Fortunately, as of this morning, we are not living in a place where the event I’m about to describe is an every day reality.
But I’d like you to imagine yourself somewhere else…..it doesn’t really matter, you name the country…I’m sure you can think of one.
But imagine, this morning is like any other. You wake up, wash your face, get dressed, and do all the rest like you always do. You go out the front down and go and down the street to the bus stop to catch the bus you take every day to work.
The bus pulls up and you wait for the passengers to get off, but you notice that one man pauses in front of the bus, fiddling with something under his jacket.
You only have a second to think about it and then there is a tremendous explosion. Deafened by the noise, you collapse in pain, you’re cut and bruised but you’re still alive. It seems a street sign had shielded your head and face from the blast.
But in quickly becomes clear that many others were not so lucky. There are men, women and children all around you burnt, dismembered, dead and dying. The world starts to spin and you nearly lose consciousness as the horror of it all takes your breath away.
How could this happen? What kind of world do we live in? Could really be a world governed by a good, all-powerful God?
It is almost beyond imagination.
Yet, this kind of thing happens almost every day in the world we live in, and it’s the kind of event that can shake even the most faithful person to the core.
And it’s also just the kind of world, and the kind of events witnessed by Habakkuk.
And at first, in the previous chapter, Habakkuk cried out for justice. He himself felt pain because of the impact of evil on the world around him.
And Habakkuk had a list of complaints. A long, long list. He said in so many words, “The world is going down the toilet, God, what’s up with that. Nothing is getting better, it’s only getting worse. And you’re doing nothing about it.”
Sound familiar?
But God says He will handle it, in time. He would deal with the problem of evil and injustice in Judah – by sending the Babylonians to destroy the country !
God is always victorious over sin, and He here promises to be victorious again.
God is always victorious!
In the fullness of time, We know that Christ’s victory is assured. Amen?
It’s a done deal.
But in the mean time, as we’re waiting here, it can get pretty ugly.
But we have to get through it, somehow.
So Habakkuk has his list of complaints, just like we do, and as he waits and perseveres through the ugly, just like we are, Habakkuk responds just as we should.
He remembers God’s promises;
He recalls God’s character;
He speaks to his God and asks for answers;
And he waits faithfully for God to respond.
That last one is a hard one, isn’t it? He waits faithfully for God to respond.
Cause you see, he’s disturbed, and not understanding. Yet he’s confident that God will answer, and determined to wait until He does.
When he last visited the prophesy of Habakkuk, that was almost two years ago, and I told you then that God would answer his concerns but we too would we waiting a while to hear about. We too would also have to wait.
Now for me, the two years went pretty quickly, but years can seem pretty long. It been long enough since we read from Habakkuk that many of you may not even remember what we talked about. That’s a problem with the passage of years , and that’s exactly what happened with these prophesies. The people would get a little bit, and then wait, and a little bit more, and then wait.
And the final answers to the words of prophesy could be decades or even centuries away or millennia away. To find out God’s final word, they’d have to wait.
If you remember, the first believers, were pretty impatient. Christ had just ascended into heaven only a handful of years before…with the promise to return. But it had been a few years, already, and where was He?
They’d say “We’re waiting here, faithfully, Jesus, where are you? Isn’t it time yet?”
In our reading here today, finally, after the waiting, God does answer His prophet, in Chapter 2. And we’ll find out together what He says.
Habakkuk Chapter 2 [From The NLT – New Living Translation]
1 I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guardpost.
There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer my complaint.
2 Then the Lord said to me, “Write my answer plainly on tablets,
so that a runner can carry the correct message to others.
3 This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled.
If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.
4 “Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked.
But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God.*
5 Wealth* is treacherous, and the arrogant are never at rest.
They open their mouths as wide as the grave,* and like death, they are never satisfied.
In their greed they have gathered up many nations and swallowed many peoples.
6 “But soon their captives will taunt them. They will mock them, saying,
‘ What sorrow awaits you thieves! Now you will get what you deserve!
You’ve become rich by extortion, but how much longer can this go on?’
7 Suddenly, your debtors will take action. They will turn on you and take all you have,
while you stand trembling and helpless.
8 Because you have plundered many nations; now all the survivors will plunder you.
You committed murder throughout the countryside and filled the towns with violence.
9 “What sorrow awaits you who build big houses with money gained dishonestly!
You believe your wealth will buy security, putting your family’s nest beyond the reach of danger.
10 But by the murders you committed, you have shamed your name and forfeited your lives.
11 The very stones in the walls cry out against you, and the beams in the ceilings echo the complaint.
12 “What sorrow awaits you who build cities with money gained through murder and corruption!
13 Has not the Lord of Heaven’s Armies promised that the wealth of nations will turn to ashes? They work so hard, but all in vain!
14 For as the waters fill the sea, the earth will be filled with an awareness of the glory of the Lord.
15 “What sorrow awaits you who make your neighbors drunk! You force your cup on them so you can gloat over their shameful nakedness.
16 But soon it will be your turn to be disgraced. Come, drink and be exposed!
Drink from the cup of the Lord’s judgment, and all your glory will be turned to shame.
17 You cut down the forests of Lebanon. Now you will be cut down. You destroyed the wild animals, so now their terror will be yours. You committed murder throughout the countryside and filled the towns with violence.
18 “What good is an idol carved by man, or a cast image that deceives you?
How foolish to trust in your own creation- a god that can’t even talk!
19 What sorrow awaits you who say to wooden idols, ‘Wake up and save us!’
To speechless stone images you say, ‘Rise up and teach us!’
Can an idol tell you what to do? They may be overlaid with gold and silver, but they are lifeless inside.
20 But the Lord is in his holy Temple. Let all the earth be silent before him.”
That’s how God answered Habakkuk. And it’s pretty detailed answer. But God doesn’t always answer that way does He?
God could have simply said to Habakkuk what He said to Job: “Job, I am your Creator. I am so far above you, I am so far beyond your understanding, I am so much more powerful than you, that you cannot understand me. So just trust me. Believe in me.”
And as much as I’d to tell you otherwise, THAT is ultimately the answer, my friends. The truth is God owes you and I nothing more than that.
Now, we want him to spell out his whole plan in full detail, but God doesn’t have to do that, and usually doesn’t.
It’s two fold deal with us and God. Our part is to trust, and have faith.
God’s is to keep his promises, and take care of the details. He always does.
And that’s what he tells Habakkuk verse 4.
4 “Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God.
Three times this verse quoted in the New Testament, even by Jesus himself. And these words are both the essence of the gospel and of how we are to live the Christian life.
If you trust yourself, your life will be nothing more than a crooked, confused, worthless mess.
Some have illustrated this by passing out a piece of paper to a group and asking each person to draw a crooked line, when they were handed them back in you would discover that not one of those lines was identical to another.
Because the truth is … there are many ways to be crooked.
But if I was to ask all of you to draw a straight line, and I gave you a ruler, and if you used that ruler, all the lines would be the same.
Because although are many ways to be crooked, there is only one way to be straight.
So to be seen as righteous by God, we must trust Christ and live by faith.
And that’s the straight answer.
God tells us “He is working ALL THINGS TOGETHER with PERFECT TIMING so that HIS NAME IS EXALTED over all the earth. (and) EVERY CREATURE will bow before HIM in silence.”
So when God says He is working ALL THINGS together for good, He means ALL THINGS.
So, God is saying, “Habakkuk, tell the people that I’m going to use the Babylonians in ways that they can’t comprehend, my actions are necessary to fulfill my master plan.”
You’ve got to have faith in ME, and leave it all in MY hands. Can you do that?
Do you know how to do that?
No, not really. We don’t. We have a tough time waiting faithfully.
So the rest the chapter is not a further answer, but an negative illustration. This is what it looks like when you are NOT living by faith.
For my whole life, I’ve been subjected to negative illustration.
My earliest formative years were in the Johnson/Nixon Vietnam era, and everywhere I went I heard vivid descriptions of what’s wrong with the world. And it didn’t stop there. With every administration, and new decade, came a new, and sometimes even worse scenario of doom. Even today, most of the conversation that I have with people about the state of the world, is what’s wrong with it.
I have prayed since childhood, that this conversation would change from the negative to the positive. Because most of the people could tell me what’s wrong, but could not envision, or describe any real plan to make it right again.
They could only see the wrong path we were taking, but not any practical way to fix it. They could see the corruption, but not a realistic correction.
But every some many years, when things do get bad enough, and there is enough pain, and enough consequences, a few things do change, for a while. The negative can eventually push us into action.
And so God uses the negative illustration.
He says here’s how you’re doing it wrong because “Living by faith IS NOT:
Trusting Yourself!
That’s what the Babylonians were doing. They thought they were on the brink of world conquest. They had great confidence in their military might. They had great confidence in their statues and golden idols. They were certain they could force the world to honor them and their gods. They were certain they were building a lasting empire. They had great confidence and they were certain.
But they were wrong.
The Babylonian empire, as powerful as it was, in the end was one of the briefest empires of all time. Within the length of just one human lifetime, Babylon would be taken over by the Medes and the Persians and thier great confidence will have lasted barely 70 years.
God causes Nebuchadnezzer to go crazy, forcing him to eat grass like an animal for seven years, and later the final emperor, Belshazzar, holds a great feast for thousands, exalting himself and praising the Babylonian deities but that very night, Babylon falls.
God says very clearly “You cannot worship yourself or trust yourself. You cannot worship the world, or trust the world. It will not work.”
While we are waiting here, we must live by faith, not in people, or things, but in GOD.
The righteous will live By FAITH. and We become righteous by believing!
We become righteous by believing all of God’s promises – believing his faithfulness, his goodness, his sovereignty, and especially his promise of a Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
That’s how we come righteous. Righteous in God’s eyes through Christ.
But we are required to do something with that gift of righteousness. We can’t just exist. We must live by faith.
Martin Luther, in “The Just Shall Live by Faith.” tells us how he came to the knowledge of the truth of God.
When he initially read the words we read today from Habakkuk “the just, the righteous ones shall live by faith” his understanding of the righteousness of God was that we would have to earn that righteousness based on our works.
So understandably, whenever he ran across the term “the righteousness of God” he trembled.
He was so disturbed over his relationship with the Lord that he tried everything. He tried penance and prayer and all kinds of punishments of the flesh in order to gain some merit before God. He even speaks about himself being exhausted from trying to do the things that might enable him to gain merit before God because he was afraid of this righteousness of God, which he knew somehow he did not have.
He said he thought of the Lord, just like I did as a young boy, as an angry God sitting on a rainbow waiting to hurl thunderbolts toward bad men.
But then something changed. He wondered why Paul called “the Gospel of Jesus Christ” righteousness itself, and that the good news the righteousness of God was conferred upon men by their believing.
In that he rediscover the truth held by the early church “justification by faith” .
He said “It seemed to me as if I had been born again, it seemed to me as if I had entered paradise. The very expression that used to cause such fear to me and trembling became the means by which I entered into the experience of the right relationship with the Lord.”
Must Live By Faith.
The wages of sin is death, and the wages have been paid by Jesus. And now we can live both eternally, and in this life, by faith.
It’s not a list of things to do. It is but one thing to do.
Trust Jesus.
Things might get worse. Trust Him.
Yes, you are a miserable sinner. Trust Him.
Thing and people let you down. Trust Him.
You cannot save yourself. Trust Him.
We’re not supposed to just exist. We’re supposed to live in Christ. We are supposed to spread His gospel in word and deed. We’re supposed to be good disciples and apostles and ministers and extend our hands in love to one another.
We are supposed to life the full and abundance life.
But we can’t do any of it. Unless we Trust Him.
Until he returns, we are waiting here. And as we wait, the righteous will LIVE by Faith!
Amen
© 2011 Timothy Henry