Searchlights from the Scriptures

Audio  “What can miserable Christians sing?” That was the question that Carl Trueman posed a half-dozen years ago in an article that was later included in his book, The Wages of Spin. Trueman lamented the “diet of unremittingly jolly choruses and hymns” that are so prevalent in worship services today, because it “inevitably creates an unrealistic horizon of expectation which sees the normative Christian life as one long triumphalist street party — a theologically incorrect and a pastorally disastrous scenario in a world of broken individuals.” He says, “By excluding the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the church … as if the idea of a broken-hearted, lonely, or despairing Christian was so absurd as to be comical.”[1]  If that is what we think, then we haven’t read our Bibles very well. The Psalms, for example, give voice to the entire range of human emotion set to the musical strains of worshipful song. Elsewhere we find God’s faithful people pouring out hurting hearts and suffering souls to Him in song. Habakkuk is an example of just such a believer, and the third chapter of his book is an example of just such a song. How did we get here? Let us remember that in Chapter 1, we found the prophet worrying and wondering. He was bewildered by the besetting sin of his own nation, and troubled even more by God’s seeming indifference and inactivity. He became even more troubled when God began to reveal what He was doing – raising up the godless Babylonians to bring judgment on Judah. This was, in Habakkuk’s mind, inconsistent with God’s own character. Coming to Chapter 2, we find Habakkuk watching and waiting. As God unfolded the answer to Habakkuk’s many questions and concerns, the prophet silenced himself before the Lord. Five woes were pronounced upon the Babylonians, even as God’s people were reminded of three promises: the just will live by faith (v4); the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as waters cover the sea (v14); and the Lord reigns from His sovereign throne in His holy temple (v20). Now we come to Chapter 3, and we find Habakkuk no longer worrying and wondering, no longer watching and waiting. Rather, he is now worshiping and witnessing. As Wiersbe puts it so well, “Habakkuk started in the valley, but he ended up on the mountaintop! He started with sighing and ended with singing. He started with perplexity, and he ended with praise.”[2] How do we know that the prophet now sings? The notations within the third chapter make it plain. Like so many of the Psalms, the hymns of the Hebrew people, we have technical notations at the very beginning and the very end of the third chapter, along with a threefold repetition of the word, “Selah,” in verses 3, 9, and 13. This precise meaning of this term is unknown, but it seems to be a word that introduces a meditative pause, perhaps where instrumental music would play between the verses of a song. The statement in the final verse, “For the choir director, on my stringed instruments,” makes it clear that the poem is to be set to music and sung publicly. The mysterious phrase, “on Shigionoth” in verse 1 is also very difficult to explain with certainty. That is why the English versions tend to just transliterate the Hebrew word instead of translating it. Psalm 7 is said to be a “Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord,” and the word shigionoth here in Habakkuk is likely a plural form of the same word. So it is obviously some sort of musical directive, referring perhaps to the instruments that would accompany the song, or the style in which it was to be played. It may also refer to the specific tune to which the song is set, similar to what we find in our own hymnals where the hymn title is found at the top of the page, and the name of the hymn tune is found at the bott

Audio  The first and second of the Ten Commandments are pretty straightforward. The Lord God says, “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them” (Ex 20:3-4). It is easy to think that idolatry is an issue that humanity has outgrown. Many of us do not regularly encounter temples or shrines where devotees make sacrifices and offerings as acts of worship before a statue. We might be tempted to think that higher education, sociological changes, and even perhaps intellectual evolution have rendered idolatry obsolete. If we have the privilege to travel the world or get to know people who come from other parts of the world, however, we will quickly realize that idolatry in its most overt forms is still prevalent today. Moreover, there are subtler forms of idolatry that are even more ubiquitous, perhaps even taking place unwittingly in our lives. That is how subtle idolatry is. In our text today, the sin of idolatry is the primary focus. The context of this portion of Habakkuk has been dealing with the impending judgment on Babylon. Four pronouncements of “Woe” have been issued to this point for a variety of transgressions. And now we come to the final one, but it is actually a root cause of the others. Why has Babylonpillaged, plundered, enslaved, and killed so many people? They are idolaters. As Roberston writes, “Because their religious orientation was wrong, their moral standards had to be perverted.”[1]David Prior says similarly, “What we worship affects our choices and our lifestyles. The Babylonians had chosen idolatry, and their social and national life bore the inevitable trademarks of their consequent lifestyle.”[2]Therefore the judgment announced in this passage is well-deserved for the Babylonians. However, Habakkuk’s words are not merely for the Babylonians. They were also for his fellow-countrymen. Had Judah itself not fallen into rampant idolatry and the sins that flowed out of it, they would not be facing the Babylonian invasion. God had raised up the Babylonians to bring judgment on Judahfor its sins. The condemnation against idolatry here in this passage is intended to rebuke the Jewish idolater who erroneously believes that he will escape judgment because of his ethnic heritage as a citizen of God’s chosen nation. But even among the righteous in Judah, there would be a great temptation, upon seeing the Babylonians swiftly conquer their homeland, to conclude that the idols of other nations were mightier than the God of Israel. The words delivered through the prophet here were a stern warning to never turn aside from the worship of the one true God to idols. The message is also for us still today, for idolatry can creep into our lives in little known or least expected ways. Few, if any, of us would carve statues to worship or go to shrines or temples to make sacrificial offerings. And yet idols can be found elsewhere in our lives from time to time, and we need to be able to identify them so that we can be on guard against them and turn away from them in devotion to the only God who really is. Before we deal with how to identify the idols in our lives, let us dive into our text and discover the answer to the question that the prophet rhetorically poses in verse 18: “What profit is the idol” The short answer is, “The idol is of absolutely no profit!” So there you go. We can just have the benediction and be on our way. This could be the shortest sermon I’ve ever preached. No, rather, we must look at what our text says about why the idol is of no profit. And there are three reasons set forth. I. The idol is a powerless god created in the image of the one who crafts it. (v18) The Bible tells us that mankind was created in the image of God. Scholars have debated for centuries what, exactly, this all entails. The full and detailed meaning of “the im

Audio  Senseless acts of violence, terrorism, and murder. Drug and alcohol abuse. Sexual abuse. Environmental disasters. Systemic injustice in which some are punished beyond the extent of their crimes, and others get off unpunished. Such things plague our society today. Almost every headline during this past news-filled week has related to one or the other of these issues. And yet, we constantly hear that the Bible is an antiquated book that has no relevance to our contemporary world. In just the three verses we have read, we see all of those matters addressed clearly. Habakkuk lived 2,600 years ago, and yet in his day, society was plagued by the same concerns that affect us today. This very week, in our own state, we have seen images in the news that reflect back decades to a day and time that we all hoped we had moved beyond. But these societal concerns that we have listed, and more that could be added to the list, are not the root of the problem. They are symptoms of an underlying cause: human sinfulness. Because the human heart and mind are warped by sin, we see the same manifestations of it over and over again throughout history. We cannot evolve beyond it; we cannot educate ourselves out of it. Habakkuk’s day and age was much like our own, in that the primary concerns of the righteous Israelites involved moral degradation in their homeland and global unrest sparked by militant terror on the part of the Babylonians who branched out from modern-day Iraq to conquer by force and destruction. Many wondered why God did not stop them. But God had declared that He was in fact using them to accomplish His purpose. The Jewish people had violated God’s covenant with them and earned for themselves divine chastening and judgment. Babylon was the tool that God would use to deliver it. But the Babylonians were not exempt from God’s moral standards. They did not see themselves as divine agents of the one true God. Instead, they saw themselves as emissaries of their pagan deities, establishing a name for themselves in the world in the name of their gods. And so, in the exercise of their terror, they exceeded what was fitting. The punishment they inflicted on nations exceed the crimes for which God was bringing about judgment. And now the crimes of the Babylonians had to be punished in turn. The passage before us is part and parcel of a larger section dealing with the impending doom of Babylon. Though they had conquered many lands and enslaved many peoples, the day was soon to come in which all the survivors of those peoples would see Babylon fall and would taunt and mock them in their demise. Five pronouncements of “Woe,” or “taunt-songs” are given from verses 6 through 20. Having considered three of them in weeks past, we come to the fourth today. In this one, we are dealing with the issue of crime and punishment – namely, the crimes committed by the Babylonians, and the punishment that would come upon them. But this is not merely a lesson in ancient Mesopotamian history. As we have said, the issues plaguing the world in that day were no different than the ones that occupy the news hour today. The crimes committed by the Babylonians in our text are parallel to many things we see going on around us. Therefore, the punishment that is meted out in God’s justice here in our text must be relevant for us as well. I. The crimes of sinful men are many. (vv15, 17) Every generation has had a person or entity that it has considered to be the epitome of evil in the world. Most recently, perhaps we might say that it was Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda; ISIS; or Boko Haram. A generation ago, it would have been Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Third Reich. In Habakkuk’s day, there would have been few if any who would contest that the moniker could be fittingly applied to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire. The accounts of the Bible, secular historians, and even the inscriptions of the Babylonians themselves all accord with one another on the atrociti

Audio  The chief end of man, says the often quoted Westminster Catechism, is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. This is the highest purpose to which we can aspire; it is the answer to the immortal question, “What is the meaning of life?” Each of us has been given life by our Creator as a gift, and we are to use that gift in the exercise of bringing glory to God and enjoying Him in the intimacy of a personal relationship. It sounds quite simple doesn’t it? But in the world of real human experience, we find that nearly everything is at odds with this purpose. The world is so infected with sin that it lures and beckons us to defy this purpose. We ourselves, in our sinful nature – our flesh – are also corrupted by sin, so that our desires run counter to the glory of God and the enjoyment of Him. And of course, we have a great spiritual enemy, the devil, who is constantly at work seeking to persuade and tempt us to abandon the course of glorifying and enjoying God. We are fallen people in a fallen world. And that makes this seemingly simple purpose of life much more difficult to attain in real experience. In Jesus Christ, we are called to be in the world but not of the world. We are here, in this fallen world, as agents of reconciliation and transformation to bring glory to God through our lives and our work for Him in the midst of this world’s corruption. But we are to be on guard, lest we ourselves become corrupted by the ways of this fallen world. In this world, we are surrounded by people and things. God’s word is clear that we are to love people and use things to bring Him glory. But the world and the devil are always appealing to the sinfulness of our flesh to turn that upside down – to love things and use people to acquire them, that we might glorify ourselves instead of our Maker.   The Neo-Babylonian Empire that had burst onto the scene of world history during Habakkuk’s time is an example of this. Nabopolasser was perhaps initially motivated by noble ambitions to shake off the oppression of the Assyrian Empire. He united the Chaldean people and formed a strong military to secure independence. Soon enough, however, those ambitions became corrupted. He and his son Nebuchadnezzar began to advance against other nations, conquering, looting, torturing, and enslaving them simply because they could. No one in the world could stop them. In the meticulous providence of God, the uprising of the Babylonian Empire came at a time when God could use them to bring about the well-deserved judgment upon His own people. With the Northern Kingdom of Israel having already fallen to the Assyrians a century before, the Southern Kingdom of Judah had followed in their destructive ways. Injustice, idolatry and immorality were rampant among a people who had been established to bring glory to the God who had called them out for Himself, redeemed them from bondage and established them for Himself in a land that He gave them. In a short time, they would be steam-rolled by the Babylonians. But Babylon would not escape the judgment of God themselves. Though God used them, He did not endorse their methods or their motives. Babylonwas building an empire of self-aggrandizement, and they were breaking the backs of innocent people to do so. They would answer for it eventually in the perfect timing of God. Our text today is the third of five proclamations of judgment issued against Babylon. The Lord said that the day was coming in which all the plundered nations who had fallen prey to Babylonwould rise up and sing taunt-songs against them. Each one begins with a word of “Woe.” We’ve discussed two of them in previous weeks. This is the third. In these taunt-songs, Babylonis mocked by the words of its victims, who give voice to the condemnation of God Himself. With the passage of two and a half millennia, the world has changed a great deal. But in the words of the 19th Century French satirist Alphonse Karr, “the more things change, the more they s

Audio If these walls could talk … what would they say? We often think of that hypothetical question when we visit historic places. If the walls of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, for example could talk, they would tell us about the founding of our nation – how the Declaration of Independence was debated and approved; how the Constitution came into being within that building. What if the walls of this church building could talk? Would they speak of great Sunday services when the gospel went forth boldly and souls were saved and lives were changed? Would they speak of the beautiful weddings, somber funerals, and exciting baptisms that have been conducted here in this room? What about the walls of your office, or the walls of your home? What would they say? In many cases, we are glad to know that walls cannot talk! Here in our text today, however, we read of certain walls that do talk, and what it is that they say. The walls belong to the proud Babylonians and their king Nebuchadnezzar. He was a great builder. He built a massive empire! He built a magnificent capital! He built a majestic palace for himself and his family! But one day, the walls of all the he had built would speak out. The passage is part of a larger section of Habakkuk concerning the judgment that was coming upon Babylon. Having been used by God as an agent of judgment on the nation of Judah, Babylon itself would be held accountable before God for its own transgressions in the militant expansion of its empire. The nations that Babylonhad pillaged and plundered would see the empire fall, and when that day would come, they would take up songs of mockery against their oppressors. There are five of these taunt-songs recorded here in Chapter 2, each one beginning with the word “Woe!” We looked at the first one last week, and this is the second. In the final verse of this passage, the walls of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, and those of his entire empire, are given voice, and the stones of the wall cry out, while the rafters of the framework answer back in chorus. And what those walls say is as relevant to us today as it was 2,600 years ago when these words were first written. So what do those walls say when they talk? Let’s look at our text and find out. I. If these walls could talk, they would tell of the resources by which they were built (v9a). Fabric, as many of you know, is usually sold by the yard. Every now and then, we go down to the fabric store near our house and buy some for a craft project we are working on, and we take the big bundle of fabric over to the counter and say, “I need two yards of this.” And we watch them measure out the fabric and cut it, and then they attach a sticker to it with the measurement and the cost. Thankfully, the folks at our local fabric shop are generous with their cuts, and they usually cut a few extra inches longer than we ask. But, if the shop was unscrupulous in their practices, they might cut a few inches short or take the fabric into the back where we could not see them cut it. Perhaps they might cut a yard and a half and charge us for two. That happened a lot in the ancient world, and when it did, the Hebrew word that is used here in the first line of verse 9 applied. Literally translated, it is “Woe to him who cuts off an evil cut,” meaning that the fabric seller has taken more than his share and cheated the customer. And so this phrase was often used more generally for anyone who made a profit by taking unfair advantage of others. When it comes to the Babylonian empire, the pronouncement of woe that is sounded against them is due to the “evil gain” by which they built their house – their dynasty and empire. That’s what the first woe, in verses 6-8, was all about. The Babylonians had taken what was not rightfully theirs by force and extortion, pillaging, plundering, and looting every nation it wanted, because no power in the world was strong enough to stop them. They built an empire nearly unrivaled in history, but it was a

Audio  If you walk into a major bookstore, like Barnes and Noble, you will find the books conveniently arranged by category. If you are looking for a book on business management, there’s a section for that. If you are looking for a book on financial planning, there’s a section for that. If you want a book on foreign policy, they have a section for that too. But what if you want a book that covers all those subjects? Well, you have to go to an entirely different section of the store and find one book that deals with all those topics. It’s called the Bible. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that the Bible was written to be a textbook on those subjects. The Bible is the Word of God, written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to reveal the nature and will of God to humanity. But God’s nature and will come to bear on how we handle money, how we handle our business affairs, and how leaders should lead. And when it comes to what the Bible says about these matters, there are promises, examples, and warnings. We have been studying the little book of Habakkuk for a couple of months now. It is a little book, but it has a lot to say. I think many of you have discovered how surprisingly relevant to our day and time this 2,600 year old writing is through our study. I remind you yet again that Habakkuk was burdened about the immorality, idolatry, and injustice that was rampant in Judah. These were God’s chosen people, but the nation was filled with corruption. He cried out to God about it, and God’s answer was surprising and even more troubling. God declared that He was raising up the Babylonians (called here the Chaldeans) to be His agents of judgment upon Judah. God would discipline His people by bringing a foreign nation in to overtake them, just as He had repeatedly promised them that He would do. It burdened Habakkuk to consider that God would use violent pagans to do His work, and that the chosen people would suffer at their hands. The righteous would suffer alongside the wicked as this judgment came upon the whole nation. Habakkuk cried out in 1:13, “Why do You look with favor on those who deal treacherously? Why are you silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they?” Whereas the book began with the prophet asking “how long” God would allow corruption to run rampant in Judah, it soon turned to Habakkuk asking God “how long” He would allow the Babylonians to dominate the world. The section of the book that we are entering into today contains the answer to that question. God’s message to the prophet is that a day of reckoning is coming for Babylonas well, and it was coming soon. Though they shot to prominence rather suddenly, their position as a global power would be short lived – less than a century. And here in verses 6-20 of Habakkuk 2, their downfall is vividly described in five statements of “Woe.” Earlier in verse 6, the Lord said that the nations which Babylonhad subjected in its wave of terror and cruelty would eventually take up a taunt-song against them, even mockery and insinuations about them. And these five woes are those taunt-songs by which the nations who fell victim to Babylon’s tyranny would ridicule them in their demise. The words are an altogether certain promise of God’s judgment, but sung in such a way by the nations as to make sport of Babylon, adding to their shame. The word “Woe” translates a Hebrew exclamation that some have translated as “Ha!,” “Ahah!”, or even “Ah!” So, woe is most definitely pronounced upon the Babylonians, but almost with tongue in cheek, as the nations laugh at the downfall of their oppressors. The first of these “Woe” statements concerns God’s judgment upon Babylonfor its dishonest gain. Babylonamassed matchless wealth and land through their militant expansionism, but here we find the dangers of such dishonest gain spelled out. And the warning is not for ancient Babylonalone. In a society in which one’s worth is measured in dollars and cents, and in which the allure

Audio Habakkuk 2:4-6a The Pitfalls of Pride Is pride a virtue, or is it a vice? I suppose it depends on who you ask, or how the term is used. We use the term in a variety of ways. A person can say that he or she is proud of something that has been accomplished, or proud of something that another person has done, and mean nothing improper by it. But there is another sense in which this kind of pride can lead to boasting, or an over-inflated estimation of oneself, which is inappropriate. A relatively recent song by the folk-rock group The Avett Brothers uses an interesting contrast to distinguish between these two meanings. They sing, “I want to have pride like my mother had, and not like the kind in the Bible that turns you bad.” Traditionally, Christians have viewed pride as a sin – in fact, as one of the so-called “seven deadly sins.” Indeed, it is very difficult to find a positive reference to pride in the Bible, though there are a scant handful of such uses. Most of those would refer to the excellence of God’s character. More often, in sixty-one passages of Scripture, pride is spoken of in its negative connotation.[1] Pride was the sin of Satan which caused his downfall. Pride is found at the root of almost every human sin, for pride insists that one should be able to do as one pleases, apart from any rules or consequences. Pride is often contrasted in Scripture with positive virtues like humility, obedience, and servanthood. In the Old Testament, pride is said to go before destruction (Prov 16:18). It does not seek God (Psa 10:4). It brings disgrace (Prov 11:2). It breeds quarrels (Prov 13:10). It deceives (Jer 49:16), brings one low (Prov 29:23); and ultimately humiliates (Isa 2:17). In the New Testament, Jesus speaks of pride as an evil thing that proceeds from within a man to defile him (Mk 7:22). Both James and Peter quote from Proverbs 3:34, saying that God opposes the proud (Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5).[2] Therefore the Bible is filled with stern warnings against pride and examples of the destructive nature of pride. We find one such warning and example here in our text. In verse 4, “the proud one” is contrasted with the righteous, who lives by his faith. The word translated as “proud” means “puffed up,” “bloated,” even “tumorous.” This person is swollen, infected if you will, with a spiritual cancer that results in the diagnosis here that “his soul is not right within him.” The phrase means “crooked” or “twisted.” The proud one has a crooked soul. In verse 5, a synonym is used. The “proud one” is called “the haughty man.” The only other occurrence of this Hebrew word translated “haughty” here is found in Proverbs 21:24 – “24  “‘Proud,’ ‘Haughty,’ ‘Scoffer,’ are his names, who acts with insolent pride.” Other Hebrew words are translated as “haughty” throughout the Old Testament, and in one case the word is found in a list of things that the Lord hates. Haughtiness has to with arrogance and disdain for others. A haughty person is one who looks down on others as being inferior to himself or herself. Who is this proud and haughty one that the Lord addresses through Habakkuk here? Most specifically, these words are a denouncement of the prideful ruler of Babylon. Depending on the exact timeframe in which this book was written, it could be Nabopolasser, or it could be his more famous son, Nebuchadnezzar. Both are guilty of the same sins of pride and arrogance. More generally, the nation of Babylon as a whole is condemned in these words, for they are all guilty of carrying out the militant expansionism of their ruler’s voracious desires. But then universally, we can apply these words to all who are sinfully proud and haughty, who are puffed up with their own sense of self-importance, infected with the tumor of a crookedly arrogant soul. What we must make most certain of is that at the end of the day, these words do not apply to ourselves! If they do, and our condition goes unremedied by repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus,

Audio As a young man, Martin Luther recognized that he had a serious problem. He took the Bible seriously, and knew that he did not live up to the righteous standard of the holy God who was revealed in the Bible. He knew that all the commands of Scripture stood written as an indictment of a well-deserved condemnation over his life. Desperate to find some way to placate God and rid himself of the burden of his sin-guilt, Luther decided to become a monk. Surely renouncing all worldly pleasures and possessions and devoting oneself fully to the service of the Lord would earn him God’s approval. Or so he thought. In the monastery, he was shepherded by a faithful mentor to devote himself to the study of Scripture. And that Luther did with all his heart and with his mind. In his study, he came upon this verse of Scripture, Habakkuk 2:4, and it lit a fire within him. As Boice writes, “He recognized that somewhere in these words was a revelation of a different way of pleasing God than by fastings, self-immolations, prayers, charity, and good works.”[1] Not yet sure of the answer to all of the longings and questions of his soul, Luther set out on a pilgrimage to Rome. There at the churchof St. John’s Lateran, a staircase can be found purporting to be from Pilate’s hall of judgment in Jerusalem. Plates of glass cover stains which are said to be from the blood of Christ. And there pilgrims come from all over the world, still to this day, to climb those steps on their knees, reciting prayers at each step, pausing to kiss the glass-covered stains. This is done as a means of receiving an indulgence – a minimizing of the penalty of sins. The most recent pope to issue such a promise of indulgence at the Lateran Stairs was Pius X in 1908. And it was for this reason that Luther went to visit the Lateran Stairs. But something happened midway up those stairs. A handwritten letter from Luther’s son Paul is displayed in the Library of Rudolstadt today in which the following account is given: “my late, dearest father, in … his journey to Rome … had come to the knowledge of the truth of the everlasting gospel. It happened in this way. As he repeated his prayers on the Lateran staircase, the words of Habakkuk the prophet came suddenly to his mind: “The just shall live by faith.” Thereupon he ceased his prayers, returned to Wittenburg, and took this as the chief foundation for all his doctrine.” [2]Later, as Luther meditated on Paul’s quotation of this verse in Romans 1:17, he said, “although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against Him. … Night and day I pondered … the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning.”[3]The words which are translated in the New American Standard as “the righteous will live by his faith” are just three words in the Hebrew Bible. In these three words, Walt Kaiser says, “one of the most triumphant notes of biblical revelation is sounded.” The fact that this short portion of a short verse in a short book of the Old Testament in quoted in three separate books of the New Testament gives us a hint of the significance of these words. Before we investigate the meaning of these words and their application to us, let us set them in their original context in Habakkuk. Again, I will remind you that Habakkuk was staring at an unprecedented national crisis. Judahwas infested with immorality, injustice, and idolatry. Habakkuk had cried out to God to do something about the problem, and God answered by saying that He was sending the Chaldeans – better known as the Babylonians – to overtake the nation

Audio If you watch the political campaign ads, the debates, the roundtable talk shows, you will repeatedly hear it said, “What our country needs now is ….” Fill in the blank. Immigration reform, healthcare reform, healthcare reform-reform, a new tax plan. A leader who can help bolster our economy, a stronger defense, better foreign policy. We could go on and on with what people think we need. And of course, everyone has an idea about how to best bring about what they think we need, or which candidate can deliver on it. Habakkuk’s day, as we have seen repeatedly, was not that much different than ours. I imagine in his day, there were many who could be heard saying, “What our country needs now is ….” They had terrible leadership. The political, judicial, and religious systems were corrupt. Violence was rampant in the land. Injustice was the order of the day. And a foreign, militant force of terror threatened to overtake the nation at any given moment. God had declared it, and so it was sure to happen. And while everyone in the land offered his or her own opinion of what the nation needed the most at a time like that, Habakkuk pulled aside from it all. He knew that his only hope, and the only hope for his country, was for God to speak. Habakkuk says in verse 1, “I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart and I will keep watch.” He takes up the position of the watchman. In ancient Israel, the watchman was very important. He would stand on the tower of the city wall keeping a sharp eye out for the approach of the enemy. The watchman had to keep himself attentive, vigilant, undistracted, and alert at all times. And that is the position that Habakkuk says that he has taken. But he is not on the lookout for the enemy. God has already declared that the enemy is coming – the Chaldeans, or Babylonians. No, Habakkuk is keeping watch for something entirely different. He is keeping watch “to see what He will speak to me,” that is what God will say. Habakkuk knows that in the dark days in which he lives, when things are moving rapidly from bad to worse, only a word from God can bring any help or hope. So he climbs the tower (whether literally or figuratively we do not know) to wait for that word. He also knows that when God speaks, He will correct the prophet on some of the faulty thinking he has had about God’s governance of the world. He says he is watching to see what God will speak to him, and how he will reply when he is reproved. Habakkuk needs God’s word to straighten out his fuzzy thinking about what is going on in the world and how God is acting, or not acting (as the case may be) in the midst of it. He expects a reproof from the Lord, and he desires it. But it will only happen if God speaks His word. We do not know how long the prophet waited for God to speak, but verse two tells us that He did. “The Lord answered me.” Our God is a speaking God. As Schaeffer said, “God is there, but … he is not silent; that changes the whole world.”[1]The very fact that God speaks means that the situation is not hopeless. He spoke to Habakkuk about the events of His day, and He has a word for us in our day. So, when people start pondering what our nation needs most in these difficult days, the answer is that we need a word from God. That word is found in the Bible. Now, let me tell you what the world doesn’t need. It doesn’t need people jumping up and down talking about how much we need the Bible. The world needs the Bible! And that means that we who have it and believe it must live it and proclaim it. The desperate need of our day, and of every day, is for the Word of God. Why is this so? I want to suggest three reasons that can be found here in our text. I. We need the Bible because the Bible is the written revelation of God’s word (v2a) At the Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando in June of 2000, the adoption of the revised Baptist Faith and Message, our confession of faith, was on the floor. I can remember it like it was

Audio  “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” That’s the old saying. But where do the tough go when the going gets tough? If we take Scripture seriously, as well we should, then we know that we go to the Lord in prayer when the going gets tough. The Bible does not sugar coat life in this fallen world. The people of faith whose lives are described in these pages were real people who lived real lives in the real world. They endured hardships and difficulties as great as, or greater than, any that we have experienced. Though their circumstances and specific struggles varied, one thing they have in common is that each one found prayer to be a refuge in the storm. The prophet Habakkuk is but one of many examples to whom we could point. His nation was filled with violence, corruption, and injustice. The righteous were oppressed by the wicked, and immorality was rampant. Habakkuk had prayed for a long time, with no answer, but then God spoke. His answer was not what Habakkuk wanted to hear. Things were about to get worse, as God had revealed to Habakkuk that He was raising up the Chaldeans (the Babylonians) to come in as agents of divine judgment in the land. The going had gotten tough and was about to get tougher. But these things did not drive Habakkuk away from the Lord. He returned repeatedly to the Lord in prayer in the face of these troubles. Why did he do that? What is it about the Lord that keeps us coming back to Him in prayer when the going gets tough? We come to Him time and time again because of who we know Him to be. Because of who He is, we can entrust to Him the concerns and burdens of our hearts and souls. So, who is He? As we examine this portion of Habakkuk’s prayer, we find a vivid description of who God is and what He is like. Habakkuk addresses his prayer to God in a specific and personal way. He is not crying out to some indistinct deity with agnostic desperation. He calls upon the Lord by name. In verse 12, he addresses Him as “Lord,” and when English versions use all capital letters for “Lord,” it is an indication that the Hebrew word underlying this translation is the divine name YHWH. This is the name by which the Lord revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush, saying, “I Am that I Am.” The name is related to the Hebrew verb “to be,” and speaks of God’s self-existence. He was not created by anyone or anything else, nor is He dependent upon anyone or anything else. The very mention of His name tells us that He alone is the only God who is. Habakkuk called Him by that name which testifies to His existence and His attributes. The attributes of God are not like pearls on a string, which may be removed from one another and examined in isolation. Rather, they are like facets of a diamond, which can only be appreciated fully when seen in relationship to the other attributes. God’s attributes are revealed to us in Scripture, and seldom do we find a single attribute stated in isolation. They cannot be separated. As Tozer noted, “almost every heresy … has arisen from believing about God things that are not true, or from overemphasizing certain true things so as to obscure other things equally true. … We can hold a correct view of truth only by daring to believe everything that God has said about Himself.”[1] In Habakkuk’s prayer, he shows us that he dares to do just such a thing. He believes what God has said about Himself – all of it! And, as he calls out to Him in prayer, he reminds us of who this God is and what He is like. He is YHWH, the eternal, omnipotent, holy, faithful, sovereign, and steadfast One. And that is good news for us when the going gets tough, because we can get going to Him in prayer. I. YHWH is the eternal God. Whenever we sing John Newton’s hymn “Amazing Grace,” we sing a stanza that is not original to the song. It says, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.” We don’t know who