Habakkuk: the Prophet who Questioned God (Habakkuk 1:1-4)

Good to see each one this morning. We're gonna start a study this morning in the book of Habakkuk So you can find your way to that Old Testament prophet

There are also some Sunday school outlines available and there's some back on the back counter there and Also, if you need one, you can raise your hand raise your hand for a handout

Habakkuk the prophet who questioned

God Let's commit our time to our Lord this morning Ask his blessing on our study our father

We thank you for this opportunity that we have because of your grace to gather together in fellowship through our

Lord Jesus Christ to worship together to study your word to edify one another and Father now as we open your word to this great

Old Testament Prophet we pray that you would be our teacher that you would show us what you would have us learn from this study

Accomplish every work that you have for it and that your will would be done and that you would be glorified through it

And we thank you and praise you in Jesus mighty name. Amen Well just to orient us a little bit to our study

I thought I would spend just a few minutes talking a little bit about the prophets in general and What the scriptures have to say about it

Typically when you talk about prophets and prophecy you might think of certain prophets that are more long -range eschatological prophets and and there are those but typically the the writing prophets as they're called

There are 16 of them in Scripture and they're essentially divided up into two categories there are divided up into the major prophets and the minor prophets and The the minor prophets there are 12 of them and the major prophets, of course

Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and Daniel and I included lamentations there simply because Jeremiah also wrote that work the 12 minor prophets are

Called by the by the Jews in their Hebrew Bible and they're categorized and collected all together as a single work

So they just simply call them the 12 the 12 So their Bible has fewer books than ours does so we count all the 39

But they would just simply say they are the 12 and they're referred to as the minor prophets

Based on their length and not on their significance. It's Kind of a little bit of a misnomer there but I guess it's better than calling him the

Longer or the shorter prophets because somebody might make a mistake and think well you got a little short prophets, you know and then you could talk about the short prophets and of course the

Nephilim the Giants but It simply has to do with the length of the prophecy I did kind of a very non scientific little study just taking my

Bible and counting through the the number of pages occupied by each of these Isaiah occupied just in my

Bible 101 pages Jeremiah 96 Ezekiel 73 and Daniel 22

Now you come into the minor prophets and the largest minor prophets Hosea 15 pages

Amos 12 and Zechariah 12 and they go down from that so you can see that that just gives you an idea of the relative

Length of these prophecies Habakkuk and this Bible only has occupies about four and two -thirds pages

So it's relatively short compared to some of these other ones The other thing is the minor prophets tend to to focus in as far as the issues that they deal with more local issues

The major prophets do as well, but the minor prophets tend to talk about more more local issues

Whereas the major prophets as we know they deal with these far -reaching eschatological prophecies that they're very well noted for another way you can

Organize them is in chronological order. This has done quite a bit too You can talk about where they are on a timeline and there's all kinds of timelines available in charts

You can find these and basically generally speaking Obadiah Will be the earliest minor prophet of all the prophets and then of course ending up with Malachi so they cover somewhere around four hundred and fifty years total in their in their time span on a timeline, but you can also talk about Geographically but on a timeline they can be divided up into the pre -exilic prophets such as the pre -assyrian prophets who would be

Jonah Amos Hosea Micah and there's Isaiah one of the larger prophecies and then

Obadiah and Jonah and You can see that the time reference on that 734 to 722

BC 722 is pretty much the date everybody agrees was when Assyria came down and they swarmed over and took captive the northern kingdom of Israel which was comprised of the ten tribes

South the southern kingdom of Judah the tribe of Judah and Benjamin and you have then the pre

Babylonian prophets from 722 then to 586

Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk and Jeremiah 586 BC is pretty much can agreed upon is that the date that the

Babylonians who had already come down and taken captive much of that area and there was a

Series of deportations back to Babylon finally, the Jews rebelled the final time the

Babylonians had had it and they came in in 586 and destroyed the city tore down the Walls and burned down the the temple as well you can also geographically talk about who they who the prophets prophesied to and Now we're back talking about just the minor prophets

So to Israel the northern kingdom were to Amos and Hosea Amos was from Judah But you remember he was sent up north to prophesy to the northern kingdom to the southern kingdom of Judah Six prophets were sent

Joel Obadiah Micah Nahum Habakkuk and Zephaniah to the Assyrian Empire Jonah remember

God sent him to Nineveh and he said I don't think I'm gonna go to Nineveh I think I'm gonna go this way and you remember the story

One sent to the Assyrians in Nineveh and then there are the post -exilic prophets three of them

Sent to the Jews in Jerusalem during the time of the Restoration Zechariah Haggai and Malachi, of course, so they can be organized in in various ways.

And however you do that Pre -exilic prophets and then of course, there are the exilic prophets

Daniel and Ezekiel They were up in Babylon during that time period Daniel being taken captive during one of the very early deportation

So he was there the entire 70 year period and then of course once they came back down to Jerusalem to restore the temple

You have the post -exilic prophets Haggai Zechariah and Malachi And so that's just a very basic run through how they're organized and and it's done in several different ways

The themes of the minor prophets They they they and there's there is some overlap into what they actually dealt with But essentially one of the things they did this they revealed basic spiritual truths about God and man

In other words, they would go back through and remind the people they were talking to what God was like Concerning his attributes and we're going to see some of that as we talk about we work through Habakkuk but also they talked about man and revealed basic spiritual truths about man and His sin and the problems that he had and that brings up another thing they did confrontation and condemnation of sin

This is very typical of a prophet to confront people in their sin and call them to repentance and also

Doesn't get much notice or much press But also the prophets very commonly then when there was repentance and when there was restoration

They would give a message of comfort to the believing remnant and then of course what they're mainly known for is prophesying future events

They would prophesy near prophecies and also far prophecies So this is pretty much what they did and you can kind of and of course there's variations on them

Some of them did more of these things than others, but that's the basic idea of what they did. Another issue was

That the prophets did there was three ancient enemies of God God's Covenant people there were the

Edomites and they remember the Edomites were the descendants of Esau okay, the contemporary modern -day

Arabs are descendants of this people group right here and Then there were the

Assyrians who are also enemies of God's Covenant people And then of course as we're going to see the

Chaldeans as they're called Chaldean is just another name for the Babylonians Chaldeans was sort of the people group early on that eventually gave rise to this group of people called the

Babylonians But for all intents and purposes when you see Chaldeans think of the Babylonians okay, and Another issue that's very important to remember

Is that Obadiah was sent to condemn the Edomites which he did and we're going to talk a little bit about that And a prophet that went to the

Assyrians to condemn them was Nahum. You have a quote at the bottom of your Well, I gave you

Joel and Obadiah there Obadiah at the bottom of page one But Nahum also condemned the

Assyrians and as we're going to see here's our guy Habakkuk Who is prophesying the destruction of the

Chaldeans? So this is what they did and how they did it and where God sent them

Prophecy was very important because it validated God's Word It also did some other important things and when they prophesied near prophecies

This is very important. Oftentimes, you know, we think of the prophets and these Eschatological far -reaching prophecies, but the near prophecies are very important because it validated them as a legitimate prophet

Remember that God's standard for a prophet is 100 % accuracy 100 % accuracy in their predictions and the penalty for that is death if they didn't get it, right

And so you could look at Deuteronomy chapter 13 and also Deuteronomy chapter 18 here to validate that But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name which

I have not commanded him to speak Or which he speaks in the name of other gods that prophet shall die

Now you may say in your heart How will we know the words which Yahweh has not spoken when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh if the thing does not?

Come about or come true. That is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken The prophet has spoken it presumptuously you shall not be afraid of him

The standard for a prophet in the Old Testament is 100 % accuracy And if they failed it was a capital crime so it was really important that these guys have near prophecies because if all they had was

Far -reaching prophecies way out into the future that may or may not come to pass when they're off the scene

They can't be held accountable But these near prophecies they were watching and waiting and listening and making sure that they came true and that Certified that prophet as a true prophet of God if it came true and that also would validate their prophecies that were farther off Into the future.

So the biblical standard was and is 100 % Accuracy people today who claim to be prophets and you see this all the time.

And of course this last Pandemic issue people were prophesying all kinds of things about the pandemic and all the rest and and You know

They're just very fortunate that they were not Old Testament prophets because they had a very effective way of weeding out the fake from the real in in those days

So before we go any further, are there any thoughts or questions you might have on this?

these standards and these basic issues with Prophets and what they do and what they're all about prophet is someone who

Proclaims direct revelation from God direct revelation from God. It's very important part of the part of the definition well

Background the time Habakkuk wrote this the Assyrians were in power. They had been in power for for quite some time and They overran and took the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 and you can see the massive area that they covered in their

Empire. I mean Just a massive amount of territory a massive amount of cities and people groups and everything and you kind of wonder

What were these people thinking, you know, because it's one thing to conquer it all but now you got to control it and hang on To it right and as we're going to see

With these people that did this and it's going to include the Babylonians they had this lust for conquering nations and that lust for conquering nations came back around and and was something that also led to their own destruction and The Babylonians had been conquered by the

Assyrians at this point in time and so when Habakkuk wrote this prophecy the

Babylonians were not in power, but the Assyrians were And it probably wrote this during the time of King Josiah King Josiah was a relatively good

King. He instituted many reforms in Judah that unfortunately were only temporary and So this prophecy probably written somewhere around sick between 630 and 622

During his the later part of Josiah's reign The the

Babylonians conquered Assyria in 612 so that's kind of gives you a little marker for what was going on and in 609

Josiah died and his son Jehoahaz took the throne and only three months later the

Egyptian Pharaoh came up and deposed Jehoahaz and then installed his brother

Jehoakim to the throne Jehoakim was ungodly. He was evil. He was rebellious and it was shortly after Jehoakim came to power that Habakkuk wrote this lament because he saw the

Degradation of his nation and he's looking at Judah the country of Judah all around him

He sees the decline the degradation that the perversion and of course the greed the violence the lack of justice and so on and of course this began a severe spiritual and practical

Cultural decline in his own nation. So he's first looking internally to his his own country and Eventually again, the

Babylonians came into power and you can see the massive territory that they conquered

And It's just amazing what they were able to do and then you see media over there to the right eventually, as you know, the

Medo -Persian Coalition came against Babylon and conquered them Daniel chapter 5

Those were the Medo -Persians that conquered them So even though these people came to power and they swept across the the landscape and they conquered all these people

Eventually God took them down as well the Hebrew prophet the

Hebrew prophet Habakkuk there again Babylonian Empire So Habakkuk his name in Hebrew is actually pronounced have a kook have a kook.

Okay easy way to remember that every family have a kook The name actually means the first part

So all the families that they're all no never mind won't ask for a show of hands Havoc Havoc means to embrace means to embrace and so with that with that name then that last syllable is

Taken and duplicated at the end. And of course, there's this lengthening of the vowel from an ah to an ooh So it's have a kook and by by duplicating that last

Consonant on the end of the name it intensifies the word So havoc means to embrace and how a kook means to firmly embrace.

So that's the meaning of his name Okay, but since kook has a connotation in English That may not be fitting for a

Hebrew Old Testament prophet I'm just going to use the American version and we'll just call him Habakkuk. Okay fair enough.

We'll all know who we're talking about His prophecy is different than the other prophets One of the things is very significant about him is that he does not receive a message from God normally

You know It's like God says he commissions a prophet and he says take this message to those people and they go do that but Habakkuk has a conversation with God he has a

Dialogue with God and it comes in the form of questions as we're going to see and so that makes it very different other prophets spoke to God's people with a word from God Habakkuk dialogue and It comes in the form of a of a series of questions or some of your texts might even say

Complaints and it is they are complaints when you boil it all down It's their complaints in the form of questions.

You've heard these something like who taught you how to drive, right? That's a question

But it's also a complaint and you can think of all kinds of things like that people ask questions in the form of a complaint

But this is what's going on here. He's looking around him at his own culture He sees the degradation and the sin and the absolute decay all around him and he just is

Struggling internally to figure this out. I always think of Asaph in Psalm 73 when

I read Habakkuk Because Asaph was also a godly man, right and as he looked around him at his culture

He struggled with that though that age -old paradox, you know, he saw the the prosperity of the wicked

But he also saw the suffering of the righteous and he just had a lot of trouble putting that together

Why because he knew God he knew what God was like He knew that God was a holy

God a righteous God and you can just walk through all of the attributes of God that he understood He's all -powerful.

He's all -knowing. He sees everything. So certainly he sees what's going on Well, then why doesn't he do something about it?

And of course we know from from Asaph Psalm 73 what happened He said he struggled with this.

He had all these issues internally until I came to the sanctuary of God And then he saw God showed him.

What did he show him? He showed him their end their end and it was like it had been like Asaph was watching the parade of life through a knothole on a fence, right?

All he could see was what was passing right in front of him But then is where God sort of took him up on the top of the hill and he said now

Survey the entire parade you see you see where they end and then it made sense to him So he basically got the eternal perspective.

Well, you're gonna see some of this in Habakkuk to Habakkuk is Struggling with what he knows about God see an unbeliever is not going to have this struggle, right?

They don't care. They see the prosperity of the wicked and if they're wicked they go. Well, this is the way it should be

Right. What's wrong with this and Who cares about the righteous anyway, if they're suffering maybe that's the way it should be

But a godly person a person who knows God who knows what God is like and who knows his history

What he has done in the past and what he says he's going to do in the future Struggles with this and a lot of is simply about timing right timing and schedule my schedule is probably not exactly what

God's is, but it's difficult to put all that together and These men are troubled by what they see around them.

Well, let's look at this These first four verses you can follow along on your outline there today.

We're going to look at 11 verses we'll start out with the first four and We'll see what goes on here with Habakkuk.

He's really having an internal struggle with what he sees here From the

LSB these first four verses read this way the Oracle which Habakkuk the Prophet beheld

How long Oh Yahweh will I call for help? You will not hear

I cry out to you violence Yet you do not save Why do you make me see wickedness and cause me to look on trouble indeed

Devastation and violence are before me and there is strife and contention is lifted up Therefore the law is ignored and justice never comes forth for the wicked surround the righteous

Therefore justice comes forth perverted in this translation, it's called an

Oracle an Oracle is also sometimes called a burden It essentially is a heavy message a heavy message that contains statements of judgment against both

God's own people and God's the enemies of God's people. And so that's part of what we see there in the superscription

It is a prediction of judgment on Judah as we'll see and on her enemies and it calls him

Habakkuk the Prophet. Okay, not every prophet is called a prophet, but they are prophets But here Habakkuk is called

Habakkuk the Prophet and it's what he saw or beheld so a lot of what we're going to see later on in this is what he actually was would be held or saw in a vision so this is this is a vision a prophetic vision that he has and Then it says how long here's this first question how long

Oh Yahweh will I call for help? so there's a history here. He's got a history of making these observations and then struggling with what he's seeing this violence and this degradation within his own country and He asked this first question.

Why doesn't God hear in verse 2 and then

Why doesn't God respond? Why doesn't God respond and his conclusion is the law is paralyzed.

That's the word They're an actual literal word frozen. The law is not having any effect It's one thing if you see injustice if you see violence if you see crime and all that But if there is law enforcement that deals with it, then you have a sense of justice, right?

But if that if there's no law enforcement in place and he actually uses the word here Torah for the law, you know

The the law of the Jewish nation given by God Then the frustration even doubles because he has seen the implicant implementation of God's law in the past, but it's not happening now

One thing very important to see here a very important word We're gonna take a little time to look at it.

And that's the word violence in verse 2. I cry out to you Violence. This is a very important word.

He uses it again there in verse 3. It's used a total of six times here in in Habakkuk and We need to take a little time and talk about this word here

It is in the LSB how long Oh Yahweh will I call for help and you will not hear I cry out to you

Violence yet you do not save this word occurs in the Old Testament Depending on what translation you use about 68 times

Okay, but it occurs six times here in in this little prophecy now.

I did a little Crude math here if you take away the number of times that occurs in Habakkuk from the total number of times that occurs in the

Old Testament count up the verses It occurs in the rest of the Old Testament about one in 372 verses, okay

But here in Habakkuk one in every nine point three Okay, so this is a prominent theme in Habakkuk Violence violence violence what he is seeing around him

Again 68 times in the Old Testament total six times in Habakkuk it occurs chapter 1 verse 2 3 and 9 chapter 2 verse 8 and twice in 17

And so this is a very important word here. It's well worth our time to take a look at it It's actually this word right here in the

Hebrew Hebrew word Hebrews built on a what's called a tri radical root

Okay, so three consonants and initially at all all the head was consonants. There aren't weren't any vowels You see well, how do they know what the sounds of the words were?

well as a child you would hear your parents teach you the words and so you would hear and learn the sounds of the words and Then it may be at some point in time

You might come to be taught to read them if you ever had that opportunity And so then you would know that it would be read from right to left and Hebrew is read from right to left seems a little

Strange, but if that's all you ever knew it probably wouldn't be all that strange So this particular word the first letter there on the right

Is height height the second letter maim and the third letter summic maim noon

Summic and then you see those two little look like little tees underneath Those are those are were added later centuries later

They were called vowel points the when the language fell out of usage over a period of time people forgot what it sounded like right, and so the between about 200 and 900

AD a group of Scholarly Jews called the Masoretic Jews developed a vowel system and they're called vowel points

So they're either dots and series of dots and dashes and things like that This particular one has an aw sound to it.

Okay, and you can see there's two of them there There's one there under the first letter So that would be a single syllable and then the second one there added to that That second letter the maim so that the maim and then that that vowel and then the summic form the second syllable

So it's a two -syllable word in In Hebrew, so the Hebrew word for violence.

What is that word? That word is Hamas Hamas ring any bells the

Hebrew word for violence is Hamas now that is the name of the

Arabic terrorist organization that you are hearing so much about and If you go back and look at the origin of that particular organization

There is a word in in Arabic that means zeal Okay, and but don't let anybody kid you that that's what they mean by that that if you look in a

Hebrew dictionary The dictionary would give you secondary definitions for Hamas One would be cruelty and another one would be injustice

But the word zeal is not found there. Okay, the actual Arabic word is

It's an acronym and when you boil it all down it means the Islamic resistance movement, okay, that's what it means but so it's no accident that They chose a word that in Hebrew means violence and violent destruction as well.

So I Cry out to you Hamas. Okay, that's the word you also have down at the bottom of your page

There are two quotes one from Joel 319 and another one from Obadiah 10 remember these are condemnations of the nation of Edom Edom are the ancestors of modern -day

Arabs and They are the people that came from Esau right remember Jacob and Esau and the conflict that was there.

Well, here's Joel's prophecy Egypt will become a desolation and Edom will become a desolate wilderness because of the

Hamas Done to the sons of Judah in whose land they have shed innocent blood

And then Obadiah Because of Hamas to your brother Jacob you will be covered with shame and you will be cut off forever

Prophecies in God's Word built on and taken off of and because of the Abrahamic Covenant the covenant that promised to the descendants of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and this is an unconditional covenant it is

Not dependent on their members unilateral. It's not dependent on their obedience It's all dependent on God and his faithfulness to carry it out

Promise them the land a seed a seed line, which would culminate in Messiah and also blessing

He would use them through you He said he's going to bless the whole world and that that covenant is still in force.

It was never abrogated It was never abandoned even because their disobedience which they have been disobedient through the centuries and God has chastened them for it

But wherever you find that covenant mentioned that it's a covenant that's repeated. It's a Transgenerational covenant and he says to you and to your descendants forever.

It's still in force. It's still in force today so very very pertinent very very

Important to understand the foundation of this but Habakkuk's in turmoil. How can

God disregard Judas sin and he gets his first answer in The next several verses and it's an answer that is kind of shocking

But but basically his first question is he's just struggling to see what's going on in his own nation.

I Found a quote from a very excellent Old Testament scholar. He's now with the

Lord his 1909 to 1995 was his lifespan. Dr. Charles Feinberg.

You can tell by his name. He's Jewish Absolutely brilliant man. He he's trained to be a rabbi at an early age and he was just an expert in the

Old Testament Old Testament The Hebrew language he wound up converting to Christ and being trained and he was

Graduated from Dallas Seminary and then went on to study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology I believe and earned another

Pete he had a Doctor of Theology degree then you're in a PhD and Semitic studies and he was a just a world -renowned

Scholar spoke multiple languages very very brilliant man. He went on to teach at Talbot Seminary where he met mentored and was a professor to a young seminary student named

John MacArthur and If you heard Pastor MacArthur's testimony, he talks a lot about how dr

Feinberg really influenced him a lot but in his quote in his Commentary on that includes

Habakkuk and bear in mind this quote is 1951. Okay The silence of God in human affairs then as now has ever been difficult to understand

But this does not mean there is not an answer and that divine wisdom is incapable of coping with the situation

All is under his seeing eye and everything is under the control of his mighty hand

But in the meantime now, he's referring back to Habakkuk here. The law was slacked literally chilled

Rendered ineffective paralyzed it came to be looked upon as being without force or authority

Because of the because of unrighteous judges the law was set at naught Since the form of judgment were corrupted both life and property were insecure

Justice could not prevail because the wicked knew how to him the righteous in on all sides so that he could not receive his just due miscarriage of justice was the order of the day and Snaring the righteous by fraud the ungodly perverted all right and honesty because God did not punish sin

Immediately men thought they could sin on with impunity. He could have written that yesterday

Okay. Well, let's look at the rest of this passage verses 5 and Habakkuk now receives his first Answer yes the question.

Here's the answer God says this See among the nations and look

Be also astonished be astounded because I am doing something in your days

You would not believe if it was recounted to you for behold I am raising up the

Chaldeans that bitter and hasty nation who walks on the breadth of the land

To possess dwelling places, which are not theirs. They are dreaded and feared their justice and exaltation come forth from themselves

Their horses are swifter than leopards and sharper than wolves in the evening their horsemen come galloping

Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour all of them come for Hamas their horde of faces move forward and they gather captives like sand and they mock at kings and Rulers are a laughing matter to them.

They laugh at every fortress and heap up dirt and capture it then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on but they will be held guilty they whose power is their

God First thing we see here in verse 5 God will respond to their sin.

God's not asleep. He knows everything We don't need to inform God right?

Some people want to do that. Hey Lord, you you probably don't see what's going on down here That's okay. Let me help you out with that.

You know, you don't need to do that. He's omniscient He knows about these things in greater depth and detail and a long time before we ever do

God will respond to the sin of Judah in verse 5 and God will use a surprising tool a surprising tool in verse 6

He's going to use these people called the Chaldeans and what's what's important to remember here a little bit of the timing again

The Chaldeans So I can go backwards here, whoop, nope, that's not working what

I do Well, it doesn't matter I was gonna take you back to the map But at that point in time that he wrote this the

Chaldeans had not come back They had been defeated early on by the there it is

They had been defeated early on by the Assyrians, but they were just still down in Babylon and had not

Come back to power. That's why it's such a shock that God says yeah, I'm gonna raise them up and they're going to defeat these

Assyrians and Habakkuk's really struggling to figure that out. And so in verses 7 through 11

He gives a description of what they're going to be like when they come rampaging across and take out the

Assyrians Verse 7 they're self -ruled. They are dreaded and feared their justice and exaltation

Come from themselves. They have no authority with themselves. We might call this Autonomous right so flawed self -ruled they don't they don't answer to anybody

They're a power to their own self and also verse 8 They are swift in battle Their horses are swifter than leopards and sharper than wolves in the evening their horsemen come galloping their horsemen come from afar

They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour So they're very rapid in their in their ability to conquer nations very swift

They're self -ruled they're swift in battle verse 9 they're successful all of them come for Hamas their horde of faces moves forward and they gather captives like sand whenever the

Bible wants to talk about a Group or a number that you can't measure it usually uses something like sand, you know

They're very successful and they capture a lot of people and it capture a lot of land verse 10

They're also scoffers. They mock at Kings and rulers are a laughing matter to them They laugh at every fortress and heap up dirt and capture it

Basically when they came to a fort fortified city and it had a wall They would just get busy and begin to heap up what they called a siege mound

And eventually they got up to the top of that wall and at some point in time They just swarm over the wall and take people out

Very interesting to know that when Babylon came back into power and they rebuilt they built the city of Babylon to that massive place

That the wall that they built was over 300 feet tall and thick enough that They patrolled the perimeter of that city by chariot on top of that wall

It was wide enough on top that two chariots could pass through so they patrolled on the top of that wall They had a lot of confidence

They also had a water source because the Euphrates River ran through a gate in the wall

And so they were self -contained very self -confident. Who's going to build a siege mound big enough to go over a 365 foot wall except when the

Medo -Persians came we know from historians. That's not what they did That night remember

Daniel 5 they were having a drunken orgy with the vessels that they had robbed out of the temple and That was the night that they that the city fell and the way that's the way the

Medo -Persians did it they went back upriver and they Excavated the river down and they got ready to rechannel that River and at the proper moment when the troops were

Surrounding that gate that water gate They gave the signal and they they redirected that River and when the river fell down below that gate

The army just swarmed right up to the middle of town up that riverbed and they took them from the inside out That's Daniel chapter 5 remember the handwriting on the wall.

Okay, that's how they did it. So their confidence in their own military prowess didn't help them at all and And they scoff at anybody who thinks they can be stopped and also verse 11 they are sack

Religious sacrilegious then they will sweep through like the wind and pass on but they will be held guilty

They whose power is their God Their idolatry was their own strength their own military power their own prowess to to to Defeat their enemies, but that's also one of their major weaknesses, right?

Because that sin of worshiping their own strength and their own power came back to bite them later on that is always

Something that is self -defeating So there we have the first question and the first answer of Habakkuk He asked that question he struggled with it and it did come in a bit of a form of a complaint to God We're going to deal with that later on as well

Okay, any thoughts or questions you might have from what we've seen so far anything sound a little familiar to any of this

I Read Habakkuk and it's almost like he could have written this yesterday He could have looked back at this just this past week in the

United States of America Just tick off all of the all the issues that you see. Okay, very relevant very relevant very pertinent

How about some practical principles on page two? You could probably certainly think of some more and I hope you spend some time and think about this passage and pray about these things

God is God always hears our prayers when we cry out to him always Always hears our prayers and number two

God sees every sin long before we do You and I will never well,

I'll speak for myself I will never become so sensitive to sin that I'll see it before God does okay? Okay, that's he knows sin better than we do he's an expert on it and he sees it

He's more sensitive to it than we will ever be and so we don't need to inform

God about the sin we see around us, okay, and He sees it and he knows and then three

Following that God judges and will judge every sin ever committed in the history of creation

Okay, very important. It looks like people get away with things, you know in life They don't oh, it's an issue of time.

God has all the time in the universe. He's not bound by time. We are Every sin ever committed will be dealt with by God will be judged in God's economy of things and he's the righteous

Holy God every sin will be dealt with at some point in time and this is a major theme of Habakkuk and Sometimes this this theme is called a theodicy

You see this all through scripture theodicy made up of the word for God to us and dick

Hatsune in the Greek so it's dick Hatsune means righteousness So this is a this is a story that vindicates the righteousness of God and you see these all through the

Bible New Testament and Old Testament oftentimes It's just sort of the proceedings sort of just stop and God does something that lets you know

Oh, you are judging sin Okay Good and it's a vindication of the righteousness of God called a theodicy and then for man's

Administration of justice may be perverted but God's is perfect and Then five we may not see it or think it but God is always working out his program

He has a program he has a purpose there's an end point that tell us that everything is working toward and he's always working out his plan and program and Six and this is what we're gonna see next time

Habakkuk really struggling with this one God has and will use wicked people and or nations as tools of judgment

That's kind of tough, right? I mean, wait a minute and we're gonna see Habakkuk struggling with this the

Chaldeans These people are more wicked than we are. Oh, yes, we're in sin But how can you use these wicked people to judge us?

Well, he does and he did but he also raised up the Medo -Persians To judge the Chaldeans and then he raised up the

Greeks to judge the Medo -Persians And then he raised up the Romans and judged them. Okay, and so on it goes nobody gets away with anything in God's economy of things and Then seven

God's covenant promises are still in force and he will faithfully fulfill them all

God doesn't break his promises God God does not break promises. God doesn't whisper.

God's hey God is what they don't make a good title for a no Never mind number eight in a world of sin and chaos.

God knows those who belong to him He knows he knows you and then number nine if your faith is in Jesus Christ You can rest in the loving power of your

Savior who will bring you safely into his presence no matter what trials or sufferings you go through in this life or How twisted perverted and sinful this world becomes?

Okay, you can count on God if your faith is in Christ the Jesus of the Bible Okay, not that Jesus of the cults or the isms and schisms or miss

Defined whatever but the one revealed in Scripture you can trust God to take you to his presence and then

There's a statement there by William F. Albright. Very interesting. I did a little reading on him guy was just an absolute genius

He was called the father of American archaeology And he spent a lot of time studying the the

Archaeology and the all of the stuff of the of the Holy Land in that whole area and did a lot of work after 1947 on the on the

Dead Sea Scrolls and everything and probably fairly slowly To understand the

Bible is true over his lifetime. He didn't start out that way It was kind of a skeptic But here's a here's a quote from him only the

Hebrews so far as we know made covenants with their gods or God and this guy was an expert on ancient cultures and Religions and all that kind of thing only the

Hebrews made covenants with their gods or God Now the only thing that he could have gotten better if he would have said only the

God of the Hebrews made Covenants with the Hebrews because it was God who initiated and made the covenants with them and with nobody else

Okay, and they're at the bottom read that and understand. There's the Abrahamic Covenant the first mention of it in Genesis 12 it is still in force and All of its aspects are still in force

You can't chop up a covenant into bite -sized chunks and say well this parts in force, but this isn't no God made a promise

He's going to carry out this promises if God doesn't carry out all of his promises He made to the nation of Israel. You can't trust him with your salvation

Okay, that's what's at stake here, but you can and they can as well. Okay Let's pray father.

Thank you for this introduction to this tremendous Prophecy it's

Fairly small and yet it's so powerful and it just is so relevant father.

We we can relate to the internal turmoil that Habakkuk experienced as we look around in Our own situation our own culture, but like Habakkuk we can trust you for all things

We know that you are in the process even now carrying out your plan Help us to be faithful with what you have called us to do father to to proclaim

Christ as the only solution to all of the issues of life particularly the issue of Salvation and all that that means and so we just thank you father for what you're doing