Habakkuk: The Prophet who Questioned God Week 3 (Habakkuk 2:6-19) | Adult Sunday Shool

No interference?

Good.

I was pretty much convinced last week it was my fault. My magnetic personality must have been interfering.

Probably not.

Well, it's good to see each one this morning. Thankful that you're here. Let's commit our time this morning to our Lord and ask His blessing on our study this morning in Habakkuk. And there is another outline around here.

Some of them passed out. There's some back on the counter back there. And a few others right up here if you need one.

Let's pray together.

Our Father, we know that it is because of Your grace that we are even able to gather here together and to fellowship in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus.

Christ.

And so, Father, we just praise You for that grace. And thank You for the fact that You have, in time, space, history, brought us together here. And now, Father, as we open Your word, we pray that Your Spirit would be our teacher, that You would accomplish every purpose that You have in it, that You would be glorified in it.

And we just thank You for this time. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, last time, it was week two that we looked at Habakkuk's prophecy. And you probably noticed I got very creative with labeling these various outlines.

You know, week one, week two, week three, week four. And, you know, that's OK. Sometimes you get a flurry of creativity, you know, and you just have to express it like that. But we saw last time as Habakkuk was going through this inner turmoil with what he saw around him in Jerusalem and in his own country of Judah.

The sin, the violence that we said is the Hebrew word.

Hamas.

And so he questioned God about it. How long, oh Lord, is this going to go on? Because he knew God. That's one of the key things you have to start out with here is that this is a man who knew God. He understood what God was like, his attributes.

And so his question is, as he sees all of this sin around him, is how long can you, the holy God of Israel, put up with this and not judge it? And then we saw that answer. He will judge it. But he's going to use an unexpected instrument to judge it, and that is the Chaldeans, and which raised a second question in Habakkuk's mind.

How can you, a holy God, use an unholy people to judge and punish your own people? And the second answer came when he climbed up, so to speak, and maybe he did not do it actually, but figuratively, he climbed up on the watchtower to wait and watch and see.

He said in chapter 2, verse 1, I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint. And so he did that.

And in verse 2, it says, and the Lord answered me. Yahweh answered him. And that answer also was maybe not exactly what he expected, but this answer is really, really critical for Habakkuk's prophecy, but also, as we're going to see, for essentially the rest of the Bible as well as all of the history of God's redemptive program.

And so here we have Habakkuk 2 .4 that we need to spend a little bit of time with because it is so important. His answer was, behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith.

And here he compares the proud, wicked Chaldeans who have no faith because they have rejected Yahweh. Remember, we saw one of their characteristics was that they are self-ruled. There's no other authority but them in their minds.

And that pride is going to be their downfall. His soul is not right within him. The Hebrew word there is crooked. His soul is crooked within him. And it uses that Hebrew word for soul, nefesh. But in strong contrast, the righteous will live by his faith.

So it's very important for us to take a little time and to talk about this little statement because it really is a incredibly important statement. And as you can see here, quotation from Dr. Charles Feinberg.

This is from his commentary on the minor prophets. This text, which later became the watchword of Christianity, is the key to the whole book of Habakkuk and is the central theme of all the scripture. So you can see, scholar of his caliber is looking at this saying, this is a very, very critical text here.

And as we're going to see, it's very interesting to me that it's sort of buried away here in the middle of this little minor prophet. And yet it has such an important relevance for all of the Bible, in fact, of all of historic Christianity.

And so we need to spend a little time talking about it here. As for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith. This, of course, flows out of the Abrahamic covenant.

It just doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's important to see Habakkuk there is relying on Genesis 15 .6, which is reproduced there for you on page two, I believe. Page three. Then behold, the word of Yahweh came to him, that is Abraham saying, this one will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.

And he brought him outside and he said, now look toward the heavens and number the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, so shall your seed be. Then he believed in Yahweh and he counted it to him as righteousness.

This little verse has undergone all kinds of scrutiny and criticism and strange interpretations over the years. One of the things that the liberals have tried to do with it is they say, well, see what's going on here is what he says that is that Habakkuk and all people need to live out their obedience to the Mosaic law and therefore be termed righteous by God.

Well, that's not what's going on here. This is also what some of the rabbis have done through the centuries, basically unregenerate rabbis evaluating this. They said Moses was so holy and such a godly man that he intrinsically knew the law, the Torah, the actual commandments of Moses at Sinai.

He understood them 400 plus years before they were even given, okay? Not true. What this passage really means is, and you can understand it when you understand what it's built off of. Paul quotes it in Romans 117 and Habakkuk is working off of Genesis 15, six, which is also an extension of the actual Abrahamic covenant given in chapter 12, verses one through three.

That's also reproduced there for you. But that, of course, flows out of Genesis 3, 15, that passage about the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, okay? So we have here in a good example of progressive revelation and it's important to see these things at the time they were given and ask the question, okay, what did they know and how did they know it?

Abraham certainly had no knowledge of the Mosaic law in that regard because he was four centuries plus.

Prior to that.

Paul even uses that argument when the Judaizers tried to impose the Mosaic law and the right of circumcision on the Gentile Christians who were being saved by God's grace through faith alone. And Paul says, no, no, no, you can't do that.

And he uses a masterful use of the timeline there showing that Abraham was justified centuries before the law was even given and he was even justified 13 years before he was even circumcised. So therefore, you cannot impose those two things on the Gentiles and basically tell them to become Jewish in that way.

They're saved by God's grace through faith alone. And this is what Habakkuk is teaching here too. Except what we see here, as this flows out of the Abrahamic covenant, we wanna take a look at how the apostle Paul uses this in Romans 117.

That was part of the homework you were gonna have at the bottom of our study last time. And so if you take a look at the bottom of page four, this key verse is used in the New Testament, quoted Romans 117 by Paul, and then again in Galatians 3 .11 by the apostle Paul, but also the writer to the Hebrews.

So it's well worth our time, I think, to take a look at how it's used. Very important part of studying scripture is to see how the New Testament uses the old. It's also very controversial nowadays. But if you do it right and you see how they do it, everything will just sort of unfold and flow out together.

So how does Paul use this in Romans 117? He says in verse 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous will live by faith. So what Paul is emphasizing here in his quotation of this is the righteousness, the righteousness that comes from God to those who by simply exercising faith in Christ, the righteousness that is imputed to them, okay?

That's how he is using it here. Well, what about Hebrews 10, 36 through 39? Remember that Hebrews was written to mainly Jews or Hebrews as the name implies. And it says in verse 35 to Christians, these would be messianic believers.

Therefore, do not throw away that confidence of yours, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. For yet in a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay, but my righteous one shall live by faith.

There's the quote.

And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the persevering of the soul. So here, the writer of Hebrews stresses faith or faith to live out God's will in your life.

And you know what follows right after this is chapter 11, which is that great, commonly called the Hall of Faith. And he says there, by faith, so-and-so did this. By faith, so-and-so did that. All those examples.

Oh, and by the way, he gives more print there to Abraham than anybody else in that entire list. So different, slightly different views, slightly different stress. He's stressing, and I think here really is how Habakkuk is using it as well, the just will by faith live out their lives by trusting God under all circumstances.

Well, what about Galatians 3 .11? And again, this one is primarily to the Gentiles. Paul says in verse 11, foolish Galatians, who bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

This is verse one of chapter three. This is the only thing I want to learn from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Have you begun by the Spirit?

Are you now being perfected in the flesh? Did you suffer so many things for nothing if indeed it was for nothing? So then does he who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you do it by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, so know that those who are of faith, those are sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaimed the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, all the nations will be blessed in you.

So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, curse it is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them.

Now that no one is justified by the law before God is evident, for, here's the quote, the righteous shall live by faith. However, the law is not of faith. Rather, he who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.

For it is written, curse it is everyone who hangs on a tree in order that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

And you can hear just over and over and over again, he's contrasting works of the law with faith. So in that passage, Paul is stressing faith, the faith that is the instrumental means by which God then counts us as righteous.

So there's the three usages in the New Testament of this quote here. And it is a key quote throughout the entire Bible. And so I thought it would be well worth our time to take a little time there and spend that talking about this passage.

But remember, the quote of Paul in Romans 117, and also all those other quotes are built off, are from Habakkuk 2 .4, which rests on all these other passages, okay? And also, so significant here, as you probably well know, in the history of the reformation of the church, this was key in the salvation of Martin Luther.

It really is. In many of his writings, he talks about that experience. And because he's in the Catholic church, which is a works righteousness system, okay? So every time he thought about the righteousness of God, he assumed, well, yes, God is righteous, and God expects me to somehow, in my keeping of the law, the rules, and all these other regulations and things, somehow achieve that righteousness, okay?

And it got to the point where it became so frustrating for him, because he was going to confession for hours at a time, doing all kinds of penances, and, you know, these, laying out on the cold marble floor, you know, and doing things to abuse his body, wearing real heavy woolen sweaters, and things like that, you know?

And then, at one point in time, he realized, as he meditated on this, wait a minute, this is the righteousness of God that he imputes through faith. And all of a sudden, that changed everything. And so, this key little verse here was used by God to launch the reformation of the church.

So, extremely significant in, not just for Habakkuk, but for the history of the church, and for us as well. So, let's talk a little bit about this morning. Oh, do you have any questions on that, or any thoughts?

Okay.

Let's look at page five in your notes.

Cleverly titled, Week Three.

As Habakkuk moves on in his prophecy, what he's gonna do here now, and God is going to show him in great detail, the judgment of the Chaldeans. He says in verse four, behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

And then, verse five, moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol. Like death, he has never enough. The Chaldeans were well-known for their drunkenness.

Even other ancient Greek writers note the Chaldeans' reputation for drunken festivals. And it wasn't that they were drinking wine, it was that they were getting drunk. And as we're going to see, using the drunkenness for all kinds of debauched and horrific idolatrous and carnal ceremonies.

What he says there also at the end of verse five, he gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples. Remember how in their quest for, in their lust for more land and more countries and more conquering, they were just rampaging across the countryside and had an insatiable hunger to conquer and to subjugate peoples to themselves.

Look at verse six. Here's what's going to happen. Shall not all these take up their taunt against him with scoffing and riddles for him and say, and what follows are five woes against the Chaldeans. When it says there shall not all these, the referent is those people that they had subjugated.

And what you're going to see here and throughout this part of this, the rest of chapter two here, these five taunts, you're going to see a couple of features. One, you're going to see, and we're going to talk a little bit about it here, the kiastic structure that is part of this.

That's that X, I haven't crossed out that. We're going to talk about that. What you're also going to see is a very interesting feature of scripture and you just see it all through the Bible. Once you see it, it's going to pop off the page at you.

And that is eschatological reversal. Eschatological reversal. Jesus taught this way. It's a very common Hebraic method for teaching truth. Remember, these folks all didn't, they didn't have their own copy of scripture.

They didn't, everybody just didn't have a big scroll that they took home and read. They had to learn by hearing. That's why there's so much stress in the Old Testament, even in the New Testament on hearing, on listening.

And of course, that great statement in Deuteronomy 6, verses four, that became pretty much the theme verse of the nation of Israel. It's called the great Shema. Shema is hear or listen. Shema Israel Adonai Eloheinu and so on.

So there was, there are things built into the text, to the scripture that are structural things that would have served as memory aids for people who wanted to memorize the word of God. And they were told to memorize it and meditate on it.

And one of them is the kiastic structure. Now this is named after the Greek letter ki. I know it looks like a chi. We English speakers tend to pronounce vowels long, okay? Or if you were a member of a sorority or a fraternity in college or something, you know, delta chi, you know, right?

Okay, pronounce it that way, that's okay. But I'm gonna call it how I learned it and it's not a big deal. The Greek letter ki looks like an X, okay? And so what happens is with this particular structure, and this is, again, how Jesus taught.

This is one example here. And Jesus was saying to them, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. That is a kiastic structure from Mark 2 27. And so when you take that and you sort of spread those two apart and you have to supply the verb in the second clause because it's elided or left out of the second clause, the Sabbath was made for man and not man was made for the Sabbath.

A real simple way to illustrate this is your hands. Your hands are a mirror image, right? And so Sabbath was not made for man and then you have the contrastive term right in the middle, kind of like a hinge.

Sabbath was made for man and not man was made for the Sabbath. So you see Sabbath, Sabbath, man, man. But when you put them in parallel, like you would if you were reading them, you can see it's an inverse parallel, okay?

And then if you connect the like words together, you wind up with this X or kiastic structure. And so this is just simply a way for people to, it would help you to memorize the word of God if you didn't have your own written copy, which the vast majority of people would not have had that.

Okay, also the entire book of Habakkuk is also a kiastic structure. You can find outlines online and there's different ways to outline this. Basically for your outline, I just outlined it in the two major ways.

Chapters one and two is Roman numeral one and then chapter three, which we're gonna look at next week is Roman numeral two. But it also is a kiastic structure. And would you guess where the actual focal point is?

It's chapter two, verses two through four. That very important statement about how a man, a righteous man will live by his faith. So that's just a little bit about the structure of this. And so on your outline there, what you see, this kiastic structure, the focal point of it is verse 13, right there in the middle.

Yahweh will judge with fire, okay? In our kind of our Western way of looking at things, we often think of A, B, C, D, E. And so a story is told, the punchline is at the end. Oftentimes in Hebrew writing and Hebrew thought, the punchline, the upshot of the story is in the center, okay?

And there's one example right there. Yahweh will judge with fire. That's verse 13, okay? So there we have kiastic structure and it's something that's throughout scripture, Old and New Testament, and it's part of what God has built into his word.

So just to make it easier for people to memorize the word of God. There's other things as well. Different features of the text are there. And so let's take a look then at these five woes. Chapter, verse six sets it up for us.

Shall not all these take up their taunt against him with scoffing and riddles for him and say, and here's the first woe. And what you'll see in each one of these woes, you're gonna see a rebuke, then you're gonna see an eschatological reversal, okay?

And then it's gonna give you the reason why. Remember the prophets would not only confront people in their sin, which they did, that was part of their job. Here's the sin, this is Yahweh's definition of the sin, not yours or mine, okay?

We wouldn't get it right. And here's also the judgment that could happen, might happen or will happen, but also one of the things they did as well, and we're gonna see this next week in chapter three, they comforted the remnant.

They gave comfort and hope for those undergoing this. And remember, God is using the Chaldeans to judge the Jews of Jerusalem and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, He is, but they're gonna survive. This is a means that God is using to bring them into compliance with His word.

But when He judges these other nations, He judges them and essentially annihilates them, okay? But He doesn't do that with the nation of Israel, why? Because they are promised in the Abrahamic covenant, the perpetuity of their people.

And that is repeated over and over and over again in scripture, and that is God putting on display through His covenants, in a covenant, you have to think of it as a contract, okay? It's a contract. Contracts are good for stating the conditions of the agreement between the parties involved, but it also is a means by which you can monitor compliance with that, okay?

And one of the things that covenants do that God makes is that you are able to measure His integrity and His ability to do what He said He was going to do. And same thing with you and I as believers in Jesus Christ.

If I lose my salvation, okay? If I lose my salvation, if I could and if I did, all right? God would lose more than I would. I would just lose my salvation. He would lose His integrity and therefore His glory, right?

Same thing is true in the nation of Israel. If God doesn't keep His promises to the nation of Israel, to the Jewish people, okay? He loses more than they do. His integrity is at stake and therefore His honor and therefore His glory is diminished, okay?

One of the greatest features of scripture for you and I is that God binds Himself to the promises that He makes,.

Okay?

That right there eliminates any possibility that His promises will not come to pass or will fail in some way. They won't. Well, let's look at the first woe. First thing we see here and there's various words we could use.

I just say the Chaldeans are plunderers. They're plunderers. Some other words we might say they are rapacious, they're looters, they're pillagers, they're marauders, they're spoilers, okay? So you can pick your poison there.

But the Chaldeans are plunderers. What does it say? Woe to him who increases what is not his. For how long? And makes himself rich with loans. Will not your creditors rise up suddenly? And those who make you tremble, awaken?

Indeed, you will become spoil for them. There's the reversal, okay? You've wiped out all these people, you've taken their stuff, and they did. I mean, they just, it was scorched earth. They not only took their valuables, their property, their houses, their crops, they did all kinds of damage to the landscape, as we're going to see.

Verse eight, because you have taken many nations as spoil, all that is left of the peoples will take you as spoil because of human bloodshed and hamas, or violence, done to the land, to the town, and all its inhabitants.

So because of their plundering, because of what they did to these people, it's going to come back, and some of those same people are going to come back and do the same to them. It's going to be an eschatological reversal, and it's going to happen suddenly.

Read Daniel 5, which is 539, which is centuries into the future. In 539, the Chaldeans are in Babylon, and they have this massive city with this massive wall around it. They're proud, they're invulnerable, they think, and yet a coalition of nations, which they had previously defeated and crushed, the Medes and the Persians, have gained power and have come back into power, and on that night, recorded by Daniel in Daniel 5, that city fell in one night, cataclysmically.

Boom, it came down. We talked a little bit about how they did it last time, by damming up the Euphrates River and coming right up into the middle of town, and then just invading the town from the inside out.

That is going to happen, and it's going to happen suddenly. The violence that you have put on other people is going to come back and crush you. And then the second woe, the Chaldeans are greedy, greedy, known for their avarice, their coverlessness, their ravenous selfishness.

This is the second woe. Woe to him who is greedy for evil gain, for his house to put his nest on high, to be delivered from the hand of evil. You have counseled a shameful thing for your house by cutting off many peoples, so you are sinning against your own soul.

Surely the stone will cry out from the wall, and the rafter will answer it from the framework. This is quite possibly a reference to the dynasty that the Chaldean leaders tried to establish. Remember Nebuchadnezzar in that speech he gave from the top of his house, overlooking his great city of Babylon and how he was just basically bragging, look what I have done, look what I have done.

Except the house that you thought like a nest was put way high up in the tree, out of reach of any danger down below, is going to go down. It's only going to last three generations. So from Nebuchadnezzar to Belshazzar was only three generations.

The house of Nebuchadnezzar collapsed. And he even uses some very poetic language. It's like a personification. When this structure comes down, the stone will cry out from the wall, and the rafter will answer it from the framework.

He pictures the stones being kind of crumbling and being crushed and crying out to the woodwork, the rafters, the beams, and then the beams as they fall and are crushed, crying back out to the stonework.

It's like an antiphonal thing, back and forth, back and forth, as this house, the house of Nebuchadnezzar comes down. It's cataclysmic reversal because of their greed and what they tried to do to other people.

And then the third woe, which is the center of this chiastic structure, the Chaldeans are violent. They're violent, cruel, brutal, murderous. Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with injustice.

Hebrew word there is also translated evil. Is it not behold from Yahweh of hosts that peoples toil for fire and nations grow weary for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea.

So here he highlights the violence of the Chaldeans and how they built cities with slave labor and using people like that. But then again, the focal point, Yahweh will judge with fire. And this is also a look into the future, the future kingdom.

That future kingdom which will also destroy and crush the rebellious kingdom that is in place on earth when Christ comes back. And here he quotes Isaiah 11, nine. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea.

And then the fourth woe, the Chaldeans are debauched. He's already made mention of their drunkenness and how they use the drunkenness essentially as part of their worship service. It's a drunken worship service filled with all kinds of perversion.

And so it says in verse 15, woe to you who make your neighbors drink, who mix in your venom even to make them drunk so as to look on their nakedness. That's the purpose of their getting drunk was to get other people drunk as well and then engage in these perverse types of ceremonies.

You will be filled with disgrace rather than glory. Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness to a Jewish mind that would have proven that they were not Jewish, okay? Their own nakedness is exposed.

The cup in Yahweh's right hand will come around to you and utter disgrace will come upon your glory. On that night recorded by Daniel in Daniel chapter five, you remember what was going on. Belshazzar and his court and all those people were having a drunken festival and they were using the sacred vessels that they had stolen out of the temple decades before to do it, to get drunk and to get other people drunk, okay?

It clearly specifies what they were using to get drunk in that passage. And yet that's when the handwriting on the wall came,.

Remember?

And they had to go get Daniel in order to be able to understand what it was and basically predicted the downfall that night and Belshazzar's death that very night.

God judges it.

Oh yes, you have in the cup that you have taken out of the temple and you're getting drunk with it, you're getting other people drunk with it in order to have sexual parties and things like that. But God has a cup in his hand too.

That cup is a cup of wrath and it's being passed around and it's going to come to you. And then verse 17, for the violence or Hamas done to Lebanon will cover you and the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them because of human bloodshed and Hamas done to the land, to the town and all its inhabitants.

The Chaldeans were a debauched people, perverted, corrupt, debased, degenerate, depraved. If you want a little more contemporary term, woke, okay?

They were.

The fifth woe, starting in verse 18. The fifth woe is their idolatry. Now we've seen this already. Remember back up in chapter one, verse 11, they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men whose own might is their God.

They had so much pride in their own military ability and to conquer people that it became an idol and they worshiped it. We talked a little bit last time about, fairly common in ancient times for armies that they were victorious to lay out their weapons and then have a worship service to worship their weapons that they gave credit to their victory for.