Habakkuk: Chapter Two

Well, good morning. Good morning. It's good to be with you today. It's Sunday. It's my favorite day of the week because we get to be among a bunch of really fantastic people.

So if you're a guest here today, we're so glad that you're here. My name is Josh. If we haven't met, if you agree that this is a fantastic group of people, then, and you want to connect further than the best friends, first step that you can take is to join us at the information desk in the foyer. Meet our team there. They'd love to get you connected, answer any questions you have, get you serving, get in a group, whatever it is.

They'd love to help. Last week we started a short series looking at the Old Testament book of Habakkuk. And many of you said to me afterwards, I've never heard a sermon on the book of Habakkuk. And I told you last week, as I told people what we were going into, they were like, oh, Habakkuk, that sounds boring.

But if you missed last week's message, there was a lot of really heavy and good and important stuff in there to kind of grapple with. But here's a quick recap. If you haven't, if you didn't hear last week's message, please go listen to it online. There's some significant stuff in there for our faith, not just for this place, not just for Whitewater, but for all of us. In chapter one, Habakkuk is watching as the Babylonians, a ruthless, evil and violent people, are sweeping from the east, sweeping across the known world.

And they're swallowing up nation after nation, town after town, city after city. They're raping, pillaging, murdering, plundering, and capturing everything in their path. And Habakkuk knows that they're on their way and he is crying out to God. We Read in Habakkuk 1, verses 1 through 3, how long, Lord, must I call for help? But you do not listen or cry out to you violence, but you do not save.

Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me. There is strife and conflict abounds. And in the face of evil, terrible people coming to capture God's people.

God says something that should. That absolutely is unthinkable to Habakkuk. That rattles his foundations and really should rattle our own internal narrative on who God is and how he handles things. God says, I am doing something, Habakkuk, that even if I explained it to you, you couldn't understand it. I am raising up the Babylonians.

This is disruptive. And last week we hit pause on the story as Habakkuk seemed to be stamping his feet and crossing his arms and saying, I don't like that answer. I will wait right here for a better answer, a different answer, because I can't stomach this answer. We read the opening words of Habakkuk. Chapter 2.

Habakkuk says, I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts. I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to this complaint. Now at first glance, it looks like Habakkuk is defiantly standing watch for God to give him a better answer. He says, I will look to see what he will say to me, what God will say to me and what answer I'm going to give to this complaint. But while I usually agree with the translation of the NIV and the esv, I think they got it wrong this time.

I think in the original Hebrew this reads differently. And I think that the NASB actually nails what's under it. Habakkuk 2:1 in the NASB says, I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart, and I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me and how I may reply when I am reproved, when I am corrected. Habakkuk is saying, I will stand watch and wait for God to correct me and how I will respond when he does. See, I don't think Habakkuk is defiantly stamping his foot and demanding a different answer.

I think he's faithfully standing watch and waiting with long suffering patience for God to correct him with a better, deeper understanding of what he's doing. And I think this translation also makes way more sense of chapters two and three in Habakkuk's response. Because like we said last week, if God is indeed who he he says he is, then when he gives us answers that we're not satisfied with, we can't understand. The problem isn't that he has suddenly gotten off script or stepped out of his character. The problem is that in our limited understanding of things, we can't make sense of what he's doing.

The book of Habakkuk forces us to deal with something here that cannot be written off as the natural result of sin in this world. When God says, I am raising up the Babylonians, when he refers to the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar as my servant, Nebuchadnezzar we are forced to wrestle with God. We said last week. That's what Habakkuk's name means, to take hold of something and wrestle with it. And Habakkuk's posture towards God in his wrestling should be a huge example to us.

In our wrestling. Habakkuk isn't defiantly demanding an answer here. I don't believe. And as we transition into chapter two, we see Habakkuk shift from exasperation and indignation to concluding that the problem must not be God. The problem must be his own understanding of things, not God's hypocrisy and unfaithfulness.

I believe that this is why he expects God to correct or reprove him. Because he knows God to be faithful and good. He knows that God is unchanging. And if God is unchangingly faithful and good, then the problem can't be God. The problem must be Habakkuk's perspective and understanding and thinking.

Now, in this moment, we see Habakkuk's faith in God play out. It anchors him to an option that didn't exist. But before this moment, in chapter one, Habakkuk is viewing things as binary. There are only two options. If God stops the Babylonians, then he is good.

And if he does not stop the Babylonians, he is not good. But in chapter two, Habakkuk starts to lean into a third option that doesn't fit into his simple logic. You may remember from science class going through school the word taxonomy. Starting back in the 18th century, scientists began to group living things together into categories based off of their physical characteristics. This is where we get the groups or the classes.

Like amphibians, reptiles, mammals, we all remember this. Amphibians are cold blooded animals that usually begin life in water with gills and then develop lungs to live on land. Mammals are warm blooded animals with hair or fur that give live birth and feed their young with milk. Reptiles are cold blooded animals with scaly skin that typically lay eggs. And all of this helped scientists to understand and categorize animals into nice neat groups.

Now all this works great until almost the end of the 18th century. After this has been widely accepted as a great way to do things. British scientists discovered the duck billed platypus. It has a bill like a duck, webbed feet, a body covered in fur rather than feathers, mammary glands that produce milk and it lays eggs. It is not a bird, it isn't an amphibian, and it is unlike every other mammal on the planet.

The duck billed platypus doesn't fit into the nice neat categories of taxonomy. The duck billed platypus is other. Like that little button on your McDonald's drink that says other. That little bubble, it's other. What's my point?

I believe that between chapter one and chapter two of Habakkuk, Habakkuk runs into a duck billed platypus. Habakkuk runs into a situation that he cannot categorize as anything else that but other, a situation that breaks the nice neat confines, the nice neat containers he previously was able to place everything in. He runs into a moment where everything he thinks he knows about God is confronted with the reality that God's actions don't fit. This is why I think the book of Habakkuk is such a significant book for us. And if we can come to grips with the possibility that our neat categories for everything we think we know about this world and about God and how things should work don't account for all things, then like Habakkuk, we can become anchored to a rich, unshakable faith.

When God's actions and what he says to us don't make sense because God isn't like anything else in the world. Other things can be compared to Him. He cannot be compared to anything else. And our huge mistake is made when we shift from saying things like God is like this or God is like that to saying if he does not do this, then he is not good.

God must behave in a way that makes sense to us, because if he doesn't, he can't be who he says he is. And if our minds can swallow the idea of a duck billed platypus, surely we can conceive that the only being capable of speaking life into existence, the only one who claims to be omnipotent, omnipresent and perfectly loving and unbelievably transcendent over all things, could possibly do things in a way that doesn't make sense to us.

So let's see what happens as Habakkuk takes this turn at the beginning of chapter two, where I believe he concedes to a God who can be all the things he says he is and still do things that make no sense. It's in this concession that Habakkuk says, so I will stand and watch the horizon for the way that you, God, will help correct my perspective and my understanding of you. And then Habakkuk steps into the hardest mind process again. Waiting, waiting. We don't know how much time goes by from the original moment that he says, how long, oh Lord, till God gives him the first response.

We don't know how much time goes by between chapter one and chapter two, where Habakkuk adjusts his perspective. And we don't know how much time goes by before God gives him another response. But we can assume that Habakkuk is doing a lot waiting, a lot of waiting. Habakkuk says that he has positioned himself as a watchman on the ramparts. A watchman has one job.

They post up on a high point and they fix their gaze on the horizon, looking for anything that might be coming. Habakkuk is diligent in his waiting. So let's pick up with God's response to him in Habakkuk 2. 2. Then the Lord answered me and said, write the vision and inscribe it clearly on tablets so that one who reads it may run.

For still the vision awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end. It will not lie. It will not be untruthful. If it seems slow, wait for will surely come.

It will not delay. Waiting is among the hardest things for us to do, isn't it?

And across all of history, we are the lousiest waiters that have ever existed because we have technology surrounding us constantly that makes it so we don't have to wait. When we see those three little dots that indicate someone's responding to our text message, right, it's an eternity to wait for them to respond.

Whether we have to wait two years until we finally graduate, or nine months for our first child to arrive, or six weeks until we can have that surgery that we need to have, or four days for our test results to come back from our biopsy, or 10 minutes in the grocery line. We stink at waiting. So I want to ask you, when you feel like you're waiting on God, do you post up on a high point and diligently watch the horizon? Do you diligently wait? I know that is not my default stance, for sure.

It's impatience. And I'm guessing that nearly all of us could say the same thing. Anytime we have to wait any length of time past our expected length of time, we lose our minds.

And I think we show up. It's like we show up at God's door and we're like, God, God, hey, God, God, we need you. God, we need an answer from you. Hey, God, God. Oh my gosh, why isn't he answering?

And then we just walk away and we go find a person who clearly cannot solve our problems for us. But at Least they can nod at us while we talk and we walk away. Having never waited or listened for a response from God, I found this convicting quote from an English pastor from 1900.

Too often we ask questions and do not wait for replies, shoot prayer arrows into the air without stopping to see where they alight or what quarry they strike. We are in too great a hurry to take time and trouble for climbing the watchtower and awaiting the divine reply. How often God's answers come and find us gone. We've waited for a while, and thinking there was no answer, we've gone on our way. But as we have turned the first corner, the post has come in.

God's ships touch our wharves, but there's no one to unload them. His letters lie at the office, but no one calls for them. It is not enough to direct your prayer unto God. Look up and look out until the blessing alights on your head. When we ask what is according to his will, we will receive while we pray.

Another quote from a guy named Corey Shumate says, maybe God seems silent to us because we are never silent before Him.

Maybe you've never taken the time to consider this. But sometimes the consistency of our waiting and listening for an answer matters more than the consistency of asking for an answer. I'll say that again, let it sink in. Sometimes the consistency of our waiting and listening for an answer matters more than the consistency of asking for an answer. So here's Habakkuk, posted up on a high point, diligently watching the horizon, waiting, well for God's response.

And then, unfortunately, once again, God's response is not at all what Habakkuk was hoping for. The promise that God gives Habakkuk is a promise that will take time, more waiting. Not a day, not a few days, not months, not a year, not a decade. 70 years. God gives him a promise that will not be fulfilled for 70 years.

A promise that Habakkuk will not even live to see fulfilled. God says, all right, now that your head's on straight, Habakkuk, I'm ready to give you a promise for the future. And you're gonna feel like it will never come. But it will come. It will come.

And write it down so that you don't forget. What's the promise? It's a promise that a day is coming when the Babylonians who are rising to power now won't exist anymore. They will be crushed and destroyed, and God's people will return. The promise opens with a key that unlocks God's instruction for how he wants his people to wait.

Well, in the meantime, Habakkuk 2:4 he says, see, the enemy is puffed up, his desires are not upright, but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness or the righteous one will live by by faith. God says in the waiting for God to fulfill his promises, the righteous will live by faith. This phrase, the righteous will live by faith is actually on repeat in the Bible. It's used three times in the New Testament. It's a phrase on repeat for God's people all throughout time.

It was for God's people as they were carried off into captivity in Babylon. It was for God's people as they awaited and longed for the coming Messiah, King Jesus to be born. And it is our promise to hang onto as we wait or I'm sorry, it's our role to walk in faithfulness as we look to the future when Christ will return once and for all and finally vanquish sin and death forever. Romans 1:17 says, for in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. Just as it is written, Paul just says hey, just like Habakkuk said, the righteous will live by faith.

This is a two sided coin. Those who have faith are proven to be righteous and those who are righteous show that righteousness through their faith. In Galatians chapter 3, Paul quotes Habakkuk again when he says that we can't be justified by our good behavior, our white knuckled tribe. We are justified by our faith in Jesus Christ. And then we read in Hebrews 10 so do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded.

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a little while he who is coming will come and will not delay and but my righteous one will live by faith and I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back. But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved. And all this drives us back to the opening point that we made last week. If God is indeed who he says he is, then whatever he is doing right and whatever he promises will come though it tarries, wait for it.

This is not blind faith. This is actual faith. This is real faith. And just like we talked about when we talked about the shield of faith in the Armor of God series, belief only turns into faith once we put our weight on it. It's only when we place Our weight on God, who He says he is, who he says we are, how he says we should live, what promises he has made, that faith is embodied and actually made.

Real faith. This is not only true of Habakkuk, it will be true for all of God's people. For all of time, in every season, in every difficult will be proved righteous by embodying real faith, by putting our weight and living as if it is true. This is the message of the book of Habakkuk.

Then in chapter two, as it continues, God pronounces five woes on the nation of Babylon. And anytime you read this word woe w o e in the Bible, it represents a deep distaste and disgust for something. God has a deep distaste for the behavior of the Babylonians. He pronounces woe to the greedy, the dishonest and self serving, the violent and oppressive, the corrupt and immoral. And woe to the idolater, the one who worships idols.

And while these are certainly woes against the Babylonians, there are also woes that serve as a giant and painfully accurate mirror for Israel too. We read what was true about them last week from all the other prophets that talked about how they were living just like the Babylonians. But the righteous will be unlike these woes. The righteous will live by faith or by faithfulness. It's in the middle of these woes that another promise is hidden in verse 14, love this promise.

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. What?

The Babylonians are coming. They're going to take everything. And for 70 years you're going to suffer as slaves in Babylon. But I'm going to solve this. And there will be a day that that the whole earth will see my glory.

It will cover the earth like water covers the sea. If you were here for our Songs of Summer series, you may remember when we were Talking about Psalm 46, that famous verse, be still and know that I am God. And that word know is the same word that Habakkuk uses here for the word knowledge. You may remember the word, it's yadda. And yada is more than head knowledge.

Yaddah is an intimate knowing through experience. God says through Habakkuk that there is a time coming when the entire earth will experience the glory of God for themselves. And just like many other prophecies in the Bible, this is a multi layered fulfillment of prophecy. The glory of God is experienced in 70 years later as God once again rescues his people out of captivity and they go back home. Then it's fulfilled again in the coming of Jesus, the Messiah.

We read in John 1:14, the word Jesus became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. And then ultimately this promise will be fulfilled when Christ returns and God's people will once again experience his glory firsthand, the whole earth will see Luke 21:27. At that time, they will see the Son of Man, Jesus coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

And while that amazing day is promised to us, the future, at some unknown hour and day, today we are left with the grueling meantime of waiting. And our challenge is to live by faith as we wait.

I think the most poignant story of waiting in the Bible is the story of of Joseph that we read in the book of Genesis. Joseph is the youngest of 12 sons. He's his father's favorite. And as his father's favorite, his father shows him favor and blesses him with all kinds of things, including a really nice jacket. And his brothers are jealous of him, and he's a little pompous, and this doesn't go well.

And his brothers are so mad at him and they despise him so much that they decide that they're going to sell him to a slave trader who takes him to Egypt. And they go back home and they tell their dad, sorry, your favorite son's dead. So in Egypt, after being sold into slavery, just. We can't even fathom this, right? We can't fathom being sold into slavery, being carried away to travel in a caravan all the way to Egypt, and he ends up being bought by a guy named Potiphar.

Potiphar is the captain of Pharaoh's army in Egypt, and he is a servant in Potiphar's house. And he is so faithful as a servant and so capable that Potiphar puts him up in his house until he's the second most powerful person in Potiphar's household, He runs the Potiphar's affairs. Well, Potiphar's wife finds Joseph to be a pretty handsome dude, and so she throws herself at him. And he says, I can't do this. This would not honor God or my master.

And she then cries foul and tells her husband that Joseph tried to attack her. So Joseph is imprisoned wrongfully. He goes to prison, and he's waiting and suffering and questioning. And in that waiting and suffering, God blesses him more. He gives him a supernatural gift to translate the dreams of two guys in jail.

Well, one of those guys eventually gets out and works his way up in. And he's now with Pharaoh. Pharaoh has a dream that cannot be discerned. And he says, I remember a guy from jail who can discern your dream. Joseph shows up.

He is now at the king's, right in front of the king. And he says, I'll tell you what your dream means. It means you're going to have seven great years where the harvest will be rich and abundant. And then you're going to have seven years where there is going to be a massive famine. And Pharaoh says, great.

How about you run the show here? So Joseph is now in charge of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. And for seven years, he stockpiles all of this grain. And for seven years, there's a terrible drought and famine. Thirteen years goes by.

Famine strikes. Joseph's brothers, who had sold him into slavery 13 years earlier, they come all the way to Egypt to buy food from an official they don't recognize as their own brother. When Joseph reveals himself, they throw themselves down at him and they say, we're your servants. Please, please, please, please, please. We'll do anything you want.

Now, for 13 years, Joseph had the chance to multiply his hatred for his brothers. That's what I'd be doing. For 13 years, he could have plotted his revenge. Now that I've got this power and this money, what am I going to do with it? To get back at them?

And when his brothers were right there at his feet, completely at his mercy, he could have wielded his power over them in contempt. But Joseph proved his righteousness through his faith by proclaiming his faithfulness in God. And we read this unbelievable response that he gives to his brothers in this moment. Joseph says to them, don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God?

God knows better. You intended to harm me. But God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done. The saving of many lives. What perspective.

What an amazing response. Through his waiting and suffering and difficulty, he chose faith. He chose to come to see and yada know God's faithfulness even through something that if God had explained it to him up front, he would not have signed up for. And he could not have understood. Joseph's story.

And Habakkuk's story should give us hope that that God has greater plans. Even in our story of waiting and suffering and struggling and questioning. Chapter two of Habakkuk ends with these beautiful words. The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.

God is God and that's enough. That's enough. Church if God is indeed who he says he is, if he is indeed who he says he is, then his promises will be fulfilled. They will be fulfilled even when they feel like they will never come. And our job is to diligently post up and watch the horizon for what he has promised and prove our righteousness by living in real faith.

Faith that has our weight placed on it. There are a handful of songs throughout the years that have just kind of settled in my bones. Anchor songs, faithful songs over the years that I've gone back to in times of need. And one of the most potent is a song that the band is going to sing here. It's called Sovereign Over Us.

It's a song that serves as a reminder that God's faithfulness is unchanging even in our darkest valley. To say that God is sovereign is to say that he has supreme authority, control and power over all creation. It means that there's nothing that can limit or hinder his ability to accomplish his purposes.

Church I know we all walked in here with some sort of darkness, some sort of waiting, some sort of valley, some sort of suffering and difficulty. I look across the room and I know stories in this room. There's a mom who lost her son to a car accident this week. There's a husband who just passed the mark of one year of burying his wife this week for us. My father in law died suddenly Sunday night and we just buried him two days ago.

And there's a thousand other stories that that walked into this room today. And I'm telling you, there is strength to be found. God is actually who he says he is.

And he is sovereign over our worst, darkest difficulty. He's sovereign over whatever you're going through. He's sovereign over your loss. He's sovereign over your sorrow. He's sovereign over your suffering.

He's sovereign over your grappling and wrestling. He is sovereign. And so as we just sit, just sit and just listen to these words and let them just kind of soak into your spirit today.

He's sovereign over us. And then during the interlude, we've got communion tables up here and Laura will invite you to come up and share in communion.

I said it last week. No one was at the foot of the cross watching Jesus die there and thinking this is the greatest plan that was ever made.

No one. And it is exactly what God chose to do. It was the best, the most perfect of all things to happen.

Because he can do things that we can't understand. So we'll take a few minutes.