FBC Adult Sunday School – February 27, 2022

Habakkuk’s Confusion Over Corruption and Violence

Of what's going on, and God's word tells us that the things that are written in the Old Testament are written for our learning, written for our example. So, for example, God has not revealed to anybody here what he's doing with this Russia-Ukraine thing.

Right?

I mean, there is no revelation. There's nobody that can stand up and say, God told me that this is what he's doing with this whole thing. He hasn't given us that, but what he's done is he's given us the scriptures to give us insight into how he works, and I think that's what I want us to look at this morning.

I want us to think about how does God work in the bigger picture, in the affairs of the nations? So, what I want to do is, first of all, start in the book of Habakkuk. So let's go to the Old Testament minor prophet Habakkuk, and Habakkuk, the way I would look at this section of our lesson time is Habakkuk reflects confusion in corruption, confusion in corruption.

All right? Let me show you what I mean. So Habakkuk chapter one, in verses two through four, the prophet expresses confusion. I'm confused. So Habakkuk is a Jew, of course, he's in the land of Judah, and he says, oh Lord, how long shall I cry, and you will not hear?

Even cry out to you, violence, and you will not save. Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me. There is strife and contention arises. Therefore, the law is powerless, and justice never goes forth, for the wicked surround the righteous.

Therefore, perverse judgment proceeds. All right, so Habakkuk is looking in his own country, in his own nation, and he is seeing violence, he is seeing corruption, he's seeing strife, he's seeing contention, he's seeing a powerless law, he's seeing the law and order have been basically suspended because of what is going on in his immediate environment.

And he says, how long are you going to put up with this? All right, so this is the confusion that the prophet is experiencing amid the corruption. He says, why is this going on, and how can you allow this to go on, how can you tolerate this?

All right, now look at the next two verses, and the Lord gives, the Lord gives the prophet revelation. Remember I said a minute ago, God has not spoken direct prophecy to anybody here, or anybody on the planet, related to Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, the rest of the world, China, Taiwan, et cetera, et cetera.

But he has given direct revelation to Habakkuk, and here's what he says. He says, look, look among the nations and watch, be utterly astounded, for I will work a work in your days which you would not believe though it were told you.

For indeed, I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, which marches through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. And then skip down a few verses to verses nine and 10.

He says, they all come for violence, their faces are set like the east wind, they gather captives like sand, they scoff at kings and princes are scorned by them. They deride every stronghold, for they heap up earth and mounds to cease it.

And I don't know about you, but you read that, and you're thinking about some of those images that you saw, you've seen in the news, right? Images of this invasion, the Russians are coming for violence, their faces are set like the east wind, coming from the east wind, gathering captives, scoffing at kings, Vladimir is just laughing at the Western powers and so forth.

Princes are scorned by them and so on and so forth. Speaking of the coming for violence, I saw a picture of some kind of a weapon that Russia is using that is, they're being charged already with war crimes because of this particular weapon.

It's a motorized vehicle, I didn't read any more about it.

To find out what it's about.

But they come for violence, all right? So the Lord says, okay, Habakkuk's confusion is, I see all this corruption all around me, all this wickedness all around me, and you're not doing anything about this, God, why aren't you doing something.

About this?

God says, hold on to your hat, Habakkuk, I'm sending the Chaldeans to come and they are going to exert powerful, violent force. Well, verses 12 to 14, all that does is increase his confusion, right? And the prophet responds and he says, wait a minute, you know, wait a minute, he's scratching his head, you can see it, right?

He says, are you not from everlasting, oh Lord, my God, my Holy One, we shall not die. So on the one hand, he's frustrated by the corruption in his own country, and the Lord says, I'm going to deal with that corruption, I'm going to send the Chaldeans and they're going to wipe you guys out.

And the prophet says, wait a minute, we're your people, we're not going to die. Oh Lord, you have appointed them for judgment, oh rock, you have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wickedness.

Why do you look on those who deal treacherously and hold your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he? So what the prophet is, the confusion he's expressing here is, wait a minute, God, yeah, we're corrupt, we've got some corruption going on in our country and violence and all the rest of that kind of stuff, but the Chaldeans, I mean, they're far more wicked than we are, how can you do this?

Well, the Lord responds again with revelation in verses three and four. And he says, chapter two, verses three and four, we're telling him to write the vision, to make it plain, he says, for the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it will speak and it will not lie.

Though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith. And then note this important reminder at the end of the chapter in verse 20, he says, but the Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him.

And in essence, what the Lord answers him in revelation is, I know about the corruption of the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, I know about that corruption, but I'm going to deal with them as well. In all of this, he says, the just shall live by his faith, and the Lord is in his temple, all right?

So this expresses the prophet's confusion in the corruption and none of the solutions or answers that God gives in revelation have occurred yet in the prophet's lifetime, in the prophet's vision. I mean, he hasn't seen it in his experience.

He hasn't experienced it. All right, now let's go back to the years leading up to the prophet's experience of confusion, all right? So go back with me to 2 Chronicles chapter 36. Keep a marker there in Habakkuk.

It's hard enough to find without a marker. So keep a marker there and go to 2 Chronicles. We're going to end up in chapter 36, but I want you to see, starting in chapter 27, I want you to see the spiritual pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth in Judah.

Now, let's remind ourselves of the history. Let's step back even further in the history. Israel, God's chosen people, God's established them in the land of promise, the land of Canaan, becomes a nation, the nation of Israel.

They get their first king, Saul, not God's choice. God gives them David, and David reigns over Israel, and he reigns well, leads Israel in righteousness. Yeah, he's not a perfect man, understand that, but nevertheless, the nation is in a good place under David's leadership.

David dies, Solomon comes on the throne, and in the years of Solomon's reign, 40 years of Solomon's reign, again, there's peace, there's prosperity. He introduces some corruption in the land with the idolatry through the wives he marries, and there's that problem.

It's seeds of corruption that are sown that are going to end up causing problems later. Solomon dies, his son comes on the throne, Rehoboam, and Rehoboam is, I think of Rehoboam as the stereotypical kid that's brought up with a silver spoon in his mouth.

You know what I mean?

He's just kind of spoiled. He's used to having everything he wants, the way he wants it, when he wants it. He can make demands, and he gets it, because after all, my dad's the king, you know, that kind of a guy.

He comes on the throne, and under Solomon, taxation's been heavy. It's been a prosperous time. People haven't minded paying the taxes, for the most part, to help the prosperity of the nation, but Jeroboam leads a contingency of people from the northern tribes, Ephraim, Manasseh, you know, Asher, Naphtali, and so on, and he comes to them and comes to Rehoboam and says, would you please reduce the tax burden upon us?

And J .B. responds, I mean, not J .B. Pritzker.

Rehoboam, Rehoboam, Rehoboam responds,.

And he says, you think the taxes were heavy under Solomon, you haven't seen anything yet. I'm gonna be even harsher on you. So Jeroboam says, fine, we're leaving the nation, and they separate from the nation, and now Israel becomes two nations, Israel to the north, Judah to the south.

So what we're gonna focus on is Judah, because Habakkuk is dealing with his crisis in the nation of Judah, and this crisis comes, this confusion comes years and years after the division of the land. By now, Israel is pretty much off the scene.

The 10 tribes are pretty much off the scene. That's not in our picture here. But in Judah itself, and Judah has been the more, has been the more righteous of the two halves of the nation, because remember, under Jeroboam, he established idols to worship, and he said, these are your gods.

He established his own priesthood to lead in worship of these idols and so forth. And so Jeroboam led Israel completely into apostasy. Judah, on the other hand, kind of held on to sort of a remnant of righteousness, and there was, through the period of the kings of Judah, this pendulum that just kept swinging back and forth between good and bad kings.

And I just wanna quickly survey the most recent pendulum that leads up to Habakkuk's time, okay? So chapter 27, chapter 27, verses one and two, you've got King Jotham. It says, Jotham was 25 years old when he became king.

He reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. So he lived until he was 41. And verse two tells us, he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Uzziah had done, although he had not entered the temple of the Lord, but still the people acted corruptly, all right?

So Jotham becomes the king, and he leads the people in a righteous way, although a lot of the people, maybe the majority of the people, are still acting corruptly. The king, though, is a good king. Now, in chapter 28, Jotham dies, and Ahaz becomes the king, all right?

So the pendulum had swung to the right. We had a good king. Ahaz becomes the king, and he was 20 years old when he became king. He reigned 16 years in Jerusalem, and he did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord as his father David had done, for he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and made molded images for the Baals.

So now the pendulum swings to the left, and a corrupt king comes on the throne, all right? Now go to chapter 29, and verses one and two. And in chapter 29, Hezekiah comes on the throne. Hezekiah is a name that is synonymous with good king.

The pendulum has swung back to the other side, swung back to the right side. Hezekiah became king when he was 25 years old, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abijah the daughter of Zechariah, and he did what was right in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father David had done, all right?

So again, watch the pendulum. Good king, bad king. Good king, and then chapter 33. So you got a lot of ink spilled covering the life and the reign of Hezekiah. You come to chapter 33, and verses one and two.

The pendulum swings back the other direction. It says Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem, but he did evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel.

So think about how much more corrupt Manasseh is than Ahaz was. You know, reading the summary of Ahaz's reign, you read that he followed in the corruption of the kings of Israel. Well, that's bad enough, but at least the kings of Israel, when they set up their idols, they said that their idols were representative of the God of Israel.

I mean, that's bad enough because it's a violation of the commandment thou shalt not make any graven images, right? And they were bad enough because they had their own priesthood that was in violation of God's work, but to follow in the footsteps of the nations that were driven out is even more egregious because after all, why did God drive those nations out and give that land to Israel in the first place?

Because they were so horribly corrupt, and yet Manasseh follows in the footsteps of those corruptions of the nations that got kicked out of Israel. So a bad king. Now go to chapter 34. And Manasseh had a son by the name of Josiah.

Pendulum swings back the other direction. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. He reigned 31 years in Jerusalem, and he did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David and did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.

So the pendulum has swung far right. Are you getting the picture here of the life cycle of the government in Judah? You've got good, evil. Good, evil. Then Josiah comes on the throne, good. All right, now as Josiah passes off the scene, the vision and the confusion, the confusion and the vision that Hezekiah expressed, I'm sorry, that Habakkuk expressed and experienced is recorded for us in these next sections.

All right, so look at chapter 36. Chapter 36 and verses one to four. Says then the people, Josiah died in the previous chapter at the end of chapter 35. He died in a battle against the Egyptians, I believe it says, but then in chapter 36.

Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and made him king in his father's place in Jerusalem. Jehoahaz was 23 years old when he became king and he reigned three months in Jerusalem.

Why did he have such a short reign? Well, verse three. The king of Egypt deposed him at Jerusalem and he imposed on the land a tribute of 100 talents of silver and a talent of gold. Then the king of Egypt made Jehoahaz's brother Eliakim king over Judah and Jerusalem and changed his name to Jehoiakim.

And Necho, N-E-C-H-O, N-I-C-H-O, Necho took Jehoahaz, his brother, and carried him off to Egypt. So the pharaoh took Jehoahaz, the three-month reign king, took him off to Egypt. So the Egyptians defeated Josiah in battle.

Josiah dies, the people take Josiah's son and make him the king and the Egyptian pharaoh says, not so fast, you're not going to have one of his descendants on the throne. Got rid of him and he put his own puppet king in place and named him Jehoiakim, all right?

So what are you seeing here? What did Habakkuk see that caused him to cry out? Violence, violence, there's violence here. The violence of the Egyptians coming in and defeating Josiah, killing Josiah, the good king, and establishing a puppet king in his place.

Verse five, what also Habakkuk saw was evil. Verse five says, Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king, he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem, and he did evil in the sight of the Lord his God. So again, the pendulum has swung back in the other direction.

But now, the vision of Habakkuk is becoming clear for our understanding, he is seeing violence, he is seeing corruption everywhere, the law is disregarded, he did evil in the sight of the Lord. That leads to verses six and seven, punishment.

What did the Lord say to Habakkuk when he cried out, what are you going to do about all of this corruption in our land, what are you going to do about all this violence and this evil? The Lord said, hang on, I'm sending the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, I'm sending them and they're going to punish, they're going to chase them.

Verse six, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, or the Chaldeans, came up against him and bound him in bronze fetters to carry him off to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar also carried off some of the articles from the house of the Lord to Babylon and put them in his temple at Babylon.

All right, so this is really phase one of the ultimate coming Babylonian captivity and there is a number of years that separate phase one and two, it didn't all happen at once. So there was a little bit of respite, if you will, giving the people of Judah an opportunity to repent, but here's warning, right?

Here's the punishment that comes for the corruption and there's warning in that punishment, in that chastening here in verses six and seven. How is that responded to? Verse nine, Jehoiakim, after Jehoiakim got, Kim got taken off to Babylon, Jehoiakim becomes the king.

He was eight years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem three months and 10 days. Poor kid, but it says he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, in the sight of the Lord. How much evil could an eight-year-old do in the sight of the Lord?

Obviously enough, evil. I mean, the evil that he saw around him, even as an eight-year-old, he just perpetuated it for the three months that he was on the throne. How else did they respond to this threat of the Babylonians and the punishment that they'd already inflicted?

Verses 11 to 14. So Nebuchadnezzar took, well, look back at verse 10. At the turn of the year, Nebuchadnezzar summoned him and took him to Babylon with the costly articles from the house of the Lord and made Zedekiah, brother, Joachim's brother, king over Judah and Jerusalem.

Verse 11, Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king and he reigned 11 years. He did evil in the sight of the Lord his God and did not humble himself. Now get this, notice this. He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet who spoke from the mouth of the Lord.

And he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar who had made him swear an oath by God, but he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord God of Israel. Moreover, like if that's not bad enough, moreover, all the leaders of the priests and the people transgressed more and more according to all the abominations of the nations and defiled the house of the Lord which he had consecrated in Jerusalem.

And Habakkuk says, God, what in the world is going on? There's violence. The Babylonians have been violent against us. The Egyptians have been violent against us. And we've responded to that with corruption.

How long can you let this go on? How long can you let this go on? And the Lord responded to him and said, I'm sending the Chaldees. You can think of it as, again, I'm sending the Chaldees. There's a warning in verses 15 and 16.

The Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by his messengers, rising up early and sending them because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his words, scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people till there was no remedy.

You see, this is what Habakkuk saw. He saw the conditions of his land being in such a case that there was no remedy. Because every time God sent a prophet and sent warnings and sent messengers and said repent and turn from this sin, turn from this direction, they laughed at them.

They mocked them. They ridiculed them. They rejected the word of the Lord, utterly rejected it. So, in verse 17 and verses 20 and 21, there's this final fulfillment of what the Lord had revealed to Habakkuk.

I'm sending the Chaldees, right? Verse 17. Then he brought against them the king of the Chaldeans who killed their young men with a sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, on the aged or the weak.

He gave them all into his hand. Now, when you read that, you can understand why Habakkuk is like, wait a minute, God. Yes, there's all kinds of corruption in Judah, but these people are horrible. They're ruthless.

They're wretched. And you see a description of just how wretched. They had no compassion on young men or virgin, on aged or weak.

They didn't care.

They slaughtered them all. Slaughtered them all. Verses 20 and 21. And those who escaped from the sword, he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths.

As long as she lay desolate, she kept sabbath to fulfill 70 years. All right, so here's the final fulfillment of Habakkuk's vision. The Babylonians have come. They've decimated the land. They've taken scads of people into captivity.

They've destroyed the temple. They've taken all the goods of the temple into Babylon. And now the land is just desolate. And there it lies. But now let's look at verses 22 and 23. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, one thing that tells you is that Babylon, who was used by God to punish Judah, is no longer.

They've been conquered by the Persians. So in the first year of Cyrus, the king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing, saying, thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord God of heaven has given me.

And he has commanded me to build in the house of Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is among you of all his people? May the Lord his God be with him and let him go up. And you turn the page to Ezra chapter one and verse one and following it, it begins with the way 2 Chronicles 36 ends with Cyrus issuing this decree that anybody who wants to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, you may go, you may go.

So this, I would label this the correction of the corruption. So if the Babylonian attack and decimation of Judah was the consequence of the corruption, this is the correction of the corruption. A remnant is sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.

And God in grace is offering a prophetic fulfillment. Jeremiah the prophet said the land is going to lie desolate for 70 years, that it might keep its Sabbaths. All these years that the Sabbath wasn't, the Sabbath years were not kept, the land is going to keep its Sabbaths.

And God offers this grace in fulfillment of the prophetic word. But then I also want you to notice verse 23 again. How that in this correction of corruption, God is exalted. Cyrus, the king of Persia says, all the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord God of heaven has given to me.

He doesn't say I have conquered. And he commanded me to build this. And then he says, may the Lord is God be with him. God is the God of Israel is exalted. All right, now I went through all of that to bring us to a couple of contemporary applications.

God Uses Evil Nations for Chastening and Purification

And the applications are not pointed at national corruption. That's not my purpose. I'm not going to stand up here and say, Russia is horrifically corrupt.

It is.

And Ukraine is absolutely righteous because it's not. I mean, anybody that knows the history of these nations knows there's all kinds of corruption and plenty of it on both sides of it. So, and they're not any more corrupt than many of the other nations of this world.

China, North Korea, and even our own. So let's not, my purpose is not to go there and to try to figure out who's more corrupt and which one God is using to punish the other. Here's the bigger purpose, all right, by way of application.

Number one, the Lord in his sovereign purposes uses corrupt, evil people and nations for the purpose of chasing. All right, so the Lord uses corrupt, evil people and nations for the purpose of chastening.

Secondly, the Lord has an ultimate goal of purging and purification. You see that back in verse 21 of 2 Chronicles 36, where it says, the Lord did this to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of the prophet until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths.

The Lord had ordered that, commanded that, the land was to lie fallow one year out of every seven. And Israel ignored that, Judah ignored that for all these years. And so now the land is going to lie fallow for 70 years, why?

Because the Lord wants to purge and purify his people. And then the third point is, and this takes us back to Habakkuk in the last couple of verses of the book. The Lord in all of this is to be trusted and worshiped, needs to be trusted and worshiped.

Verse 17 of chapter three, Habakkuk, though the fig tree may not blossom nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

That's been one of the blessings of seeing some of the way, the way some of the Ukrainian Christians are responding in all of this. They're basically saying, yeah, the bombs may fly. And I don't know what's going to happen to us, but we will trust in the Lord.

He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. So again, as we think about this mess in Eastern Europe, Russia, so forth, we don't have all the answers and there's a lot more going on behind the scenes and in the clouds, if you will, than we even know.

But what we do know and what we can be confident of is that our God is the one in whom we trust, even in these things, even in this corruption, even in all of the chaos, he is the one that we trust and he is the one we nevertheless worship because he has it in his control and he uses it for his purposes.

So in that, let's take encouragement. So our Father and our God, we do thank you for your word in the Old Testament scriptures that give us insight into the way you work and how you work. Though we may not know all the details of what you're doing right now in this day, in this age, in this world in which we live, what we do know is that you are in control and we thank you for that insight.

Bless these thoughts to our hearts, in Jesus' name, amen.