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Text: Habakkuk 1:12-2:20
Title: God’s Question and Answer Session: Part 2
Textual Theme: God is just in his punishment of the wicked.
Goal: to encourage Habakkuk that God is just.
Need: God has just told Habakkuk that he will punish Judah with wicked Babylon which seems to go against God’s very nature of being just.
Sermon Theme: God is just in his punishment of the wicked.
Goal: to encourage Christians that God is just.
Need: God promises that he is just, but often we feel overwhelmed by injustice anyway.
Sermon Outline:
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Introduction
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God is the everlasting Rock
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God woe.
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Conclusion
Congregation,
*Last week we took a first look at the book of Habakkuk.
* *Habakkuk is a prophet, called by God, not to tell the future, but to promise condemnation for wickedness and blessings for those who follow the path God leads them on.*
We also looked at the structure of the book.
We saw that the book is a dialogue.
It’s a back and forth, kind of a question and answer period with God.
It starts off with Habakkuk raising a complaint against God, then God responds.
Twice that happens and then Habakkuk ends his book with one last talk to God.
After his two complaints, he doesn’t end with more complaining, but instead ends with prayer.
*Knowing that before we even look any further helps us understand that Habakkuk and the people of the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin are going to be content with the answer God gives.
*
The complaint last time is much like one we could bring today.
What do the unjust seem to rule and flourish?
Why can God sit around while injustice fills the world.
For Habakkuk, he saw injustice all around him, and he thinks, “if God really is just he wouldn’t just let it happen.
God would do something about it.
*This is one of those fabric of the universe questions.
God you can’t really be God if you allow injustice to happen, can you?*
The solution is to wipe out God’s people with an enemy nation, Babylon.
So there you have it, the solution to Habukkuk’s complaint.
Habakkuk thinks, WHAT? Why?
Why is that a good punishment?
*It actually leaves Habakkuk with more questions than answers.*
God has promised that he is going to love the children of Abraham.
God has promised he is going to love those people that he brought out of Egypt and brought through the desert.
He promised he would always be faithful.
He promised that they would live long in the land the Lord was giving them.
Right?
*He can’t give their promised land to a nation that is even worse can he?*
*But before he starts into his complaint he starts off recognizing who God is.*
I think this is so so soo important.
As we come before God with any request or any complaint, we have to first acknowledge who he is and what he has always meant to us.
Wouldn’t that be a great way to approach an argument with any person we love.
For some reason we get ourselves so angry during arguments that we almost depersonalize the other person.
They aren’t our spouse or our friend that we love.
They are just our problem.
But wouldn’t it be great to start off you complaint saying, Oh wife who has been my partner for so long.
Or, oh my best friend who always has been there for me.”
Start off with the true and positive aspects of who the other person is and what they mean to you.
Habakkuk says, “*O Lord, are you not from everlasting?
My God, my Holy One, we will not die.
O Lord, you have appointed them to execute judgment; O Rock, you have ordained them to punish.**
**Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.
Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?
Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?** **You have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler.**[1]*
The first part of this second complaint is Habakkuk’s reconition of who God is.
He starts off with O LORD.
In Hebrew, this is a very significant moment.
The commentaries say, *“Habukkuk envokes THE NAME.”
This is important stuff.
He begins with by saying YAHWEH.
*In older english Jehovah.
And that name of God was very important.
You use that personal name of God only when you are very serious about your praise, or your complaint.
*That name Yahweh carries with it all the history of God with his people.*
Mentioning the name Yahweh makes Habakkuk remember that this is the God who has been with his people through everything.
*He is always there for his people.*
*The word everlasting comes out in verse 12. *He says, Are you not from everlasting.
That concept is so important for God’s people.
What good would a God be if he was not there from the beginning.
What good would a God be if he was not everlasting?
*God is everlasting.*
Because God is everlasting, his covenant love for his people is everlasting as well.
He doesn’t agree to love someone and then reach the end of the contract.
It goes on forever.
In Genesis Abraham and his decendants are promised an everlasting inheritance in the land God was going to give to them.
An everlasting God, will live up to his everlasting covenant to give everlasting blessings.
That is who God is that is the way he operates.
That’s God.
Letting foreign people rule in Jerusalem is not part of the everlasting covenant agreement.
Habakkuk has a legitimate argument.
He says, okay, you promise to save us from our own injustice, but now… this.
“Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?
Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”
Why are you going to take out Jerusalem’s injustice and replace it with down right evil?
You are the everlasting loving God who doesn’t tolerate injustice.
This isn’t like you?
Habakkuk promises to wait on the answer from the Lord.
And it comes.
God’s message to him starts by assuring him that this revelation of future events will really happen.
But what is it about?
Not about predicting the future.
It is about judgement against those who don’t follow the law of God.
Its about the rewards for those who do live out the purposes God put in place for them.
*We hear this loud and clear in verse 4-5*.
It’s the list of wrongs that Babylon will be punished for as well.
God will use them as a tool for punishing his people, but then he will punish them for their own sin as well.
And listen for that little reminder, that glimer of hope for the righteous in the middle of it all.
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