Learning About Faith From Habakkuk

Introduction

Appreciate everybody coming back this afternoon for another hour of worship and study together and just thankful for your presence. And first of all, of course, I want to say that I’m thankful to the elders for deciding to enter into an arrangement with me and Tony that we could kind of share the dues a little bit. Of course, for me it’s more about I want to keep him here. So whatever we can do to aid in his longevity, not only as a gospel preacher, but as with us more than happy to do. And of course, as Mike said, I’m happy to get back in the pulpit on a little bit more regular basis, a couple times a month, and when once when Tony’s gone and once when he’s here, and of course, that’s still going to leave at least once a month, basically when anybody else wants to preach to still have that opportunity as well.

So I’m not taking all this long. this evening I want to speak for just a few minutes out of the minor prophets in the book of Habakkuk. last week, Tony said, Hey, I’m preaching on God’s love and our love for God, so I basically called dibs on that, and so I was like, okay, well, how do I go completely the opposite direction of that? Hmm, minor prophets. But none of you thought when you got here tonight that you’d be hearing a lesson on Habakkuk. Now I’m kind of regretting that decision because I’m like, wow, I’m preaching a lesson on Habakkuk. What was I thinking? but in any case, hopefully we’ll get a few things out of our study and time together tonight.

In case you’re wondering where Habakkuk is, it is between Nahum and Zephaniah. I’m sure that helps you out a lot. The minor prophets, the last part of the Old Testament, comprise of twelve books, Hosea through Malachi. Habakkuk right here in the middle. Most of these books are books of prophecy that were targeted towards Israel and Judah and the nations around them, either because of their own wickedness or because they were to be the ones who would execute judgment on Israel and Judah. Habakkuk prophesied during the period of after Israel had been taken away in his captivity, but before Judah’s conquest and captivity by the Babylonians. And that is what Habakkuk prophesies about.

The exact time not known, however, probably towards the end of Josiah’s reign, which would put it anywhere between 640 and 606 BC. But as we look at this book, there is one seemingly glaring difference between this book and most other books of prophecy, and that is that while most prophets are taking God’s message that they have received directly to the people, in this instance, Habakkuk is actually taking the complaint of the people in his own feelings to God. And God answers him, much as we see in the book of Job. And he is representing the people of Judah in his complaint. It’s more of a dialogue between him and God. This is fitting as his name actually means embrace. One commentator says that his name speaks as one who took his nation to heart, comforted it, and held it up as one embraces and presses to his bosom a poor weeping child, calming and consoling it with good hope.

1. His Burden: Faith Dealing With the Problem

The message of the book easily falls into three different sections, conveniently divided by its three chapters, of course, all man given. Chapter 1, his burden, chapter 2, his vision, and chapter three, a prayer. What we see in this book is a progression from questioning God’s justice and judgment, his care for his people, to being assured of God’s ultimate salvation. And this begins with the burden that he feels and is found in the first section of the book. His burden. Faith dealing with the problem. First, as we, as we look here in Habakkuk chapter 1, and beginning with verse 1. The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw, O 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 look idly 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 surround the righteous. So justice goes forth, perverted. Habakkuk laments over the apparent rule of wickedness and of violence. He says, How can the Lord justify his indifference towards such things? In verses one through four. And again, this is much like Job. And Job is looking at the situation of his life and how he’s being punished, it seems, and he’s like, Look, I haven’t done anything wrong. How can you, God, not care? How can you allow this to happen? And God’s answer to Job in verses five through eleven is that he’s not indifferent.

He says, Look among the nations. The Lord answers to him and says, And see wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that is the Babylonians. That bitter and hasty nation who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome. Their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves. Their horsemen pressed proudly on, their horsemen come from afar, they fly like an eagle swift to devour. They all come for violence, all their faces forward, they gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh.

They laugh at every fortress, but they pile up earth and take it. And then they sweep by like the wind and go on. Guilty men whose own might is their God. This gives us a not pretty picture of the Babylonians, doesn’t it? They cat they gather up captives like sand. And God says to him to Habakkuk, I’m not indifferent about that. Just because you see this coming, just because you know this is going to happen, and I’m allowing this people to come in and to conquer you, doesn’t mean that I don’t care about their wickedness. He does not overlook the oppression of the wicked. He is not, he is rather doing something that will be hard to fathom. He says in verse 5, look among the nations, be astounded, I’m doing a work that you would not believe if you were told.

God’s raising up the Chaldeans to execute justice is going to show his sovereignty. It’s going to show us that he is in control, that he is in control still today. In doing so, in le using this violent nation that arrogantly thinks it is serving its own God and its own purpose, he is showing that he is in control. This nation, it says in verse eleven, they go on and sweep up like the wind and go on guilty men whose own might is their God. He’s saying, Look, I realize that they are guilty. These are guilty men. Their own might is their God. They worship themselves. I know that, God says. And we can see application in that today, can’t we? We look around us and we see all the evil in the world, and it seems like, okay, there’s evil and then there’s really evil.

And that seems like that’s all we have around us. And we wonder where God is in all of that. And when we look at this story, we can see that God is still in control. We have to understand and believe in his sovereignty and his rule over all things in this world. And so the prophet says, okay, then, if that’s what you’re doing, then he asks another question in verses 12 through 17. Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my holy one? Who shall not die? Oh, Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. He’s saying, okay, I understand what you’re doing. You who are a purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

He says, okay, you’re doing that, but I don’t really understand why you can do that. You’re a holy God. You’re supposed to not even be able to look upon evil. Why do you allow this to go on? Especially to one who is to swallow up the evil to swallow the man more righteous than he in verse 13. He’s saying, Look, it is or Judah is, we’re way better than the Chaldeans. Of course, what he’s doing there is making that lesser of two evils argument that I think, again, we have a problem making that kind of argument to ourselves, don’t we? Well, I’m not as I’m not as bad as they are. So why is this happening to me? But that’s fallacy. If you’re not ignoring, but you’re using a wicked nation to judge, how can a holy God employ such an impure and godless agent?

And again, those in the world around us would look at this situation and say, How can you have a faith in that kind of a God? How can you have faith in a God that allows innocent people to suffer and to perish? The fact of the matter is that sin is sin. And no one is innocent. But that’s hard for Habakkuk to understand. It’s hard for us to understand. But again, we must have faith in the sovereignty and the justice of God. We cannot use a lesser of two evils argument. Moving on in verse 1 of chapter 2. He says, I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

2. His Vision: The Righteous Shall Live by Faith

This is something that weighs a heavy burden on Habakkuk. God has answered his first question by saying he’s going to use the Chaldeans to punish the wickedness and violence in Judah, but the Chaldeans are wicked also. How can he use them? What we have to understand is that Judah was not righteous. He’s saying, look, we’re better than them. But there were, yes, there were some in Judah who were righteous. And we too use that same argument. You know, we but we’re so much better than all the other people out there. And so we have problems grasping with God’s decisions, his justice, his righteousness. And so God gives him another answer. He says, first, that the just shall live by his faith or by his faithfulness.

Habakkuk is to write what God reveals to him. Chapter 2, beginning and verse 2, the Lord answered me, write the vision. Make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits. It’s appointed time. It hastens to the end. It will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay. Verse 4 Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

This verse is actually quoted from three times in the New Testament. Romans chapter 1 and verse 17, Galatians 3 and verse 11, and Hebrews 10 and verse 38, and we’ll look at those three later on. The righteous shall live by his faith. God answers him. And at Sebakus says, How can you allow these things to happen to the righteous? God says, okay, if you’re righteous, if you’re truly righteous, if you’re truly going to live by that righteousness.

Then I will see. But you must prove that to me. You must live by your faith. Despite the things that are going on around you, despite the persecutions and the temptations. He says, You must live by your faith. And he says that God will judge the proud. Secondly. Continuing on verse 5, moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as she’s like death, he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples.

Shall not all these take up their taunt against him with scoffing and riddles for him and say, Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own. For how long? And loads himself with pledges. God begins to pronounce woes upon the Chaldeans, and anyone who’s going to act wickedly. Woes in verses 5 through 8 are pronounced on the proud, possessed with the lust of the conquest and plunder. In verses 9 through 11, woe to their efforts to build a permanent empire through cruelty and godless gain, and that conquest would not last. Verse 12 through 14, woe to those who build cities with bloodshed. Verse 15 through 17, woe to those with cruelty in their treatment of those that they have conquered. And verse 18 through 20.

And this is, I will go ahead and read this, verse 18. What prophet is an idol when its maker has shaped it? A metal image, a teacher of lies. For its maker trusts in his own creation, when he makes speechless idols. Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake to a silent stone, arise. Can this thing teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it. He says, Woe to those who are given over to idolatry. These things that you made this thing. It is something that is man made. And yet they’re trusting in this. Those who worship that in which there is no breath at all. But he says, in contrast to that in verse 20, but the Lord is in his holy temple.

Let all the earth keep silence before him. We sing a song about that. The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before them. What does that mean? We need to notice the irony here that these idols, that those evil people are worshiping, are silent when the worshiper calls upon them. And yet we as God’s people must be silent before the one true God.

One commentary says that the contrast is marked. And the climax is marvelous. But the Lord is in his holy temple. This is what we need to get.

From dumb, mancarved idols, attention shifts to the living Lord, the self-existent, eternal, holy sovereign, who rules the universe from his holy temple, that is heaven. Instead of shouting, Arise and awake, the whole earth must stand in silent awe and worship before him. The Hebrew word hasa rendered be silent means hush. For Habakkuk, the message was clear. Stop complaining. Stop doubting. God is not indifferent to sin. He is not insensitive to suffering. The Lord is neither inactive nor impervious. He is in control. In his perfect time, Yahweh will accomplish his divine purpose. Habakkuk was to stand in humble silence, a hushed expectancy of God’s intervention. When God pronounces these woes on those who do not trust in him but act wickedly, he is showing Habakkuk that he is just and that he will judge.

His judgment may not come in the time that we think that it should come, but it will come, and it is inevitable. The point that he is trying to get across is this that while God may use a wicked nation like Babylon to punish the wickedness of Judah, he will not let Babylon’s wickedness go unpunished either. And while waiting on that deliverance, the righteous person will live by his faith in God. Which Habakkuk illustrates with his prayer in the third chapter. Brethren, we need to understand that. This is the solution. When we look at the world around us and the evil and all the hardship and the persecution and the temptation, we must realize that if we want to escape that, if we want to make it through to God’s ultimate judgment, the solution is to rely on God.

The solution is to have faith in him and to live by that faith. It is to understand that he is in control. To have faith in his sovereignty, in his justice.

3. A Prayer: In Wrath Remember Mercy

Because indeed, he is the holy one, the creator of Israel. And so Habakkuk prays a final prayer in chapter 3. And he begins by petitioning for God’s action and mercy. A prayer of Habakkuk. In verse 1, O Lord, verse 2, I have heard the report of you and your work, O Lord, do I fear? In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. God came from Tamon and the Holy One from Mount Peron. His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.

Habakkuk is asking God, as he writes this prayer in the form of a psalm, to revive his works in verse 2, and in his wrath to remember mercy.

We need to pray that prayer. For God in his wrath to remember mercy. Because without that, we are hopelessly lost. We who once were dead in our trespasses and sins. But God has made us alive together with him in Christ.

God in his wrath will remember mercy. To those who live by faith.

In verses 3 through 7, he said he goes on to say verse 4, his brightness was like the light. Rays flashed from his hand, and there will there he veiled his power. Before him went pestilence and plague, followed at his heels. He stood and measured the earth. He looked and shook the nations. Then the eternal mountains were scattered. The everlasting hills sank low. His were the everlasting ways. I saw the tints of Kushan in affliction. The curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. He shows us here that God is in control over the very earth itself, something that man could never even dream of trying to actually take and harness. And he continues on in verse 8. How was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord?

Was your anger against the rivers or your indignation against the sea? When you rode on your horses on your chariot of salvation, you stripped the sheath from your bow, calling from many arrows. You split the earth and the rivers, the mountains saw you and writhed. The raging waters swept on, the deep gave forth its voice, it lifted its hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their place at the light of your arrows as they sped, at the flash of your glittering spear, you marched through the earth in fury, you threshed the nations in anger. You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck.

Habakkuk remembers, and he makes reference to many of the battles that God fought for the people of Israel in the past. And he praises him for his salvation, understanding that God always brings justice and judgment to the wicked. He always has and he always will, especially for his people. And so he makes this profession of faith.

He says, I hear, and my body trembles. My lips quiver at the sound, rottenness enters my bones, my legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us. He understands that he will have rest in the day of trouble. He has understood God’s message to be silent and to be patient before him. But he expresses his faith that while trouble may come, he will rejoice in the Lord who will be his strength. We finish up this book in verses 17 through 19. Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit beyond the vines. The produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food. The flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the saws.

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deers. He makes me tread on my high places. What a beautiful ending. Though all these things, in verse 17, though everything just looked like it’s just all is lost. In verse 17, there’s no food, there’s no herds, the flocks are cut off. Everything around me seems dire.

Not just trusting in God, but rejoicing in him. Taking joy in him and the God of my salvation, he says. Because God is his strength. I think this is one of the greatest expressions of faith we could find. As bleak as it is, Hoback still rejoices in the Lord and places his trust in him. Oh, how we need to learn that lesson.

Through turmoil and temptation, we rejoice. There’s not a single person in this room that could say everything in your life is just hunky dory right now. Nobody can say that. We all have our troubles. We all have our trials that Satan puts in our lives that try to get us to turn away from him. To say, God, how could you, a holy God, let that happen? That’s how people, I think most people justify their lack of faith in God. It’s their own human reasoning that says a whole a righteous and holy God would never let that happen to you. He would never let you go through any hurt because God just loves everyone so much, and he is just gonna make everything in your life just a breeze.

It’s just not true. It’s a lie. It’s a lie, Satan tells us. We cannot believe it. Yes, things are hard. But the righteous shall live by faith.

4. What Lessons Can We Learn From This Short Book

Faith in a God who always comes through for his people. Who always executes justice. Who always triumphs over evil. So what lessons can we learn from this short book? One, we need to have faith in the universal supremacy of God’s judgment on the wicked. God would use Babylon to punish wicked Judah, and Babylon would also be destroyed for its wickedness.

We need to understand that evil is self-destructive. If the righteous can be patient, trusting in the Lord, then the tyranny and arrogance of the wicked will eventually fall. But we have to understand that this applies to us as well. If God is going to punish evil, we cannot afford to be swept up in it. Because judgment will surely come. It always has, and one day it ultimately will. Number three, we need to understand and learn the fact of divine discipline. In Job, it is shown in the suffering of the individual. And we see it in our lives as well. In Habakkuk, it’s shown in the suffering of a nation. In both cases, though, suffering, it’s disciplinary. The point of it is to get us to trust in the Lord.

And perhaps the most important lesson concerns the value of faith. By it, the righteous in Habakkuk’s day would live, they would withstand. And we understand that even in the midst of the evil of Judah, those who remain faithful were not destroyed with them. At least those who were, at least not spiritually. And even more so today.

This is what living by faith is all about, brethren. Galatians chapter 3, if you look with me there, Galatians chapter 3, verses 10 through 14.

Paul writes only, or rather, chapter 3, verse 10. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law. For the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

The value of faith in being justified apart from the law can never be understated. We no longer have to live by that law, as Tony said this morning. If we live by faith, we receive the promise of Christ Jesus. In receiving salvation. Faith is also important. Romans chapter 1, verses 16 through 17, again, where this verse is quoted from Romans chapter 1 and verse 16 and 17, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Living by faith is what it’s all about.

If we do not live by faith, we cannot hope to inherit salvation. We must learn to persevere. Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 35 through 39. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance. So that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For yet a little while the coming one will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. That faith cannot be shallow.

It almost seems like it’s coming directly from Habakkuk. Verse 35 don’t throw away your confidence in God and His sovereignty. You have need of endurance. Why? Because there’s all these things around you that are pulling at you to walk away, to forsake God. And yet he says that when you have done the will of God, you have maintained that faithfulness, you will receive what is promised. The coming one will come and will not delay. God will execute his judgment and his justice. For the righteous who live by faith. A deep, grounded faith. The one that is expressed by Habakkuk in Habakkuk chapter 3, verses 17 through 19. Is that our kind of faith? The one that says, no matter what happens around me. Everything looks dire and bleak and grim.

Conclusion

My trust is in the Lord. And he will see me through. If that’s not your kind of faith, let us invite you to make it that. Make that choice. It is a choice. To live by faith. Renewing our hope in Him day by day as we walk. As He walked. And trust in His Word and His will. If you need to put on Christ and baptism and begin that walk today, we can help you in that. Or if you need to just renew your commitment to God and turn away from any sin that’s in your life. And you need the prayers of the congregation to help you in that. Why don’t you do that now while we stand it soon?