Well, good morning everyone.
My name is Zeke and I am a member here at Red Village and I’m on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. So I work with college students at UW Madison, seeking to reach the campus with the Gospel and equipping students for a life of sharing the Gospel, studying Scripture and pursuing God, both during their time in college and for the rest of their lives. It is a joy and an honor once again to bring you God’s word this morning and continue on where we left off in Habakkuk. Now that might be a confusing sentence to some of you since the last time that I preached on Habakkuk was April of 2024. So I’m not expecting you all to remember everything, just most of what I said last time.
But it’s been a minute. So for a lot of what I’m going to talk about today, the context of this lesser known book is pretty needed. So with that in mind, I’m going to begin with some context of what has happened so far in the Book of Habakkuk and where the Book of Habakkuk is placed in the context of the Bible. So Habakkuk is one of the minor prophets which is found towards the end of the Old Testament. So it’s about 2/3 of the way through your Bible.
This book was written somewhere from around 615 to 600 BC after the fall of the Assyrian Empire and during the rise of the Babylonians, but before the beginning of the Babylonian exile of Judah. So here’s a bit of a rundown of where we are in the history of Israel. King David is a good grasping point for us to begin in highlighting where this is happening. Contextually, he’s a pretty familiar guy. So he’s king of the twelve tribes of Israel and has a son Solomon, who becomes king and builds a magnificent temple to the Lord.
But because of Solomon’s sin, and that he is not fully following God with his whole heart, God says that he will tear 10 of the tribes of Israel away from his family. Solomon dies. And after a huge mess of war, idolatry and lots of sin, the twelve tribes of Israel split into two kingdoms referred to as Israel. The northern kingdom composed of 10 of the tribes and Judah and the tribe of Benjamin. Israel immediately set up two golden calves to worship so the people wouldn’t go to Solomon’s temple in Judah.
And Israel was a very wicked nation for most all of its existence. After about 200 years of this, we see in Isaiah the prophesied and fulfilled Judgment on Israel as the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom. After the kingdom split, Judah followed God some of the time, but was still often consumed by idol worship and other evils. Habakkuk is written in Judah around 300 years after the kingdom split, or like 350 years after King David died and about 100 years after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians. This is around the same time of the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and is all leading up to when the Babylonian empire would lay siege on Judah.
This is all also taking place before the exile, so before Israel lives in captivity in Babylon, before Daniel, before Esther, and especially before the books written about the return of the exiles like Ezra, Nehemiah. As for structure, the book of Habakkuk consists of two complaints from Habakkuk the prophet and God’s responses to those complaints. And the book ends with a psalm of faith. Habakkuk’s first complaint is him crying out to God because of the wickedness in Judah. He says that justice never goes forth and the wicked surround the righteous.
His complaint is that it seems like God isn’t doing anything to punish the wickedness and sin happening in Judah, and it is just being allowed to continue. God responds to this first complaint with something very different than what Habakkuk was probably expecting or hoping for. God promises destruction of Judah by the Chaldeans or the Babylonians as they’re also known. Habakkuk’s second complaint is one in response to this. He is in shock as he asks God how.
How can he do this? How can he turn Judah over to a vile and wicked nation more evil and idolatrous than Judah itself? And he asks, how can it be good and right for God to raise up such an evil nation to destroy Judah? God answers Habakkuk’s second complaint in two parts. First, which is what I covered in my last sermon by telling Habakkuk that the righteous shall live by faith.
Or in other words, righteous people should faithfully trust God’s plans to declare that although it is difficult for him to understand, God’s plan is what is most good and absolutely just. And Habakkuk should rest in faith, knowing that this is how God will always operate. But God does answer in a second part, and this is our text of study today, the Five Woes of Habakkuk. So that’s quite a bit of context, and I hope at least some of that made sense. But there’s one other thing that I want to talk about before we read our passage for today, and that’s the emotional setting.
I feel like we can easily gloss over what this would have been like for him. We can read it as a Bible story where things are hard, because, you know, in the Bible, things are always hard. But then we don’t really think about how this would feel for us today. At this point, Habakkuk was probably pretty haggard. He was suffering at the hands of the wicked and watching helplessly as the few righteous people who remained in Judah were beaten down and oppressed at his side.
In his emotional petition for God to bring his salvation, he learns of the impending conquering and destruction of his city and his people for them to be dragged into a foreign nation even more wicked than the wickedness found in Judah. This is hard, and I don’t want to skip over how complex and difficult the situation for Habakkuk is and all of what it means for Habakkuk to live by faith in trusting God’s plan. So our passage for today is Habakkuk 2, 6, 20. But I will be reading the entirety of chapter two, which begins at the end of Habakkuk’s second complaint. And then verse two starts God’s response, which spans the remaining 19 verses of the chapter.
So please open your Bibles to Habakkuk chapter 2 and follow along with me.
Habakkuk2. I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me. Write the vision, make it plain on tablet, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time.
It hastens to the end. It will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come, it will not delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up.
It is not upright within him. But the righteous shall live by faith. Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol like death he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations, and collects as his own all peoples.
Shall not all these take up their taunt against him with scoffing and riddles for him, and say, woe to him who heaps up what is not his own for how long, and loads himself with pledges? Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be spoil for them, because you have plundered many nations. All the remnant of the people shall plunder you for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them. Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high to be safe from the reach of harm.
You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples. You have forfeited your life for the stone will cry out from the wall and the beam from the woodwork respond.
Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity. Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that people labor merely for fire and nations weary themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea? Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink. You pour out your wrath and make them drunk in order to gaze at their nakedness.
You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink yourself and show your uncircumcision. The cup of the Lord’s right hand will come around to you and utter shame will come upon your glory. 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.
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. 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. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent before him. Please join me in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this word of Habakkuk the prophet and your response to him. We thank you for the ways that this reveals your justice and helps us to learn more of how we can live by faith, trusting in your plans. Please speak through me. Give me words to speak.
Help people to receive the message from you, not in my own wisdom. Jesus name, Amen.
And so, as God continues in his response to Habakkuk’s second complaint, he begins to describe five woes, five aspects of injustice that Babylon is doing and that are cause for the impending judgment of Babylon. God sees Habakkuk in his distress and he listens to his complaint. He sees that it is hard to see a wicked nation like Babylon flourish. And these woes are a comfort to Habakkuk that God sees the wickedness of Babylon and will bring about justice. As in the first part of God’s response to Habakkuk in chapter two, Babylon or the Chaldeans aren’t explicitly mentioned.
God uses him and he to describe the wicked character in the story. And I think that that is intentional, both so that this judgment on Babylon can be applied to the wicked nations to follow Persia, Greece, Rome, and many others, but also I think, because although this is a specific judgment brought against the impending oppressors and conquerors of Judah, it is also a critique of Judah. And in many ways, if we are willing to listen, it can be a critique of us also.
The first complaint of Habakkuk, which is the first part of chapter one, is one crying out to the Lord because of the wickedness in Judah, wickedness that was not being addressed. And I think that although these woes were primarily spoken against the Chaldeans, they are also written to show the justice found in the destruction of Judah by the Chaldeans. However, for simplicity as I expose it, I will be speaking primarily in the context of the he being the Chaldeans. So with that broader view of the recipient of the judgment in our passage, let’s dive in.
The first half of verse six provides the immediate context for what God is declaring. Shall not all these take up their taunt against him with scoffing and riddles for him, and say, or as the NASB translate it, will not all these take up a song of ridicule against him, even a saying and insinuations against him, and say the all these is referring to all nations and people which he gathers for himself in his greed and unrest. All these nations, tribes, and peoples of the earth, who have witnessed and experienced the wickedness, destruction, oppression, and greed of the Chaldeans. In a way, this is to say, will not those who are oppressed eventually cry out and act against their oppressors? And so we enter into the first woe of the Chaldeans, the first warning of the earthly consequences of their warring wickedness and greed that is as unsatisfied as death and hell itself.
So this is verse 6B through 8 is our first woe. Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own for how long, and loads himself with pledges. Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be spoil for them, because you have plundered many nations. All the remnant of the people shall plunder you for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities, and all who dwell in them.
Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own. For the Chaldeans, this was all of what they had wealth and possessions brought from the stripping down of the nations to which their armies laid waste. They stripped the nations bare of the people, possessions and property. God is displeased with the accumulation of much through the downfall of others. We can see this from the beginning and the establishment of God’s law with the people of Israel.
Leviticus 19 and 25 speak about this in different ways. The Chaldeans receive even more wealth from the surrounding nations in pledge given in fear as a means of putting off their destruction. Their greed is their own undoing as their unjust accumulation of all that has led to their debtors having no option but to rise against the Chaldeans in vengeance. And in verse 8 God declares that this destruction of the Chaldeans will happen because of all the plundering, violence and death that they have caused to all the cities of the earth. This is right and just earthly punishment to the Chaldeans for what they are doing to the earth, just as their conquering of Judah is right and just because of Judah’s own wickedness.
And this should serve as a warning and a question to us also where do we acquire money and things in unjust ways? Where do we gain at the loss of others or acquire things in ways that perpetuate the unjust treatment of others?
Verses 9 through 11 the second woe woe to him who gets evil gain for his house to set his nest on high to be safe from the reach of harm. You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples you have forfeited your life for the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the Woodwork respond. Verse 9 takes this acquisition of wealth from a national level to a personal and familial level, and also brings up the issues of how we utilize that wealth. Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house. This is not describing evil gain made by the inequitable use of his property, but is speaking of acquisition of wealth utilized for the benefit of his family and home.
First was addressed how wealth was acquired wickedly. Now we address the wicked use of that wealth. Verse 9 speaks of the ways this is primarily done to set his nest on high to be safe from the reach of harmony. God is condemning the utilization of wealth to create safety and security for the family line. John Calvin writes from the perspective of the man doing this in the passage, Were I satisfied with a moderate portion, many would become my rivals.
But when my treasure surpasses what is common then I shall be as it were beyond the reach of men and and when others envy one another, I shall escape. The sin of this woe is in establishing the future and well being of oneself and lineage far above the well being of those around them. This is bound in selfishness and trust in personal plans and wisdom instead of loving neighbor as self and trusting in the wisdom of God with the obedience of his commands. I’m going to slightly tangent to go over the way this woe very directly applies to us today because I think this is a great temptation and wickedness that we can easily engage in without awareness. So C. Stacy woods, the first president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in the United States, writes in his book Some Ways of God.
He writes this how easily we citizens of heaven, secure in Christ Jesus, find our imagined security in earthly things. Take for instances the insurances and Social Security which surround and undergird us. Let me first hasten to say that there is nothing whatsoever intrinsically unchristian in these supports and guarantees which seem to cover our every need from the cradle to the grave. The danger is in the effect that these securities have upon us. Spiritually we feel secure against almost all of the disasters of life that can overtake us, so we no longer feel the same intensity our need for God.
If my home burns down and I’m out of work and there are children to feed and I have no insurances to fall back on in agony, out of desperation, I will cry out to God to meet my need, but with multiple insurances the pressure is off. The same is true of all types of wealth. These things give us the sense of material security which is dangerous for our spiritual welfare. My greatest need is to feel and understand my need of God. I need the every hour is always true and should be the constant cry of our hearts.
To feel my need of God my Father and consciously to depend on him is spiritual health. To feel secure apart from God is spiritual sickness and disaster. Woods puts it well into words to feel my need of God my Father and consciously to depend upon him is spiritual health. To feel secure apart from God is spiritual sickness and disaster. When our security is found in anything but God, we are using our wealth and insurances in place of trust in God.
Woe to us for setting our nest on high to be safe from the reach of harmony. I think this is a pretty controversial view of security and wealth today, even in the church to see both the call to steward wealth well and to be wise and also actually fully faithfully adhere to the call to not build bigger barns for ourselves in security and comfort and just in case, but to use our wealth to care for our brothers and sisters in need around the world and give generously in such a way that we must continually trust in the provision from God so as to ensure we never rely on ourselves. But this isn’t some new or novel perspective on how to live, but it is a warning that God explicitly gives to his people in Deuteronomy 8 as he tells them about the prosperity he will bring them if they continue to obey his commandments.
So this is Deuteronomy 8:12 lest when you have eaten and are full, and have built good houses and live in them, and when you have herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there is no water. Who who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know that he might humble you and test you to do you good in the end? Beware, lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you.
So you shall perish because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God. The warning to Israel was to be wary that they looked to their wealth for security and forget to set their hearts on the Lord above all else. Solomon’s reign was the height of wealth and comfort for Israel and took place immediately before their fall into idol worship and the division of the kingdom. And I won’t go too far down this rabbit hole, but I do think that we should take it as a warning to us, our church and our nation that America.
But I do think we should take it as a warning to us and our church for our nation. America is one of the most comfortable and wealthy nations in the world and it is becoming increasingly irreligious and self idolatrous. But leaning back to our passage, God presents the punishment for this selfishness and wicked use of wealth in verse 10 shame that is self devised for your family and a forfeiting of life, whereas God declares to Israel, like the nations that the LORD makes to perish before you, so shall you perish because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. Verse 11 functions as a sort of transition, intertwining the woe of evil gain for house with the third woe and making it clear that it is unavoidable that their wickedness and sin will remain hidden, for even the home which is the base for the evil, will cry out, proclaiming the wrong that it was done. And so here is the third woe.
Verses 12 through 14 woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity. Behold, it is not from the LORD of hosts that peoples labor merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The third woe is a woe of foundations. To build a city on iniquity and wrongdoing to establish something upon the death and destruction of others is a true evil indeed.
But motive in work is more of the issue addressed in this woe and the cause for God’s justice to come upon the Chaldeans. The foundation of all that the Chaldeans are doing is built upon wood, hay, and straw, to use the analogy of Paul in First Corinthians 3. The things of vanity that serve no purpose and are destroyed in the fire that will test all things. Their work was to build themselves up at the expense of others, a foundation that is a far cry from being set on Christ with gold and precious metals, things built in Christ and for God that serve a greater purpose and than our own self glorification. Here is yet another woe we should look to and question ourselves.
God declares that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Do we want to take part in this proclamation of the glory of the Lord, or spend our life in vanity, proclaiming our own false glory? Too often we excuse ourselves from taking part in the proclamation of the glory of the Lord in all the earth because of things that are good or not inherently bad. But too often we are caught in the trap of laboring in vanity only for things which will perish in the fire, and not for eternal things. Verses 15 through 17 the fourth woe woe to him who makes his neighbors drink.
You Pour out your wrath and make them drunk in order to gaze at their nakedness. 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 upon your glory. 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. The fourth woe is an interesting one. At face value, this seems to be a critique of forcing and coercing others into drunkenness, which is in itself wrong and worthy of woe and punishment. But I don’t think that this is the heart of this woe. Habakkuk2.5 says, Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest.
His greed is as wide as Sheol. Like death, he is never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples. And so this is a base for our understanding of this woe. The drunkenness of the Chaldeans is not one of strong drink, although that is probably also true, but it’s a drunkenness of the gluttony and greed for the conquering of others and spilling their blood on the ground.
So the evil in this woe of enticing others to drink to drunkenness is to entice them to join in the warring cause and share in the drunkenness of desiring to destroy all nations. The many kings who joined with the Chaldeans in their battles would be the neighbors led to drunkenness. Kings and kingdoms who have been enticed to desire nothing more than to kill, conquer, and destroy other nations and peoples alongside the Chaldeans. Without this aid, Babylon would not have been able to bring about the destruction that they did. But one with so great a drunkenness for ultimate dominion would by no means slow their greed for wealth, peoples, and power to honor the agreements with their fellow drunken warring nations.
So not only are the Chaldeans intent on evangelizing their lust for blood, but then in their desire for power, they turn on these same nations who they led into a love for war, expose their nakedness, and so as to destroy and subdue these supposed allies. When this critique is taken to be the metaphor that it is, we see this woe is not one of a local sinful and abusive behavior leading to drunkenness and then sexual exploitation, but it’s a national level of enticing others to sin and then betraying these allies out of and insatiable drunkenness for power and dominion. God’s response to this is to respond in kind. God will do to these Babylonians just as he later proclaimed to do to the metaphorical Babylon of Revelation 18 and pay her back as she herself has paid others, and repay her double for her deeds, mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed and again in Revelation 16 and God remembered Babylon the great to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. To bring justice for this great wrong of wickedness.
God will in his righteous wrath bring about destruction and justice upon the Chaldeans, and show them as fools in their own folly and unrighteousness. And this justice will consume their glory and reveal its emptiness and put the justice and glory of God on full display in the process.
Verses 18 through 20 the fifth woe 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. Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, awake to a silent stone, awake. Arise. Can this teach?
Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent before him.
And at last, in this fifth and final woe, the full folly of the Chaldeans is completely put on display. The Chaldeans worship their false gods of wood and metal, and attribute their victory to them. They will see their destruction of the nation of Judah as them and their false gods defeating Yahweh, defeating the Lord, who brought the Hebrews out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. They will look to and worship their false handmade gods, who cannot talk or do any works of power, and claim them to be higher than the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And how foolish, how foolish are they to put their trust in silent stones and speechless idols?
How foolish are they to assume they know the plans and purposes of God, and suppose that he was not at work in allowing them to conquer Judah? Who are they to suppose they can defeat the Lord God Almighty, or to know his thoughts, plans, and purposes in the world? All who worship anything but the one true God are are but fools, trusting in their own creation. We do this when we look to anything but God to pursue anything but him. We do this when we attribute our gain to ourselves, or do anything to gain glory for ourselves.
And so this section ends with but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent before Him. For all the gods of the world, the only true and living God is the Lord. We stray and worship the things created when our Creator sits on his throne above all our right response and the response all will have is to see and acknowledge the Lord for who he is. The greatest part of all this is God’s glory and justice being revealed.
The Chaldeans think they are the ones receiving ultimate glory, but it is all a part of God’s ultimate plan for justice and redemption. The Babylonian empire fell and is no more, but our God reigns forever and we now see his ultimate plan for redemption accomplished in Jesus, who will one day bring true justice to all people, tribes and kingdoms for all time. All of this is a fulfillment of Psalm 2, the nations raging and God reigning, which I would love to read and dive into. But that is another sermon for another day. Now this is a pretty dense text and a contextually tough passage.
We looked at the five woes God is declaring of the wickedness of the Chaldeans and how he will bring his justice and worked through not only what each of these woes meant for the Babylonians, but took short detours exploring the ways we are guilty ourselves and so also did deserving of receiving these woes. But wrapped up in all this is a complex web of God’s justice and I want to spend most of the rest of our time focusing on this. When I speak of justice here, I am referring specifically to how God rightfully brings punishment to the wicked. There are multiple levels to this complexity. One is seeing the impending destruction of Judah by the Chaldeans as good and God ordained.
We talked about this a lot last time and won’t go into that aspect too much today. The complex aspect of God’s justice we will be focusing on has to do with how we should look at the justice of God through these five woes. Part of this answer is simple. God told Habakkuk these five woes as a comfort, so he would know and trust that the wickedness of the Chaldeans would not go unpunished and that God would bring justice. But the rest of this answer is a bit more complex.
Let me tell you a story to help bring out some of this complexity. During the Cold War there was a union between the communist nations of Eastern Europe known as the Warsaw Pact. You can think of it as the communist version of NATO. A friend of mine who has done a lot to engage in global missions throughout his life began his ministry around the same time. There was a meeting of many of the leaders of the nations involved in the the Warsaw Pact.
My friend found a picture of these presidents in their black suits gathered together. He cut it out of a magazine and posted it in his office. And every single day he prayed for each leader by name. He would look at this picture and pray for each and every leader that God would either redeem them or remove them from power. These leaders collectively not only caused the suffering and death millions of people, but they actively opposed Christianity and were some of the chief persecutors of the church in their day.
My friend would pray that Jesus would make his salvation known to them and change their hearts so that they would see their sin and turn from it, or that God would bring his justice and remove them from power so their wickedness would come to an end. Five years later, in 1989, there was a revolution in nearly every one of those countries, removing the leaders from their positions of power and functionally ending the Warsaw Pact. The Berlin Wall fell. And in many ways, his prayer was fully answered. By 1991, every country had an entire change of power.
And overall, every single person prayed for was removed from their positions of power. One killed, most removed, and one of them was even possibly redeemed. As he later spoke of himself as a Christian, his prayer was answered. But it was not just his prayer. It was the prayer of millions, some who began praying it in 1917 when the Russian revolution led to the Communist control of the Bolsheviks.
Today, my friend prays the same prayer for many other dictators of the world that they would be redeemed or removed. This is the paradigm by which we must view the things of our passage today with a desire for redemption through Christ and a desire for a bringing of justice and punishment for the wicked. When we look at the five woes of Habakkuk, we should rejoice in that God is bringing justice to wickedness and that this is an attribute of God. And we should also pray for the redemption of our souls and the souls of others so they might not experience the wrathful justice of God that Babylon experienced. It is easy for us to look at our enemies and demand that they receive justice and to look at ourselves and plea and expect redemption.
It’s a whole lot harder for us to look at ourselves and see the ways that we do deserve God’s justice and look at our enemies and pray for them to be redeemed.
We should seek to have the truths of these woes shape our lives and our response to God’s justice. So here are two chief desires to come to mind for us to do this. So first we should desire and trust in God’s justice. As I said before, there are many ways that this is easy and ways it is much harder. This is most often easy when it’s time for our enemies to be punished.
But it’s sometimes a hard truth for us to accept. We don’t really like to talk about hell or even think about it. We often like to avoid thinking too hard about the passages in the Old Testament where God destroys or punishes a person, family or nation because of their sin. Some heretical sects of Christianity have even gone so far as to try and claim that the God of the Old Testament and Jesus are entirely different and that the God of the Old Testament isn’t good, maybe more neutral or evil altogether, but separate from Jesus. We like to look at the gentle and lowly aspects of Jesus and forget about the times that Jesus was angry or quite literally drove people from the temple with a whip when they were sinning in his Father’s house.
And we definitely don’t want to think about the holy and righteous Jesus depicted in Revelation with a sword bringing judgment. It may be hard for us to understand because deep down we don’t think we deserve judgment and we want to cry out unfair, mean unjust at a God who truly sees and reveals our sin and that we are deserving of death, when this is the greatest, holiest and most loving thing that our God can do. So the way we desire and trust in God’s justice and must stem from us knowing and trusting that God’s justice is good, God’s justice is right, it is just. And also by recognizing how we are deserving of wrath and punishment, we are saved by grace, not by our works. So our recognition of our sin is key in us understanding this.
Therefore, we must also pay close attention to the ways that we act unjustly and sin and continually repent of these things. This doesn’t save us. But for the Christian, this should be an outpouring of our faith and the way that we love Jesus. For if you love me, you will keep my commands. So we should reflect on the ways the five woes can convict us also and repent.
But we can also desire justice to come, like how my friend prayed for the removal of those leaders, or how Bonhoeffer operated in the midst of World War II, or how Bishop Alexander of Constantinople prayed for the death or removal of the heretic Arius, who was wreaking havoc in that day. We even see this in Revelation as the martyrs cry out to God, asking How long until he will punish those who persecute and killed them?
Our second desire? We should desire redemption and salvation from God’s just punishment for all people for our sin. Just as God is a God of justice and will bring punishment to those who sin against him, he is also a loving and merciful God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The story of Judah doesn’t end with them being conquered by Babylon. God redeems his people and brings them home.
He has the city and the temple rebuilt. And amidst his people in Israel, Jesus is born in Bethlehem. God came down in the form of a man being born and lived a perfect life on earth. He preached for the need for repentance and faith in God and was killed on a cross. Even though he did nothing wrong.
He died to make a way for us to be able to be fully redeemed and saved from the justice of God that we rightly deserve. And this is the most beautiful and redemptive thing that God was doing in the destruction of Israel. And it provides a means for us and all who repent and believe in Jesus to be redeemed. And it should be our desire for all to be redeemed. If you are here today and don’t yet know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, I hope you can see how he desires for you to be among the redeemed and will come to follow Jesus.
For those of us who are among the redeemed, then our role is to spend our lives serving God in His mission for the redemption of the lost. We should pray every day for people around us to be saved. Kevin DeYoung is quoted as saying, if all your prayers came true this week, who would be converted, whose marriage would be restored, what great gospel advance would there be and what missionaries would be sent out? All of these things are great acts of redemption. And I don’t think this means that we should make a list of as many people as possible and pray for hundreds of people every day to be saved.
Although I’m definitely not opposed to this. George Mueller, who I do not have time to talk about, was a big advocate for praying for the lost and had five men he prayed for every day for over 40 years.
In the end, all five men that he prayed for every day came to follow Jesus. But don’t just stop with prayer. Also act and live in ways that will bring redemption to others. So if I lost you at some point in there, our response to seeking God’s justice, punishment and eventual redemption through the five woes in Habakkuk 2. So our response should be to do these things, to see God’s justice as good, to repent of sin, to desire redemption for all, and to pray and actively live in ways that advance the gospel for the redemption of the lost.
Let me pray.
Dear Jesus, we thank you for your word.
We thank you that you are a good and holy and just God that brings justice to the earth. We thank you that you are so good that you cannot allow wickedness to go unpunished and that in the end you will bring ultimate justice to all.
Jesus, we also thank you for your redemption, that you saw our need and loved us so much that even though there was no way that we could make a way to be with you, you made a way for us to be with you. You made a way for us to be redeemed. Jesus, we thank you for that. Please help us to live this out, to see your justice as good, to repent of our sin, to desire redemption for us and for others, and to live this out actively for the advancement of the gospel in the kingdom. Jesus name.
Amen.