Sermon Tone Analysis

*HABAKKUK*

 

*Does evil bother you? *Turn to the book of Habakkuk – today I want to return to the rather extended series I have been doing on the minor prophets.

They were all written thousands of years ago now, before Christ came to earth, before the new covenant and before salvation had been revealed.

What relevance do they have to us today?

What about now?

Us?

Our situation?

The world we live in?

Well what about the society we live in?

What think ye of it?

Are you content with it and the way things are?

Does it ever bother you?

Do you ever get bothered by what goes on around you?

We live in a society where values have been systematically eroded, where morality has disappeared.

Righteousness is not even a word used anymore.

What society esteems is ambition, enterprise, success.

We admire the one who gets ahead, who makes it, the self made man.

Success is the measure – not righteousness or justice.

Justice is downplayed in the place of expediency.

Relativism rules – not whether something is right but whether other people do it?

Consensus determines right.

The consequence is a slide in morality that is rocket assisted!

We live in this world, in this society, we are constantly in contact with it and its morality.

It reminds me of Lot – we give him bad press as worldly, which he was, but the Bible calls him "righteous Lot" [*2 Peter 2:5-10 */God/ /did not spare// the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them,* felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds*), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority./]

God judges and punishes wickedness and rescues the righteous – a principle we will see in this book.

But Lot, being righteous, was tormented by what he saw going on around him.

We should be the same.

Does evil bother you? *[OHP] *Do you get upset by evil all around?

- Habakkuk did.

Here is evil all around – does God not see it?

Does He not care?

If He is righteous and just how can He allow it to continue.

Things have declined to such a state that surely God must intervene and do something!

Don't you think so? Well that is exactly the situation Habakkuk was in – his message is vitally relevant to our own day.

[*Habakkuk 1:1-11 */This is the message that /{{:he יְהוָה}}/ revealed to the prophet Habakkuk.

O {{:he יְהוָה}}, how long must I call for help before you listen, before you save us from violence?

Why do you make me see such trouble?

How can you endure to look on such wrongdoing?

Destruction and violence are all round me, and there is fighting and quarrelling everywhere.

The law is weak and useless, and justice is never done.

Evil people get the better of the righteous, and so justice is perverted.

//Then /{{:he יְהוָה}}/  said to his people,// “Keep watching the nations round you, and you will be astonished at what you see.

I am going to do something that you will not believe when you hear about it.

I am bringing the Babylonians to power, those fierce, restless people.

They are marching out across the world to conquer other lands.

//7//They spread fear and terror, and in their pride they are a law to themselves.“Their

horses are faster than leopards, fiercer than hungry wolves.

Their horsemen come riding from distant lands; their horses paw the ground.

They come swooping down like eagles attacking their prey.

“Their armies advance in violent conquest, and everyone is terrified as they approach.

Their captives are as numerous as grains of sand.

They treat kings with contempt and laugh at high officials.

No fortress can stop them — they pile up earth against it and capture it.

Then they sweep on like the wind and are gone, these men whose power is their god.”/]

Habakkuk's day – context  Not much is known about Habakkuk.

He was in a Levitcal choir and lived in Jerusalem around the same time as Jeremiah, perhaps a little earlier in the the latter part of Josiah 's reign.

His prophecy is unusual – usually prophecies are {{:he יְהוָה}}'s message delivered to the people but his work is different from that of the other prophets, in that it is entirely addressed to God, not to the people.

Habakkuk had a problem, serious questions and he went to hwhy for an answer.

The name Habakkuk may come from the Hebrew for ‘hug’ or ‘hang on tightly’.

Certainly, he hangs onto God in this prophecy until he gets his answer – a lesson for us in the present day, perhaps.

Habakkuk must have lived in the period of the rise of the neo-Babylonian Empire (c.

625 B.C.), for the Chaldean invasion of Judah was threatening (v.5-6) and the iniquity of Judah was mounting.

Josiah turned to  and led a great revival, turning the people back to God – but the nation was so corrupted that judgement was inevitable (*2 Kings 22 */Josiah //was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Jedidah the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath.

He did right in the sight of /{{:he יְהוָה}}/ //and walked in all the way of his father David, nor did he turn aside to the right or to the left./]

He had the temple repaired and in doing so they rediscovered the book of the law.

It was read to king Josiah who took it to heart and was disturbed by the punishments recorded in it [*2 Kings 22:11-17 */When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes.

Then the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam the son of Shaphan, Achbor the son of Micaiah, Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant saying, Go, inquire of /{{:he יְהוָה}}/ for me and the people and all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of /hwhy/ that burns against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.”//

//So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess.

She said to them, “Thus says /{{:he יְהוָה}}/ God of Israel, ‘Tell the man who sent you to me, thus says /{{:he יְהוָה}}/,// “Behold, I bring evil on this place and on its inhabitants, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read./

/Because they have forsaken Me and have burned incense to other gods that they might provoke Me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore My wrath burns against this place, and it shall not be quenched.”

’ //But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of /hwhy /thus shall you say to him, ‘Thus says/ {{:he יְהוָה}}/ God of Israel, “Regarding the words which you have heard, because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before/ hwhy/ when you heard what I spoke// against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I truly have heard you,” declares/ {{:he יְהוָה}}/ .

Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place.”

’ ” So they brought back word to the king/.].

Habakkuk prophesies at a time when the armies of Babylon are invading Palestine.

Judah is a little nation, tossed on the waves of great empires.

The empires rising and falling at this time are Assyria, Babylon and Egypt.

As Habakkuk writes, Babylon is rising.

Her armies are on the march.

She has defeated the Assyrians — destroying Nineveh in 612 bc.

A few years after this, in 608 bc, Judah is defeated by Egypt at the battle of Megiddo.

Pharaoh Neco, the Egyptian king, kills Josiah the king of Judah and appoints his own rulers.

But Babylon is far stronger than Egypt.

Nebuchadnezzar defeats Pharaoh Neco at the battle of Carchemish in 605 bc.

After twenty years of threat and fear, Babylon will also defeat Judah — and carry her population into captivity in 586 bc - within 50 years of this prophecy.

Habakkuk was in touch with {{:he יְהוָה}}, *[v.1] *heard from Him, received revelation – he received revelation through a vision, he actually saw what he relates.

It was like being there!

Seeing and hearing God.

But the message was weighty – it was an oracle, or a burden.

It was heavy – because it concerned judgement.

{{:he יְהוָה}}'s revelation is weighty!

How many of the supposed revelation from God are light and trivial – it is not the oracle of hwhy!

It was a burden, it must be proclaimed in order to be released from the load.

The vision had come in response to the earnest prayer of the prophet which he cried out to hwhy as he saw the unrestrained wickedness around him.

What he knew of a righteous and just God told him that the nation of Judah deserved judgement.

*[v.3] *Evil was all around – iniquity, wickedness, destruction, violence, strife contention.

It was all around Habakkuk yet hwhy did nothing.

Evil pervaded!

Iniquity and wickedness, violence and oppression, disputes and strife.

It is just the same today.

I remember in my youth Arthur Allan Thomas, and the Crew murders – it was in the news for years because murder was such a rare event.