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THE ANSWER NOBODY’S EMBRACING (3)
(Habakkuk 2:5-20)
SUBJECT: Faith—waiting on the Lord.
F.C.F: Why doesn’t God do something?
PROPOSITION: Since the Lord will accomplish his own agenda, we must find our place in him.
INTRODUCTION:
A. The psychologist Leon Festinger is credited with the theory of cognitive dissonance. It describes the feeling of discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs. When there is a discrepancy between beliefs and behaviors, something must change in order to eliminate or reduce the dissonance.
More simply it means that God has made us rational beings, we are bothered when things do not make sense to us. Habakkuk, for example, struggled because he faced conflicting beliefs. On the one hand he was convinced that God was good and just, but on the other hand, life didn’t make much sense.
B. First, as we have seen, God’s people had abandoned him. How could a good and just God allow that to happen? It didn’t make sense. And
God’s answer was that he was sending the cruel
Babylonian army to overrun the land and conquer the people.
This only made matters worse for Habakkuk.
How could a good and just God allow a more wicked people to conquer a less wicked people? God’s answer is contained in chapter 2. In short, the
Babylonians would not prevail indefinitely. In fact,
God would set all things right in the end.
C. Now this truth that God would make things right gives us a wonderful opportunity to understand what it’s all about. What was God’s intention all along? What is all of this leading to? And we found our answer in verse 14: “
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” God is glorifying himself in all the earth, and he invites us to come and enjoy his glory. We are hard wired to enjoy the Lord’s glory.
But when our race rebelled, we struck off to make our own way. We rejected the Lord’s glory, and sought our enjoyment, our happiness, in something else. And instead of the greater happiness we thought we would achieve, we found only misery instead. The Babylonian army is a picture of this bid for happiness—and the Lord says it is an utterly empty quest.
So as we saw last time, we were made to enjoy God’s pleasure. God made all things good for
1 our enjoyment that we might taste and see that the
Lord is good. But when we abandon God, we live for the pleasure itself. Like that conquering, Babylonian army scooping up all the stuff they could carry as they robbed and plundered, we seek pleasure in stuff, and the stuff alone is unsatisfying, a dead end. It was given to lead us to God.
And we were made to find our protection in the Lord, our true and abiding safety and security in the almighty God who made us. But when we turned away, we sought to establish our security in our own strength, like that Babylonian army, seemingly invincible and invulnerable. But it could not last.
Eventually the conqueror would be conquered, and then what? The dangers and threats of life are meant to drive us to Christ as our Shepherd and Friend.
And we were made to find prestige, glory in the Lord, who is all glorious. But when we left all that, we could only seek glory in self, like that
Babylonian army, building up its vast city, one of the
“seven wonders of the ancient world.” Yet now, that wonder lies in ruins, buried in the dust. All the marvels of this creation were given to display the greater glory of God our Maker that we might enjoy his glory.
IV. WE MUST ENJOY THE LORD’S PURITY.
A. And now we must peer into one of the darkest aspects of sin and its deadly effect on us. We were designed for purity. We were made to enjoy goodness and cleanness and straightness and rightness. Indeed, as God is restoring us, the fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
It is the Holy Spirit who indwells us and who brings about all these things.
But in our foolish bid for autonomy, making our own way apart from God, we became twisted so that we no longer desire purity. Rather, our hearts crave for perversity. We now naturally take pleasure in corruption, degradation, degeneracy, decadence, cruelty, wickedness, and evil. This is now default mode for the sinner.
B. And this, too, is illustrated by the vileness of the Babylonian conquerors. “
15 “Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink— you pour out your wrath and make them drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!” Yes, that means exactly what it says.
The image is that of a person who takes his neighbor
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1207-29A out to the tavern, gets him good and liquored up, and then strips him and mocks him in his shameful, naked, drunken, stupor. That’s the image. It is to glory in cruelty, mockery, and shame.
First, we should ask whether or not this is meant as a mere figure of speech or to be taken literally. It does seem strange to think that an army would bother to take the time to get people drunk in order to abuse them. I think it is rather a picture of their cruel, mistreatment of those they conquered, raping them, stripping them for shameful sport.
And we should understand that this same vileness resides in our own hearts as well. No one forced the Babylonian army to behave this way. It’s just that they finally could do what they really wanted to do deep down inside. The restraints had been removed. There was no more societal pressure against it, nor was there any power that could prevent them. They were only doing what comes natural to all of us.
C. And if you doubt this, just consider the rising scourge of pornography in our land. A couple of decades ago, only a few people knew of the drugstore in one of our local towns where you could go and buy the dirty magazine discreetly, when nobody’s looking. A few decades ago in my home town, one of the ne’er do wells in our community would gather his raunchy friends and show 16 millimeter films on the inside wall of his machine shed at night. Now, of course, so-called soft porn is showing in theaters, and the worst of the worst filth is freely available in every home compliments of the world wide web. And, of course, pornography is inherently cruel and hateful to others, taking pleasure in shaming and degrading others, even if they do so willingly, people who were made in the image of
God.
And be sure you understand, nobody is forcing it on us. It’s there, and people turn to it, because we want it, because deep down inside the people who were created to enjoy purity, instead love perversity. That’s where sin has left us.
And we ourselves are being destroyed by it. I hope you see this. This love of degeneracy is drawing us into its filth and ruining us as well. When you kick mud against another, much of it splashes on you a well. “
16 You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink, yourself, and show your uncircumcision! The cup in the LORD’s right hand will come around to you, and utter shame will come
2 upon your glory! 17 The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, as will the destruction of the beasts that terrified them, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.”
D. God has made us for purity. This is the hopeful joy of his restoring work in us in Christ. He is not simply cleaning up our outward behavior but giving us new minds and new affections. It’s like the crazy guy who loves to eat from the garbage pail: moldy bread, rancid chicken, coffee grounds, dirty potato peelings. All the while, the finest foods are available, but they turn his stomach. And suddenly he’s cured! He comes to his right mind, and he recoils from the filth and stench and flees to feast on what is wholesome and pure. That’s the glory of
God’s restoring work in Christ. We were made to enjoy the Lord’s purity.
And…
V. WE MUST ENJOY THE LORD’S PROFIT.
A. We were also made to seek that which is truly lasting and valuable. Verse 18 begins with a question: 18 “What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols!” You immediately recognize the absurdity of making an idol, calling it your god, and then calling on it to save you. But what is implicit in the question is that profit, true and lasting gain, is a good thing, to be desired and sought.
B. This theme of “profit” or “gain” runs through the Bible. It assumes that we rightly desire that which is of lasting, enduring worth.
For example, the unique little book of
Ecclesiastes is an extended experiment. Solomon the wise man sets out to discover if there is anything
“under the sun,” that is apart from God, that would make life worth living. If you leave God out, is there anything really worth living for? Or as he says in the third verse: “ 3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” His answer is given up front: “ 2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” Apart from God, all is meaningless, a mere chasing after the wind. But notice what is assumed: that gain, truly lasting profit is desirable, and we should seek it! God made us to enjoy his profit.
Our Lord Jesus echoed and expanded this
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1207-29A very truth. In Mark 8:36 he said,
“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”
He doesn’t discourage gain. He only points out that worldly gain is worthless. Jesus also spoke about two kinds of treasure: treasure on earth which everybody seeks, but absolutely nobody keeps, or treasure in heaven, which cannot be lost.
We were made for gain. God made us to enjoy true productivity, to produce “fruit that will last” unto eternal life. We were made to enjoy labor for that which would endure, labor in the Lord which is not in vain.
C. But so many, like that idolatrous
Babylonian army worship what is false. “ 19 Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake; to a silent stone, Arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it.” Idolatry, worshiping cars and homes and bank accounts and money is folly because it cannot help. It cannot really answer our deepest and truest needs.
And it will always fail us in the end.
What is of greatest worth? Seek that! And, of course, it is the Lord himself. He is the pearl of greatest price. He is true profit, lasting gain, treasure in heaven. He is the one that if you have him, you have more than all, and if you do not have him, you have less than nothing.
CONCLUSION
I think we may have this whole evangelism, witnessing, sharing Christ with others, all wrong. We tend to think that people are out there having a good time, enjoying life, truly happy and content, and here come the Christians out to ruin it all. This is certainly the world’s perspective, and perhaps we have allowed this to influence us as well.
Christians are fun-haters, wet blankets, killjoys, and spoil-sports. Christians are like the parents at the sleep over. It’s just getting into high gear at
2:00 a.m. and the dad says, “Okay, knock it off, lights out!” It’s like that famous quotation by H.L.
Mencken: “Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
But here we see that this is all completely backwards.
1. God made us to enjoy his pleasure. Sinners apart from God can only seek their pleasure in stuff, and find themselves empty and miserable.
3
2. God made us to enjoy his protection.
Sinners who have rejected God can only seek their protection in self, which is no protection at all.
3. God made us to enjoy his prestige, his great glory. Sinners who have turned their backs on God seek glory in and for themselves, which is dull and boring and dead.
4. God made us to enjoy his purity. Sinners are enslaved to perversion and only continue to sink lower and lower into degradation and shame.
5. God made us to enjoy true profit, finding lasting gain in him. Sinners seek lasting value in worldly treasures—and never, ever find them.
God has entrusted us with this great news. He sends us to call his banished children home again—to find true hope and health and life in Christ.
This is why you were born. And you will never find peace, never know your place, never understand your purpose, until you find your pleasure, protection, prestige, purity, and profit in the
Lord Jesus Christ, who said,
“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”
This is what it looks like when all is set aright: “
20 But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.”

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