Faith That Finds a Resting Place
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
When the elders were first Discussing and they decided to do this brown paper passages series It didn't take me really long to decide what my first passage was going to be and as you can see from the title up there I've chosen the book of Habakkuk or Habakkuk is that I'll call it Habakkuk the rest of the night. I love this book because of what it teaches about real faith and and what teaches us, what it reveals about the sovereignty of God. Now I need to already put in a disclaimer because everybody's been talking about how I'm going to go through the Book of Habakkuk. And we will actually be reading the entire last chapter of the book, but most of this tonight is actually going to be a history lesson, because what really I love about this book is the way he could pray that prayer that you're all very familiar with, when you understand the context of what was going on when he wrote that prayer.
So a lot of the message tonight is going to actually be really an introduction more to the book of Habakkuk and helping explain what was going on in Israel's history at the time and why that prayer is all the more remarkable. You know the prayer I'm referring to. The short version goes something like this. Though life circumstances are kicking me in the face, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. If you had to summarize the book, that's kind of about a good enough synopsis of the book as any other. It is such a deep and personal profession of faith in God, no matter what the situation may be. It expresses the kind of deep rooted faith all true believers aspire to have.
It's the kind of faith that I want to be better at exhibiting. When I first encountered this prayer years ago, I didn't take the time to really appreciate the backdrop against which the book was written. Later, when I did take time to study the book, I was blown away by the severity of what Habakkuk was facing, and it made his prayer even more remarkable. That's what I'd like us to focus on tonight, as I mentioned, the story of Israel leading up to Habakkuk's amazing prayer of faith. And if you know the book a little bit, if you've read it before, you know it opens up with Habakkuk really wrestling with this vision that God has given him. God has shown him what's about to happen, which is basically Jerusalem is going to get wiped out.
Habakkuk, like many of us, is struggling with that. He says, why? And he knows who's going to do it. And when he looks at the evil nation God's going to use, he says, it's bad enough. You're going to come in here and wipe us out. but you're going to use that wicked ungodly nation to do it. And Habakkuk's really wrestling with that. So again, it just makes it very real. Some years ago, I taught a miniseries on Habakkuk in adult Sunday school. Little did I know then that God was about to take Gail and I through our own times of major testing, where we would get to see if we could honestly pray like Habakkuk did. Just a brief catch up with that.
It's just a brief synopsis of what I'm referring to. This time of heaviest testing for Dale and I was between the years 2008 and 2012. And by the time those years were over, we would see our income drop by 30 percent. Our net worth would drop by a quarter of a million dollars. Our reputation would have been tarnished and most of our closest friends estranged from us because of our... We took a stand for righteousness. We would need to leave the church we had served in and raised our family in for almost 30 years. And to cap it off, on June 6, 2012, at 2 a.m., I would have a heart attack on the outskirts of London, bringing an abrupt end to my European vacation.
So that's how my four years went. How about you? It was an adventure, to say the least, and we still live with some of the after effects to this day. I've never been one to have trouble sleeping. Gail will tell you that as soon as the lights are out and I'm in the horizontal position, I'm gone. I'm asleep. But for the first time in my life, I knew what it was like to lay awake for most of the night, trying to get my mind to stop whirling. We were in a set of circumstances that no matter how hard we tried, we weren't going to get away from them. We had no choice to wait on the Lord and to write it out. Now some of you can relate and have faced even greater trials and tribulations than that, so I don't stand up here to say that I've had the worst experience of anybody. Some of you you could get up here and trump my experiences.
But we've all, probably at different times, have had situations that really overwhelmed us. And we were like, I've got no plan B. I've got nowhere else to turn. And that was a situation that we found ourselves in. There's an old saying, the same sun that hardens the clay softens the butter. Some who profess Christ when faced with adversity have their hearts hardened like clay in the sun and become bitter and sometimes even abandon the faith altogether. Others, like butter in the sun, find adversity softens their heart and draws them closer to the Lord. Why do some, when faced with hard things, seem to get more and more bitter, while others seem to get softer and sweeter?
I suppose there are lots of ways you could answer that question, but I know that for believers, faith or the lack thereof is a major factor in determining which effect trials will have on the heart. I like the man Habakkuk because he was a man of faith and he was real. What I mean by real is that he wasn't just some stoic person who could feel the pain of adversity or who didn't care so that it didn't really affect him that much. There are some people like that that just are kind of pretty steeled individuals and so, come what may, they just let it roll off their backs. But Habakkuk wasn't like that.
He was a guy that really felt the sting. He felt the pain, and yet he was a man of tremendous faith. Some Christians think having faith means you learn to grit your teeth and just buck up and never question or cry or have sleepless nights. If so, then Habakkuk was not a man of faith. Before Habakkuk wrote his beautiful prayer of faith, he spent some serious time wrestling with what God had shown him was about to happen. The first two chapters of Habakkuk are a dialogue between him and God where he's protesting basically what God is about to do and God is just patiently responding and answering his questions but says but I'm God this is what I'm gonna do. I said a moment ago that the second reason I like the book of Habakkuk is because we get a glimpse of how God in his sovereignty is orchestrating world events according to his purpose. There is a tendency for us to not see our lives as subplots in a much bigger story. If I think of my life story as the story, it will tend to cause me to place greater weight and import on the events in my life than they might otherwise warrant. You could Take what I just said and say that I'm arguing that our individual lives don't really matter at all. But that's not what I'm saying. Jesus' illustration about the Father's care for the sparrows and the lilies of the fields relative to us proves that our individual lives do matter to God. But what I'm trying to say is that we need to accept that there is a story of all stories being told by God himself. And each of our life stories fits into that story. I kind of like Doug Wilson's synopsis of God's story. He says it's a boy kills dragon and gets the girl.
That's kind of the whole gospel right there. Our life stories fit into that meta-story, and it's up to God to determine how we fit into it. Consider the atheist who is a historian. He sees the rise and falls of empires. sees the birth and decline of nations, he sees war and peace. To that historian, these are all just loosely connected world events that don't have any unifying context to them. That historian is going to have a hard time learning really anything from history if all he can see is a big jumble of random stories in the history of mankind. What we need is the perspective that our life story fits rightly, and I mean it fits rightly into God's ultimate story, and by faith we believe that the good guy wins in the end.
That's a huge step of faith for me to look at my life, whatever the circumstances may be, and to say it fits rightly into the story that God is telling. In order to better appreciate Habakkuk's closing prayer in chapter 3, then I'd like to do a brief survey of a chunk of time in Israel's history, leading up to and immediately following when Habakkuk was written. In our survey, we're going to see how God decreed the rise and fall of major empires for the twofold purpose of chastening Israel for their infidelity and to make his name known among the nations. Now bear in mind these nations were not nice empires. They were known for their internal wickedness and for their cruelty to their enemies. Some of the research I did on some of them, they were definitely not nice people. God had revealed to Habakkuk in a vision that he was about to use Babylon to severely discipline Judah for their sin. This revelation greatly distressed Habakkuk.
He actually starts his writing with the oracle of Habakkuk, what the prophet saw. The word oracle could mean just the word utterance, but it can also mean burden. And I think if you actually listen to Habakkuk's opening question to God, you can almost translate it as gripe. But I think burden is a better translation for the word oracle here than utterance. opening up in Habakkuk, what Habakkuk wrote, his first question to God, his first complaint, if you will, was, 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?
Yes, some pretty strong accusations against God. Basically, God, why are you asleep at the wheel? Why are you not paying attention? 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. Have you ever thought, oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? That's about as raw as it gets. I suspect many here tonight can relate to what Habakkuk was thinking and feeling. It almost sounds like he was living in our day and age, with the way our nation is deep diving into its immorality.
But it was worse. Imagine if God showed you in a vision that he was about to cause North Korea to invade and conquer America because they had rejected him as Lord. You knew the Koreans would destroy cities and kill many people and take most of the survivors back to North Korea to be slaves and to be indoctrinated with their worldview. Sure, you knew America was not perfect, but North Korea, God's going to use North Korea to discipline us. How could God use such a godless nation to discipline America? Can you see why Habakkuk was just a little bit freaked out about what God was going to do? Now Habakkuk was written, wrote about his vision sometime around 580 BC by best estimates and theologians debate back and forth, but I settled on 580 BC. King David had consolidated his rule over Israel and made Jerusalem the capital in around 1000 BC. So remember all the strife and trouble they had with the Kings until David finally was the official king over all of the nation of Israel. That was about 1000 BC, made Jerusalem the
capital. And that's only 420 years before Habakkuk's vision. So again, picture, King David's finally on his throne, got total control, all the bad sons are out of the way, Jerusalem's the capital, and just 420 years later Habakkuk is seeing the vision about Babylon, about to come into town and destroy everything. And then just 40 years after David had established his throne, that's when Solomon built the first temple. So we're really talking about not a lot of time has elapsed. How did Israel get into this mess? How do they go from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in 400 years? And that's what we want to see in our overview of this chunk of Israel's history. Our unbelieving historian I referred to earlier, he would have one explanation for why these changes occurred. He will argue all the socioeconomic factors that led to the rise and fall of the nations. But we're going to see from the biblical record that in fact God was orchestrating world events for his purposes. And I found this really fascinating
as I went through it because we see clearly in the scripture where God said what he was going to do and these whole empires that came into being and then God says I'm going to take out that empire and that it sure enough that empire disappeared. And even in one passage we're going to look at, we actually get to see what God was thinking and what one of those kings was thinking. And to understand that, you know, when you look at it from just a human perspective, we can say, oh, what's going on? We can freak out. But when you realize that God is the one that's in control and directing it, it puts a whole different twist on the story.
Now, we are going to pick up the story shortly before 700 B.C. or about 120 years before Habakkuk was written. That's all I'm going to be covering here in this little history lesson is about 120 year period leading up to when Habakkuk was written. You think about it, you know, overlay that with our time period. That's kind of like going back to the 1900s for us. I mean, that's only as far back in Israel's history as we're reaching as if we were to reach back to the 1900s. You know, even some of us can recall stuff that happened. Not that we live there, but we can recall stuff that happened back then. So we're not talking about a huge period of time.
I want to impress upon us how rapidly a nation or empire can collapse under the weight of its own sin But first I just got to quickly do a quick jump back even further in time just to show you what was going on before God started the big moves that I'm going to talk about This is kind of what the Middle Eastern area look like don't worry about adjusting your prescriptions I know that's a blurry image, but this is a what the area around It's the Mediterranean Sea, that big body of blue towards the bottom screen, that little gray blob underneath the yellow area, that's Cyprus. And then you had the Hittite Empire was the dominant power and force.
This is before Israel. Israel's still down in Egypt. Egypt's kind of that pale yellow area down below. And Egypt's also controlling what now would be Jerusalem in that area. That's kind of what the world looked like, just so you can kind of get your bearings. They tried to overlay a Google map on top of that, so you can start to get a feel for what the geography looks like today. So you can see that the Hittite Empire took up a lot of Turkey and some of those areas there. And then, as God worked through the Exodus, brought his people out, you can now see what happened. God allowed Israel to come in, to conquer the Promised Land, to take dominion over all of it.
And you can see all that purple area is what the entire nation of Israel looked like after they had finished conquering the Promised Land. And again, if I just overlay a Google map on there for you so you can sort of get a feel, you can see how much of what we call Syria today that they actually occupied at that time.
So that's sort of where we're gonna not start to pick up our story. Our story is gonna pick up some years after Israel has become a divided kingdom. There were 10 tribes that made up the northern kingdom of Israel and two tribes that made up the kingdom of Judah. If you remember any of your history, after they had their split, one king went north and he had 10 tribes followed him and two stayed loyal, Judah and Benjamin, and they stayed in the southern region. So we referred to the northern kingdom and the kingdom of Judah. The northern kingdom had gotten really bad under their various kings. You can read about them in Chronicles.
And while all this decay in Israel was going on, God had allowed the Assyrian Empire to come to power in the region. Now, I think I'll pull that slide up now. Hopefully it'll fit the story. The picture you're seeing is a little bit advanced from where I'm at in my notes, but this is where we're going to end up with the Assyrian Empire. Notice what's happened to Israel. A little blob of purple there.
The Assyrian Empire had come to power in the region. They didn't know it, but God was using them as a tool for disciplining Israel. To get a feel for how bad it had gotten in the Northern Kingdom, we can just go to First Chronicles chapter 5, 25 through 26, and we just get a brief description. It says of them, But they broke faith with the God of their fathers, and hoard after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of King of Assyria, the spirit of Tiglath Piliser, King of Assyria, and he took them into exile, namely the Rubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Haile.
Haibor, Harah, and the river goes into this day. And so God has allowed and ordained that the Assyrian Empire would come up, he stirred up their hearts, and And he said he motivated them to want to come in and take over large chunks of the nation of Israel. And it's actually at that point in history where we see ten tribes disappear from the history records. This was the beginning of a 20-year campaign where the Assyrians waged war with the Northern Kingdom and they eventually captured the capital city of Samaria. It used to be that for the Northern Kingdom, Samaria was the capital. And so they came in, they conquered that, those ten tribes disappear, and all's were left with is what we would call the kingdom of Judah, that little area of purple there.
And again, a little overlay of the map here, just so you can get a modern day feel for how far their territory spread. Notice that it was God who stirred up the Assyrians to go after the northern kingdom. The Assyrians didn't know that they were being used by God. Meanwhile, back in the Kingdom of Judah, the little purple area up there, Ahaz was king at this time. Now he was not a good king. By all accounts, he was a patsy who sought to curry favor with anyone that he could. When he first began to reign, he was facing some harassment by an alliance that had been made up between the northern kingdom when they still existed.
And the Syrians, those two had come together, they were agitating, they were putting some pressure on the southern kingdom of Israel. And so he was being harassed. So to get them off of his back, he actually appealed to the Assyrians. He said, hey, Assyria, would you kind of give me a hand here? I've got the northern kingdoms and I've got Syria giving me trouble, so I need your help. So he made an alliance. And if you again, you know the history, that got him into a lot of trouble with the prophet Isaiah, who rebuked him for looking to man and not God for his help. The Assyrians did end up helping Ahaz by conquering in the Northern Kingdom as the map shows.
But in return, Ahaz was essentially in the back pocket of the Assyrians from then on. He was, in essence, just a puppet king, greatly subject to what the Assyrians wanted. Well, Ahaz dies at the age of 36. He was so wicked that the people wouldn't even allow him to be buried in the special place that they had reserved for kings. They had a special sepulchre area. Israel and the kings get buried. They said he was a bad dude.
We're not going to bury him. They just put him somewhere out in a common grave somewhere You can see that in Second Chronicles chapter 28 next up After keen a has is his son Hezekiah. You should be familiar with that name The first thing that he does is he orders the priests and Levites to repair the doors to the temple that a has had allowed to decay and to remove all the defilements of the sanctuary that a has allowed a Ahaz had allowed the temple to get in this terrible state of repair. He had brought in a lot of other pagan Idols and other things and it just totally defied this place that God had said that was reserved for me and me alone It says it tells us in 2nd Chronicles It took him 16 days to go in and clean out all the stuff that a has had brought in Now hezakiah did a lot of good and brought about a lot of reforms But unfortunately, he was still under Assyrian influence because of Ahaz's earlier collusion with them.
During Hezekiah's reign, the Assyrian king who had led the destruction of the northern kingdom died. So the king who had been responsible, who had been in charge of Assyria and had brought us to the situation you see up there on the map, he dies. And so Judah, the little purple area, Judah says, Oh, we have an opportunity to finally free ourselves from Assyrian control. So they began to agitate to get out from underneath Assyria's thumb. Well that didn't sit well with the newest Syrian king, Sennacherib. He was the son of the previous king. So he decides it's time to finish the work this father started and he starts making plans to lay siege to Jerusalem.
So he says, my father took all the other purple area. I'm going to take the rest of it. At first, Hezekiah tries to bribe him off with money, which Sennacherib accepted. But then he double-crosses Hezekiah and went ahead with the siege anyhow. Second Chronicles 32, 10 through 19, records Sennacherib's taunting of God, Hezekiah, and the people of Jerusalem as the siege begins. And I just want to read this for you. But this is amazing. So again, what I want you to keep remembering what's going on in the King's mind and what's going on in God's mind, God's plans. But this is what's going on in the Sennacherib thinking.
And here's what he came and said as he started the siege against Jerusalem. Thus says Sennacherib, King of Assyria, on what are you trusting that you endure the siege in Jerusalem? Is not Hezekiah misleading you that he may give you over to die by famine and by thirst when he tells you the Lord our God will deliver us from the hand of the king of Assyria. Has not this same Hezekiah taken away his high places and his altars and commanded Judah and Jerusalem? Before one altar you shall worship and on it you shall burn your sacrifices? That's true. Do you not know what I and the fathers have done to all and my fathers have done to all the peoples of other lands? Were the gods of the nations of those lands at all able to deliver their lands out of my hand?"
It kind of sounds like he's got a little bit of a Napoleon complex here, huh? Napoleon hadn't happened yet, you know.
But, "...who among all the gods of those nations that my father is devoted to destruction was able to deliver his people from my hand that your God should be able to deliver you from my hand? Now therefore do not let Hezekiah deceive you or mislead you in this fashion and do not believe him for no God of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or from the hand of my father's how much less how much less will your God deliver you out of my hand pretty arrogant boast huh and his servants said still more against the Lord God and against his servant Hezekiah and he wrote letters to cast contempt on the Lord the God of Israel and to speak against him saying like the gods of the nations of the lands who have not delivered their people for my hands so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver his people for my hand and they shouted it with a loud voice in the language of Judah to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall to frighten and terrify them in order that they might take the city and they spoke of the God
of Jerusalem as they spoke of the gods of the people of the earth which are the work of men's hands." So you got the picture? If you're in that little dinky purple area and you got that big blue area laying siege against you and they're right outside the walls and they're talking like that you're gonna have trouble holding your water and if that's all you can see is that perspective you know you're pretty nervous from a human point of view this was a pretty scary and dire situation it looked hopeless but we know from scriptures what was really going on Isaiah 10 5 through 19 gives us a fascinating look at what was in the mind of God and what was in the mind of Sennacherib father when he waged war against the northern kingdom of Israel.
So we're gonna go back a little bit here. I'm gonna read out of Isaiah and this is God speaking saying what he was thinking and what Sennacherib's father was thinking when he came in and took over the northern kingdom. Here's God speaking first. Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands is my fury against a godless nation I send him and against the people of my wrath I command him to take spoil and seize plunder and to tread them down like the mire of the streets but he does not so intend and his heart does not so think but it's in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations not a few so you say you've fallen it so God has just said I was the one who stirred up the king and sent him in to be my whip in the lives of the northern kingdom."
But he says, but this is not what the king was thinking, for he says, the king says, Are not my commanders all kings? Is not Calno like Karakimish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus? As my hands has reached to the kingdoms of the idols whose carved images were greater than those of Jerusalem Samaria, shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols as I've done to Samaria and her images. So you see what God's thinking, what the king's thinking.
The king of Assyria has no idea what's in store for him. God goes on in this passage to declare that once Assyria is done serving his purposes that God will punish them for their arrogance and their wickedness. To drive home the point of who's in charge, God continues his rebuke of the king of Assyria in verse 15 at same passage with these words and here's what God just says to the Assyrian king shall the axe boast over him who hues with it or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it as if a rod should wield him who lifts it or is if a staff should lift him who is not wood therefore the Lord God of hosts will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors and under his glory a burning will be kindled like the burning of fire. The light of Israel will become a fire and his holy one a flame and it will burn and devour his thorns and briars one day. The glory of his forest and of his fruitful land the Lord will destroy both soul and body and it will be as when a sick man wastes away. The
remnant of his trees of his forest will be so few that a child could write them down. And then apparently it must have been a Syria at one time must have had very lush forests that they were known for. But God is saying, there's gonna be so few trees left that a little kid could count them. One, two, three, four. God was gonna so obliterate their land that there wouldn't be hardy trees left to count. Well Hezekiah prays for deliverance from the siege and God miraculously answers and Sennacherib fails in his bid to conquer Jerusalem. So at this time, Sennacherib, you know you can go back and read the story of how God miraculously delivered Israel. He's defeated. He goes home. We still have a little purple spot up there. The kingdom of Judah is has survived this challenge. The King Sennacherib he returns to Assyria. As soon as he goes back home, he's in the house of his God.
I don't know, you know, crying in his milk or whatever they drink and his sons kill him. Although Hezekiah did many good things, he was prone to being though too proud. This pride led him to invite the king of Babylon to come, visit, and show off all his riches. This act of foolishness led Isaiah to rebuke him. Now an interesting comment on this event is found in 2 Chronicles 32-31. It says, And so in the matter of the envoys of the princes of Babylon, who had been sent to him, Hezekiah, to inquire about the signs that had been done in the land, God left him to himself in order to test and to know what was in his heart.
The Babylon was not yet empowered. Their empire is starting to form. Their king had heard all the stuff that's going on down there around that area called Jerusalem. They had heard how this little dinky nation had defeated the Assyrians. He wanted to know what was up, so he sent an envoy into Judah and Hezekiah said, Come on in. Let me show you all of our riches. Let me show you all the good stuff we have here. And apparently, what was going on there was Hezekiah was a little bit puffed up with pride and he wasn't giving God the glory like he should have. And God was testing him to see what was in his heart. And instead of giving God praise for the victory, it sounds like Hezekiah was kind of soaking up some of the glory for himself is the way I would interpret it based on the fact he was rebuked and that one verse I just read.
Well moving on, we come to King Manasseh, son of Hezekiah. He became king at the age of 12, and actually he was a co-regent with his father, Hezekiah, for 10 years. So for 10 years, I'm not sure why that happened, but they made him king, and so for 10 years, father and son were co-regent of the land. And then after that 10-year period, then Manasseh took full responsibility, sole responsibility for leading the people. Now Manasseh reigned for 55 years in Jerusalem, and you can read all about him in 2 Kings chapter 21. He was particularly evil. He reintroduced many of the pagan practices that his father had eradicated from the land. He rebuilt the high places and the altars to Baal. Now remember we're still just talking about a 120 year period of time of all of this going on that we're talking about.
Manasseh brought back the practice of astrology and the worship that was entailed. We read that he built altars for the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord." So he took a space that God himself had said, this is mine and for my name only, and he built altars to the hosts of heaven. And he made his son pass through the fire and practiced witchcraft and used divination and dealt with mediums and spiritus. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. To say that God was provoked to anger is probably an understatement. In 2nd In Kings 21, 10-15, we read God's judgment on Israel because of Manasseh's sin.
Here's how to provoke God was. "'Now the Lord spoke through his servants, the prophets, saying, Because Manasseh, king of Judah, has done these abominations, having done wickedly more than all the Amorites did who were before him, and also has made Judah's sin with his idols. Therefore says the Lord, the God of Israel, behold, I am bringing such calamity on Jerusalem and Judah that whoever hears of it, both his ears shall tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem, the line of Samaria. What's that all about? The line of Samaria, where was Samaria? It was the capital of the Northern Kingdom. And God's basically saying, I'm about to do to you what I did to the Northern Kingdom.
And I will stretch over Jerusalem, the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab. And I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. And I will abandon the remnant of my inheritance and deliver them into the hands of their enemies, and they shall become as plunder and spoil to all their enemies, because they have done evil in my sight, and have been provoking me to anger since the day their fathers came from Egypt, even to this day." Now we know that this prophecy is foretelling the eventual destruction at the hand of Babylon. after Jerusalem had fallen to Babylon, Jeremiah wrote these words again revealing that God was the one doing all this. Jeremiah wrote, Israel is a hunted sheep driven away by lions. First the king of Assyria devoured him, and now at last Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, is not his bones.
And again, I'm reading after all of the events have happened. This is after Habakkuk's time. So we're jumping forward to get a glimpse and looking back to say what was going on during all that history. God was the one who had brought a Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to gnaw on Israel's bones. Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold I am bringing punishment on the king of Babylon and his land as I punished the king of Assyria. So why did Assyria come and go? God. Why did Babylon come and go? God. Scriptures are very clear. As we will see, Babylonia was used by God as his whip to discipline Israel, but they did not know this. And because of their arrogance and cruelty, God was going to punish them. Once again, we see a situation coming that looks to be the story when in fact, it's just another subplot in the story that God is telling. As we're going through all of this, try to again keep in your your mind, okay, what if I did not believe in God or I wasn't thinking about God, how
would I interpret the world events that are going on, how would I interpret a Syria coming in and clobbering me, how would I interpret, send a crib and all of that. I would look at those as that's the story, that's what's happening, my life stinks, it's really bad and we would just disassociate it from a higher purpose and a higher story and I want us to keep making an application to our own lives that whatever your story is today, it fits rightly into a bigger story that God is telling. Well the time for Manasseh's evil reign ends and his son Ammon becomes keen in his place. Now not much is written about him except that he continued in Manasseh's footsteps and did more evil.
He wasn't too popular either because his servants murdered him after only two years after he became king. I suppose that's one way to enact term limits. If you don't like the king, just kill him. But two years he served, and all we know is that he was just as bad as his father. Now at this point in our chronology, it's about 643 BC, and we're only about 60 years away from when Habakkuk was written. So we started the story 120 years prior, now it's 60 years prior, we're getting closer to what's going on.
After Ammon is murdered, the people made his son Josiah King. Yay. Finally, we get a good King. Josiah was a very good King. He was made keen at the age of eight. And I'm kind of wondering if that's why he ended up being a good King, because perhaps there was an opportunity for some good, godly adults to influence his lives in those formative years, instead of before his father had a chance to have much influence on him. But he served a total of 31 years. We are told that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left."
It's interesting that it says he walked in the ways of his father, David. How many generations away from David do you think he was at this point in time? He's 15 generations away from David. David was 15, great, great, great, great, great grandpa. And yet they referred to him as he walked in the steps of his father, David. Was there no ancestor, keen, in between that was worthy of comparison? Josiah had an exceptionally tender heart towards the Lord. Second Kings 23-25 describes him this way.
Before him there was no keen like him who turned to the Lord with all of his heart and with all of his soul and with all of his might, according to the law of Moses, did any like him come after him. Now that is a legacy. How would you like that written about you at the end of your life? The other notable part of Josiah's story is how he responded when temple workers found the book of the law that had been lost sometime during the previous king's reigns. That's how bad it was. The book of the law that God had given them, the previous kings had lost it. Nobody had any idea where it was. Josiah sends people in to start rebuilding the temple, getting it back in repair, and they find it buried under a bunch of rubble somewhere, and they bring it out to the king.
And so it says, when Josiah had read, had the book read, he tore his robes in anguish because he realized how far the people had drifted from God's commands and the judgment they stood under. I mean, for a loose comparison, what if we lost the Bible for, you know, a hundred years and people were just living their lives and all of a sudden we find the Bible. Can you imagine what the impact would be on people who wanted to know God? All of a sudden realize how far they had drifted. Josiah orders an entourage from his courts to go seek out a prophet of the Lord and inquire what the Lord wants them to do. They end up going to a prophetess named Hilda and this is what the Lord said through her. Thus says the Lord, behold I will bring disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read, because they have forsaken me and they have made offerings to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands.
Therefore my wrath will be kindled against this place, and it will not be quenched. But to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus you shall say to him, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, regarding the words that you have heard, Because your harvest penitent and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you declare the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place."
This was your classic good news, bad news story. Because Josiah's heart was soft and penitent, God promised to preserve him and not let him see and live through with the calamity that was coming. But even his good actions were not enough to stave off the judgment that God was going to bring against the king of Judah. So again, because of Manasseh, God said, I'm going to raise up a nation. We know that nation was going to be Babylon. It's going to come in. It's going to wipe you out. And so once again, even Josiah sees the writing on the wall. And fortunately, God, at least that I will let you escape it, but it's going to happen.
Josiah's life comes to an end when he was murdered by the Egyptian king Pharaoh in a battle. At this point, another shift in empires is going on. A serious empire is collapsing. And they and Egypt are trying to fend off the rise of Babylonia. So again, a lot of world dynamics, world politics are going on. Syria is in its last days. Babylon's on the rise. Egypt is also there, not much of a force these days. So they and Assyria together are saying, hey, maybe we can team up and hold Babylon off. And apparently it was during one of these campaigns to challenge Babylon that there was a battle, and Josiah went up there to see what was going on, and he was, apparently, it's not clear what he was doing up there, He went up to see Pharaoh Necco and Pharaoh Necco kills him.
Um, and that's how, uh, Josiah's life comes to an end. Well, we're quickly closing in on the time that Habakkuk was written around 612 BC, Assyria falls to Babylon. Um, when Babylon captures Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, God once again, orchestrated the rise and fall of empires for his glory. And the dominant player is now Babylon. And again, this is a picture of Babylon after they've already conquered Judah. So again, I'm a little bit advanced in my map here, but imagine Judah is still there, not yet taken. But there's again the modern map. You can see that Babylon really extended quite a ways, had quite a bit of territory under its belt.
With the Assyrians out of play, this gives Egypt an opportunity to make a grab for Jerusalem. And we read that Egypt's Pharaoh, Neko, he swoops into Jerusalem. Remember up until this time Assyria really has the dominant influence of what's going on in Judah. But because Assyria is now out of play, Egypt swoops in and they go ahead and they haul off the new king who is Jehoaz off to essentially what's an Egyptian prison.
And Jehoaz reigned only three months in Jerusalem before he was captured and taken by the Egyptians down into their territory. Now, Jehoias was not a good king either. We're told that he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that his father had done. And you can sort of see the the temperature is turning up, the frequency of the turnover of kings is increasing. And then you get in this guy's only in office for three months and he's taken captive. And what happens then is after Pharaoh, Necco took him away, he then went, the Pharaoh went and took Josiah's other son Elohim and renamed him Jehoiakim and made him a puppet king over Jerusalem. So effectively Judah was now a vassal state of Egypt, no longer really under Assyrian influence but now under Egyptian control. Babylon's there brewing, they're becoming bigger and stronger, they're agitating, but meanwhile while there's this gap in power, if you will, because of Syria's fading off. Egypt's trying to make a play and so they take
out the one Jehoiaz and they put in Elohim and say your name's now Jehoiakim and basically his job was just to collect taxes and send the money back to Egypt. He rained for 11 years and like so many kings before he too did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. It was not a great time to be living in In Jerusalem Can you see the global chess game God is playing as he works out to put his plans in place? It's just fascinating when you realize that This was all God orchestrating all of these events and these nations had no clue That they were pawns God was moving around his chessboard working out his situation Well Babylon ends up pushing Egypt out of the way and takes control of Jerusalem as one of its vassal states The other destruction hasn't occurred yet, but Babylon now comes in and exerts its influence.
It says, Egypt, you're out of here, and it takes control of Judah. Jehoiakim at first becomes a servant to Babylon, but after three years, he starts to push back against Babylon. He says, this isn't fun anymore. I think I'm going to have an uprising. I'm going to try to get you guys out of my life. This marks the beginning of the end for Judah and it's right now, right now in history is when Habakkuk is written. So Habakkuk is living, he sees all this going on, God gives him this vision what's about to happen. He's been seeing all this interplay, what's going on, Egypt's in, Egypt's out, now we got Babylon's in here, the king is doing all this wicked stuff and God gives him this vision that guess what, the end is near. I'm going to come in and wipe out Judah. That's the backdrop of Babylon. Babylon sends in troops to quell Jehoiakim's revolt, but God is not going to be fighting for Jerusalem. In fact, just the opposite. The king of Babylon did not realize that he too was a puppet.
Second Kings 24 2 through 4 tells us, and the Lord sent against him, Jehoi sent against him, meaning Jehoiakim, notice who sent, the Lord sent against him. He had Chaldeans and bands of the Syrians and bands of the Moabites and bands of the Ammonites and sent them against Judah to destroy it according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by his servant the prophets. Surely this came upon Judah and the command of the Lord to remove them out of his sight for the sins of Manasseh according to all that he had done and also for the innocent blood that he had shed for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood and the Lord would not pardon.
a sad statement. You know, the Lord would not pardon, but the sin had been that bad. And so once again, Babylon thinks they're doing their thing. But God says, No, I'm adjutating the hearts of the Babylonians to come in and do my work. Well, as they say, resistance is futile. Jerusalem is no match for the Babylonian forces, especially when God is not fighting for them. The rebellion is their rebellion is put down in Jehoi, Kim resigns himself to then just being under Babylonian control until his death. After his death, his son Jehoi-Chin is made king of Israel. Like his father, it was a name only, and he served just three months before Jerusalem is conquered, and like his father before him, he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. You'd think one of these kings would get a clue by now that things aren't going very well. Maybe God's not on our side these days, but now they keep getting deposed or getting bumped off, and they just go back and repeat the same sins of their father. Not a very bright group at all.
Finally, the day that Habakkuk had seen in his vision arrives, we read about it in 2nd Kings 24, 10 through 17. This is what Habakkuk had been dreading. This is what happened in that point in history. At that time, the servants of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, came up to Jerusalem and the city was besieged, and Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to the city while his servants were besieging it, and Jehoiachin, the king of Judic, gave himself up to the king of Babylon himself and his mother and his servants and his officials and his palace officials. Basically he just surrendered. The king of Babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign and carried off all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasure of the king's house and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the Lord which Solomon, king of Israel, had made, as the Lord had foretold. He carried away all Jerusalem and all the officials and all the mighty men of Valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths.
None remained except the poorest people of the land. And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, the king's mother, the king's wife, his officials, and the chief men of the land he took into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. And the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon all the men of valor seven thousand and the craftsmen and the metalworkers a thousand all of them strong and fit for war and the king of Babylon made Mattana I'm sorry I'm babbling that name Jehoi chins uncle keen in his place and changed his name to Zedekiah so why did I take all that time to give you a history lesson the first reason was to help us get into Habakkuk's head and understand the fear and consternation he had when God said to him, look, and this is in Habakkuk, look, his ain't God's answer to Habakkuk, why God, look among the nations, observe, be astonished, wonder because I am doing something in your days you would not believe if you were told for behold I am raising up the Chaldeans, that's the Babylonians, that
that fierce and impetuous people who marched throughout the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs. That had to absolutely blow a back its mind. A second reason for our history lesson is because we need to see that history is really all about his story. All historical events that happen are not simply random events caused by humankind. history is the unfolding of a story written, directed, produced, and starred in by God himself. It is a story that has pleasant moments and tragic moments. It's a story that from our vantage point contains good and evil. We like the good, but we don't like the evil so much. Habakkuk didn't like the evil either that he saw. He was even more astounded when he learned that God was going to use an evil nation like Babylon to discipline Judah.
We stand in a foolish and a precarious place when we try to accuse or defend God for the evil that we perceive around us. Far better is it for us to simply recognize that God is in the process of bringing glory to himself. We may wonder at and be mystified at the means God uses, but we must never doubt the truth of God's justice and righteousness as he pursues his ultimate purpose. As a footnote to our history lesson and to underscore that God is in control, let me read a few brief excerpts from Jeremiah 51 concerning Babylon. What was God going to do with Babylon?
Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will stir up the spirit of a destroyer against Babylon, against the inhabitants of Leb-Kamai, and I will send to Babylon winnowers, and they shall winnow her, for Israel and Judah have not been forsaken by their God, the Lord of hosts. But the land of the Chaldeans is full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel. The Lord has stirred up the spirit of the keen of the Medes and Persians, because his purpose concerning Babylon is to destroy it, for that is the vengeance of the Lord." Vengeance for his temple. And guess what happened in history? The Persians came in and took out the Babylonians. And again, you won't be able to see this map at all very well, but that's the same Google map. I've been overlaying everything else, but basically Persia was monstrous. It just took over a huge swath of land.
In 539 BC, God fulfilled his promise to the Babylonians and they were defeated by the Persians. Now, with all of that as background, perhaps it will be much more powerful the the next time you read Habakkuk chapter three. Let me read it for you now. Oh Lord, I have heard the reports of you and your work. Oh 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 to Timon and the holy one from Mount Peron, Selah or pause. His splendor covered the heavens and earth was full of his praise. His brightness was like the light raised, flashed from his hand, and 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 tents of Kushan in affliction. The curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. 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 horse on your cherry of salvation? You stripped the sheath from your bow, calling for many arrows, Selah. You split the earth with 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 thresh 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.
Selah. You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors. You came like a whirlwind to scatter me, rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret. You trampled the seas with your horses, the surging of mighty waters. I hear and my body trembles. My lip quivers at the sound. Rottenness enters into my bones. My legs tremble beneath me. Yet I quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us. Though the fig trees should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the field yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 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 high places. That is faith that has found a resting place. Let's pray. Father, we can't help but feel like Habakkuk in a situation like this. And what can we do just to put a hand over our mouth and to be silent and to watch, to pray, to acknowledge, to praise you? We know that you are sovereign in all things, that you are accomplishing your purposes. And Father, perhaps a day will come for America where we will face similar situation and we We will see some nation rise up or some economic calamity or some other thing happen.
And we'll want to point to our president or our leaders and we will say, why did you allow this to happen? And we will look for someone to blame. And perhaps at one level, they are responsible for their sins that contribute. Yet Father, we have to recognize that just like you made these empires rise and fall, are also at work in our lives today in the world today allowing events to occur to shape the story that you are telling. And so come what may, Father, whether we deem it pleasant or we deem it unpleasant may we be found faithful to be like Habakkuk, that even though everything's bad that we would still hope in you and put our confidence and our trust in you and be patient and wait for you to deliver us in good time. Father make us a people of ever increasing faith. We just pray in your Son Jesus name. Amen.
