Do you like surprises? Sometimes?
That's right. It might depend on what the
surprise is and who's doing the surprising.
My wife Kristen does not like surprises, perhaps as much as
many people do. Whenever we watch ATV show that
has any kind of a suspenseful plot, she will read a Plot
Summary of the episode before we watch it.
It helps her to relax. She also doesn't like surprise
parties as much as some people do.
I once learned that the hard way.
What's the surprise and who's doing the surprising?
A lot of people's view of God is that he's anything but
surprising. If they have any vague notion
that corresponds to the God of the Bible, it would be something
like a combination of a heavenly grandfather and Santa Claus,
kind of distant up there. Catch him on a good day, maybe
he'll give you a present. Maybe he'll have some like
slightly useful advice for you if you get him on a bad day,
maybe he'll get a lecture. A scolding, but kind of
predictable. OK, I know.
I know what God's going to say on that topic.
I don't really need to go and sort of look it up.
I kind of know the guideline already.
A lot of people's view of God is as a kind of domesticated,
distant deity. CS Lewis was an atheist
throughout his teen years and his 20s before, very
unexpectedly to himself, he became a Christian around the
age of 29. He experienced it almost like
being dragged into believing in Christ against his will.
He wrote a memoir of his conversion called Surprised by
Joy, and he well captures the sense of genuine surprise or
even shock that there is in coming to reckon honestly with
the reality of the living God. God is far from domesticated.
He's far from predictable and boring.
Better words would be shocking, astounding, unnerving.
Lewis wrote about this dynamic and his work on miracles.
It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were
alone. Lookout, we cry.
It's alive. And therefore this is the very
point at which so many draw back.
I would have done so myself if I could, and proceed no further
with Christianity. An impersonal God, well and
good, a subject of God, of beauty, truth and goodness
inside our own heads. Better still, a formless life
force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap.
Best of all. But God himself alive, pulling
at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an
infinite speed, The hunter king husband, that is quite another
matter. There comes a moment when the
children who've been playing at burglars hush suddenly.
Was that a real footstep in the hall?
There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in
religion, man's search for God, suddenly draw back.
Supposing we really found him. We never meant it to come to
that. We're still supposing he had
found us. Have you ever been surprised by
God? Have you ever been shocked?
Unnerved. Astounded?
One test of whether you truly know the true God is that He
does and says things that shock you, things that surprise or
unnerve you, things that make you marvel.
This morning we continue our series in the Old Testament book
of Habakkuk with chapter 1, verses 5:00 to 11:00.
Last week we considered the prophets painful cry to God.
In verses one to four, Habakkuk laments the evil and degradation
that he sees all around him, and he cries out in verses 2 and 3.
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help?
And you will not hear or cry to you violence, and you will not
save. Why do you make me see iniquity?
And why do you idly look at wrong?
Habakkuk accuses God of culpable inaction in the face of evil.
He asks him why. How long?
What are you doing? When are you going to bring a
change in our passage? God answers Habakkuk, but his
answer is surprising, Shocking even.
God's answer is not what Habakkuk was expecting or hoping
for. Please follow along as I read
Habakkuk chapter 1 verses 5:00 to 11:00.
Look among the nations and see. Wander and be astounded, for I'm
doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.
For behold, I'm raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty
nation who marched through the breadth of the earth to seize
dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome.
Their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.
Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the
evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on.
Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle swift to
devour. They all come for violence, all
their faces forward. They gather captives like sand.
At kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh.
They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take
it. Then they sweep by like the wind
and go on guilty men whose own might is their God.
What does God tell Habakkuk to do in this passage?
In one sentence, Marvel at God's surprising judgment.
Marvel at God's surprising judgment.
That's God's message to Habakkuk and to the whole people of Judah
and to us this morning. Marvel at God's surprising
judgment. He calls Habakkuk to wonder, to
be amazed, to be astounded, to be shocked into Worshipful
silence. Shocked at what?
At the fact that he is raising up the Babylonians to judge his
people. We'll walk through the passage
and see that God gives us 3 reasons to marvel at His
surprising judgement. The first point we'll cover
verses 5 to 6. The second point we'll cover
verses 7:00 to 11:00. The Third Point, we'll draw out
something that's implicit in the whole passage .1.
Verses 5 and 6. God's supreme power.
Look again at verse 5.
Look among the nations and see Wonder and be astounded, for I'm
doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.
Habakkuk's report of the Lord's answer to his complaint is
abrupt. We don't really know what's
happening because there's no transition.
There's no. Then the word of the Lord came
to me saying, we just hear these 4 commands.
Look, see wonder, be astounded. The Lord replies directly to
Habakkuk's complaint, and he dispenses with any niceties.
English grammar doesn't make this explicit, but in Hebrew all
four of those imperative verbs are in the plural.
God is speaking not just to the prophet Habakkuk, but through
him to all of Judah. He has a message for all of his
people. He's telling them to wake up and
look up. He's telling them to lift up
their eyes from their present local circumstances and see
something big that God is doing on the global stage.
There's a lesson in this for us already.
When you're struggling to trust God's goodness or His promises,
look up. Look up to God's throne in
heaven and remember that He reigns over all things.
Look back to what God has done for his people throughout the
centuries. Look back to what He's done for
you throughout the years and decades.
And look around to what God is doing for his people around the
world. A number of us have been
enjoying recently the 9 Marks podcast called A Storm in the
Desert about God's surprising work of bringing an outpouring
of gospel fruit in the United Arab Emirates in the Middle
East. You can be encouraged by ways
that God is at work around the world in 10 million ways.
You might get a glimpse of one or two or ten.
When God says I am doing a work in your days that you would not
believe if told, He's reminding us that He's transcendent.
He's above us. He's beyond us.
His ways are above our ways. His thoughts are above our
thoughts. One good theological way to say
this is that God is incomprehensible.
That doesn't mean we can't know anything about Him.
It does mean we can't know everything about him that should
humble us. God is utterly faithful and self
consistent, and yet our minds are so small and our knowledge
of Him is so incomplete. But there are plenty of times
when His word will surprise us or even shock us.
If you're paying attention, His judgements will cause you to sit
up and marvel what happens when a new generational talent breaks
out in a pro sport. You might think of a Steph Curry
or a Patrick Mahomes, these kind of people who instantly enter
the debate about greatest of all time.
People marvel. They wonder how, how can his
shooting of three pointers be so machine like in its consistency?
How can he get off that pass so far, so fast with such accuracy
when he's already been tackled and he's bending over sideways
and his elbows like 2 inches from the ground?
How can he do it? People marvel because what
they're witnessing is beyond anything they've ever seen a
human being do. It's above, it's beyond.
It stands out from anything they've experienced.
That kind of marveling that might lead you to enjoy seeing
one of the best in the world play is a teeny tiny taste of
the ways God intends for us to marvel at His transcendent
greatness and power and wisdom. Because it's beyond not only
anything we've ever seen any human being do, it's beyond
anything we can comprehend. A test of whether you truly know
the true God is that you marvel at Him.
This marvelling includes wonder. It induces humility.
It inspires godly awe and fear of Him.
It prompts you to submit to Him and entrust yourself to Him.
As Psalm 131 verse one confesses, O Lord, my heart is
not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high.
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too
marvelous for me. Marveling at God's supreme power
should leave lead you to leave secret things in His hands.
It should lead you to recognize that there are limits to what
you can ever know and will ever know.
Marvelling at God's supreme power should lead you not to
talk back to God, not to sit in judgement of God, not to demand
that God's judgements all clear themselves at the bar of your
reason. One of the key purposes of
weekly corporate worship is that it trains our hearts and minds
all together to marvel at God. In corporate worship, we marvel
together at God's power, His goodness, His sovereignty, His
Providence. Think about the ways we've
already done that together. This morning we've prayed a
prayer of praise that exalted God's character.
We've confessed the truth of God's Providence in the
beautiful devotional language of the Heidelberg Catechism.
We've sung songs that celebrate God's supremacy like Ancient of
Days. Are you seeing a pattern?
Do you see some deliberate design there in the themes of
the service? One of the best things that can
happen to you in corporate worship is that it provokes you
to marvel at God. And that that marvelling at God
doesn't just wash away or stop as soon as you exit through
those doors. But that actually that renewed
sense of God's greatness, that renewed sense of His Majesty
will carry through into your week, will make some difference
in your obedience, your service, your trust in Him, your worship.
Throughout the week we come together to delight in God and
to be transformed by that delight.
Now in our passage, verse five, he tells us to marvel.
What does he tell his people to marvel at verse 6 for?
Behold, I'm raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty
nation who marched through the breadth of the earth to seize
dwellings not their own. Teeny tiny ancient Near Eastern
history lesson coming In verse 6, the Lord uses the name
Chaldeans to identify the family dynasty who would, very soon
after this, come to power in the territory of Babylon.
Up until the late 7th century BC, Babylon was a territory
subject to the imperial power of Assyria.
Assyria was the dominant empire of the time.
They're the ones who sent the northern Kingdom of Israel into
exile. But over the span of 10 years
after Nabo Pulasar came to power, between 6:14 and six O 5
BC, Babylon conquered the old capital of Assyria, then the new
capital Nineveh, then the city of Haran, and then they defeated
Egypt's armies at Karkamish in Syria.
Four massive victories in 10 years.
There's a new global power on the scene.
They have taken over the Assyrians dominance.
Babylon had a meteoric rise. And the Lord tells Habakkuk that
he's the one who's going to make that happen.
This is the Lord announcing it in advance and saying, when you
see the Babylons go from the Babylonians, go from nothing to
everything, know that I'm the one who did that.
As the Lord would later warn the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar
generation later in Daniel 432, the Most High rules the Kingdom
of men and gives it to whom he will.
Habakkuk 16 asserts that God's Providence extends to the rise
and fall of empires. I'll say more on that in a
minute. For now, we should just note
that one aspect of what's so shocking is Babylon's rapid
ascent to dominance. No one would have predicted it.
No one could have seen it coming.
But there's something else that's shocking in the Lord's
reply to Habakkuk. This nation that God is raising
up is, as verse 6 says, a bitter and hasty nation who marched
through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their
own. They have an insatiable appetite
for conquest. They're hardened.
They're fearsome. They're just going over the
whole region, devouring more and more territory, taking more
stuff that doesn't belong to them, and heaping it up into
their own empire. They'll stop at nothing.
We often use the phrase today as a cliche, or might say it
ironically, but Babylon truly is an evil empire.
Verses 7 to 11 are going to show us just how evil, but verse 6 on
its own has enough to shock us. So wait a minute, in response to
the evil of his people, the Lord is going to raise up an evil
empire to punish them? That's not exactly heart
warming. No warm fuzzy feelings for
Habakkuk in the Lord's reply. This would not make a very good
Hallmark card. When you are in distress over
injustice, remember the Lord will raise up an evil empire to
punish you. This is not a word immediately
or directly of comfort. God is going to use evil to deal
with evil. This is almost certainly not the
answer to prayer that Habakkuk was looking for.
At first. Habakkuk's problem was that God
wasn't answering his prayers. Now God does answer, and that's
going to present problems of its own.
I'll do a little bit of work to resolve that tension that God's
answer seems to make things worse, but I'm not going to
fully unpack it or fully address it because that tension of God's
answer seeming to make things worse is actually going to drive
a good portion of the rest of the book.
So we'll say a little bit now, but it's a tension we have to
sit with. We have to live with the tension
because it's going to unfold in the next few sermons.
This sermon is kind of in the midst of things God is
answering, but it doesn't really make sense.
What do you do with that? What do you do with that?
Keep praying, keep trusting. Trust that while God's response
might not be what you want, it will be what you need.
Sometimes God's lack of an answer doesn't make sense.
Sometimes His answer doesn't make sense.
Keep entrusting yourself to Him. Now, like I said, I'm not going
to address the problem fully because the book of Habakkuk is
going to do that on its own timeline.
But I will say something briefly about how we can understand God
to be sovereign over evil without being the author of
evil. God is the creator and sustainer
of all things. All things exist because God
continually wills and enables their existence.
As Paul says in Acts 1728, in Him we live and move and have
our being. God also exercises a pervasive
influence on all of creation, and He governs all of creation.
Nothing exists independently of Him.
Nothing escapes His sovereign command, control, and
permission. Proverbs 1633 says the lot is
cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord.
Proverbs 21 one, the King's heart is a stream of water in
the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever He will.
Jesus Himself teaches in Matthew 1029.
Are not 2 sparrows sold for a penny and not one of them will
fall to the ground apart from your Father?
As RC Sprole often said, there are no maverick molecules.
There is nothing in this universe.
There is nothing in your life that escapes God's providential
direction. Now, it's important to recognize
that God's action and creatures action don't work on the same
level. It's not like two people if you
and I are playing catch with a baseball.
If I'm throwing, you're catching If you're catching.
If you're throwing, I'm catching.
We cannot both throw the same baseball at the same time, at
least not without stretching the analogy beyond its bounds.
Thank you. But God's action is on a
different plane from ours. While you're throwing the ball,
God is holding the ball together and holding up the air that the
ball flies through and giving your arm the strength it needs
to throw. God is at work enabling your
work. God's work empowers your work.
God's work and your work are not in competition.
You can work because God is working what you are working.
God works through secondary causes.
God grants creatures their own agency, their own
responsibility, their own free choice.
God works through creaturely causes, not because he lacks
strength, but because he abounds in goodness.
It's part of the dignity that he gives to creatures.
And this also means that creatures can intend to
something different by their actions than God intends to
achieve through their actions, as Joseph said to his brothers
in Genesis 5020. As for you, you meant evil
against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many
people should be kept alive as they are today.
Here's how the Westminster Confession summed all this up.
God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of
His own will, freely and changeably ordain whatsoever
comes to pass, yet so as thereby.
Neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to
the will of the creatures, or is the liberty or contingency of
second causes taken away, but rather established.
When it comes to God's providential government over
evil actions. In particular, it's important to
draw a distinction between God permitting and God affecting.
God permits evil, He doesn't perform it.
Every sin is the result of some defect, some absence of what
should be there. God isn't responsible for that
absence. The creature is.
Now, what does all this teach us?
It teaches us that God is supremely powerful.
God is sovereign over evil. He raises up and casts down
empires. He raises up and casts down
leaders. He's able to ordain and work
through evil human acts without being the author of sin.
He makes people's evil intentions serve his good
purposes. God's ways are marvellous and
surprising, in part because he uses crooked sticks to draw
straight lines. What's the greatest example of
that in all of history? It's the cross of Christ.
Recall what Michael read earlier in Acts chapter 4, verses 27 to
28. For truly, in this city there
were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom
you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the
Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand
and your plan had predestined to take place.
There was nothing uncertain in what was taking place in the
path to the cross and at the cross itself.
And yet the chain of events that led there was one human free
decision after another. Both are true.
What sent Jesus to the cross? Envy, pride, fear of man,
religious opposition, all kinds of stuff from all different
kinds of people on the human plane.
What sent Christ to the cross? God's eternal determination to
save through judgement. We should marvel at God's
surprising judgement. And what is the most surprising
judgement of all? It's the cross of Christ.
The cross is the supreme instance of surprising
judgement. God uses the injustice of men to
accomplish divine justice. God pours out judgement in order
to save. The cross is at once the
judgement you deserve and the salvation you need.
So if you're troubled by God's permission of evil, if you're
troubled by evil, you've experienced, evil you've
witnessed. Know that the evil you should be
most concerned about is your own, and that God's solution to
it is a surprising judgement that saves.
You need to receive Christ being judged in your place in order to
be reconciled to God. And God proved the validity, the
power, the worth of what he did on the cross by raising Jesus
from the dead. Evil did not get the last word
over Jesus, and evil will not get the last word over you if
you turn from sin and trust in Him.
If God can accomplish salvation through judgement on the cross,
if God can bring the greatest good from the greatest evil,
then trust Him with whatever suffering you're enduring.
His purposes might not be clear to you now.
You might be feeling much more pain than comfort.
You might feel like God isn't answering your prayers, or that
if He is, His answers are only making things worse.
But if God loves you so much that He gave His only Son for
you, then you can trust that His perfect power is perfectly
matched by perfect love. He who did not spare His own
Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him
graciously give us all things? Marvel at God's surprising
judgement because it shows His supreme power.
Verses 7 to 11 the Lord double s down on the difficulty point #2
God's crooked tool. Verses 7 to 11 God's crooked
tool. You should marvel at God's
surprising judgement because God can use even an anti God empire
to carry out His purposes and these verses give us a
terrifying profile of this anti God empire.
There are three main aspects to the picture so I'll give 3 sub
points. First, verse 7, self exaltation.
Self exaltation. Look at verse 7.
They're dreaded and fearsome. Their justice and dignity go
forth from themselves. In verse 4, Habakkuk lamented
the lack of justice among his people.
Now here comes an empire with justice.
But the language is ironic. Their justice is really
injustice. It's really an anti justice.
How do we know that? Because the verse says it goes
forth from themselves, meaning they presume to be their own
law. They make their own rules.
They promote their own greatness.
They are a lot of themselves. They don't submit to God's
sovereignty, but assert their own sovereignty.
That's the hallmark of every totalitarian regime.
They submit to no law but their own, and their standard of
justice is whatever's best for them and gives them more power.
Any earthly political authorities who exalt themselves
in this way are affronting God, and while God might sovereignly
permit their evil and use them for His purposes, He will hold
them to account. No human authority is absolute.
Those who act like it will pay for it.
Second, pride in their unmatched power.
Some point to pride in their unmatched power.
We see this in verses 8 through 10.
Verse 8. Their horses are swifter than
leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves.
Their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar.
They fly like an eagle, swift to devour.
Here the Lord proclaims Babylon's terrifying military
might. Horses were crucial assets in
ancient militaries because of their speed and manoeuvrability.
And here the Lord says that Babylon's horses are faster than
big cats. They're hungrier than wolves
that haven't eaten all day, and they're able to snatch up prey
like an eagle swooping down. Have you ever seen a bird of
prey swoop down and catch something?
A couple of years ago, my family and I were walking near
Hawksbill Creek, aptly named in the foothills of the Shenandoah
Mountains in Virginia, near Shenandoah National Park.
We had stopped for a picnic. We were looking at the Creek.
Me and a couple of my kids are just watching what's going on in
the Creek bed and suddenly there was this bizarre like flapping
and squawking and tussling that lasted for about a 10th of a
second. And we were like, what just
happened? I was like, it happened so fast
my brain couldn't process it. Like I had to slow down and
replay what I had just seen to try to figure it out.
It's because a hawk had swooped down and tried to pluck up a
pigeon. It made contact, but it failed
to carry the pigeon away, like on the sand on the riverbank
right there. It happened so quick I could not
make sense of, like the bizarre thing I was seeing.
That's what the Lord is saying it's going to be like when
Babylon comes in and sweeps through Judah.
It will be so fast you can't make sense of it.
Kids in the congregation, what animal are you most afraid of?
For me, it would probably be a great white shark.
It's because I grew up surfing in Northern California and there
are some great white sharks there, and I never wanted to
meet one. The Lord is saying in this
passage, whatever powerful wild animal you might be most afraid
of, that's what it's going to be like when this army comes
through and carries out God's own justice against his chosen
people. And that picture of a terrifying
earthly army, that's like a terrifying wild animal, That's
only the faintest picture of what God's eternal judgement
will be like. Look at verse 9.
They all come for violence, all their faces forward.
They gather captives like sand. He's saying that they have
strict military discipline. They have total dedication to
destruction, and because of this intense military power, they can
take captive whoever they want. They can carry them off and make
them their slaves. Then verse 10, at kings they
scoff, and at rulers they laugh. They laugh at every fortress
where they pile up earth and take it.
They're not afraid of any ruler. They're not afraid of any
authority. They're not afraid of any
earthly power. Why?
Because they have superior military might, they know they
can conquer any defence or counter attack.
They have a bigger, stronger, tougher fighting force.
They have the best military technology on the planet.
To understand the second-half of verse 10, you have to understand
how ancient cities were built for defence.
They would have thick walls that would be pretty wide and maybe a
couple of stories high that would protect the whole city.
That was so that if any invading army came, you could have your
guys stationed on top, Archers shooting down from there,
catapulting heavy things down. It was a major means of
protection. The problem was, the Babylonians
were so good at building siege mounds, they could just bring in
all this material, build a ramp and send up men, send up weapons
and just walk right over the wall of the city and take it.
They were totally superior. They were so confident in
themselves that they could laugh off any challenge.
This is a picture of pride in earthly strength.
It's repulsive, and it should be.
But does that kind of pride find any echo at all in your own
heart? Is there anything in your life
where you have a certain strength and you think it makes
you better than others, where you relatively excel in this
area and so you can laugh at somebody else?
This brings us to verse 11, our third subpoint, Idolatrous self
worship. Idolatrous self worship.
That's what we see in verse 11. Then they sweep by like the wind
and go on. Guilty man whose own might is
their God. The first half of the
Babylonians pictures them almost like locusts, just sweeping in,
devouring, and like the wind moving on to the next target.
But then the second-half of the verse strikes a different note.
Guilty men whose own might is their God.
You cannot conclude from the fact that God is using them that
God approves of them. You cannot conclude from the
fact that God put them in power that he endorses their behavior.
He calls them guilty. You cannot conclude from the
fact that God permits their evil that God endorses their evil
because they're guilty. There's just a little teeny tiny
hint of hope here. There's a little crack in the
wall of judgement that a tiny ray of grace can shine through.
The Lord is going to use Babylon to judge his guilty people.
But Babylon is guilty too. Which means if the Lord applies
the same standard to them that He does to His people, He will
not let them off the hook. But the Lord's not focused on
that just yet. We'll get there.
The last phrase of verse 11 is telling and haunting.
Whose own might is their God? All pride is at root self
worship. It's taking something you
appreciate about yourself and making it your God.
Here Babylon specific form of self worship is that they
worship their own strength, their might, their military
power, their dominance. What could offer evidence of
that kind of self worship? One thing would be, say, a
political leader setting up a golden statue of himself, just
like King Nebuchadnezzar did in Daniel chapter 3.
Those who worship themselves will insist that others worship
them too. If you're not a believer in
Jesus, do you have anything that counts as strength that you
might be tempted to entrust yourself too, as if it's a God?
For some people, that might be money.
If you have enough money, you can buy your way out of a whole
lot of tight places. If you have enough money, you
can store up all kinds of security for your future.
Whatever that thing is, where you look for help in your life's
worst messes, whatever that thing is, where you turn for
refuge when your life gets hard. If it's not the God of the
Bible, that is your functional God.
What do we learn from these verses as a whole?
All of verse 7:00 to 11:00. They teach us to marvel at God's
surprising judgement because He uses a crooked tool to carry it
out. But again, why is He doing this?
Why is he raising up the Babylonians, and why is he
warning Judah about them .3 God's righteous purpose God's
righteous purpose What is God's righteous purpose is that he
will wield the Babylonians as a surprising instrument to judge
his people Judah for their idolatry and injustice.
He will send his evil power against his own people to
destroy their society and carry them off into exile as an
expression of his own perfect, promised divine judgement.
Now, nothing in this passage makes this purpose absolutely
explicit. Chris Biggers pointed that out
to me rightly, as we're studying the passage together this week.
It doesn't actually say he's doing this to judge his people.
That's right, it's not explicit, but I think the whole passage
implies it. Otherwise, the Lord's response
would not address Habakkuk's complaint in any meaningful way.
He's crying out about injustice. If God starts talking about
something totally different, it just doesn't even add up.
Now certainly God's answer does create new problems for
Habakkuk, but we shouldn't overlook the fact that the Lord
does respond to Habakkuk's complaints.
The Lord does answer Habakkuk's prayer.
Habakkuk complaints about the people's injustice, and this is
how the Lord is going to deal with that injustice.
Now confirmation that this is the case can be found in the
very next verse of Habakkuk, chapter one, verse 12,
second-half of the verse, Habakkuk confesses to the Lord.
Oh Lord, you have ordained them as a judgement, and you, O rock,
have established them for reproof.
Now Habakkuk 1 teaches us about God's retributive judgement
against His old covenant people. By judging His people like this,
God was fulfilling the covenant He made with them through Moses,
particularly in the last few chapters of Deuteronomy.
God promised blessings if they obeyed and curses if they
disobeyed. That is God's righteous purpose,
which He uses an unrighteous nation to accomplish.
But how do we as New Covenant Christians relate to this
judgement? Just three quick points.
First, rejoice that justice for your sins was carried out on the
cross. Paul says that Christ's
crucifixion in Romans 325 was to show God's righteousness because
in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he
might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in
Jesus. Secondly, live soberly in light
of the final accounting that you'll give on Judgement Day, as
Peter tells us in First Peter 117 And if you call on him as
Father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds,
conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your
exile, you will give an account of yourself to God on the last
day. Let that shine a light into how
you live each day He gives you now.
Third, submit to every form of divine discipline.
In Hebrews 12, the author compares God's discipline of us
to how earthly parents discipline their children to
train them In verses 10 and 11. He says, For they disciplined us
for a short time as it seemed best to them, but He disciplines
us for our good, that we may share His Holiness.
For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than
pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of
righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
One reason God ordains hardships and trials for us is to
discipline us, to teach us, to train us, to mold us into
Christ's character. Trials discipline us by putting
pressure on what we're holding on to instead of God, so that we
release our grip and learn to grasp him instead.
God doesn't send us discipline to condemn us, but to conform us
to Christ. What divine discipline have you
endured lately? That'd be a good topic to
discuss over lunch together or to take up with a member of the
church during the week. What divine discipline have you
endured lately? In this whole passage, verses
5:00 to 11:00, what is God doing?
He's engaging in a patient process.
He's preparing His people and bringing them along a step by
step. He's bringing them to recognize
and embrace. The rightness of His using the
Babylonians to judge them. When God does something shocking
or surprising in your life, it can be hard to square that with
His wisdom, with His goodness, with His love.
But part of the struggle of faith is learning to reconcile
yourself to God's Providence and to confess that he is good and
all he does. Nothing he does is wrong,
wicked, or evil. Deuteronomy 32 verse 4 says the
rock. His work is perfect for all his
ways are justice, a God of faithfulness and without
iniquity, just and upright is he.
How can you reconcile yourself to God's surprising, sometimes
shocking Providence? A few thoughts on application
that will close with it begins with understanding and
submission. Know that God is sovereign and
embrace that truth rather than resisting it.
Welcome that truth. Don't fight it.
Say with our Lord Jesus in the garden, not my will, but yours
be done. Reconciling yourself to
Providence continues through trust and thanks.
Thank God for His work in your life.
Thank God for the good things He's given you in the midst of
pain and hardship. Can you see ways that God has
set a limit to your suffering, that God kept it from being
worse than it was? Can you see ways God has
provided for you in surprising ways in the midst of your
suffering? Thank Him for all of that, and
let thanks deepen your trust. Often God's Providence hurts
your heart. Often God's Providence hurts
your head. To trust God is to continue
confessing His goodness when you can't see how your life
manifests that goodness. To trust God amid perplexing
providences is to believe Him farther than you can explain
Him. If you trust God only as far as
you can explain Him, then it is not God you're trusting.
Finally, as Thomas Watson wrote, learn to adore Providence.
Let what you see and understand of God's Providence lead you to
worship Him for it. When you get a glimpse of the
good purposes that God is carrying out in your life, let
that lead you to worship Him. When you see something of how
God is causing all things to work together for good to you,
let that lead your heart to say, Behold our God seated on His
throne. Come, let us adore him.
Let's pray, Heavenly Father, we pray that we would look, see,
wonder, and be astounded at your grand purposes for saving and
judging your people, at your purposes of accomplishing
salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We pray we would look, see, wonder, and be astounded at the
good work you're doing in our lives as you weave together
blessings and burdens, joys and hardships.
Father, we pray that we would submit to your sovereign reign
over all things and learn to adore it in Jesus name, Amen.