The Unthinkable
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The Raiders… the Wylie Raiders. Los Angeles, Oakland, Las Vegas whatever they are. They are still the raiders and a rival to all Denver Bronco Fans. Sometimes when we are not having a great year, the year is fine as long as we beat the Raiders… we can lose all games as long as we beat the Raiders we are happy. The arch enemy Raiders and even the Chiefs to some extent we cant even cheer for them in the Super Bowl. We don’t want them to be successful at all. But Shane same conference… nope Buccaneer fan today.
Now what if its the AFC Championship and the Broncos were playing the Raiders and the refs obviously made all the calls go the way of the Raiders. They were even cheating and there were no calls. Not just that but the Commissioner actually was on TV and said that was his plan all along. He wanted to make sure the Raiders made the Super Bowl because the ratings would go up. After the loss there as appeal after appeal, but everyone insisted that it was better for the league that the Raiders would win. Then all of the Raider fans and the front office came to Denver and destroyed Empower field, the front office, and the practice facilities and the police would do nothing about it…they even assaulted bronco fans that tried to stop them. The authorities did nothing and said they would do nothing and actually supported them in their wake of destruction. Pretty farfetched illustration… pretty unthinkable right?
So take that and multiply the feelings you have by a hundred and maybe we might scratch the surface of what it would have felt like to the people of God when Babylon came to destroy them. Sure the Babylonians were not arch enemies with Judah, but they stood for all that was contrary to the core values of the people of Judah. But what an unthinkable plan of the Lord to use a people more unrighteous to judge them. But with such a bleak and hopeless situation, how in the world do we find any hope? We can find hope when he does turn the unthinkable into the amazing. Let’s look at it today.
I am raising up the Babylonians,
a cruel and violent people.
They will march across the world
and conquer other lands.
They are notorious for their cruelty
and do whatever they like.
Their horses are swifter than cheetahs
and fiercer than wolves at dusk.
Their charioteers charge from far away.
Like eagles, they swoop down to devour their prey.
“On they come, all bent on violence.
Their hordes advance like a desert wind,
sweeping captives ahead of them like sand.
They scoff at kings and princes
and scorn all their fortresses.
They simply pile ramps of earth
against their walls and capture them!
They sweep past like the wind
and are gone.
But they are deeply guilty,
for their own strength is their god.”
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.
1. The Babylonians
2. The Unthinkable Tool
3. The Unthinkable
The first thing we are gonna look at is the Lords hand upon the Babylonians and how they fulfilled the plans of the Lord. The second thing we will uncover is a brief character sketch of the people that the Lord unthinkably used to bring judgement to the people of Judah. Finally, we will see how in Christ the Lords turns the unthinkable into the amazing.
Thesis: Though sin and the pattern of this world may cause us to question the plans a purposes of God, it is the truth of Scriptures and the power of the Spirit that will cause us to find hope in the plans and purposes of Christ who brought to us life and life more abundant.
I. The Babylonians
- By the Impulse of God do the nations rise and fall.
A. The Lord is raising up the Babylonians… some of your translations may say Chaldeans. He was bring them… not into existence here, but bringing them as enemies to his people. This shows that God’s control reaches farther than the boundaries of the nation of Judah…to all of the events on the earth.
“Are you Israelites more important to me
than the Ethiopians?” asks the Lord.
“I brought Israel out of Egypt,
but I also brought the Philistines from Crete
and led the Arameans out of Kir.
B. More specifically here… the Lord is raising up a nation that he will use to chastise His own people called by His name.
If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you.
“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,
C. And let us not think that he wont do it, because at the time of this prophesy, the Lord had already used Assyria to judge Israel.
“What sorrow awaits Assyria, the rod of my anger.
I use it as a club to express my anger.
D. So if you remember history, if you care, the Chaldeans were not the original inhabitants, but a Semitic people who collected as an anti-Assyrian movement. A defendant of the leader of that movement became king of Babylon... Nabopolasser who founded the Neo-Babylonian empire. And from this time on, the Babylonians were synonymous with Chaldeans.
E. But why is this important… I’ll show you. This is the Babylon that Jeremiah was concerned with. You really can see the hand of the Lord upon this nation. The quickness in the rise of the Babylon is remarkable. Who would have thought that a nation that was virtually known as nonexistent would conquer the old capital of Assyria in 614, Nineveh in 612, Harran in 610, and beat the armies of Pharoah Neco at Carchemish in 605 becoming world leaders over Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Palestine and Egypt in essentially 20 years.
F. But we also see the rapid decline of the nation in 539 when they were conquered by Cyrus which coincides with Jeremiahs prophesy that Israel would return in 70 years. Again we see...
“Not by their own instinct, but by the hidden impulse of God do the nations rise and fall.” - John Calvin
G. The Lord make this declaration of the rise and fall of this nation. This goes to show the extent of the powerful control the Lord has over nations. He orders their rise and fall according to His own plans and purposes.
H. Just in case you forgot recently… God is in control. We are talking about the God who has all things in this world working for Him, through Him and by Him. We can therefore find great comfort in knowing that no one can do anything, not even a nation can do anything unless it has been given to them from above. When the Lord makes a promise we can know and be confident that He can and is able to fulfil all of them.
II. The Unthinkable Tool
- The unthinkable tool of judgement upon the people of God.
A. First the Lord says that they are bitter and impetuous. They as a nation are characterized this way. Not just some of them but most of them at least are ill-tempered and fierce. A good description of this is found in...
You know your father and his men; they are mighty warriors. Right now they are as enraged as a mother bear who has been robbed of her cubs. And remember that your father is an experienced man of war. He won’t be spending the night among the troops.
- They are impetuous or understood as rash. They are in such a hurry to carry out their objectives that they jump from one objective to another. The idea here is that the Lord wants us to see that they act without concern for what impact they will have on those they conquer. They are irrational and cruel and because of this, they do not sort out the facts and people in their way will indeed suffer great injustices. See this in our world today?
B. They will march across the world taking things that are not their own. The interesting thing here is that it probably would trigger the remembrance of what the Israelites did to the canaanites when they were used as God’s tool to judge them.
“The Lord your God will soon bring you into the land he swore to give you when he made a vow to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a land with large, prosperous cities that you did not build. The houses will be richly stocked with goods you did not produce. You will draw water from cisterns you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant. When you have eaten your fill in this land,
C. Can we think of people today who take what is not theirs?
D. They were famous for their cruelty. They were coming and they were not gonna come tenderly. People were afraid of them. If you had to face them, you were not optimistic, you were terrified. And what is more they conduct themselves according to rules they have established for themselves, and consider themselves answerable to none. Literally, from the people their judgment and their lifting up comes out’. They do what they want and honor and glory will go right back to themselves. Unthinkable that God would use a nation that will not give Him glory.
E. They do what they want and make up right and wrong for themselves. Can we think of people like this today?
F. Now the people of Judah, may have took comfort in the fact that they lived pretty far away from this enemy. and surely there are many that stand in the way before they even get here. But the Lord assures them that this is not the case. It does not matter how far you are they are coming and they will be here in no time. But the speed of their coming makes it even clear that running away would be futile. They will catch you. We cant run from them and they will be here soon. Do we know people like this today?
G. And like an eagle they come down. This is an allusion to the curse that comes for disobedience.
“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,
H. The Hebrew ne-share finds the eagle and vulture as interchangeable here. Even though we know they are different kinds of birds. The eagle hunts prey and the vulture is a scavenger, but the point of this word … they both have excellent vision which enables them to swoop down with accuracy on whatever they have spotted. They will not have wasted effort… the Babylonian armies would be able to detect from a distance those lands that would provide them with the good stuff and they would swoop down on them to loot and ravage. Do we see this kind of behavior today?
I. They are bent on violence… they are bent on hamas. The Babylonians had no inhibitions about using violence to get what it is that they wanted. Use violence to get what they wanted sound familiar?
J. The east wind of Babylon is best understood as a wind that comes and it was so hot that everything shriveled up in its path. Like
And as the sun grew hot, God arranged for a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah. The sun beat down on his head until he grew faint and wished to die. “Death is certainly better than living like this!” he exclaimed.
K. Captive like sand. Sand is always a word used in relation to the covenantal promises of the Lord to Abraham. Here the Lord does the unthinkable that turns the blessing into a curse with the wording. But this is part of the curse...
You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity.
L. They do not care about kings or rulers of other nations… it does not matter how well known you are or your reputation. They will come and destroy you with not second thought about it. Thats what they did to Pharoah. They make fun of the most powerful adversaries in the world. They have no respect. Sound like people we know today?
M. There is no fortress or wall of protection that will stop them. They just prop up ramps and there are in. There is no security, there is no security software, no protection, no defense that will guard against them. They are in and out like the wind. Sound familiar?
N. And they are guilty. So guilty. We would think that all the preceeding would make them guilty, but we see it go deeper than that. They believe that might is right. They proved themselves stronger than others. They were successful against others. They worshipped their own success. They worshipped their own ability. Because they were successful, they believed themselves to be right. All of the justification is in their success.
M. Our culture says The only really authentic miracle is success, it washes away old sins. This is what is worshipped today. As long as it is successful it is right. As long as it is successful it should be followed. As long as it is successful, it should be respected and honored. As long as it is successful it is worthy and deserving. In our culture we cannot tolerate failure. You are not worthy unless there is success. Why do people flaunt their success today? Because their worth and significance is not seen by anyone unless there is success.
N. In our culture today, just like the Babylonians, success is worshipped. It is our God. Pragmatism is king in our culture. Like the Babylonians we worship our own ability and resources.
O. So why in the world would God do this to His people. This is Habakkuk’s concern. Why would he use such a horrible people judge His people. Why the judgement of a bad people with worse people? How could Judge the just with the unjust. How could he do the unthinkable? Hold that thought.
III. The Unthinkable
- Crucify Him.
A. Many times we see Scriptures like this and think the Lord is unfair. How could He do that? Why would He do that? Its easy for Him to do, He did not have to experience how unfair it is.
B. Many times it is easy to stand apart from all this and think we are exempt from it all. But if we are honest we see that we do the same things as the Babylonians. We see what others do to us as being unfair, but what about the stuff we have done to people. We call no fair and injustice when the “Babylonians” come against us, but what about when we are the Babylonians? Get Perspective right. The reality is we do the same things.
C. How many time in our lives have we been mean and rash? How many times have we taken things that are no our own? How many times have we been cruel and done what we wanted to do no matter what the consequences? How many times have we been persistent in chasing down what we want from others and getting it no matter who we hurt? How many times have we been violent to get what we want, to loot, the destroy? How many times have we left a shriveled up path in the wake of our sin? How many times have we made others our slaves in greed threats or blackmail? How many times have we shown disrespect to those deserving? How many times have we been guilty of putting our trust in self or others, relationships, a spouse, a special interest group, a successful and resourceful person, a politician, even a spiritual leader… rather than in the Lord?
You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things.
D. Yes because of sin we all deserve to die and face the wrath of God. Because of sin we all deserve to face judgement and consequences. Because of sin we all deserve death upon death.
E. But God the unthinkable… He sent His Son the one and only Son of God to come into this world to live the life we should have lived to accomplish the righteous life. The very righteous life to truly be righteous because He is righteous. But now the unthinkable… He allowed His perfectly righteous Son to be judged by a people way more unrighteous then He.
Pilate responded, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?”
They shouted back, “Crucify him!”
F. And Christ was crucified.
G. But the unthinkable, became the amazing. Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures… The saying is trustworthy and deserving...
H. The promises continue...
I. The unthinkable happens with God many times in the Scriptures, but we will see and will always see that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called to His great purpose.