. Live by faith, in the unshakable hope
and expectation of that day when all wrongs will be made right, and the whole
world will be filled with His glory.
No comments:
Post a Comment