Scripture: Habakkuk 1
Sermon: Habakkuk – kukkabaH
Topics: justice, dialogue, hope, grittiness, resilience, abundance
Preached: March 23, 2014
Rev. Mike Abma
Preamble
The 12 Minor Prophets have within them different clusters.
The middle cluster of 3 are the prophets Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah.
Two weeks ago we heard from Nahum.
Nahum lived during the Assyrian oppression of Judah.
Nahum pleaded with God to ACT – to do something!
Well, actually, Nahum pleaded with God to do something very specific – to bring ruin and desolation on Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria.
Judah has suffered too long!
Nineveh needed to be destroyed.
Now we turn to Habakkuk.
From all appearances, Habakkuk lived a little later than Nahum, but not much.
Habakkuk also cries to God for help.
But in Habakkuk’s prophecy, God answers, and he answers more than once.
Here we have a prophetic dialogue:
Habakkuk cries/prayers
and God answers.
We do not know what the name Habakkuk means, exactly, but it seems to mean “one who struggles.”
Habakkuk is one who struggles with God.
Habakkuk is a mini-Job.
Job’s was a personal struggle.
Habakkuk struggles on behalf of his people.
Most prophets spoke on behalf of God to the people.
Habakkuk speaks on behalf of the people to God.
Habakkuk has something to say.
He demands justice.
Habakkuk’s was a time of violence.
Judah and Jerusalem were pawns on the international stage.
They had the Assyrian Empire to the north.
The Egyptian Empire to the south.
Judah and Jerusalem were being squeezed in the middle.
It left everyone poor, hungry, tired, hopeless.
And so Habakkuk bangs on the door of heaven demanding an answer.
So let’s read the first chapter and into the second chapter:
Habakkuk’s Complaint: How Long, O Lord?
2 O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
and you will not save?
3 Why do you make me see wrongdoing
and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
4 So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails. (?)
The wicked surround the righteous—
therefore judgement comes forth perverted.
LORD’S RESPONSE The Babylonians are Coming
God gives Habakkuk an answer.
God was rousing a new Empire, the Chaldean Empire or Babylonian Empire in the East.
It was about to come rampaging through their territory with horses and armies.
No one would be able to stand up to their power and might.
5 Look at the nations, and see!
Be astonished! Be astounded!
For a work is being done in your days
that you would not believe if you were told.
6 For I am rousing the Chaldeans,
that fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth
to seize dwellings not their own.
7 Dread and fearsome are they;
their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.
8 Their horses are swifter than leopards,
more menacing than wolves at dusk;
their horses charge.
Their horsemen come from far away;
they fly like an eagle swift to devour.
9 They all come for violence,
with faces pressing* forward;
they gather captives like sand.
10 At kings they scoff,
and of rulers they make sport.
They laugh at every fortress,
and heap up earth to take it.
11 Then they sweep by like the wind;
they transgress and become guilty;
their own might is their god!
Habakkuk’s Complaint: Will They Wipe Us Out?
Habakkuk is somewhat shocked by this answer.
Would the good be destroyed with the wicked?
Would the good and the bad be swallowed by this new power in the land?
Would this empire simply gather everyone in their net and drag them down?
Where was the justice in that?
12 Are you not from of old,
O Lord my God, my Holy One?
You* shall not die.
O Lord, you have marked them for judgement;
and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.
13 Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,
and you cannot look on wrongdoing;
why do you look on the treacherous,
and are silent when the wicked swallow
those more righteous than they?
14 You have made people like the fish of the sea,
like crawling things that have no ruler.
15 The enemy* brings all of them up with a hook;
he drags them out with his net,
he gathers them in his seine;
so he rejoices and exults.
16 Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and makes offerings to his seine;
for by them his portion is lavish,
and his food is rich.
17 Is he then to keep on emptying his net,
and destroying nations without mercy?
2I will stand at my watch-post,
and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,
and what he* will answer concerning my complaint.
GOD’S ANSWER — WOE TO THE WICKED
God give a rather long answer that stretches to the end of chapter 2.
It is a list of warnings, or woes,
To the greedy —
those counting on false sources of security,
those relying on human power
those relying on false gods —
it ends with these words;
But the Lord is in his holy temple;
Let all the earth keep silence before him!
To which Habakkuk whispers his final prayer.
A prayer acknowledging God as the Creator and Sustainer of all things.
God the one whom no power can stand before.
There is an acknowledgement of the coming violence
But in the end
there is a stunning affirmation of trust:
HABAKKUK’S PRAYER ENDED WITH
Though the fig tree does not blossom,
and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
and there is no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
and makes me tread upon the heights.*
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
Through the ages Habakkuk has been a source of comfort and strength to millions who have faced daunting situations that look hopeless.
Whenever, and wherever God’s people have suffered,
Habakkuk has been there to voice their pain
and to re-affirm their trust.
The closing words of Habakkuk are so striking, so moving, that they have become the epitome of hope in terrible times.
In many ways, these words are the Old Testament version of what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:
Though we are hard-pressed, we are not crushed;
Though perplexed, we are not in despair;
Though persecuted, we are not abandoned;
Though struck down, we are not destroyed.
There is a grittiness to this faith.
There is a resilience to this hope.
There is something that resonates deep within us that this is most surely true:
that no matter how bad things look
no matter how difficult things become
God is King, and all things are under his command.
ZIMBABWE
Some of you may know the name Pastor John Bell.
This is not the John Bell who is Scottish, a musician, and liturgist.
No, this John Bell is pastor in a church in Harare, Zimbabwe.
When John was last here, he said that Habakkuk was the prophet they turned to again and again.
Things in Zimbabwe were so bad.
People were starving.
AIDS was epidemic.
Violence was everywhere
Politics was corrupt under President Mugabe.
“We have been turned into a nation of beggars,” Pastor Bell said.
Christians in Zimbabwe are tired, frustrated, and angry.
And that is why Habakkuk is their prophet.
He speaks for them.
He speaks to them.
MIRROR IMAGE kukkabaH
But does Habakkuk speak to us?
You may think the title for this sermon looks a little odd,
But in many ways I think we live in the opposite set of circumstances as Habakkuk.
In many ways, our world is the mirror opposite of his.
Habakkuk lived in a tiny weak country surrounded by strong Empires.
We are the Empire. The United States is the strongest nation in the world and has been for some time now.
Habakkuk lived under oppression and the threat of destruction.
He lived under Assyrian oppression.
He lived facing the threat of his world being destroyed by the Babylonians.
Things were violent and threatening to get more violent.
Things were going from Bad to Worse.
Today, in spite of the many smaller conflicts in the world, we live in perhaps the most peaceful age in human history. Steven Pinker, the Harvard Social Psychologist, has made it his career to illustrate how the last 70 years of human history have seen less violent deaths than any previous age. It has resulted in what some historians are now calling The Long Peace — the period from 1945 – today.
Habakkuk lived in a time of poverty, starvation, destitution.
The other year, The Spectator, the oldest magazine in England, ended the year with this Editorial “Why 2012 Was the Best Year Ever.”
The Editorial went on to describe in detail how globally
There is less hunger
less disease,
less violence
less poverty
and more prosperity globally than at any other time in history.
This, they wrote, is a Golden Age.
Let me take the opposites a bit further.
Habakkuk cried to God. His was a constant lament.
In our world, in our western culture, fewer and fewer people are crying to God.
As I said a few weeks ago,
there are more and more happy atheists,
or at least content agnostics,
who feel they have nothing to say to God,
And besides, even if they did, they feel there would be no one listening.
It would be like whistling in the dark.
If anything, our age is less like that of Habakkuk’s
and more like that predicted in Deuteronomy 8
When God says to his people
“When you have eaten your fill
Built your homes
When your flocks and herds have multiplied
And your silver and gold has increased,
Then do not forget the Lord your God.”
NEW AFFIRMATION
And so, with that in mind,
I would like to re-write the end of Habakkuk
for our day and our Golden Age.
Though there is food in every fridge,
and abundant waste in every landfill;
though there is a car in every garage,
a chicken in every pot (Truman),
a cell-phone in every pocket;
though the 401K is generously funded,
and the cash flow is more than comfortable;
though we have a different pair of shoes for every day of the week,
and a different wardrobe for every day of the month;
though we are richer than most in the world,
and more comfortable than we deserve.
Yet, we will rejoice in the Lord.
We will exult in the God of our salvation.
God the Lord is our strength.
He is the one who makes our feet like the feet of a deer,
and makes us tread upon the heights.
0 Comments