April 22, 2018 PM Meet The Babylonians by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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April 22, 2018 PM: Meet The Babylonians Habakkuk 1:5-11 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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We'll turn please once again to book of Habakkuk and We'll look this morning
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At chapter 1 and verses 5 through 11 entitled this message meet the
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Babylonians which they were about to and This afternoon in the pages of scripture
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Lord willing we will Beginning of verse 5 Look among the nations and see
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Wonder and be astounded For I'm doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told
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For behold I am raising up the Chaldeans that bitter and hasty nation who marched through the breadth of the earth
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To seize dwellings not their own They are dreaded and fearsome their justice and dignity go forth from themselves
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Their horses are swifter than leopards more fierce than the evening wolves their horsemen pressed proudly on their horsemen
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Come from afar. They fly like an eagle swift to devour They all come for violence all their faces forward.
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They gather captives like sand at Kings They scoff and it rulers they laugh they they then
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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 might is their own
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God Now this of course comes as God's answer to the
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Prophets opening question where he said Oh Lord How long shall I cry for help and you will not hear or cry to you violence and you will not save whereas Habakkuk's cry his plea the violence.
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He saw the iniquity that was before his eyes was from where It was from Judah and most especially from the rulers the ruling class of Judah So he calls out to God.
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Oh Lord, how long and here in these verses. I just read to you is God's answer God had shown him the iniquity in Judah and he the prophet had faithfully cried out against it and in his eyes to no avail
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Injustice greed idolatry all continued unrestrained if the question was
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Lord, why do you wait? this answer Might have made the Prophet long once again for God's previous patience
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Judah's sins you see Had not escaped the Lord's notice Nor had the judgment that they so richly deserve been forgotten in fact
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In this answer, what do we see? What did the prophecy but the judgment was well on its way and it would be more terrible
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Than anything the Prophet could have imagined You see sin will be met with punishment and that punishment will be commensurate with the wrong done the horror that the
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Babylonians would bring described here in excruciating detail as Awful as that would be
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It's really only a hint of the depth of our offenses against the
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Holy God So this afternoon as we continue in this prophets short prophecy
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Let's meet the Chaldeans Let us meet God's chosen instrument of judgment
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Who are the Chaldeans Chaldeans is synonymous? It's really the same as Babylonians by the time
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Habakkuk received his commission this nation these Babylonians The Chaldeans had already already destroyed a
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Syria and that was in 612 BC And they were to be
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God's chosen instrument of judgment Next now Syria had been
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God's instrument of judgment against the northern kingdom against what we call Israel and now Babylon Against the remaining kingdom
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Judah and the Prophet Habakkuk He is aghast at this prospect his answer to God's answer will be our text for next week when he answers back
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How can this be? But for now for this afternoon, let's note simply this
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The punishment will fit the crime Matter of fact what's more than that the punishment will be point by point
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Exactly what God had warned of centuries before this We go through this very quickly you'll get the sense of it in verse 6 it says that they dwell
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So these they seize dwellings not their own If you think all the way back to chapter 6 verse 12 of Deuteronomy as Israel's getting ready to take the promised land
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Israel is told that God is going to let them live in cities and houses that they didn't build Others built them and God's going to drive them out and give them to his people
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God will displace what was theirs and going to give it to Israel but then
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Deuteronomy 28 verse 30 as The curses for disobedience are detailed that it says quite the opposite you
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Israel you will build a house, but others will live in it This is the people who's coming upon them
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The Babylonians who in general seized places that they didn't make other people's property and they dwell there
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And this is the turnabout that Israel's about to experience from Babylon Verse 7 their dignity their justice and dignity go out from themselves.
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What does that mean? It means they make their own standards. They live by their own rules They cared not one whit what
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God had to say What they said if by force we can impose it upon you then might makes right
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Israel had once been told keep my statutes and do them for that will be your wisdom and your Understanding in the sight of the peoples who when they hear these all these statues will say surely
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This is a great nation is a wise and understanding people But having refused to go forth with God's justice and God's dignity before them
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They're going to be conquered by a nation whose own justice whose own dignity things that they've put together by their own standards their own thinking their own desires and Because of their military might can impose upon others and what was their wisdom?
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What was their justice? What was their dignity? Well in Babylon the application today today is obvious and we don't have to spend a lot of time
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Detailing it they make their own rules They decide for themselves.
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What is right? As long as they're stronger than anybody who might be able to pose a different standard on them as long as they can hold them
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At bay or even conquer them they are in that sense right and nobody's going to change them
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Who's Babylon How do we understand Babylon? Do you remember a boxer named
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Mike Tyson? He was the heavyweight boxing champ in the late 1980s he might have been the fiercest man to ever enter the ring and I saw him on TV when he was fighting the
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European boxing champ a man named Frank Bruno and Tyson won the fight during the referees instructions before the opening bell
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Because you could tell by the way Tyson was staring at him in the way Bruno was looking back that Bruno was terrified
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He lost the fight before the bell and you know the referee saying well,
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I want a clean fight no hitting below the belt and all that But it was over before it began officially ended in the fifth round, but Tyson won it long before that What I bring in a boxer as an example in a message about the gospel you see a
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Syria The nation that we spoke about in the previous series in Nahum Nahum who prophesied a serious fall a
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Syria had been the Mike Tyson of the ancient Near East Only a fool would not have been terrified of a
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Syria but now Guess who's coming to dinner? The guy who took out
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Tyson with a single punch That's who Babylon was
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Now where would Israel go what will Israel do when they hear this they had a long centuries long a lifelong habit of going to Egypt for help
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Could they go to Egypt for help No Very near this time at a battle called
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Karshmish after the place where it took place Babylon destroyed
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Egypt militarily Egypt was no threat to Babylon and no help to anyone else
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So by the time they hear this prophecy from Habakkuk Their options are virtually nil
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And we can look at this we can say well, you know The Lord does have a way of taking away our refuges
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Places where we're going to turn in times of distress perhaps times of providential distress Chastisement we would call it that the
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Lord has given us And he takes away those refuges those Egypt's until we're left with only him
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In times of trouble times of turmoil too often our first instinct is to do something to do something
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Assess the situation gather up our options and then we analyze the options for pluses and minuses and maybe we plug them into a spreadsheet
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Which we've programmed that will perform a statistical analysis and give us the probable outcomes
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And we choose what looks most beneficial to us and all the while we never stop to ask Why has
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God set me here? Why are my options? Dwindling away why every time
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I turn this way or that way it's always been there this Egypt This is Syria who's been my ally before and it's gone
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They're not there for me good time to stop and Ask the
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Lord Why has this providence? Why is this chastisement upon me? Israel by the time they hear this they had nowhere left to turn
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And when I think of the history we don't have that particular battle in the
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Bible But we know from archaeological and historical evidence that took place so about the time of this prophecy Israel had nowhere to go all these places they used to run for cover
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They couldn't There was only Babylon coming there was only the
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Lord's decree that they would judge Israel for its or I should say Judah For its long long rebellion which with which the
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Lord had suffered long And he sends judgment against Judah piece by piece removing options so that what is left
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Only him turn to him As we go through these minor prophets one of the real
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Shining characteristics of what we call the minor prophets is this constant call to repent Repent and as Malachi says perhaps the
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Lord will leave behind a blessing Who knows says Joel if he will forgive your sins
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Jesus wept over this kind of obstinacy In loose gospel when he drew near and saw the city that's
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Jerusalem He wept over it saying would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace
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But now they are hidden from your eyes you see the Lord takes no pleasure in bringing death and destruction
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But he ever offers himself Faithful to his own word if only we will see if only we will hear if only we will obey
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If only we will pray and ask God why is this providence upon me why is your chastising hand heavy upon me
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Oh Lord hear my repentance and put me back on your path of righteousness
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If only we at the start of the trial would stop and pray Ask God to open the eyes of our heart that he might reveal the sin so easily that so easily ensnared us or entangles us in the cords of desperation as We go on and on Trying to find alternatives options
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Spreadsheets that give us probable outcomes from statistical analyses and yet, what does the
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Lord say again and again? Open your eyes If you're a child of God his love is upon you and therefore he chastises therefore
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He drives you to himself by taking away every option that we possibly could have thought we could have possibly thought of And forcing us where we need to go at the beginning and the only place where we must end up which is in his arms
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How awful is sin, I mean really how awful is sin
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It's so awful in God's eyes that a Babylonian horde is
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Only a hint of what is actually deserved Should his anger issue into unrestrained justice the
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Babylonians It would be as we say a walk in the park There's a principle to this we have in the scripture the
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Apostle Paul says to the Galatians God is not mocked for whatever one sows that he will also reap
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Sometimes called the principle of what we call Lexus talionis Lexus talionis the punishment fix fits the crime
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Israel sowed their own seeds of disobedience and so we're given the harvest not only deserved but clearly warned of a lot of examples of this in the scripture of God or his representatives
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Bringing out Punishment that fits the crime exactly David's assault on the
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Ammonites after their prince mistreated his eminent emissaries was Lexus talionis Gahazi tasted that when he was made a leper for having extorted the money from Naaman Naaman who was so recently cured of that same disease
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Think of the madman Balaam Justly executed for even entering into a transaction that involved a curse in opposition to God's will many more examples of this
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Just one more though for now At the end of the model prayer. Do you remember what the Lord Jesus said?
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For if you forgive others their trespasses your heavenly father will also forgive you But if you do not forgive others their trespasses neither will your father forgive your trespasses
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Lexus talionis So Babylon is coming to bring that bring
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God's Lexus talionis, but again Who is Babylon? This is my point this afternoon really is to introduce to you meet the
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Babylonians They lived in the heart of Mesopotamia They are the
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Chaldeans that was Abraham's homeland because he left err of the Chaldeans Their history for centuries was an oscillation from obscurity to ascendancy
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It was a Babylonian envoy that so impressed King Hezekiah That he showed them all his wealth in the temple.
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It seems he took credit for it He bragged about what he had done and so incited the Lord's anger and brought forth the judgment that was so near to its final conflagration in Habakkuk's time
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This is what's coming Do you remember the end of chapter 39 of Isaiah? When the
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Prophet says because you showed those Babylonians all the wealth Paran not in the
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Bible my Paran and took credit for it and boasted about as though you had done it therefore these same
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Babylonians are going to carry your sons away captive and Hezekiah says the word of the
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Lord is good and Then parenthetically in the scripture parenthetically for at least there will be peace and justice in my time
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These are those Babylonians when they came as an envoy to Hezekiah Babylon was a known power, but they weren't the power
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Now they are Now God's Word is coming true God is fulfilling the word
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He warned of back in Deuteronomy when Israel is still on the eastern side of the Jordan before they had crossed on the dry land into the promised land that promise and then again
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Hezekiah becomes good King Hezekiah one of the greatest of all the Davidic Kings becomes the catalyst for bringing
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Judgment again and here it is Meet the Babylonians again
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If this is a boxing match This is the guy who took out the fiercest best fighter in a single punch
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That's who's coming to you Babylon though in the
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Bible is more than a place and more than a people
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What does Babylon ultimately stand for now? They were literally a people and these battles literally in time and space in history took place
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But Babylon in the Bible is much more than that Babylon stands for everything that is opposed to God It's sort of like what
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Paul says in Ephesians about the ruler the prince of the air Who rules over all things whose influence the world is following the reason everything is a scant out there away from God Opposed to God hating
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God why? Because of this ruler because the spirit that infuses everything well
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Babylon is in the Bible that spirit now They're not the enemy. The enemy is a singular and literal and real spiritual being we call him the adversary
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We call him the devil. He's real literal Babylon though still stands for what he stands for opposition to God in Revelation chapter 14 and verse 8 and Here's the way we have to read our
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Bibles from the Revelation in the New Testament back to the Old Testament We understand the Old Testament by the revelation of Christ in the new
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So Revelation 14 8 I think is the ultimate if not the final definition of who
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Babylon is or was Another angel a second followed saying fallen fallen is
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Babylon the great She who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality
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If you just do a word study in the book of Revelation put in Babylon and you can get quite a bit more on this
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Long time before Revelation was written Babylon had actually fallen The literal physical
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Babylon had fallen to Persia and Persia then fell to Greece and Greece then fell to Rome But it was
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Babylon's King this paradigm of all that it means to be anti God Against his people haters of his son
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Long before their King Nebuchadnezzar Do you remember when he famously looked out the window saw his kingdom and said look what
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I have done Look at all the nations. I have taken the whole world bows down to me.
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They all worship me Do you remember that now? I haven't quoted. I've paraphrased it and immediately
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God having heard him sent him into the wilds to crawl on all fours Eating and lowing like the beast that he was and his nation actually was
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Babylon is the very image of man's insane desire to aggrandize the self rather than God Babylon stands for the entire anti God sentiment so prevalent then as today
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Look and see Said the Lord to the Prophet look and see Look at what's happening, but then look deeper you look and then want you to see
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Really see ponder what your eyes tell you and consider it carefully. I Don't mean a cost -benefit analysis
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I mean look and see and see it and ponder and meditate until you see it from God's viewpoint from a scriptural perspective
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Paul quoted Habakkuk 1 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
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Paul quoted that Well, I didn't write down where he quoted it,
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I can't remember right now. Give me a second They'll come to me later.
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I'll interrupt myself and tell you oh
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Sorry It's right in front of me. He quoted that when he preached at the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia He quoted
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Habakkuk 1 5 when the when the gospel was rejected by those people who heard him Paul having bathed his
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Proclamation of the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus in the Old Testament prophecies that proved every word he said
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He said to them in Acts chapter 14 verse 30 Beware then lest what is said in the prophets should come about and here it is look you scoffers
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Be astounded and perish for I'm doing a work in your days a work that you would not believe even if one tells it to you
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Even if it were laid out to you in detail as it was for our prophet or as Paul had just done an act to Antioch of Pisidia But Paul pointed to a work that God had done not a work that God was going to do but to work that God had done
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Habakkuk pointing to the coming Babylonians Paul looking back to the cross Looking to what
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God did when he raised his son Jesus from the dead That's what the whole point of that sermon that he preached to them there was about And so the way the
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Apostle understands Habakkuk 1 5 becomes for us its ultimate purpose as the
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New Testament stands over the old as the interpretive scheme a work that you won't believe it's astounding and Paul substitutes scoffers for nations and he adds the word perish
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Now in Habakkuk's day or after Habakkuk's day when Babylonians came the Jews in that doomed city did perish
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Many died of starvation many survived the siege only to be put to the sword once the walls came down Some survived the sword
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But then were exiled into Babylon Babylonian captivity But Paul is pointing to the finished work of Christ when he preached in Antioch and there on Christ's cross is
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The ultimate Lexus Talianus the ultimate punishment fitting of the crime There at the cross at Golgotha in Christ Jesus the promised judgment
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Full recompense for all sin was finally and fully meted out You can read at the end of the second
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Chronicles how awful the Babylonian siege and destruction of Jerusalem actually was
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But that wasn't all of God's judgment. That wasn't all of his fury All of his judgment all of his fury waited for the cross
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Waited for Christ Jesus Babylon was only a hint and we know that because the same people
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Were again given over to God's wrath in 70 AD When the temple was destroyed by the by Rome which made the
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Babylonian experience just an inkling of what was yet to come after that So here's the idea
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Look and see Observe and think carefully think deeply about these things
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Here's a work that I can tell you There's too much to believe If the
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Prophet said look among the nations and see wonder and be astounded I'm doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told and Paul changes it just a little bit and says look you scoffers and see and wonder and perish he says perish which is
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The Lexus Talianus for not believing this incredible work What work am
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I speaking of? the cross and all judgment Such that Rome in 70
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AD Which made the Babylonian? disaster Looked like almost a walk in the park
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Those were not the ultimate expression of God's wrath Where was that?
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On the cross poured out upon Jesus Christ This is a work that's too much to believe
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Would you believe that that God took the only innocent man who ever lived and put him on the cross and there is he hung?
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helplessly punished him I said last week punished him as Though he were the only man who would ever send as though because he was tempted in all points as we are
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Yet without sin and punished as though he were Would you believe that?
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Is it Lexus Talianus Well, Jesus didn't deserve that Jesus never sinned and Yet when he became sin for us sin was rightly punished in him think carefully about that He punished it all on him in exact compliance with his own word
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Romans 3 23 for the wages of sin is death He judged Jesus who never saw never sinned.
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So I say to you look and wonder wonder and be astounded He bore our sins in his own body
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He hung on the tree and there suffered God's wrath be astounded because the only innocent man who ever lived was treated as though he were the only one who'd ever been guilty and To quote
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Habakkuk 1 5 the way Paul did in Acts chapter 14 Perish if you will not believe that the
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Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all You know, there's no judgment to come after this
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In Deuteronomy God promised judgment against Israel if they should rebel against him
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In Assyria and then Babylon God brought that judgment and he brought it again with Rome They brought it again with the
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Diaspora which to this day Jews are still all over the world and not largely in their homeland
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After the cross Christ came once for sin.
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He died once for all time when he said it is finished. It was all finished
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There is no other chance There is no waiting for another judgment to see if that one maybe wasn't the end.
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It was the end the cross Finished it all the author to the
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Hebrews says but as it is Jesus has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself
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Here's the salvation That draws us to this table This is why
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Paul preaching to the Jews at the synagogue in Antioch Antioch of Pisidia quoted
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Habakkuk 1 5 As we look again on these symbols of the
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Lord's anger at our sin and his justice in punishing it to be astounded that in wrath
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God remembered mercy and Put his wrath on his son and his mercy on who?
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You or on me on we whose faith is in Jesus Christ faith being a gift of God be astounded
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Look and see Look and see the broken bread look and see the fruit of the vine his body
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Broken for you his blood poured out for you look upon that and be astounded at the mercy and the goodness and the kindness of God To do such a thing as what we remember here in a few moments
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For the sinners such as me and you who deserved a wrath
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That the Babylonians would never be able to bring upon us as cruel as they were
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These are the Babylonians And Babylon being that spirit of the age of any age
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I Believe from that time Going back before that time and going ahead from our time until the
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Lord's return the spirit of the age the spirit of rebellion against God the spirit of everything that stands for what
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Christ did not stand for and yet it does
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Come forward very cleanly to this table does it not If as I said we look upon the cross
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And do as the Prophet beckoned us do as Paul when he preached this in Antioch said look and see
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Examine yourselves Church Think about these elements the body and blood of the
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Lord given for you Think about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who never sinned
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Taking upon himself the full Unmetered Fury of God at everything that you and I and every other soul
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Ever predestined to come to Christ ever did all on him This is a work
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That even we who believe If we think upon it, can you believe that?
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Can you look upon Jesus in Agony on the cross in his humanity suffering everything that nails and a cross would bring upon any other person
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Can you look upon that and say he did this for me and just believe it
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Well, we do believe it by faith. We believe it by faith That's part of the Christian faith the cardinal truth of the faith that he died in my place that he took upon himself
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What I deserve but folks Can you believe that? Is that not incredible?
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Does that not tell us why at the end of the table? We sing a hymn to God's glory
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Why at the table? While we while we remember the Lord's death, we rejoice that he died because God sent them to die for me brethren
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Can you believe that I? Would suggest we can look and see oh, it's just we examine ourselves before we partake
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And while we do believe this and you understand the way I say this when I keep repeating it. Do you really believe it?
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Is that incredible? Is that a work that God has done that if you it's told to you?