A few days ago, my wife Kristen read me a message that was
posted on a mom's listserv that she belongs to.
The message began. I don't know what to do for
Easter. My kids are 12:10 and 5:00, The
youngest for sure believes. But the jury's out on the
middle. When Kristen first read that,
she had the same thought that I first had when she read it to
me. The youngest for sure believes,
believes in Jesus, believes that he rose from the dead.
But you don't. The message continues.
The real struggle for me is that I do not want to buy them more
stuff. I'm just done with it all.
So much stuff. I know I can't do nothing, but
please help me make something useful.
Oh, OK, So what the five year old definitely believes, and the
10 year old might still believe, is the Easter Bunny, not Jesus.
Now, we don't often question what it really means to believe
in the Easter Bunny. This mom is concerned with this
ongoing faith on the part of one, maybe two of her kids.
What does it really mean to believe in the Easter Bunny?
There is some sort of magical free creature that shows up at
millions of people's houses at the same time on the same day of
the year to distribute plastic eggs in hard to find places that
might be filled with chocolate or other things.
I guess that's what it means to believe in the Easter Bunny.
Now, I don't mean to mock this mom.
Holidays are hard. Parenting is hard.
What's she trying to do? She is trying to teach her kids
a fun myth to create some momentary magic.
That's what she's trying to do on this holiday.
Is that what Easter is? A myth that makes a moment of
magic. The stakes of Easter are a lot
higher than that. The meaning of Easter is a lot
grander than that. It's easy for sort of polite,
sweet, pastel coloured cultural traditions to sort of gloss over
what Easter is about. Easter is about a former corpse
becoming the ruler of the universe and the savior of all
who believe. Easter is about suffering, evil
and death itself all being done away with forever.
That's what I would want my 5 year old, 10 year old 12 year
old to believe if those were my 3 kids.
If you're a guest with us this morning, we're delighted to have
you. As Michael mentioned, you're
warmly welcome to join us at the Pot like afterward.
We are confident there will be enough food.
Don't worry if you didn't bring anything.
Don't worry if you didn't plan on it.
We're happy to have you for lunch with us now.
If you don't normally attend church, you might be a little
bit surprised by the passage that I am about to preach
through. It is not the most Eastery
passage in the Bible that you might think of, but that's
because I'm simply doing what we do each week here, which is
preach straight through a book of the Bible.
This sermon will be #5 of seven in the book of Habakkuk, the Old
Testament prophetic book. As you'll find as we walk
through the passage, the connections between our passage
and Easter are actually surprisingly deep and
surprisingly strong. Our passage for this morning is
Habakkuk, chapter 2, verses 6 to 20.
If you don't have a Bible with you, you can feel free to raise
your hand and I think someone can bring one to you.
Dawson, Austin, somebody, anybody need a Bible.
If you don't have a Bible, you can have one now.
If you don't have a Bible at home like that, you can
conveniently read, You can feel free to put up your hand and
keep that Bible from us as a gift to you.
We'd be delighted for you to take that home to refresh our
memories and catch you up to speed.
If you're new, here's what we've seen in the book of Habakkuk so
far. It's the late 7th century BC,
just over 600 years before Christ.
God's people are rejecting him and his ways.
Their sin and idolatry are causing total social
disintegration. So the prophet Habakkuk cries
out for God to do something about it.
And then God says he will. He'll raise up the Babylonians
an empire to their northeast, to come down and conquer Judah, to
carry out his judgement against his own people.
But that seems even worse to Habakkuk.
How can God use evil people to judge evil people?
So God answers Habakkuk first by exhorting him to trust, by
telling him to wait patiently for him to fulfill his promises.
And when those promises are fulfilled, he will make a
distinction, a just and fitting distinction between those who
trust his promises and those who don't.
These promises will eventually bring life to all who believe
and judgement to all who reject God.
Now we come to our passage, verses 6 to 20 of chapter 2.
In this passage, the judgement God is promising becomes far
more vivid and explicit. This is what God is going to do
to the Babylonians, and he's what it's what God is going to
do to all who reject him and refuse his ways.
Now, it's primarily judgement, but that judgement itself is
grounds for hope. And you'll also hear even
brighter notes of hope at a few points in the passage.
So please follow along as I read Habakkuk 2 verses 6 to 20.
Shall not all these take up their taunt against him, with
scoffing and riddles for him, and say woe to him who heaps up
what is not his own for how long, and loads himself with
pledges? Will not your debtors suddenly
arise, and those awake who will make you tremble?
Then you will be spoiled for them, because you have plundered
many nations. All the remnants of the peoples
shall plunder you for the blood of man and violence to the
earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.
Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house to set his nest on
high, to be safe from the reach of harm.
You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many
peoples, you have forfeited your life.
For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the
woodwork. Respond Woe to him who builds a
town with blood, and founds a city on iniquity.
Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that peoples labour
merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory
of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink.
You pour out your wrath and make them drunk in order to gaze at
their nakedness. You will have your fill of shame
instead of glory. Drink yourself and show your
uncircumcision. The cup in the Lord's right hand
will come around to you, and utter shame will come upon your
glory. The violence done to Lebanon
will overwhelm you, as will the destruction of the beasts that
terrified them for the blood of man and violence to the earth,
to cities and all who dwell in them.
What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal
image, a teacher of lies For its maker trust in his own creation.
When he makes speechless idols, woe to him who says to a wooden
thing awake, to a silent stone arise.
Can this teach? Behold, that is overlaid with
gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it.
But the Lord is in his holy temple.
Let all the earth keep silence before him.
Obviously, this whole passage announces and focuses on God's
judgement. We often think of God's
judgement as bad news, and in part it is.
It is bad news if you reject God and receive his judgement.
But God's judgement is also unspeakably good news.
God's judgement is not only what sinners fear, it is also what
sufferers hope for and what the oppressed cry out for.
God's judgement involves both retribution and restoration.
In our passage, retribution is the dominant note, but the two
are inseparable. God's judgement will defeat
evil. God's judgement will remove
evil. God's judgement will restore all
the goodness that evil took away and more.
That's the hope that our passage holds out to us.
Our passage answers the question, What will God's
judgement accomplish? The passage pronounces 5 woes
against Babylon, each of which gives an answer.
So the sermon will have five points.
Point #1 Plunder the plunderers. That's what God promises to do
in verses 6 to 8. Plunder the plunderers.
Look again with me at those verses starting in verses 6 and
seven. Shall not all these take up
their taunt against him with scoffing and riddles for him,
and say woe to him who heaps up what is not his own for how
long, and loads himself with pledges?
Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those awake who will
make you tremble? Then you will be spoiled for
them. Verse 6 begins by referring to
all these. Who are all these?
They're all the nations that the king of Babylon has gathered to
himself, as verse 5 says, through unjust conquests,
through taking lands and territories that don't belong to
him. So our passage predicts a time
when all those who have been oppressed will be liberated.
Not only will they be freed from tyranny, they'll even boast over
and taunt their tyrants. This whole rest of our passage
is the song they'll sing on the day when that happens.
So from the outset, this passage is about the reversal of
injustice. It's about the freeing of those
who have been oppressed. The word woe is both a judgement
and a cry of sorrow. It pronounces God's judgement
and mourns the fate of the one who suffers it.
Now, throughout our passage, these woes describe the evil
actions of the Babylonian Empire vividly and graphically.
And they do so in ways that fit lots of other oppressive powers,
whether political regimes or economic orders, whether social
trends or personal offenses. So these woes are especially
about the Babylonians. They're primarily aimed at the
Babylonians, but they also paint a picture of how all oppressors
work. And they promise a judgement
that will ultimately fall on all oppressors.
Verse 6 begins by describing how the Babylonians have greedily
gobbled up what doesn't belong to them, people, territory, the
resources and wealth of other kingdoms.
For how long? It might seem long now, but
verse 7 says, will not your debtors suddenly arise?
This might refer to literal debtors.
It's possible the Babylonians finance their their conquests by
debt, but it's most likely, I think, that it's a metaphor.
The Babylonians think they've been racking up wealth by
plundering all these kingdoms, building a bigger and bigger and
bigger war chest back home. But as God sees it, their evil
actions have been mounting up debts before Him.
And God one day is going to call those debts due unjust killing,
plunder, taking captives in war, sending them back to the capital
and enslaving them. A day will come when, just as
the Babylonians have taken spoil from many kingdoms, they
themselves will become spoil for others.
God's judgement will be just and fitting.
There will even be an element of poetic justice.
The judgement will fit with and follow from the crime.
The plunderers will be plundered.
Verse 8 Because you have plundered many nations, all the
remnant of the people shall plunder you for the blood of man
and violence to the earth, to cities, and all who dwell in
them. The remnant of the peoples
refers to survivors in the cities and territories that the
Babylonians conquered. For instance, at the height of
their power, the Babylonians subjugated the Medes and the
Persians, and it would be an alliance of those very powers
that in two generations would rise up and topple Babylon.
Verse 8 gives the reason why the Babylonians will be punished for
the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who
dwell in them. Babylon will be condemned by God
for their violence against people and their violence
against creation. They will be judged for their
greed, for their theft, for taking what didn't belong to
them. They'll be judged for harming
both people and this earth in their insatiable quest for more.
Now there's a historical horizon here and an eternal horizon in
history. Just a few decades later.
God partially fulfilled this promise by raising up Cyrus the
Persian to seize power over the Babylonians in 539 BC.
But God's judgement extends far beyond that historical event.
It will be fulfilled in fullness when Christ returns and judges
all people. And the consequences for sin
that the Lord Jesus begins to hand out on that day will
persist forever in eternity in hell.
These five woes in our passage are like a five part miniseries.
They're short, provocative episodes of judgement.
They portray both the sins of Babylon and God's judgement in
vivid detail. They're meant as a wake up call.
5 short wake up calls back-to-back to back.
They're meant to teach us 2 main lessons.
Hope in God's judgement and flee from sin.
Patiently wait for God to deal with evil in his time and in his
way, and turn from evil yourself.
It's easy to look at the world and see a whole bunch of evil
out there, a whole bunch of people, bad people doing bad
things. And that perception might be
accurate, that judgement might be true.
But a passage like this is also meant to be a mirror, to hold up
and say you might think it's only bad people out there, but
what about the bad in here? What about the ways in which
you're tempted to reflect and imitate people like the
Babylonians more than you would care to admit?
One of the themes of of this woe, and all the following ones,
is that God's judgement is fitting.
It's exact, it's just, it's complete.
Those who have robbed others will be robbed of everything.
Those who have devastated others will themselves be devastated.
How can that be good news? It's especially good news if
you've ever been on the receiving end of suffering
injustice that didn't get addressed, wasn't properly dealt
with, wasn't handled rightly by the authorities, or even if it
was, the justice that was meted out, you came to realize didn't,
didn't, and couldn't completely fix what was wrong.
All human justice is incomplete. Even when laws are just and
trials are fair, and verdicts are true, and sentences are
fitting and proportional, the execution of human justice
cannot give back everything that an evil person took away.
As we'll see throughout this passage, God's judgement doesn't
only punish evil, it defeats evil.
God's judgement doesn't just repay those who caused harm, it
also removes the harm and restores the one who is harmed
.2 Ruin every false refuge. What will God's judgement
accomplish? It will ruin every false refuge.
That's what the second woe in verses 9 to 11 pronounces and
promises verse 9. Woe to him who gets evil gain
for his house to set his nest on high, to be safe from the reach
of harm. Babylon sought to secure their
power and permanence by exploitation.
They sought to protect themselves.
By robbing others of protection, they sought security for
themselves. By denying security to others.
That's what the image of setting their nest on high implies.
It's like an eagle building a nest, an irie up in a rock face.
They tried to make themselves impregnable, invulnerable.
But of course, that obsessive quest for security shows they
were haunted by fear. Bullies have to be afraid of
everyone because they make everyone their enemy.
An obsessive quest for security shows how insecure you really
are. And verse 10 shows us this quest
was futile. You have devised shame for your
house. By cutting off many peoples, you
have forfeited your life. Now, when it says you've devised
shame, that's of course the opposite of what the Babylonians
were intending. But the point is, their plans
produced the opposite of their desires.
They schemed for glory, but what they were actually planning
turned into shame, and that's because they violently cut off
others. They stole life and thereby
forfeited their life in various ways.
In his providential rule over history and ultimately at the
final judgement God will ruin every false refuge.
Verse 11 tells us that their own possessions will testify against
them for the stone will crowd from the wall and the beam from
the woodwork respond. The image here is of lavish
royal palaces or temples that they would have built.
They would have built with plundered materials or materials
they got by spending other people's money.
So they build these nice buildings and then the stones
and the woodwork cries out against them, testifying to
their I'll gotten gain. Sinful gain can give you a
delusional sense of security. But living in sin is never safe.
No security system can keep out death.
No security system can protect you from God's judgement.
Greed is deceptive. Seeking to secure yourself at
cost to others is an illusion. You might not knowingly collude
with an oppressive political power to try to profit from
exploitation. I realized that that as a
literal description of your actions might fit very few of us
in this room. Might fit none of us in this
room. But do you ever press your
advantage at someone else's expense?
Do you ever seek gain for yourself in a way that will
leave someone else worse off than they should be?
And worse off than they deserve to be.
The Babylonians not only worshipped false gods of wood
and stone, as we'll see at the end of the passage, they also
worship their desires, their drives, their appetites.
Physical idols are not the only kind of false gods.
Any created thing that you look to for ultimate fulfilment or
security is an idol. It's a false God whenever you
look to it for total fulfilment, total protection.
If only I have this thing, I will be happy and safe.
You're making it a God in your heart.
Now these verses show us that you can even devote yourself to
one idol in the service of another idol.
Here's what I mean. These verses show us that the
Babylonians were idolatrously greedy.
Their greed was an idol. The Apostle Paul says in
Colossians 35 that covetousness is idolatry.
But Babylon's greed also served another idol, a deeper idol.
They pursued greed to attain security.
Their surface idol was greed, money, wealth, possessions.
Their deep idol was security. I'm borrowing this distinction
between surface idols and deep idols from Tim Keller's book
Counterfeit Gods. It's one of the deepest insights
in the whole book. Keller writes on this so
insightfully, I'm going to read a quote that's long but worth
it. Surface idols, deep idols.
Keller says counterfeit gods come in structures.
Sin in our hearts effects our basic motivational drives.
Each deep idol power, approval, comfort or control generates a
different set of fears and hopes.
Surface idols are things like money, spouse, children through
which our deep idols seek fulfilment.
We're often superficial in the analysis of our idol structures.
For example, money can be a surface idol that serves to
satisfy more foundational influences.
Some people want lots of money as a way to control their world
and life. And such people usually don't
spend much money. They live very modestly.
They keep it all safely saved and invested so that they can
feel completely safe in the world.
Others want money for access to social circles and to make
themselves beautiful and attractive.
These people do spend their money on themselves in lavish
ways. Other people want money because
it gives them so much power over others.
In every case, money functions as an idol, and yet because of
various deep idols, it results in very different patterns of
behavior. Over the coming week, do a
little self examination. Prayerfully consider the desires
of your heart in light of scripture.
What are the evident surface idols that dominate your heart
and mind? And what are the deep idols
seeking fulfilment through those surface idols?
If it's money you're longing for and craving, what is it you want
money to get for you? It's easy to idolize money
because in our society money can get you almost anything.
So the question to ask yourself is not just whether you want
money too much, but why? What are you looking money for
money to get for you? Money is a modern all-purpose
God substitute. It can get you anything.
It can protect you from anything.
It can fulfil anything, It can do anything for you.
So be careful not to let money replace God in your heart.
If you're not a believer in Jesus, where are you prone to
look for ultimate fulfilment or security?
That's not God. And how is that working out for
you? Through his just judgement, God
will ruin every false refuge. Now, the desire for security is
not a bad thing. We all need it, though we like
to think otherwise. All of us human beings are weak.
We're frail, we're fragile, we're vulnerable.
We need security. But you cannot find reliable
security by entrusting yourself completely to any creature.
Where can you find that kind of perfect security?
It's in God alone, as David prayed in Psalm 61.
Verses 2 and 3 lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for
you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy.
And don't look for perfect security in this life.
Instead, patiently wait for the perfect security that's coming
in the new creation. As Agustin put it, none of us
are secure or even can be secure until we arrive at our homeland,
where no friend will leave us, nor enemy gain access.
Point #3 Replace futility with glory.
What will God's judgement accomplish?
Verses 12 to 14? It will replace futility with
glory. Verses 12 and 13.
Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on
iniquity. Behold, is it not from the Lord
of hosts that people's labour merely for fire, and nations
weary themselves for nothing? Building a town with blood,
founding a city on iniquity, that that could refer to violent
conquest or conscripted labour, or both?
Like all imperial capitals, Babylon was built on the backs
of the oppressed, prisoners of war and slaves.
This is the way all proud human powers go about building their
kingdoms, Building through oppression, building for self,
building through exploitation, exploitation in service of self
glorification. In the thesis statement from his
great work, The City of God, Augustine penetrated down to the
spiritual roots of every human effort to make a name for
ourselves. He contrasts what he calls the
City of God with the city of man.
Accordingly 2 cities have been formed by two loves, the earthly
by the love of self even to the contempt of God, the heavenly by
the love of God even to the contempt of self.
The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the
Lord. For the one seeks glory from
men, but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of
conscience. The one lifts up its head in its
own glory, the other says to its God, Thou art my glory and the
lifter up of mine head. The outcome of the city of man's
building project is vanity, futility, emptiness, nothing.
That's what verse 13 proclaims. Behold, is it not from the Lord
of Hosts that peoples labor merely for fire, and nations
weary themselves for nothing? The empire builds monuments to
itself, but fire will burn them down.
Whole nations will spend themselves for their own glory,
but it will all come to nothing. Whatever empire is in charge at
any given time. Let the tape run.
Let a few more decades roll. Those territories will revolt.
That wall will fall. That dominant global superpower
will be demoted to one among many, or even less than that.
But how can we be certain? What if there's an earthly power
that bugs the trend and lasts as long as it wants?
How can we know they'll all fall?
Because God's building project will be the only one to succeed
perfectly and permanently. That's what verse 14 shows us.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory
of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. 5 Woes.
This is the middle one, and here's the reason.
In terms of typical ways Old Testament books are structured,
what comes in the middle is often the most important.
It's often the key. Here it is, verse 14, key to the
whole passage. For the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover
the sea. I've always been a little bit
confused by that phrase. As the waters cover the sea,
isn't the sea water by definition?
How is water covering water? This week I read my friend Steve
Duby's commentary on the back again.
It cleared it up for me. He explained that in this
phrase, the word sea refers to the sea bed, the sea floor.
So of course the waters cover the whole thing.
You know, as far as it extends into an incalculable depth.
Any Norman normal human person without scientific measuring
instruments, you just don't even know how deep it is.
You can't even say how wide it is.
It is covered that completely. That is what the knowledge of
God's glory will be like over all the earth when God fulfills
this promise. My wife Kristen loves to sit on
the beach and stare at the ocean.
She has said to me many times that it is the only place you
can go and just stare off into the distance and no one will
think you're crazy. We both grew up near the Pacific
and I grew up surfing often in the Pacific, so I spent a lot of
time near the ocean, on the ocean, in the ocean.
There's many times and I've just looked out to the horizon and
thought there's nothing but water between me and Japan.
It's incredible how the vastness dwarfs you, how it puts you in
your place as a teeny tiny little speck of a human being.
When you're in the Pacific Ocean, you're staring out
towards Japan. There is nothing but water for
thousands of miles out. When you're in the middle of the
ocean, there is nothing but water for thousands of feet
down. That's what God's glory over all
the earth will be like in the new creation.
Nothing but glory all the way out.
Nothing but glory all the way down.
Notice that what covers the whole earth is the knowledge of
the glory of the Lord, meaning people rightly receiving that
glory, people rightly responding to it, rightly delighting in it
and savouring it. This passage promises that God's
glory will not only be pervasively present, it will
also be perfectly perceived. When will this promise be
fulfilled? It will ultimately come to pass
when Christ returns and remakes heaven and earth.
When Christ returns and brings heaven to earth, this promise
will be fully realized in the new creation.
On that day, God's glory will be perfectly seen and will
perfectly satisfy all of His perfected people.
So this passage promises a total reversal from futility to glory,
from earthly kingdom's self seeking to all of God's people
seeing and savouring Him, from proud striving to the glad
reception of God's total gift of his all satisfying glory.
God's judgement will bring bring about a complete and perfect
transformation of all the conditions of life on earth.
So that's when. But the question is how?
How is that reversal achieved? Here is where we land squarely
on Easter. This reversal is accomplished by
the reversal that Christ experienced.
God's judgement includes both retribution and restoration,
both paying for sin and perfecting his creation.
On Good Friday, Jesus endured the retribution.
On Easter Sunday, Jesus began the restoration.
Jesus received this restoration first in his own body because he
paid for sins and then conquered the grave.
That's what he came to do. He came to deal with sin fully,
comprehensively, totally. Just like God's judgement
throughout this passage brings about a total transformation,
total justice, total change, total perfection for those who
believe in him. Total satisfaction.
That's what Jesus was accomplishing in his death and
resurrection. Our problem of sin is so great,
only Jesus death could pay for it.
Our sin is so serious it took the death of the Son of God to
suffer God's wrath for it. Our sin is so serious, the only
way we could be made right with God is by God Himself
substituting, taking our place and bearing the punishment we
deserved. And God's grace and power are so
great that he effortlessly triumphed over death, our
greatest enemy. That's what the resurrection is
about. It's about Jesus getting a life
in Himself that He can give to you and that He will give to you
if you turn from sin and trust in him.
That's what Easter is all about. That's why Christians have
gathered on Sunday every Sunday for 2000 years.
That's why in the face of a stubbornly traditional
conservative practice, that's hard to change.
Any kind of traditional religious practice takes sort of
a crowbar to pry it open and shift it.
Well, ancient Jews gathered for worship on Saturday.
The earliest Christians, all of whom were Jewish, start a
meeting on Sunday. For Christians, every Sunday is
Easter Sunday. Every time we gather on the
Lord's Day, we are celebrating His resurrection.
The Christian life starts by receiving Jesus resurrection,
and it continues by the power of Christ's resurrection working
itself out in you. If you want to know more about
that, if you're not a believer in Jesus, talk with a friend who
brought you. Talk with me or Michael at the
door. Talk with somebody over the
potluck lunch after. There's nothing more we would
like than to talk with you about what it means to receive the
power of Christ's resurrection into your own life.
God's glory will perfectly fill the new creation when Christ
returns. But the knowledge of this glory
is already spreading out over the face of the earth as people
from every tribe, tongue, and nation come to believe in Jesus.
As we fulfill Christ's Great Commission by sharing the
gospel, by going out as missionaries, by supporting
faithful gospel partners, we spread the knowledge of God's
glory into new corners of the earth.
Here's how Paul put it in language that echoes our
passage. Second Corinthians 4/6 For God,
who said let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our
hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ. This promise of God's
retribution and restoration teaches us to hope.
It teaches us to cling to God's promise when God's promise is
all you have. It teaches us to cling to God's
Word when God's word is all you have.
If you're a believer in Jesus, consider all that this promise
holds out to you. To hope in hope in the day when
you will have a perfect experience of God, perfect
fellowship with Him, perfect intimacy with him.
Hope in the day when you'll have perfect knowledge of God.
No more doubts, no more darkness, no more unanswerable
questions, no more fighting for faith and fighting off the
voices in your head that try to undermine everything God says.
No more inward battle with Satan's lies.
Hope In the day when every trace of sin is wiped off the face of
the earth. Every last speck of sin will be
scoured off of God's good earth by the flood of God's glory.
All injustice will be perfectly dealt with.
Justice will be perfectly restored forever, both without
and within. Hope in the day when all harm
will be more than healed. Hope in the day when all loss
will be more than restored. Hope in the day when suffering
will give way to glory. Easter is about this restoration
happening to Jesus first in his body, in his own human nature.
Jesus is the first born from the dead.
Everyone who believes in him will follow in that birth from
out of death. Easter is about the promise that
since this happened to Jesus first, one day it will happen to
everyone who believes in him. Jesus resurrection is the end of
evil. It's the end of death, it's the
end of sin, it's the end of suffering, all brought forward
into the present. God's judgement will replace
futility with glory, and in the resurrection of Jesus it already
has. Point #4 Shame the shameful.
Two more woes. 2 more points. Stay with me now.
Point #4 Shame the shameful. That's what God's judgement will
accomplish according to verses 15 to 17.
We'll consider verses 15 and 16 first.
Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink.
You pour out your wrath and make them drunk in order to gaze at
their nakedness. You'll have your fill of shame
instead of glory. Drink yourself and show your
uncircumcision. The cup in the Lord's right hand
will come around to you, and utter shame will come upon your
glory. The image here is of enticing
others to get drunk in order to incite them to immoral acts.
It's possible this condemns debauchery by the Babylonians,
but I think it's far more likely a metaphor for their whole
imperial program. In order to succeed politically,
the Babylonians would have had to make allegiances with all
kinds of other kings and rulers and powers.
They would have had to entice them to partner with them in
their exploitation. They promised glory, but the
reality was the shame of the morning after.
People who get drunk boast of things they should be ashamed
of. They try to lower other people's
resistance and reduce their inhibitions by pushing them to
drink more and more with them. Come on, have another one.
What's your problem? What's the big deal?
They lead people into sin. They glory in what should be
their shame. That's true of Babylon's use of
its power. It's also literally true of
everyone who uses their influence with others to lead
them into any kind of sin. Whether you like it or not,
we're all examples for others. We're all models for others.
We all rub off on others. Do you influence people to live
for God's glory or to rejoice in what's shameful?
How do your sins rub off on others?
In verse 16, God warns that just as the Babylonians have passed
around a cup of drunkenness, so he will pass around to them a
cup of wrath. They'll be justly exposed,
utterly degraded, eternally ashamed.
Verse 17 adds another layer to this condemnation.
The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, as will the
destruction of the beasts that terrified them for the blood of
man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in
them. Here I think we shift from the
metaphorical back to the literal.
Lebanon was a territory in the northernmost part of Israel that
was famous for its cedar trees. They were huge, they were
beautiful, they were renowned like redwoods and sequoias in
California. What did Babylon do to those
trees? Violence.
Babylon would have passed through Lebanon on their way to
conquer Judah. We know from Isaiah chapter 14
verses 7 and eight that they cut down huge swaths of those trees
to use them for their war machine.
They clear cut a heritage Redwood and Sequoia forest.
That's the equivalent here. Why?
To use it to get more power. The text also says that the
destruction of the beasts will overwhelm them, meaning they
will also suffer judgement for the animal lives they have
wrongly taken. By destroying their entire
habitat, they decimated all the animal life in that place.
Now the primary focus of this whole passage is on avenging
violence done to people. But God also cares about
violence done to His creation. That's why this verse repeats
that phrase from verse 8 for the blood of man and violence to the
earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.
This passage offers a challenge regarding our basic stance
toward the created world. Do we take from creation what we
want or think we need with no thought for the long term
consequences? What's the alternative to that
kind of violence? The economist and philosopher EF
Schumacher 50 years ago said the alternative to violence is
treating creation with reverence.
Another way. He put it a harmonious
cooperation with nature rather than a warfare against nature.
As Wendell Berry has said, any violence that intrudes between
the land and the people extends its damage both ways. 5th and
final point, expose idols. What will God's judgement
accomplish? It will expose idols.
That's what verses 18 to 20 show us.
Look at verses 18 and 19. What profit is an idol when it's
maker has shaped it? A metal image?
A teacher of lies. For its maker trust in his own
creation. When he makes speechless idols,
woe to him who says to a wooden thing awake, to a silent stone,
Arise, can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold
and silver, and there is no breath at all in it.
Now the key to this critique of idolatry is there in the second
part of verse 18. For its maker trusts in his own
creation. The only true refuge and
security and satisfaction is God.
He's the Creator, and we're the creatures we need to seek all of
our good in Him. Idols aren't just creatures in
one point of view, they're creatures of creatures.
That's true for physical idols, like many people in various
religions still worship today. But it's also true for idols of
the heart. Sex, money, power, status,
achievement, recognition, relationships.
When you make any of those things ultimate, they turn on
you. They become futile.
And on the one hand, verse 19 asks this rhetorical question,
can this teach? Implying they can't teach at
all. Idols are deaf, they can't talk.
But on the other hand, by their very existence, verse 18 says
they teach lies. They lie about God, they lie
about humanity. They lie about what we need.
They lie about what we will receive.
Not only do idols teach lies, they demand lies.
If you devote yourself to an idol, sooner or later you will
have to lie for it. How many times have you heard a
politician say something that you know is a lie, that they
know is a lie, and that you're pretty sure they know you know
is a lie? What's underneath all that lying
idolatry? In our passage, God exposes
idols not only by teaching their folly, but by contrasting them
with Himself and by the implied promise of what He'll do to
them. Verse 20 is another kind of
mountain peak viewpoint in our passage here at the very end.
But the Lord is in his holy temple.
Let all the earth keep silence before him.
To say the Lord is in his temple might mean that he's manifesting
his presence at his temple in Jerusalem.
He's not constrained by it or contained by it, but he makes
himself specially present there to be with his people.
It also might refer to heaven, which Exodus 25 teaches.
The earthly temple is a model of the heavenly one.
There's a temple in heaven where God reigns over all.
Either way, the point here is the temple is God's command
center. The temple is the seat of God's
government. The temple is the place from
which God rules over all things. Idols are lifeless, but the Lord
is infinitely full of life. Idols are mute, but the Lord
speaks plainly and powerfully. Idols can't teach, but the Lord
can teach both outwardly and inwardly.
Idols need to be called awake, and then they still don't get
up. But the Lord can call sinners
from death to life. Why does Habakkuk call all the
world to silence? Not just Judah, not just the
Babylonians, but everyone hearing this verse today here in
this room, and all the other 7 billion people on this planet.
Why does he call for silence? It's to show reverence before
God's reign. It's to express fear before His
Holiness, to indicate our submission under His supremacy.
Throughout the book, Habakkuk has wrestled with God, but now
it's time for reverence. Habakkuk has spoken bluntly to
God, but now it's time for silence.
Both are part of a lively, living relationship with God.
But once you've asked all your questions and you've heard God's
answers, there comes a time when silence, submission, is the only
fitting response. Brothers and sisters, this verse
and the truth behind it is one of the reasons why we bracket
our Sunday morning services with silence.
Just before we begin, just after we conclude, we take a moment of
silence. It's to cultivate reverence
before God, to help us slow down and consider the gravity of
meeting with God, to help us slow down and examine ourselves
so we don't just blunder into God's presence together.
We take a minute to cultivate reverence before approaching God
together and after hearing from God together.
More broadly, this call for reverence is why we aim to have
several elements of our service cultivate our corporate
reverence for God. We read Scripture passages that
convict us of sin, including the 10 commandments.
We confess our sins before God in prayer.
We sing songs that celebrate His Majesty in glory and we preach
the whole books of the Bible. We sit before God in silence,
hearing whatever He has to say. We embrace all that He has to
say, even if what He has to say is 15 verses of judgement on
Easter. Silent listening expresses holy
reverence. Verse 20 ends on a note of
stored up power. The Lord is in His holy temple.
He sees all things. He reigns over all things.
He observes all things. He will evaluate all things.
For now, He does that in a way that's hidden, that lets sinners
keep on sinning, that lets empires keep on rising and
falling, that tests His people's faith by letting them continue
to suffer and struggle and call out to Him.
We wonder where he is. He's in His holy temple.
What is he doing? He is reigning over all things,
but we don't see it yet. One day we will.
One day that pent up power will perfect and purify all of His
people and all of creation. How do we know?
Because I know that my Redeemer lives.
He lives triumphant from the grave.
He lives eternally to save. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we praise you for the promise that the earth
will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea, and we thank you for
beginning the fulfillment of that promise through the
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.
We pray that we would trust in You, pray that we would submit
to you, pray that we'd be reverent before you.
We pray that we would wait for You in Jesus name, Amen.