“You Won't Believe it"
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A young man from an impoverished background dreamed of a better life for himself and his family than the hardscrabble existence he had known growing up. He saved all he could and went deeply into debt to launch a grocery startup in a town called New Salem. His partner had an alcohol problem, and he ended up so far in the hole that he referred to his financial obligations as "the national debt." He gave up on ever being a successful businessman, and it took him more than a decade to pay off his failed dream.
He went into law, and then politics, and in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected president. He was an avid Shakespeare fan, and his favorite quote came from Hamlet: "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, roughhew them as we may." He came to believe this deeply about his own life, but also about the nation he led. His entire second inaugural address is an amazingly profound reflection on how God was at work in the Civil War in ways more mysterious and profound than any human being could fathom. What a loss it would have been—not just to him but to a whole nation—if the doors of that little grocery he started in New Salem hadn't closed.
Once again, God works in ways that are more mysterious and profound that any human being could fathom. But in our passage today, we find that the mysterious ways of the Lord can be even unthinkable.
Growing up...I had a pastor once told me to be careful when you ask the Lord for things because you just might get it. Meaning sometimes when the Lord does things it is not what you might expect. The scriptures do talk about His ways not being our ways and His thoughts not being our thoughts. And when we are going though difficult times we pray to the Lord for help, but what if the help is actually worse than the current difficult time. Shane that would be unthinkable. Or unbelievable? This what Habakkuk was faced to face with and we will take a closer look at this incredible predicament today.
The Lord replied,
“Look around at the nations;
look and be amazed!
For I am doing something in your own day,
something you wouldn’t believe
even if someone told you about it.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.
The Warning
The Unbelievable
The Wonderful
The first thing we will look at today is the colorful manner of which the Lord warns us graciously of his plan to deal with the injustice of people in the land. Second, we will see the essence of the mystery of God’s working and the confounding of our predispositions when he reveals His unbelievable plan to judge the people. Finally, we will see how it is through Christ and Christ alone that we will find hope and help in our time of tremendous need.
Thesis: Though sin and the pattern of this world cause us to lose sight of truth and morality despite the numerous warnings given by scripture, it is the power of the Holy Spirit and the truth of scripture that will cause us to see the beauty of the amazing works of the Lord, though we don’t understand, salvation will always come from Christ and Christ alone.
I. The Warning
- The amazing grace of a warning.
A. Remember Habakkuk had cried out to the Lord a complaint… how Long will this go on? How long will our prayers go unanswered? And why are you allowing all of this to go on? How can a good God just sit back and let this stuff happen?
B. In our text today Habakkuk had complained and questioned that the Lord is not answering him, not helping him, Oh but here we go… now he receives a reply from the Living God and it is not what he had expected or better yet, not the answer that he wanted to hear. Ever hear people say… sure I’ll give you an answer but you will not like it.
C. The Lord answers Habakkuk with a warning or a kind of heads up. Pay attention. Interesting here to note… the Lord does not disagree with Habakkuk and his assessment of the state. And why this is an important piece is that the Lord does indeed see the Land the same way the prophet sees it. So Habakkuk can no longer claim that the Lord does not see. The Lord confirms there is strife, contention, violence, plundering, and perversion of justice. Vital to see there is no … no no its not really that bad, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. (A common response by many today). And in the Spirit of the awesomeness of the plan, we will see that the Lord truly sees the problem and the Lord sees the problem to be even much worse than the prophet imagined.
D. Know this family, God does not freak out in a moment of stress. Yet he does give us a heads up in an alarming fashion. He gives us a warning here, but its not a Grandpa...“I wouldn't do that if I were you” kind of warning. It is not a good friend... “You do that one more time and I’m gonna cut you” kind of warning. It is not a mom...“Wipe that stupid look off you face or I will knock your brains out” kind of threat. They already got this kind of warning.
“The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.
“The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic.
“The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand, a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young. Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death. They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the walls you trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you.
E. It is a warning… but more of a heads up kind of warning. When someone yells heads up. Get ready. Look out. The British are coming. Yes people it is happening. Look. Be Astonished. Wonder.
F. The Lord answers Habakkuk in the Hebrew plural…this means that he is talking to the nation of Judah. And now he says to LOOK… look at the nations… look at the Gentiles. This is huge. They do not look to themselves, they do not look to the religious leaders or even the governmental leaders in their nation. Look past the borders of Judah and see what the wonder of the Lord. And be AMAZED and WONDER.
G. So look and now they are to be astounded and be astounded. Vetamahu tamahu. The verb is repeated in descriptive or related forms in the Hebrew simply to emphasize the complete bewilderment and amazement that will fall on them.
H. It will be an amazement just like Jospeh’s brothers in Genesis
Joseph told each of his brothers where to sit, and to their amazement, he seated them according to age, from oldest to youngest.
I. Or God’s work of Judgment.
Are you amazed and incredulous?
Don’t you believe it?
Then go ahead and be blind.
You are stupid, but not from wine!
You stagger, but not from liquor!
J. And He continues...
Because of this, I will once again astound these hypocrites
with amazing wonders.
The wisdom of the wise will pass away,
and the intelligence of the intelligent will disappear.”
K. Here is another vivid picture of the amazement that comes with the work of the Lord. The psalmist teaches how the people of God were to visualize the deliverance of the Lord when it comes.
But when they saw it, they were stunned;
they were terrified and ran away.
They were gripped with terror
and writhed in pain like a woman in labor.
L. But even more astonishment here because the Lord is now switching the force of this illustration. Instead of the nations looking at you in fear. Now you will look at the nations in fear. Terrible judgement is coming for you. The Lord who defended you from the nation is now gonna use the nations to come against you. Your salvation is now your destruction. Your victory is now your defeat.
M. The Lord continues to bring even more to His set up… his warning.
II. The Unbelievable
- The unbelievable is very unbelievable.
A. When we look at the second part of of verse 5 we see the translation of the word “I”when more literally we find the word “one” this is done to make an even more dramatic unbelievable statement. Though you will look to a nation that is coming know this… it is I who has done it. This adds to the unbelievable nature of the warning.
Is a trumpet blown in a city,
and the people are not afraid?
Does disaster come to a city,
unless the Lord has done it?
B. We need to get this straight from the scriptures. It is by the hand of God that these things will occur. That is why it is so unbelievable. Many times when we hear the declaration that God will do something that will blow our minds…that will cause wonder…that will astound. We always think of some spectacular event that will bring about much goodness and reward for us. Something we have never seen before. Something that we cannot comprehend. Something that will boggle the minds. Some that will cause us all to say…ohhh and ahhh.
C. But the reason we need to consider here is that the nature of the awe is not something we would call exciting and spectacular. Even though it is. It is awe striking because we cannot believe that a wonderful good holy and gracious God would actually do what He is about to do. How could he? It is not possible? I cannot believe it. I cannot believe what I am hearing. You don’t say… I can’t believe that.
D. God knows this. That is why He is preparing us with the warning. The heads up. But today… when you hear preachers and parachurch ministry leaders say things like… we are excited because God is gonna do something absolutely extraordinary. It is gonna be something so awesome it will blow our minds. We never think judgement do we? We never think it is unbelievable, because He is gonna do something that would make us think how could He do such a thing.
E. Shane you cannot preach things like that. You must not say that God could do such things. People won’t like it. You ministry will crumble… people will leave your church. Don’t tell them that the unbelievable work of God is a dumbfounding work of judgement. Ok what should I say? Maybe something like this… The Lord wont bring judgement on us, He will not let harm come to us. We will not be hurt. We will not be withheld the necessary provisions of life. There will be no disaster. There will be victory. There is peace. Lots of peace. Sound familiar? Like what we hear from many pulpits in America today?
“They have lied about the Lord
and said, ‘He won’t bother us!
No disasters will come upon us.
There will be no war or famine.
They offer superficial treatments
for my people’s mortal wound.
They give assurances of peace
when there is no peace.
F. It is all lies. Let us not be deceived today. Lies are in abundance. It is not just plaguing the world, but also plaguing the church. So much from the pulpits telling us that we are Ok when we are not. Telling us we are free from judgement when we are not. Telling us of rewards that we will not receive. Telling us of right standing with the Lord when we don’t. Telling us of life’s pleasantries and comforts that we are not entitled to. Telling us of purposes and destinies that are completely foreign to the works of the Lord in scriptures.
G. Just like the time of Jeremiah… we are hearing the same kind of optimism. But indeed they were not OK and the judgement of the Lord described here in Habakkuk did indeed happen. And we got the same kind of optimism today.
H. False teaching run rampant today with no fear of offending God. Tons of false prophets prophesy falsely and have no fear of consequences. The church bending to the ideologies of the current ungodly culture. Adhering to pop culture. Scripture twisting, redefining of biblical terms, misrepresenting the scriptures, false gospels, false prophesies, no accountability, pragamtism, existentialism, and on and on it goes… and we think nothing is gonna happen.
“I will search with lanterns in Jerusalem’s darkest corners
to punish those who sit complacent in their sins.
They think the Lord will do nothing to them,
either good or bad.
I. Oh but Shane that was the Old Testament. First of all, this is a very very wrong statement. Bad hermeneutics. Everything in the OT is still binding unless the NT abrogates it. Or stops it. The covenant of works with Adam is still binding on all of us today. If the works of God were true and moral in the OT how in the world is it now false and immoral in the NT? Truth and morality is not relative. But lets say it is the case...
J. The Apostle Paul (NT) was so concerned about the people’s beliefs and behaviors in his own day. He gave them a warning… a warning against their rejection of the gospel, his divine authority, the claim that Jesus is the messiah, the resurrection from the dead, and the salvation that Jesus alone provides. He gives a warning and applies Habakkuk to them.
Be careful! Don’t let the prophets’ words apply to you. For they said,
‘Look, you mockers,
be amazed and die!
For I am doing something in your own day,
something you wouldn’t believe
even if someone told you about it.’”
K. We see later on in that chapter that the Jews rejected the teaching of Paul even after he warned them. And did it come to pass? It did when Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70.
L. So today in your hearing… do not let the Prophets words apply to you. There are tons happening in our world today. Lies deceit deception. Do not reject the truth of the Gospel. Do not reject the sufficiency of scripture. Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world. Do not buy into the ways of the world…the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. Do not love the world. Do not sit complacent in your sins. Do not fall asleep. Wake up. Do not reject Christ and His gospel. Do not let the prophets words apply to you.
M. God has made good on all His threats of judgement. It is real. He has done it before and He will do it again. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
III. The Wonderful
- The wonderful good news of Jesus.
A. Ok Shane I hear ya. I don’t want to reject Christ. Is there any hope for me? Can I be save from this judgement. Can I be saved from the wrath of God? I don’t want to have the prophets words apply to me. Is there any hope?
B. Yes there is. We find hope in Christ and in Christ alone. Yes family... many of us are guilty of ignoring warnings. Many of us struggle with indifference to what it is that the Lord wants as opposed to what we want from the Lord.