Habakkuk 2-3
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Introduction
Introduction
Today as I was studying for my sermon, it got me thinking about boat anchors.
-You might be wondering why, and I’ll shortly tell you
An anchor is used to secure the boat at one place in the waters without drifting away along with wind or current while the boat is not in motion. Without an anchor, the boat will slowly drift away with the wind or current if the boat is not in motion, putting the vessel and crew at risk.
While you wait for help, it’s imperative to remain still rather than putting yourself and rescuing crews in danger by traveling with the current. Improper anchoring can cause boats to capsize, passengers to be swept in the water by tangled rope, and damage your boat.
In the same way, in our own lives, we endure the hardships and frustrations that batter away at our soul like waves
-We endure physical ailments
-Family hardships
-Those we love rejecting the Gospel
-Anxiety and uncertainty about the direction of our country or the affairs going on in the world
-The sinful choices of those around us
And in these times, we need something to anchor our souls to
As we saw last week, the prophet Habakkuk struggled with the sinfulness going on in His nation of Judah, God’s chosen people
-He struggled to understand how such sinful behavior could go on while God seemed to sit idly by
-So he brings his questions and doubts to God
-God then answers that He is not sitting idly by, but will shortly bring the Babylonians to come and destroy and kill and plunder the nation of Judah
-This leaves Habakkuk with even greater questions, concerns, and doubts
-How could God judge Judah with a nation even more wicked??
-He brings this question to the Lord, to which God replies and gives the overarching theme of this book, and arguably, maybe the central theme in all of Scripture when it comes to sinful man’s relationship to a holy God
-In contrast to the wicked person who is arrogant and crooked
-The righteous or just person will live by their faith or faithfulness
-The person who is a child of God will be preserved and have life, only through faith in God and the faithful living that follows this
-When a person trusts in God and His unchanging character, then and only then can a right relationship with God ensue
-this faithfulness to God by trusting in Him brings about sweet communion with God in hardship, as well as never-ending communion with Him in eternity
And we saw how this idea was rightly understood by Paul!
-He understood that only through faith in the Crucified and Risen Son of God could one have a relationship with their Creator
Now, due to me getting sick a couple of weeks ago, and Jonny taking my last Wednesday of the month to preach next week, we’re going to have fly through these next 2 chapters today
-And in these chapters, I’m going to show 3 truths about God that Habakkuk saw and anchored his soul to, and we can as well today
-If the theme of this book is faith in the character of God in the midst of hardship, what about God can we put our faith in that will anchor our souls?
1. God will be Known
1. God will be Known
The first portion of our text is a series of 5 woes given by God, through Habakkuk, against the injustices around him
-Whether these refer to the Babylonians or the Jews is not super clear
-Some commentators take different sides
-I tend to think the Babylonians are more in view here, but I think they can refer to both!
-The woes here are applicable to those who are living in the kind of sin that is being denounced
Now, I wish I could spend a whole week here in these woes!
-You could honestly preach a separate sermon on each of these 5 woes
-But we can’t
Habakkuk had questioned God:
-Why God was allowing injustice
-And why God would use a wicked nation to judge a nation that was more righteous than itself
And God hear answers Habakkuk’s questioning of His justice with resounding assurance that wickedness will be judged
Vs. 5-20
The 5 woes God gives are woes against (Waylon Bailey):
-the extortioner (5-8)
-the arrogant (9-11)
-those who build on bloodshed (vs. 12-14)
-the drunk and violent (15-17)
-the makers of idols (18-19)
God assures Habakkuk and his audience that the day of reckoning is coming for those who are arrogant and wicked
-God will judge wickedness
but notice vs. 14
Vs. 12-14 constitute the 3rd woe and it’s against people who build in violence
-These are people who build a town on bloodshed and iniquity
-This refers to when human life and human rights are not cared for or respected
-When those who are powerful prey upon the weak to take advantage of them
A great example of this is found in 1 Kings when Ahab desires the vineyard of Naboth
-When Naboth refuses, Jezebel, the king’s wife, arranges to have false accusations brought against Naboth
-Naboth, and innocent man, is stoned, and his vineyard goes to King Ahab
Notice the result in verse 13
-It’s all futile
-It all comes to nothingness
-Those who do these things weary themselves in vain
-As a kid, every night before bed, without fail, we had to clean up our rooms
-And me, I hated this task
-I’m sure at least part of it for me was that it seemed pointless
“Why clean it all up and put it away since I’m just gonna take it all out again tomorrow??”
-It probably seemed futile, pointless
-The room wasn’t going to stay clean anyway!
-That’s what nations do when, or what people do when they do wickedness and live in rebellion to God
-It’s pointless, meaningless, and futile in the long run
But look at the next verse
vs. 14
-What an awesome promise
-God will cover the earth with the knowledge of His glory!!
-What is God’s glory?
-In the OT, it referred to His powerful presence (as one commentator puts it)
-It was God manifesting Himself to His people
And this knowledge does not just mean that people will know facts about God
-This refers to an intimacy
-A knowing someone, not just knowing about someone
When was the last time you were at the ocean?
-How much of the ocean is covered in water?
That might seem like a dumb or absurd question to you
-How much of the ocean is covered in water?
“All of it . . . duh . . . that’s why it’s the ocean”
-Exactly
-And that’s how God will cover the earth with the knowledge of His glory
Brothers and sisters, the righteous person, the person of God lives by and is preserved by their faith which produces faithfulness to God
-And one thing we can be confident in, be dead-set sure about, is that God’s knowledge glory will cover the whole earth
-It is unstoppable
-There’s no “if this happens” or “if this goes right”
-The knowledge of God’s glory will cover the whole earth
-And brothers and sisters, when we use up our physical strength, our time, our money, our possessions, our very lives towards seeing the Gospel advance and the Kingdom of God being built, it is in a winning effort
-Every dollar spent on missions
-Every evening set aside for discipleship
-Every opportunity to witness
-Every sacrifice made for the advance of the Gospel
-It is worth it!
-Take heart on this truth and let it anchor your soul
-So first of all, God will be Known
-Secondly
2. God Reigns
2. God Reigns
vs. 18-19 give us the 5th and final woe
-It is given against those who make and worship idols
Vs. 18
-Habakkuk asks here: “what use is a carved idol?”
“What good does it do?”
-He calls it “a teacher of lies”
Why?
-Because the person who crafts it trusts in it!
-It deceives, because ultimately it is powerless to do anything!
Vs. 19
-Idols are useless
-They are powerless
-They have no ability to speak, or hear, or taste, or touch, or smell
-Much less to answer prayer and be of any help
And this leads Habakkuk to the second truth we’re going to consider this evening:
Vs. 20
God Reigns
He Deserves Reverential Awe and Silent Submission
-Yahweh is in His holy Temple
-I don’t believe this speaks of the temple in Jerusalem, which would be utterly destroyed by the Babylonians in a matter of years
-This speaks to Yahweh reigning from heaven over all the earth!
God reigns over the nations;
God sits on His holy throne.
You alone are the Lord;
You have made heaven,
The heaven of heavens, with all their host,
The earth and everything on it,
The seas and all that is in them,
And You preserve them all.
The host of heaven worships You.
All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing;
He does according to His will in the army of heaven
And among the inhabitants of the earth.
No one can restrain His hand
Or say to Him, “What have You done?”
‘Now see that I, even I, am He,
And there is no God besides Me;
I kill and I make alive;
I wound and I heal;
Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand.
God reigns over all the earth!
And therefore: “let everyone on earth be silent in His presence.”
-When we stand before the awesome and glorious majesty of God, there is nothing to be said
-We are to be in awe of Him
-And we are to submit to Him in silent submission
Do you know this evening that God reigns?
-Did you know that He reigns over all the earth?
-Did you know that He reigns over all the political affairs of our nation as well as over the world?
-Did you know that He reigns over all that is going on in your life?
-In the lives of your family members?
-In what’s going on at work, at school, with your family, in your neighborhood?
God reigns.
"This is my Father’s World. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet.”
In the midst of hard, or trying, or confusing, or even heartbreaking times, we can bow to God and submit to Him in reverential awe and silent submission, because He is in His holy temple
So
God will be Known
God Reigns
And this brings us to our third and final point
All of chapter 3 is really a psalm, a poem, that Habakkuk composes
-And the psalm here portrays God in majestic, glorious, and intimidating terms
-It pictures God as an unstoppable warrior
-Someone who arises from His throne to save His people and destroy the wicked
I wish we had time to pick apart the whole psalm, but we don’t
-Let me read the first 12 verses and then we’ll park on verses 13-14 which I think in many ways gets to the heart
Vs. 1-12
So God is here portrayed as a powerful, the One who rules over all Creation
-Habakkuk first prays that in God’s wrath, He would remember His mercy
-Then he goes on to picture God coming in His wrath and fury and power
Vs. 12 — He tramples down the nations in His wrath
This brings us to our 3rd point in vs 13
God will judge
I’ll come back to the first half of vs. 13 in a minute, but I want to start in the second half of vs. 13
(read 2nd half of 13-14)
God will come and punish the wicked
-God will crush His enemies
This echoes what God promised all the way back in Genesis 3
-He promised all the way back then that He would crush the head of the serpent who opposed Him
The Lord preserves all who love Him,
But all the wicked He will destroy.
“Behold, all souls are Mine;
The soul of the father
As well as the soul of the son is Mine;
The soul who sins shall die.
And Habakkuk here is extolling God for being a God will ultimately crush the wicked
-This happened to the Babylonians in 539BC when the Medo-Persians took over Babylon
-But the ultimate fulfillment of this will happen when Christ returns in judgment and will destroy the wicked
-Revelation 20:11-15 tell of us how God will judge every single person who has not bowed in submission to His Son
-But notice the flip side of this
Vs. 13 (first part)
-God comes to save His people
That’s who our God is!
-He’s a God who saves His people
But the salvation of the righteous is from the Lord;
He is their strength in the time of trouble.
‘For thus says the Lord God: “Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day.
Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He brings them out of their distresses.
And for us as NT Christians, this salvation of the Lord takes on an even richer meaning for us:
-When we were lost in our sin, God sent His own Son to take on flesh and die for us!
-He rescued us from our own sin and selfishness
-And He did this by sending Jesus to die on the cross and rise again for us!
-He has saved us from our sin presently, and will save us in the ultimate sense when He comes for His own
That’s why the NT writers could speak of salvation as a future event as well!
And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
God will save His people!
-We will not be here forever
-God will come and save us in the ultimate sense from our sin and from the evil around us and the people who hate Him!
But God’s judgment in the end has 2 sides to it:
-God will judge and destroy His enemies
-And God will save His people
This is why we have verses like Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment,
This is what we see in the cross of Christ and His Resurrection
-The finished work of Christ is the ultimate promise that God will save His people, and will judge His enemies
The Raid at Cabanatuan, also known as the Great Raid , was a rescue of Allied (POWs) and civilians from a Japanese camp near Cabanatuan, in the Philippines. On January 30, 1945, during World War II, United States Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts and Filipino guerrillas liberated more than 500 from the POW camp.
After the surrender of tens of thousands of American troops during the Battle of Bataan, many were sent to the Cabanatuan prison camp after the Bataan Death March.
The Japanese shifted most of the prisoners to other areas, leaving just over 500 American and other Allied POWs and civilians in the prison. Facing brutal conditions including disease, torture, and malnourishment, the prisoners feared they would be executed by their captors before the arrival of General Douglas MacArthur and his American forces returning to Luzon. In late January 1945, a plan was developed by Sixth Army leaders and Filipino guerrillas to send a small force to rescue the prisoners. A group of over 100 rangers and scouts and 200 guerrillas traveled 30 miles (48 km) behind Japanese lines to reach the camp in what was considered to be a suicide mission.
In a nighttime raid, under the cover of darkness and with distraction by a P-61 Black Widow night fighter, the group surprised the Japanese forces in and around the camp. Hundreds of Japanese troops were killed in the 30-minute coordinated attack; the Americans suffered minimal casualties. The rangers, scouts, and guerrillas escorted the POWs back to American lines. The rescue allowed the prisoners to tell of the death march and prison camp atrocities, which sparked a rush of resolve for the war against Japan. The rescuers were awarded commendations by MacArthur, and were also recognized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
And one of the reasons that we know so much about the Bataan Death March is because of the prisoners that were freed.
Brothers and sisters, you can anchor your soul and live in faith in the fact that God will save His people:
-In the midst of your hardship
-In the midst of any injustice you may be suffering
-In the midst of physical ailment
-In the midst of confusion and despair over the state of the world or our country
-You can be sure that God will save you and rescue you if you’re His child through repentance and faith in Christ
Conclusion
Conclusion
So we come to the end of the book of Habakkuk
-And Habakkuk actually makes application for us
And he does that by showing how he applies the book to himself and his own life:
Vs. 16-19
-Notice first of all that things are still hard
-He’s trembling
-His lips are quivering
-He’s waiting for the day of distress in which his people will be ravished
And yet even in that
-Even in the worst of circumstances
-There is still rejoicing
We can have joy even in the midst of heartbreaking circumstances!
-Why?
-Because Joy is based on the character of an unchanging God and the unchanging relationship we have in Him!
That’s why Paul could say in 2 Corinthians 6:9 that he and his comrades were sorrowful, yet always rejoicing!
And for Habakkuk, even if everything went horribly wrong, and he and his people suffered the worst of losses
-He would rejoice in the God of His salvation
God was his strength
-And God made his feet like deer’s feet to walk on high places
What does that mean?
-a deer is so sure-footed
-It can run through the forest, over rocks and hills and fallen trees and across creeks so easily
And even in the midst of the craggy and dangerous landscape of life, God makes sure the footsteps of His children
-He does not allow them to stumble
And so in closing, I want to apply this to our lives in the same fashion that Habakkuk did
-And I hope that there is something here that maybe speaks into what you’re going through, and how you can have confidence in the God of your salvation:
-Though the world continues in injustice and strong nations rule with little concern for others
-Though America continues to live in rebellion and turn her back on God
-Though Christians become more and more marginalized and taking stands for God’s Word
-Though inflation rises and the prices of gas and groceries continue to soar
-Though my house and my car and my appliances break and I don’t have the money to fix them
-Though I go through physical pain and deal with the breaking down of my body
-Though I don’t like my job and wish God would allow me into a better career
-Though there’s tragedy in my family as we deal with a loved one and wish that things were different
-Though the person that I care about is unsaved and continues to reject God
-Though I deal with the rejection of friends and family members and continue to work through the ongoing hurt
-Though I feel as if my situation is hopeless and my heart is on the verge of breaking
Yet . . .
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills.
To the Chief Musician. With my stringed instruments.