April 15, 2018 PM How Long by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Habakkuk’s Complaint and the Vision of Judah’s Corruption

And after finishing Nahum last week, we will continue in the Minor Prophets. Jonah was first, then Nahum that we finished, and now Habakkuk. And this morning, as an introduction to this prophecy, the first four verses of the first chapter.

The oracle that Habakkuk, the prophet, saw. Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you violence, and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity? And why do you idly look at wrong?

Destruction and violence are before me, strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth, for the wicked surrounds the righteous. So justice goes forth, perverted. Do you remember the movie Matrix?

I'm not a big science fiction fan, and I have to admit to you that I had to watch, especially the beginning of it, at least half dozen times on reruns before I finally understood what was happening. So if you are a sci-fi buff, and you want to enjoy in a lively discussion about science fiction, I'm not the guy.

I don't get sci-fi. But then when I finally understood it, it strikes me that it's somewhat applicable to the situation of the prophet here. Because in the movie Matrix, remember, Neo is drawn out of this dream world that he existed in, and after his eyes are opened up, given this glimpse of reality, he's told, now if this is too much for you, we can give you this blue pill, and you go back to where you were.

This dream world that you now know is untrue, is unreal, it's a fiction. But you can go back and forget all that, and it will be reality to you again. Or you can take the red pill, and go on with this expanding view of what's real, in much the same way as those fictional pills in Matrix.

The Christian's eyes have been opened. The change made in the spirit of a Christian is a total change. Now our conformance to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ is a gradual and successive thing that we call sanctification.

But eyes being opened, seeing things for what they are, can in a way make us look back upon what I was then, and the way I viewed the world then, and say, how did I ever survive in that dream world? That was also unreal.

Because with the eyes opened, with the transformation of the spirit, with the new heart that God gives us, we see things through his eyes. We see things his way. That's not to say, in a science fiction way, that the way we were before Christ was not reality, it was.

And there's much reality that we have in the scripture to describe that. You were dead in trespass and sin, and so forth. My point is that we have our eyes opened to a new outlook. If anyone's in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away, behold the new has come, by faith, you see. Nothing looks the same. And it's so different now, that that past is like that dream world. It's like, how did I ever understand that to be what's true, and right, and even real?

What was once acceptable to us is now jaw-dropping. The Apostle Peter says that we no longer run in the same flood of dissipation, because we've been changed. And we see that flood of dissipation for what it is, and it's no longer fun and games.

It's no longer pleasurable. It's no longer something to be attained after. It's a flood, judgment, of dissipation. The gospel changes everything. We no longer see evil as good, or vice versa. We see things by the standard of scripture.

To see the horrors in the world for what they are is really one of our defining characteristics as God's people. What society so easily and too often gladly accepts as normal, or right, is usually in direct opposition to God and his ways.

Isaiah chapter 5 verse 20 is one of the many crystal-clear commentaries on just this point. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

With the whole surrounding context, they're giving concrete examples of how men were doing exactly that. And Isaiah 55 goes on to say, My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. And that is said to the unbeliever, that you cannot think the way I do.

You don't have my ways before you. And not that we would ever plumb the depths of God, but in his scripture, we do have his ways, we do have his thoughts. He says that to the unbeliever. But we have the mind of Christ, says the Apostle.

We see things as God sees them, insofar as our Bibles are prisms before our eyes. As long as the scripture molds that view through which we analyze events and assess the world around us. And this is sort of the tension of the first part of this book of Habakkuk.

His eyes were opened by Yahweh, and he saw things as they were. And in the first four verses that I read to you, he says essentially something like this, Okay, Lord, you've shown me the sin all around me.

You've shown me how poorly your people are acting. And they are the subject of this first part of Habakkuk's prophecy. You've shown me. I see it for what it is. I see things as you do. And now Lord, that you've shown me this.

If it was Matrix, I've taken the right pill. I've stayed in reality. And I've cried out against them, and I've shown them their sin. He having been a contemporary probably of Jeremiah. So, Lord, why haven't you acted?

For what reason did you open my eyes? Why do you have me calling out? Why am I showing them their sin? Why have you shown me their sin so that I could see it to tell them about it? And you've done nothing.

Why have you not acted? And this question rings true for us here today in many ways. Conversion to the Lord Jesus Christ transfers us from one kingdom into another. From the kingdom of this world, who's ruled by the prince of this air, or the prince of the air, excuse me, from there to the kingdom of God and of his Christ.

And what by that? Immediately made to be misfits. We're looking at a world crash-diving further and further from God. A God that they won't recognize by committing sins that they won't even define as sin.

Eyes open with Habakkuk. Why have you shown me? Remember, he gives the credit to God. You have shown me these things. You, Lord, have opened my eyes. You have commissioned me to call out against it. And the question is, how long shall I cry?

And you will not save. You will not act. You will not do. From Habakkuk, we learn how to live in a time unique in all history. And you may think by that that I mean a depraved time, a time when men's morals, if we can call them morals, are sliding so fast away from anything that even by instinct man should say is good and right.

Does not all creation testify against so many things that we have all around us? It does. But we live in a time that's special and unique. Not because of the depravity around us. With the preacher we can say there's nothing new under the sun.

This is all just recycling the same things. Perhaps the breadth and the width of the acceptance of it is greater than it was before. But the men who commit these things are no different than they were in Habakkuk's time.

We're all the same. We live in the time between Christ's ascension and his return. We live in the time of the, what we call in theology, the already and not yet. The kingdom has already come. Your salvation has already been given to you.

You are seated with Christ in the heavenlies, if you know Jesus Christ. And yet not. Because here we are waiting for his return. We are in a kingdom that is here, that it is this, it is the church, it is the people coming together under Christ's rule and worshiping him.

This is the kingdom. And yet it's not yet the kingdom. There's never going to be another time like this. When Christ returns and that kingdom becomes final. This will all be done with. We learn how to live in this time.

This time, what we call the church age between the ascension and the return of the Lord Jesus Christ when he brings it all to an end. We learn to trust that God knows everything. We learn from this prophet that whether we cry out or not, God already knows what is happening here, that we will cry out.

We learn to trust that God not only knows, but that he will act appropriately. And we learn here, as we go through this prophet, we will learn exactly when he will act. To your dispensational friends, when you say something like that, they will take note.

I have nothing against dispensationalists. Though dispensationalism, I don't find to hang together very well, but the people, they're okay. But when you tell them that your pastor told you that he knows exactly when Christ will return, you'll perk their ears up, and you can give them this answer.

Because I gained it from the Word of God and the prophet Habakkuk. He will come at the right time. And that's all we get to know. And we learn from this prophet how to live waiting for that right time, as we look forward to the blessed hope, the glorious returning of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We learn from this prophet to wait in faithful patience for the Lord's return. This prophet ministered during one of the darkest periods in Israel's history, about 609 to 601 BC. A little bit more than six centuries before the Lord's birth.

And it was a very dark time. And we will find really no darker now than it was then. He comes logically after Nahum, who prophesied Israel's downfall at the hands of the Assyrians, and then the Assyrians' demise at the hands of Babylon.

And now this prophet, Habakkuk, is given a vision of Babylon doing to Judah what Assyria had done to Israel. As the instrument of God's judgment against his people, defeat, humiliation, exile, and disgrace.

So in many ways, logically, chronologically, and theologically, it follows very well for Nahum to be succeeded by Habakkuk. In his day, Judah's king was a man named Jehoiakim, with an M on the end. That's a little important as I go through a few of these.

I want to give you a brief rundown. Jehoiakim during Habakkuk's reign, or his tenure. And I want to do a very quick review, as Jehoiakim was one of the last in a very short line of unremittingly bad kings in Judah.

And when I say short line, because the kingdom is going to end very soon here. So from 2nd Chronicles chapter 36, in the first ten verses, we're not going to read them. I'll go through very quickly now.

Josiah's son, very good King Josiah, the last king to really be called good by the author of the Chronicles, or kings for that matter, his son Jehoahaz ruled for three months. He was deposed by the king of Egypt.

His brother, a man named Eliakim, was installed by the victorious Egyptian who renamed him Jehoiakim under Habakkuk's ministry. He was the king while that prophet was active. He ruled for 11 years and did evil in the sight of God.

Now he was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. So the first king I mentioned, deposed by the king of Egypt. Now the next king, by the king of Babylon. He was taken captive, and the temple of the Lord was plundered under Jehoiakim, the one who was king during this prophet's time.

Now just to let you know how fast things went after that. After him came Jehoiakim with an N on the end, and he managed to do evil for three months. And like his father, his reign was ended by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

And then the last king of Judah was his brother, Zedekiah, who did evil for 11 years. Zedekiah we read so much about in the prophet Jeremiah. Under his reign, the final exile occurs, the temple that would be rebuilt under Ezra is ruined, and the walls of Jerusalem, which Nehemiah would restore, were demolished.

So this is kind of the time frame, the milieu, the dark period in which this prophet lived. Now under the king specifically, where Habakkuk was prophesying, in 2nd Kings 24 verse 4, we read that during his time, he, the king, filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord would not pardon.

And that fits fairly well with the prophet's complaint at the outset, at the beginning. Why do I cry to you for help, and you will not hear? I cry to you violence. The streets are filled with the blood of innocents, people who didn't deserve to die.

I call to you violence, and you don't save them. Why do you make me see iniquity? This king, who's an idolater, who allowed the temple to fall into ruin, worse than being plundered, but the type of practices that were practiced in it.

Why do you see all these things? Why do you have me calling out? There's very little known about our prophet. He may well have been a musician prophet. One at the temple, along the lines of 2nd Chronicles chapter 25 verse 1, where it says that David assigned men who were Levites to be those who prophesied with lyres and harps and with cymbals.

A supporting piece of evidence that Habakkuk was of this priestly class is that hymn of praise that occurs and occupies all of chapter 3 of this book. It's often said that the prophets brought God to the people, and the priests brought the people to God.

Habakkuk never actually addresses the people. There's no, thus says the Lord, given to them, and a following litany of sins. What we have before us is an oracle. The same word translated elsewhere as a burden.

Oracles are words. He says also that it was something he saw. In verse 3 he gave that list, and we've said it a few times, but I'll go through it again very quickly. What did he see in this oracle God gave him?

The iniquity and the injustice, people suffering under the wicked king's oppression, courts that knew nothing of justice and brought needless hardship to people, destruction and violence, the necessities of life are being denied, and havoc is being wreaked against their property, strife and contention, legal terms that mean everyone goes to court against the other, so the law is paralyzed.

The courts are clogged with this. Justice never goes forth because the king doesn't administer justice. He doesn't insist upon that, but bribes and that sort of thing are ruling the day. For the wicked surround the righteous, the justice goes forth perverted.

The wicked, these powerful people, are surrounding, as it were, in a military sense, the righteous, the poor, the people who really need a court to work for them, and yet doesn't. And what justice goes forth, what they're calling justice, is perverted.

It has nothing to do at all with what God would call right. And all of this leads to the next verse. The law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth. The wicked surround the justice, or the righteous.

This was the vision. This is what caused him to cry out to God, O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear, or cry violence, and you will not save. The question is not whether God is aware, nor is it whether he actually has heard the prophet's anguished cry.

He says, in a manner of speaking, Lord, it is you who changed my soul, so that I can recognize evil for what it is. And now, because you've opened my eyes, I see it wherever I go. And how often we, when we drive by the Planned Parenthood, or the adult bookstore, or the things on the internet that we would protect our children from, I see it wherever I turn.

Violence, injustice, bribery, murder, sensuality, where it ought not to be. Every wrong that the powerful can impose on the powerless, they do with impunity. And now you set me to cry out against it, and yet, have you even heard me?

Think of today again. God's holy institution of marriage is distorted so much that it bears no resemblance to the covenant that the church is holding in high honor. People bearing God's image are murdered every day, because the one in whom they are growing has exercised their right to choose.

Divorce is granted for no more cause than I want it. Teenagers at their most vulnerable stage of development are encouraged to step into gender confusion, and then the promoters of this carnival say, oh, that's too bad.

You seem confused about your identity. Let me help you out of that confusion, which I myself caused and imposed upon you. Well, I ask you, and many of you think this list could go on much, much longer, and of course it could.

Why do we agonize over these things? How do you even know it's wrong? It's because the good Lord has opened our eyes. With the prophet we cry out, you have made me see, you have stirred my spirit against these things.

Dear and good Lord, it is you who made me cry out. Why then do you do nothing about my cries? Well, the answer is that we shall see violence and the like for how long? Until the Lord calls us to himself, or until he returns.

Why do we agonize over these things? The answer is, the nations do wrong. God knows this better than we do. The answer is that people do wrong to others. Many of us have been victims of terrible wrongs, of violence, of injustice, vulnerable people.

Children at one end, the aged at the other, are violated by those entrusted with their care. God knows this, and nor does he say to stop your whining, you're bothering me. It's very much the opposite.

We are being violated by the terrible of the woman who paved the way for us in Luke chapter 18. And how? By crying out day and night to the unjust judge. And Jesus, though the tone of the parable clearly criticizes the judge, he doesn't explicitly do so.

It says, but when the Son of Man returns, will he really find faith on the earth? Will he really find his people praying, trusting? Habakkuk's question looms large. How long will you put up with all this, O Lord?

And the answer is the same as when he will return, at just the right moment. Because he will put up with this until Christ's return. They're both coincident. Wouldn't it be easier if we, like Neo, could swallow a blue pill and ease back into our former blissful ignorance?

Well, the answer is no. Of course, that wouldn't be better. God waits to send his Son again until the full number of the elect have been brought in into our good Savior's fold. Wrath is being stored up for the unrepentant, and one day their cup will be put in their hand, and whether they will or not, it will be emptied.

So what purpose is served by these sharp visioned eyes that God has given us? It strikes me that when we see sinners at their ease, which is the complaint of Psalm 73, when we see them rich and carefree and luxuriating in wealth, which is another complaint in that Psalm, we can look with pity because the wickedness God has also shown us is their end.

We can look with evangelical eyes and bring them to the Savior who corrected our vision and try to show them from the Scripture where in Christ is revealed the wrongness, and not just the wrongness of it, because God has planted eternity in our hearts.

There's a level at which men know it's wrong by pride, by stupidity, by arrogance. They will not admit it. We can be evangelical with the sharpened vision that God has given us, and finally we can look at ourselves.

We can look at the harm that we've caused others, even after coming to salvation possibly, and we can wonder how many might have looked at me or at you then and maybe even now and cried out, how long, O Lord, must we tolerate this one before you act?

You see, clear vision has its price. It's a good price when it focuses us on our Savior Jesus. If someone had asked of you or me, how long, O Lord, the answer would be, until the moment decreed before the foundation of the world for him to fall victim to my son Jesus.

That's how long God put up with it. It's just a brief introduction to the prophet Habakkuk, and I need to apologize for pronouncing it different ways. Have you ever heard people speak of Habakkuk? Habakkuk?

Now I can't even give you all the different ones that people use. It's actually in the Hebrews, Habakkuk. Habakkuk. And once you get the other ones in your head, you just can't start getting it right.

I had it right. I'm going to practice it even more next week. I've tried to give just a brief introduction to this prophet. It's three chapters. We begin with his complaint, the things he's seen, and we're going to go next week into God's answer and through chapter two, the continuing answer and what God is going to do about it and how imminent it was in his time, how soon it actually happened.

He cries out how long we can look back at the prophet and say, oh, if you only knew how short their time was, which he didn't then. And then that of course will apply to us today and to the world around us.

And the third chapter is this wonderful hymn of praise to God as the prophet considers all these things and has this dialogue with God and concludes with chapter three. And we'll save that for when we get there.

The Just Shall Live by Faith and the Cross of Christ

Some of the better known verses in our scripture are from this very short prophecy. And one of them, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, about the power of God's Word by just a few words turns the whole world upside down.

You saw it this morning in R .C. Sproul's Insanity of Luther as we're going through the Holiness of God series. The just shall live by faith. That's from this prophet and we'll look at that soon in its original context, which is pretty edifying for us and then also in the context in which Paul uses it by inspiration.

God does see sin and God does do and God did do something about it. As we think about the table, which we will go to in a few moments, remember that what God did about sin was to send his son Jesus. He sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for sin, for our sin, for mine, Lord willing for yours.

If the question is how long, O Lord, the answer is Calvary. The answer is Golgotha. The answer is the cross. When we wonder about the ever-widening circle of sin around us, as we watch people invent new ways to sin against God, when we are surrounded by everything Habakkuk saw and more, we need to use our corrected vision to see the ultimate reality, which is what?

The cross of Christ. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ. What we remember here with the broken bread for his broken body, the fruit of the vine for his blood, his life poured out. How long, O Lord? That long.

When, O Lord? Then. There. What will you ever do about sin? I will send my son to die for your sin. Golgotha, the cross of Christ, the sacrificial death of our Savior. And remember, we call him our Savior.

He has that towel because he saves. Because he saved you, because he saved me from our sin. How long? That long. Where did he act? There. How did he act? He sent his son to be that which he never was, sin, so that we might become that which we never could be, the righteousness of God.

God willing, this prophet will keep our eyes open as we go through it. And as week by week we look to the prophet and see his word and apply it to ourselves today, we remember that God has acted. He's acting in a way that brings us in a few moments to this very table.

Amen.