Habakkuk 1-2, What Are You Looking At?

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Habakkuk 1-2 What Are You Looking At?

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I'll be reading Habakkuk chapters 1 and 2, and I hear the word of the Lord. The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw,
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O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you violence, and you will not save?
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Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me.
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Strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth.
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For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth, perverted. Look among the nations and see.
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Wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.
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For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.
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They are dreaded and fearsome. Their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards.
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They're more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar.
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They fly like an eagle, swift to devour. They all come for violence, all their faces forward.
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They gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it.
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Then they sweep by like the wind and go on. Guilty men whose own might is their
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God. Are you not from everlasting? Oh, Lord, my
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God, my holy one. We shall not die. Oh, Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment.
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And you, oh rock, have established them for reproof. You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?
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You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook.
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He drags them out with his net. He gathers them in his dragnet, so he rejoices and is glad.
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Therefore, he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet, for by them he lives in luxury and his food is rich.
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Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever? I will make 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
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I will answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me, write the vision, make it plain on tablets so he may run who reads it.
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For still the vision waits its appointed time. It hastens to the end. It will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it.
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It will surely come. It will not delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up.
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It is not upright within him. But the righteous shall live by his faith.
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Moreover, wine is a traitor and arrogant man who never who is never at rest.
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His greed is as wide as she old his like death. He has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects all his own as his own.
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All peoples shall we shall not all these take up their taunt against him with scoffing and riddles for him and say.
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Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own for how long and loads himself with pledges, will not your debtors suddenly arise and those awake who will make you tremble, then you will be spoiled for them because you have plundered many nations.
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All the remnant of the people shall plunder you for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.
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Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house to set his nest on high, to be safe from the reach of harm.
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You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples. You have fortified your life for the stone will cry out from the wall and the beam from the woodwork respond.
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Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity. Behold, it is not from the
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Lord of hosts that people's labor merely for fire. What? Excuse me. I read that wrongly.
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Verse 13. Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that people's labor merely for fire and nations weary themselves for nothing?
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For the Lord will be filled, read it again, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the
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Lord as the waters cover the sea. Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink. You pour out your wrath and make them drunk in order to gaze at their nakedness.
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You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink yourself and show your uncircumcision.
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The cup in the Lord's right hand will come around to you and utter shame will come upon your glory.
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The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, as will the destruction of the beast that terrified them for the blood of man and the violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.
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What prophet is an idol when its maker has shaped it? A metal image, a teacher of lies for its maker trust in his own creation when he makes speechless idols.
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Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, awake to a silent stone, arise. Can this teach?
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Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there's no breath at all in it. But the
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Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him.
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May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. What are you looking at?
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Are you looking at somebody in your life? I'm talking about you look at somebody, you know, shaking your head and thinking it's going to go badly for them.
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They're going to grow up to be a failure. They're going to wind up in prison or bankrupt.
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They're just going to be nothing. Justice will be done for them.
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Just in the last few weeks, the school district I graduated from in Katy, Texas, has gotten nationwide attention.
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I don't know if some of you have seen it or heard about it. About a month ago, the school board with the superintendent of schools presiding there held a meeting about bullying.
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And, you know, it seemed like one of these kind of typical school board meetings, hardly anyone attends. It's just going to be, you know, boring stuff.
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But it was about bullying. And a man got up, my age, age 53, and told a horrible story about how he was bullied in eighth grade in that very school district growing up there.
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A bully shoved his head into a urinal, busted his lip, fell on the ground, and the bully kicked him on the ground.
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And no one cared, important to the principal. The principal didn't do anything. He went home and took out his father's .45
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pistol and put the barrel of gun in his mouth and almost shot himself, but didn't.
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The boy who bullied him, named Lance, was known and feared as the school bully all the way through into high school.
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Everyone knew to stay out of his way. He was a tough athlete, playing linebacker for the football team and doing the shot put and discus for the track team.
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He could bench press over 400 pounds by age 18. My brother told of how, in the weight room, he would throw weight plates at the other guys.
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He said that whenever Lance came around, he just got out of there. I knew him, too. Side by side, there's me.
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I'm the skinny one. That's the track team photo. I remember him once boasting during a track meeting, you know, sitting around talking, how he beat up a
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Houston police officer. Just a couple of months before that picture, he was driving his car loudly and fast down some small road when a man came out and yelled at him, you know, stop, quiet down.
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And he backed up and got out of the car and beat the man into a five day coma. He didn't bother me personally, but I once had to intervene to stop him from bullying a fellow distance runner.
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He was recruited as a three or four star recruit to play football for the University of Oklahoma.
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A couple of years ago, I just Googled his name, kind of curious to what became of his football career. Well, it turned out he kind of washed out of Oklahoma.
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And I guess then I saw that. Well, he's probably he's probably in prison somewhere. You know, justice has been done on him.
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He didn't become a star or anything. He's probably getting his just deserts or at least, you know, some down and out guy somewhere else.
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But anyway, when that man at the Katy school board meeting told this horrible story of being bullied by Lance, the school bully, finally bring you out of the open there in the school board.
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He ended his presentation by pointing at the superintendent of schools and said that bully.
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Was you, Lance? The superintendent of schools was the school bully when he was a kid now making three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year.
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He denied it. He said he wasn't a bully, but I knew him. I knew he was a bully. And where did that get him?
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That kind of life. Well, they got him making a lot of money and now in charge of the very schools that he terrorized as a student.
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You look at that and you wonder, where's the justice? Where's God?
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Well, that's what Habakkuk was wondering in Israel, looking at how the wrong was off so strong, people seem to get ahead by violence, by bullying and looking at a society where you could do wrong and still prosper and succeed.
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You look at that and wonder, well, why isn't God doing something about it? Habakkuk asked God just that and God answers back here in two rounds going back and forth.
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Now, we don't know much about Habakkuk except what we find in this very little book. He was a prophet and wrote this little book just before the rise of Babylon to begin being the major power.
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So sometime about the same time as the prophet Jeremiah, maybe a little bit older than Jeremiah before the year 600
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B .C. He gets literally in verse one, he said the ESV translated an oracle, but it's really literally a burden.
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He saw this burden because of what he's looking at. He's looking at Judah.
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What's left of Israel after the Syrians wiped out the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 B .C.,
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about 100 years before this. Now, you would think that after seeing the northern kingdom of Israel destroyed for its sins, just like Isaiah said, if you remember back last fall,
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Isaiah said it would happen. That you would think, though, that the southern kingdom, Judah would see that and would learn this lesson would be repentant, would be reformed, would be trying to live scrupulously by God's law.
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But look at them now. There is violence. The powerful take advantage of the powerless.
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The rich landowners can you know, they can afford to pay thugs like Lance to go out and be their enforcers, to abuse anyone who gets in their way, to break legs, kick peasants off their land, you know, abuse people, make people offers they can't refuse, as they say.
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And if they if the poor then try to get justice from the courts, the rich just pay off the judges with bribes and and get their way.
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You look at society and you see that might makes right. There is strife and contention.
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Everybody is suing everybody else. And the courts decide by by whoever pays them the most or for us, maybe who will give them the most votes or congratulate them for being one of the cool, tolerant, inclusive people who make those
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Christians support what they and their bigoted Christians, what they call sin. There's no justice.
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Some people are declared legally nonpersons with no rights because they are maybe because they're black and pre -Civil
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War south or Jewish in Nazi Germany or pre -born in contemporary America.
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They can't even vote. You know, those those those pre -born people, they can't vote. They can't even congratulate you on how cool you are.
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So who cares what they say? They can be dispensed with. So law is paralyzed.
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It's not doing what law is supposed to be doing. It's risk, which is supposed to be restraining sin, bringing giving justice to the weak.
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It's what law is there for. Instead, here it's being used as another tool by the powerful to get their way by those who can pay it.
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They use the law for their purposes. Maybe they want sex without consequences. So Roe v.
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Wade, they want to pretend they can redefine marriage however they like. So Obergefell, that absurd same sex marriage decision about a couple of years ago, it doesn't matter what the
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Constitution actually says. It's paralyzed. They'll call it a living, breathing document and reinterpret it however they want.
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So the result here for Habakkuk, justice never goes forth.
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Does it come out of the courts? Does it come from the judges? Does it come from the government? The wicked surround the righteous, maybe in numbers.
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You know, polls now show that what used to be widely known was perverse. More and more people think it's just acceptable.
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The wicked surround the righteous in zeal. As the worst are full of a passionate intensity, constantly rallying for their immorality, are constantly railing against righteousness.
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So justice, that's the decrees of the powerful. The agenda pressed on us by authorities goes forth perverted,
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Habakkuk says. But that's not really what bothers Habakkuk the most. Now, all the prophets decried that kind of thing.
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Injustice, lack of compassion, arrogant religion. And we saw that in Isaiah. We've seen it in Jeremiah and Micah.
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What is driving Habakkuk? What is unique about him from the prophets is that he's been praying to God for this to stop, for help, for for God's hand to bring change, praying for what we would call,
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I guess in our language, revival in the land, praying for reform and conviction, for people to repent, praying for a breakthrough.
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For God to intervene and put a stop to all the violence, to save the weak, to protect those who are being destroyed, having their homes and what little they have snatched from them by the thugs who work for the wealthy few or by the gangs who can just get away with it.
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He's been praying for a king and for a government that will finally do something about it.
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You know, be God's hand to implement God's justice on earth that will bring God's law into practice, to be fair, to dish out justice to to the rich when they commit a crime, that they they have to be punished just like anyone else to give back the land to the poor that they've had stolen from them.
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He's been praying for a breakthrough. But all he sees is break down.
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For about 250 years in this country, in America, slaves prayed for justice. Many of them lived and died, crying out to the
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Lord for justice. And here Habakkuk has been looking at how bad his country is, how long he's been praying about it and now finally complains to God, you know, oh,
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Lord, how long? How long shall I cry for help? And you will not hear.
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Is he hearing us? He's looking back, I guess he's looking at a crooked, perverse, sinful nation and wondering why the
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Lord isn't doing anything about it. So the Lord answers. And starting in verse five.
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Telling Habakkuk. You know, what are you looking at, Habakkuk? Look, look among the nations and see what you see.
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You're looking at just your nation, Habakkuk. Look at the international scene, the nations, what's going on.
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Look at the big picture. And he says, God says, wonder and be astounded, be astounded at what's happening out there among the nations and geopolitics and then the rise and fall of empires.
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The Assyrians who have dominated and terrorized that part of the world for over a century, who destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and many other nations are starting to crumble.
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But be amazed at that. That for so long, they seem so they seem so strong, so unstoppable, the unconquerable, they were the superpower.
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But from their south, Babylon, otherwise known here as the Chaldeans, same thing, they are overwhelming them slowly, but surely by this time, city by city until eventually they destroyed them all, all the
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Assyrian cities. Notice that the Lord says in the second half of verse five, be astounded for because I am doing a work in your days.
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And so you can phrase every every word is important there. Otherwise, in your days now, you know, are very soon.
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It's coming right now. In other words, this is not some prophecy for the end times. It's not about heaven and final judgment.
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But this is about this is not in the not yet some of the new earth. This is now in this age.
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I am doing in your days. And the Lord says, I am doing it. You notice that it was just not just random events out there.
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And I'm just out of control. These left completely to human free will. And so God has to let the, you know, the
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Assyrians and the Babylonians make their own choices. He can't guide them. I can't decide for them what they'll do.
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No, that's nonsense. He can't even know what some people say. God can't even know what the future holds because that would constrain us.
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Well, no, he is. He says, I am doing this work. Look what's happening with these empires. That's my work.
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God says. The Babylonians are rising and overthrowing the Assyrians. These pagan empires in Mesopotamia with modern day
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Iraq, because it's all happening because of what God is doing.
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I am doing a work. God declares that you would not believe if told. That anyone could defeat the
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Assyrians seemed unbelievable. But in verse six, behold, look, stop.
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Behold, means look, stop looking at what you think are the wrongs that are off so strong.
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Or all around you, look what the Lord is doing. Look, he says,
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I'm raising up the Chaldeans. It's not the roll of a dice, you know, in a game of risk. By chance, a chance victory, one of them empire over another.
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The Lord is doing the raising up of one empire and the taking down of another. And sure, those
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Chaldeans, as Babylonians are, he calls them a bitter and hasty nation. But so were the
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Assyrians. And God used them, didn't he? Remember in Isaiah that God called that barbaric empire, the
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Assyrians called him, he called them the rod of his anger. They were the tool in his hands, in other words, to achieve his goal.
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Now, 100 years later, God has a new rod, the Babylonians. They are, in verse seven, dreaded and fearful, fearsome.
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In other words, they make you fear their justice. God says they're their justice.
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Judah had God's law, but perverted it to a perverted justice, not really justice at all.
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The Babylonians' justice and dignity, it says, goes forth from themselves.
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In other words, from their own will, their own power, their imposition of what they say.
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You know, we will take what we want because we can attitude. You can't stop us.
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That's all that matters. That's their justice. Now, Habakkuk has been praying that the
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Lord do something about the injustice in Judah, in his country. God's people. And he's asking that the
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Lord, he's actually the Lord. Why is taking them so long to act? And so the Lord ask the
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Lord answers, you know, look. They are coming quickly. Their horses are swifter than leopards.
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Their horsemen are going to come swooping down like eagles. Imagine the eagle doesn't look like it looks like it's far away.
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And then suddenly it's right on you. You think God's judgment on the injustice, the violence, you think it's slow and coming.
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But when it comes, it'll make your head spin about it. They're coming soon and coming for violence.
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In verse nine, God will punish the the violent with with violent people.
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He punishes violence with violence. Injustice with injustice. He'll send thieves to take from thieves, murderers to strike murderers.
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They'll gather captives like sand. The Babylonians will. And they'll scoff at these little kings and these little empires laugh at the fortresses, the walls around Jerusalem, supposed to try to keep enemies out, tear down your walls and sweep through like the wind.
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They're guilty men who don't even try to appeal to God to justify themselves, who don't twist a few scriptures to make a case for themselves.
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Like hypocrites do. They don't they don't cover their actions with a thin veil of religion. Their own might, he says, is their
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God. So at the end of verse 11, otherwise, might makes right for them.
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They can do it. They'll do it if it works. They're winning their battles.
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They're conquering more territory, taking more captives. Well, they must be doing something right. They think the gods must be on our side.
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Nothing succeeds like success, they think. Now, today, we're tempted to think, you know, with the world's strongest military in the
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USA, if we can do it, if no one can stop us, if it'll work to get what we want.
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Well, then let's do it. Do we need oil? Well, we can just go take it from whatever country we want.
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I don't know. I don't think I don't know that we're doing that yet. But I hear people saying that's not what we should do.
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I've heard that. Take what we want. We have the power. Our might makes us right.
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No, it doesn't. You hear the same attitude in the church business.
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You know, so often the thinking is if it works. And of course, they always mean work by one thing, grow larger crowds.
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They don't mean work to make disciples of Christ. They mean work to get more people in the seats, make us successful.
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Success is judged by, again, by more people, more money, bigger and nicer buildings. If it works for that, then it must be right.
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It's not scripture, God's law that guides what we do. Often churches are organized. You know, the fact is, often these days they're organized with no consultation with scripture.
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The word of God is just something we quote, something we teach in the church. It's not something that actually guides the church, which is horrible.
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And if it succeeds, we argue. We get the people in the seats. We're successful.
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We say, yeah, nothing succeeds like success. Who are you to tell me I'm wrong? I got the people.
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Never mind that the Bible is never never has a magic prayer that people are led to repeat after being manipulated by an emotional invitation is the organ play softly in the background.
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Never mind that the singing in worship shouldn't be a show looking just like a concert, you know, with the lights and the smoke and the performance.
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No, it works. That's how you pack in the crowds and in the church business, their own numbers, their ability to get more and more people to come.
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That is the idol of some people. John Calvin said the wicked consider that what has been attended by success.
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To be rightly done. In other words, if it's successful. It's right. That's the way the wicked think.
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Calvin continues, they thus dethrone God and put themselves in his place. Here, Habakkuk has been complaining to the
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Lord that he's been praying for so long about the injustice, the selfishness of the successful who believe that their own success proves them right.
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How long will the Lord put up with it? The Lord replies, look. Judgment is coming with the
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Babylonians. But this is kind of this is startling to him. That that provokes a bigger question.
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How can you use, Lord, how can you use a the more unjust, the more violent, the more wicked to punish us who are less wicked now?
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Sure, we're bad, but we're better than they are. The Babylonians, what are they going to get there to? Besides, the
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Babylonians are so far away. We need justice now. Why is it taking so long? And that begins round two.
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And Habakkuk responds back to the Lord, starting in verse 12. You know, he responds with reverence. Are you not from everlasting?
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Or are you not eternal? God, you're not like these empires, these countries that rise and fall
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Oh, Lord, you're just as God using his name in Hebrew. Yahweh, the covenant keeping
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God. My God, personally, like what Thomas said to Jesus, the resurrected
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Jesus, my Lord and my God. My personal, again, knows that holy one.
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He's the one who's high above this world. And Habakkuk is honestly complaining to the
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Lord. But he's not just chatting with him. You know, we get this irreverent attitude.
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Well, I can just chat with God and hang out. Me and the Lord just kind of hang out together, you know, like bus beds. It's kind of attitude.
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No. He's not a cynic either, blaming God for how badly things have turned out. He's not bitter.
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He's a believer. The bitter make accusations. You know, God, why are you taking so long?
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Why are you answering my prayers? Why are you doing something? Why have I suffered this? This sickness, this bankruptcy, this whatever.
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But they will not stay for an answer. The believer. We'll confront with honest doubts.
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Why do the wrong seem so strong? Why has this happened to me? Why are the immoral winning the culture war?
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Why have I witnessed and prayed for years, but they're not getting saved? Why is it the church going?
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But they wait for an answer. The bitter make accusations that will not stay for an answer.
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The believer confronts with honest doubts. But we'll wait for an answer. Habakkuk has an honest question.
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He's asking the Lord, his his God, his holy one. And first he knows in verse 12, he says,
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Habakkuk saying to the Lord, we shall not die. Which he means the fateful, the believers, people like him.
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God's promise to us is as good as he is. He is the God who promised
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Abraham that Abraham would have as many sons and daughters as the stars in the skies, the grains of sand on the beach. So even if the
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Babylonians come roaring through slaughtering the nation. God will protect his people.
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Oh, individuals might die, but not the nation, not the holy nation. Maybe the crooked nation might pass away, but not the true nation.
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The assembly of God's people. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. Oh, Lord, you have ordained them, the
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Babylonians, as judgment. And you, oh, rock, have established them, the
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Babylonians, for reproof. Or is to correct us. They're the instrument in God's hands for punishing the sins.
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Habakkuk has been complaining about. But here but here's what he doesn't understand.
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He knows that God is right. He knows that God will keep his promise, that his judgment is coming.
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OK, he understands now it's coming with the Babylonians. They seem so far off.
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You know, they didn't travel by plane in those days. But it will take so long.
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We need justice now. He says to God, Lord, you've told me to look at the nation.
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But, Lord, you need to look. You look at the injustice being done now.
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And so he says in verse 12, you who are purer eyes than to see evil. And cannot look at wrong.
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Why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than me?
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You're you're looking in. See, why aren't you acting? Are you looking at it? He's asking
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God to look at the sin and be provoked by it to act now. Don't wait for the
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Babylonians, they're too far away. It's like saying with us, sometimes we hear we might say, you know, someone there's judgment in hell.
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But people today often think, well, that's too far off. That's way off. They don't take it seriously. We need
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God. We think we need God to act now to to show his judgment sin now in our lives on this earth.
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What is it the Lord see and do that? So go back, he says, look at them, Lord. They're traitors, he calls them.
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I think he's talking about the people in Judah who knew God's covenant, knew God's law, but they're betraying it. They break their covenants.
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Their word is not their bond. They have no integrity. They say one thing and do another. And yet you, Lord, seem to be standing by idly doing nothing.
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Why? The wicked are succeeding in this society. They get more votes and they win elections.
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They make more money. They grow bigger businesses. They make promises. They're not going to keep them, but their businesses still succeed.
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The bully, you know, gets paid big bucks to be the school superintendent. Why do you stay silent about it,
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Lord? Of course, what Habakkuk doesn't see yet is that the
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Lord would come himself. And would be betrayed by traitors.
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And would himself be swallowed up, even bullied by the wicked, even by death itself.
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To make us righteous. Well, Habakkuk looks at the world and it seems that the
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Lord has just left the world up to the law of the jungle or what he calls verse 14, the law of the sea, you know, in the sea, bigger fish eat the smaller fish.
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This is the way it works in the sea. Now, he's trying to teach a big fish. Be fair to a little fish. It's not going to work.
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The powerful, the successful, he says, are kind of like fishermen, which are really kind of the biggest fish of all, right?
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They can take anything out of the sea, arbitrarily taking whatever they want. Whoever gets caught in their net, their net, like their armies or maybe their tricks, their showmanship, maybe their lies, their net, their military might, their strategies, their numbers, their success, that is their
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God. They sacrifice to it because it enables them to live in luxury.
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It's it's what's putting food on their table, they think. But how, Lord, the bothered prophet ask, can he keep these this these wicked people like fishermen?
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How can he keep emptying his net? How can he keep taking stuff, kidnapping people, hauling away whatever they want, killing nations, bullying, whatever?
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Are the wicked going to keep doing it just forever? Is there no end to it? He doesn't understand the
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Lord's justice, but he resolves in chapter two, verse one. OK, the Lord told me to look. So I will look at the nations at what the
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Lord is doing. That he is in control of them. He's going to take up his station like a watchman takes his post on a tower on the wall.
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He's going to look for what the Lord will do there. And so the
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Lord answers starting in chapter two, verse two. First answers. OK, Habakkuk.
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This is important. Write this down, write the vision, make it plain on tablets.
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This is probably why we have the book of Habakkuk, because he obeyed this command. He wrote it down. Write this down so that other people may run their lives according to it so that we might run according to it.
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This is very important. Write it down. For now, Habakkuk, the vision, the judgment.
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OK. It's still waiting a little while longer, it's a point in time.
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God says is not quite yet, but it's coming quickly.
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God says it hastens to the end. It will not lie if it seems slow.
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Wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay. Those slaves that prayed 250 years for justice, for freedom probably thought that things were getting worse in the first half of the war.
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After the 19th century in America, Southern states passed laws against slaves learning to read. The Supreme Court in the
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Dred Scott case decided all runaway slaves had to be returned perversion of justice. The South seemed to be winning the
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Civil War at first. Will there ever be any end to it? Then suddenly.
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God loosed his terrible, swift sword and judgment will come. Surely. Don't doubt that.
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The arrogant, though they doubt it, they're puffed up with their success, with their money, their power, their followers, it's working for us.
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It's going to continue to work. They will never be judged for their sins. They're sure of it.
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They might be violent and immoral or they might be a religious hypocrite who says all the right words come to church with his
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Bible, but never gives because no one but God and the treasurer, I guess, sees that sees the giving.
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Breaks a covenant because culture doesn't take that seriously anyway. And who cares what God takes seriously? Says one thing to look good and does another when no one's looking.
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Just like the arrogant, immoral or the violent person deep down such people that they don't really believe
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God is looking that God is going to judge them for what they do. So the Lord says, look at him in verse four.
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His soul is puffed up because he doesn't see that there is judgment for his sins.
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He doesn't really believe deep down. You can tell by the way he lives.
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He doesn't really believe in God at all. Oh, he may talk a lot about God, but deep down, he doesn't believe in a
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God who will judge, judge him. You know, someone really believes in the
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Lord when that faith humbles them because they know that God sees their sin. No matter how good they look to others, they know the
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Lord remembers their promises. So they keep them. They know the Lord sees they're giving.
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They know the Lord is holding them into account. So they tremble at his word, daring not to twist it, to use it, to make excuses, to break it.
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They have faith. They have real faith. It's not a show, not a family heirloom.
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You know, everybody in this family says they're Christian, so I'm going to do also. No, they have faith that makes them live according to God's law,
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God's ways. They are not among the unjust and the violent and the crooked and the covenant breakers and the hypocrites.
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Their faith humbles them because it shows them that they are sinners before their holy one.
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And it inspires them to live God's way. They live by. According to.
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Their faith. Notice they have faith because they are right with God.
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The famous phrase there in chapter two, verse four, they have faith because they are right with God.
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The Lord has declared them to be his people. Part of that people that will not die. He's put them in right relationship with him.
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That's what it means to be righteous. Right. It's not a category that you've earned by your obedience.
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It's a relationship given by God's declaration. He declares you, you're right with me.
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Notice carefully, it's not that they, the righteous, you all, I hope. It's not that they first believe and and then that makes them obedient.
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And so God is pleased with their obedience. That's why some people think I first believe my faith makes me obey.
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God sees my obedience. And because of that obedience, I'm right with God. I'm righteous.
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No, it doesn't work like that. It's because God declared them right. You're right with me.
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They're they're the righteous. You're the righteous. I hope. And so they believe. And that faith determines then how they live.
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Getting the ideas, maybe an illustration, but it's not first gin up faith on your own, make yourself believe.
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And that faith then makes you live right. You'll keep those ten commandments because you believe God's going to judge you for it.
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And then God declares you right after you've done that. No, it's certainly not gin up faith on your own.
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And then God declares you right because you gin up this faith on your own. And then it really doesn't matter how you live.
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As some teach today, that's popular teaching today. No, it's first God declares you right.
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Righteous, you're right with me. We're in a good relationship. And then as a consequence of that, because God made you right with him, you then will live by faith.
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That is, your faith will determine how you live. They, the righteous.
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Live by faith. The arrogant, though. Don't really believe the
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Lord will hold them to account. So they live for the wine, the beer, the good times.
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They break their word just because they can. They are greedy, like like death is greedy. Compares it to they're never satisfied, never having enough.
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Even if they gather everything, everyone else has. If they got everything in the world, even if everyone in the world were at their beck and call, it still wouldn't be enough.
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Look at that and see how pathetic it is. The end of it, Habakkuk says. God says, actually, the end of it to Habakkuk, to you believers, the end will be, whoa, a funeral lament.
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The moan you utter when some great disaster has struck you. Whoa. Five woes on the greedy, the arrogant, those who deep down don't really believe in the everlasting
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Lord. Who will surely judge them? Woe to the greedy and verse six is heaping up stuff, more and more gadgets and cars and bigger and bigger
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TVs. You know, it can never get too big. And then higher and higher definition.
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I don't know how you can keep doing that, but they'll keep trying. What are the greed of the Babylonians, the empires, the superpower, the thought just because they could take something, they would stuff that's not their own spoil and plunder after putting the bite on others for so long.
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Suddenly you'll be bitten. God says those who take advantage of the poor with with with credit, with with the high interest rates.
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Whoa, to them, God says, what are the arrogant in verse nine? Who thinks that if he gets enough money and, you know, a big enough house with a security system and a gated community behind walls, maybe with our own
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AR -15. Well, then they'll be safe out of the reach of any harm. Even God can't get him at them there, they think deep down.
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But they built all that, God says here on shame. And they've given up their lives to serve stuff.
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So the stones in the walls that they hide behind will cry out and expose them for who they really are.
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The beams of their house, God says here, will tell them what they thought they had locked out.
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What are those who build their lifestyle with the blood of others? God says who found their society on sin, starting in verse 12.
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It's just about indulging yourself in whatever you want. And no one can say it's wrong. That's the new vision of the so -called tolerant, inclusive society that doesn't, incidentally, include human beings who might be inconvenienced us.
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That doesn't tolerate sin being called sin. It's committed to now in the erotic freedom that we can all live for all the pleasure we want, as long as we all agree that it's
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OK to kill the human beings who are the product of that freedom and don't call anyone else's choices wrong.
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Got it? Those are the rules. So they give their lives, their work, all their time, their passion to to stuff and to that pleasure that will all pass away that will all be burned up.
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It's all going into the fire. And they give themselves to that. But even that in verse 13, this is that verse that I misread.
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I had to correct it because it was important. First chapter two, verse 13. All that stuff that people around all around us now, people give their lives to wearing themselves, chasing after things and pleasure that won't last.
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Notice that God says even that is from the Lord of hosts. He's in control of that.
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He's the commander of the heavenly armies. And he is behind even that they are not out of his control.
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He's handed them over to their own desires or to spend themselves for nothing. He does this.
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You know, he's sovereignly raising up one empire, taking down another. He's even sovereignly in control of people giving their lives for.
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For greed and lust. And he does this, he sovereignly gives people over to their own emptiness because.
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For the purpose of notice the connection between chapter from verse 13 and verse 14, for the purpose of look carefully, verse 14.
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The Lord is in control of all the sinful choices that that he judges. He's judging these things.
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And yet he's in control of them. And he is doing that for the result for that word there that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the
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Lord as the waters cover the sea. Although it's completely. At the end, we'll see that even the choices that the
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Lord judged will display. The Lord's glory, that there was nothing outside his control, that it all comes to glorifying him.
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They will all everything will make known the weightiness and the power of the
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Lord. And all will know who has withstood your hand.
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Then woe to the intoxicators. In verse 15, those who get people drunk or high, maybe to seduce them or to shame them or make fun of them or just to make money off of them.
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They will be filled with shame. Can you see it? Habakkuk, can you see it? Look and see.
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That your eyes might see the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
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The violence done to people here, to Lebanon, verse 17, maybe to us, to slaves, to the unborn, to anyone against whom we thought we could get away with it.
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That will come back in an overwhelming flood of judgment. And finally.
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What are the idolatrous? Verse 18, those who make an image, make something they can see, they can adore and they worship that thing.
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They worship what they've made, worship what they can look at. A car they've earned, a house they built, a gadget that obsesses them, a bank account, a stock full of cash.
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The jewelry they've accumulated, the body they've worked hard to make strong or they pampered, they hope that so it will last forever.
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People trust in these things. Woe to them. Their eye, their idols, that's their idol, and they're silent.
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They don't tell them anything. They can't speak. Now, the worshipers of them speak to them, to the statue of Buddha or Mary or Francis or to the car or the house or the money or the stuff.
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But they learn nothing back. Now, in our day, we actually have gadgets that we worship and we think they can talk back to us.
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But I, Siri or Alexa or Google, how to how to live. And it will give you no wisdom.
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It can't teach you. Oh, it might can show you the way to the Lifeway store, but it can't show you the way to life.
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So in verse 20, the Lord says. The Lord is in his holy temple.
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He's here. Among his people. You think he's far off, you're waiting, where is he?
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He says, I am now in my holy temple among those who worship him in spirit and in truth.
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That church that will not die no matter how bad things look in the world. The Lord is in his holy temple.
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And he can speak. He's not silent. He has spoken. The word became flesh and dwelt among us by his spirit and through his word.
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He is still speaking. The Lord is in his holy temple.
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Let all the earth, all the kinds of people, all of us, white, black, Chinese, all the earth look to him.
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Let all the earth. Listen to him quiet.
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The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent before him.