The Righteous Shall live by Faith
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Habakkuk’s Complaint
Habakkuk’s Complaint
Lsat week, we looked at the first part of Habakkuk, where he stated his complain to God, and his complaint was that all around him, he saw people doing evil. People were doing offensive things against God. And he was not simply looking outside his own community, he was looking at the sin inside his own country, done by his own people, and he was frustrated that God was seemingly allowing people to get away with sin, violence, iniquity, destruction. And Habakkuk had cried out to God previously, and at the point of the writings of Chapter 1, Habakkuk was getting frustrated by this.
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not hear?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
and you will not save?
As we looked at this, we realized how much we could sympathize with Habakkuk’s complaint. We see this all around us, don’t we? And while we do know much of the violence and sin going on across the world, we also see it right here in our own state, in our own communities. We can easily understand the frustration of the prophet as he called out to God for justice with this question, “How Long?”
This is a unique prophetic writing since it records not simply a thus says the Lord, but a conversation between a man, a prophet, and God. In fact, it is not merely a conversation. Habakkuk is stating a complaint. It is a complaint in the form of a question, but a complaint all the same. Sometimes, rhetorically, people make statements in the form of a question. So if you are ever on Jeopardy, and the question is, the Prophet Habakkuk had this complaint about the sin around him, you can answer in the form of a question, “How Long shall I cry for help?”
And as we saw last week, God gave an answer to Habakkuk. The answer was that God was not going to allow His people to continue in sin unpunished. He was going to do something that would astound, he would raise up that Chaldeans (Babylon) and they would come as God’s instrument of punishment to punish the people for their sin.
So today we will see Habakkuk’s second complaint. The second complaint is that I don’t like the answer to my first complaint. And now we will see that the compare game is going to begin. We do this all the time. Yes, I know, I’m a sinner, but those other people are way worse! And Habakkuk is about to say in response, “how can you allow a more evil people to be used as your instrument of judgment?
Are you not from everlasting,
O Lord my God, my Holy One?
We shall not die.
O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment,
and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.
You who are of purer eyes than to see evil
and cannot look at wrong,
why do you idly look at traitors
and remain silent when the wicked swallows up
the man more righteous than he?
You make mankind like the fish of the sea,
like crawling things that have no ruler.
He brings all of them up with a hook;
he drags them out with his net;
he gathers them in his dragnet;
so he rejoices and is glad.
Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and makes offerings to his dragnet;
for by them he lives in luxury,
and his food is rich.
Is he then to keep on emptying his net
and mercilessly killing nations forever?
I will take my stand at my watchpost
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.
So in this second complaint, Habakkuk starts out by noting the eternality of God. This is an important concept, it was important to the Jews, and is important to us as well as believers. Where are we if we don’t understand God as eternal? IF he had to begin existing at some point, we would not be able to say he is unchanging. We would not be able to understand him as the first cause, that is, the one who caused everything else to come into being. And if we lose that concept, and throw it out, then we are really calling Him God, but He would not be God over all. He would not be omnipotent, having power over all things, because if he himself were created, or had to come into being, then there would be something he had no power over, that is, his own existence!
Not only that, if God is not eternal, His would not be omniscient. That is, All-knowing. This is because his knowledge would be limited to his own existence, and if He is not eternal, then he could not know things prior to his own existence. He would not be trustworthy, at least not in the same way, because there would not be the same eternal history of his trustworthiness. Now, that is just a very brief summary of some of the issues we could have if we were to deny that God is eternal. But God is eternal, and this is what Habakkuk is putting faith in. Because God is eternal, and His plan for mankind was established even before there was a human timeline, Habakkuk can take God’s character to the bank. He can trust in God’s sovereignty, He can trust in God’s covenant, that God himself swore by himself because there was nothing higher than himself to swear by, and that eternal God had made a covenant with Israel, that they would never be wiped out entirely.
So,
Are you not from everlasting,
O Lord my God, my Holy One?
We shall not die.
O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment,
and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.
Here Habakkuk is struggling with truths he knows. God is eternal, he is trustworthy, his covenant promise is to Israel, and now God has said he will use the Chaldeans as the means of his discipline or punishment of Israel. So Habakkuk is trying to square these truths. He understands God has ordained them as a judgment, and established them for reproof.
You who are of purer eyes than to see evil
and cannot look at wrong,
why do you idly look at traitors
and remain silent when the wicked swallows up
the man more righteous than he?
But here is Habakkuk’s problem. He has rightly noted there is sin all around him in Israel. He hates it. He wants Israel cleansed. But the thought of Israel being cleansed by the means of the evil Chaldeans is too much. It just seems wrong. We would probably feel the same way. If God were dealing with us regarding some sin in our lives, we would hate to see someone even more evil than us being God’s instrument of wrath or judgment on us. And we will see how God answers before we leave this morning, but for now, let’s just commiserate with Habbakuk for a bit. Let’s marinate in this difficulty. Let’s soak for a bit in this dilemma.
God’s eyes are pure and cannot look upon evil. This is a biblical concept we see very clearly. God is Holy and cannot look upon evil. But that doesn’t mean he is unaware of it. And Habakkuk is saying here what we very well may have said if we were in his place. To put it another way, Habakkuk is asking why it is that God could ignore the much more heinous sins of the Chaldeans, and allow them to be used as the punisher of Israel. They are the real traitors after all. Now, all sin is treason against God, and it would be fair to ask, is Habakkuk not seeing that the sin of Israel is also offensive to God?
All we have to do is look back to the first part of chapter one for the answer. No, Habakkuk is not unaware of or insensitive of the sins of Israel. Quite to the contrary, he cries out for God to deal with his people. But he doesnt see them as traitors in the same way. The Chaldeans, or Babylonians, truly are much worse. and this is what he expresses here, and elaborates on in the next verses:
You make mankind like the fish of the sea,
like crawling things that have no ruler.
He brings all of them up with a hook;
he drags them out with his net;
he gathers them in his dragnet;
so he rejoices and is glad.
Therefore he sacrifices to his net
and makes offerings to his dragnet;
for by them he lives in luxury,
and his food is rich.
Is he then to keep on emptying his net
and mercilessly killing nations forever?
He now uses the pronoun he to speak of the Chaldeans, probably signifying the leader, the king. He brings all of them up with a hook, he drags them out with his net. The Babylonians were conquerers and imperialists. They would go into an area, defeat them soundly, and assimilate them into the Babylonian culture. So that the destruction and humility of those they defeated would be complete, they would enslave people, and drag them from their hometowns and bring them far away. This reduced the opportunities communities may have to rise up and fight back. You are far less likely to fight for freedom in a land you are a stranger in. If you make someone a slave close to home, they may have ideas about escaping and returning home, but if you bring them so far away that it is practically impossible for them to return, they are more likely to give up, to submit to their condition.
It’s like that with sin. It’s why it is so important to stay grounded in God’s Word, grounded in the fellowship of the church, grounded at home with your family. Because when you are close to home you are more likely to flee the slavery of sin and return to your family. But the farther you remove yourself from the fellowship of the church and the Word of God, the more likely you are to not only fall temporarily to temptations to sin, but to give up fighting sin altogether. Knowing this, our enemy may not be the Chaldeans, but our enemy is everywhere in the world, and we are constantly tempted to distance ourselves from the Word and from the family of God. Beware of this, because the strategy is sound: When you remove someone from their area of protection, they are more likely to give up on their values and give into submitting to a captor.
So Habakkuk uses some very vivid language to describe the Chaldeans. They are like fisherman who drag with the hook, and with the net. Fisherman and hunters alike will celebrate their success. Today, you will see pictures of people on social media. Holding up that whopper of a fish, or posing next to the harvest of the hunt. They rejoice and are glad when they have a successful day. And the Chaldeans treat people like they are prey, or like they are something to be harvested. They drag them out of their homes, they rejoice over it. They have a low view of humanity and the sanctity of life.
So what do they do? They would sacrifice to their net. This can be taken nearly literally, for the Chaldeans would actually make sacrifices to their weapons of war. Just as they would sacrifice to idols, they would make sacrifices to their weapons. and why is this? Because by them they get rich. They live in luxury, why? Because they steal and sell people. They use force to make people like cattle. These are a brutal people, these Chaldeans. They are ruthless. They have no care for human suffering. Instead, they rejoice in it so long as they are going to get rich.
This is why Habakkuk is so frustrated. These people are really horrible people. Why, oh God, would you use them to punish your chosen race? Why? This is humiliating! This is shameful! How can God remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? How can you allow this?
Are you marinating in this? Are you sympathizing with Habakkuk? Do you get what he is saying? Is this reality in our world today? Absolutely! If you were to go to Voice of the Martyrs website, you would find story after story today of how the church is persecuted around the world. There are more martyrs in the church today than at any time in history. And while we may not be to the point of people being killed for their Christian faith here in the US today, we are certainly seeing some evidence of mistreatment of believers by wicked people, even here. Sometimes it is called cancel culture, we will not let you have a good job if you stand for biblical truth. We will harass you on social media, we will go after you however we can.
And we look at things like this and can say with Habakkuk, How long? Is Chaldea going to be allowed to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?
Now Habakkuk finishes his complaint, and says he will rest and await the answer.
I will take my stand at my watchpost
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.
He is “standing by”!
Sometimes our complaining needs to come to end. I think God is very gracious to us. He allows us to spill out our hearts to him. However, there is a point, when we have said our piece to God, that we must sit back and say, I will now release to you all of what is on my heart. I will trust in you to be sovereign over this situation, I stand by ready to hear your answer. I’m setting myself up on the watchtower, looking to see what your answer will be.
And now we see God’s answer to Habakkuk:
And the Lord answered me:
“Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
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 his 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.”
He says to write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. A lot of speculation has gone into what exactly this part means. When Habakkuk writes this vision, is it simply to write down and put in a scroll to be set aside until the year 2021, when those nice folks at Oasis church will look into it to see what it means?
No, this is not what Habakkuk is to do. He is to make it plain on tablets. There is a lot of significance with tablets. The ten commandments were written on tablets. The law of God. Tablets are permanent, long lasting records of something. You can go to some of the older graveyards in our country, and see that stones that were carved into long ago still bear the record of someone’s life.
And we also see that phrase, “so he may run who reads it”. Translators and scholars for centuries have struggled with this phrase. And it seems that it may indicate that Habakkuk was supposed to post this somewhere in a high traffic area, so that those who pass by will take the message with them. Like a billboard. It was to be a public notice. This message was not to be kept to only the prophet and a few of those he knew, it was to be made available to the public at large. And this vision was waiting for its appointed time. It will come true. It may seem like it is never going to happen, but God says, trust it. It is from me, it will come true. And certainly this response answers One of Habakkuk’s initial statements. Because God is from everlasting, his view of what will take place is accurate. it is trustworthy. It is sure. When it comes, it won’t delay. It may seem delayed to you, but from one with an eternal perspective, from one who is self-existent and beyond our timeline, it will surely come.
“Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,
but the righteous shall live by his faith.
Here is something we commonly see in Hebrew literature. You see it especially in Hebrew poetry, you see it in many proverbs. It is a comparison, or better yet, a contrast. His (the Chaldeans) soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous (that is the contrasting characteristic to the one puffed up) shall live by faith.
And so it was, that a young monk, struggling with the Catholic church, who was disgusted by the selling of indulgences, and was conscientiously studying the scriptures, and trying to grasp what Paul meant by salvation through faith, came to study this verse, and a lightbulb went off that would light up many others, and spark a reformation. Martin Luther came to this verse in his study, and the Holy Spirit enlightened him, and history changed because of this verse.
The righteous shall live by his faith.
So central to the whole of Jewish thought was Habakkuk 2:4b that the Talmud records this famous remark made by Rabbi Simlai: “Moses gave Israel 613 commandments. David reduced them to eleven [Psalm 15], Micah to 3 [Micah 6:8], Isaiah to 2 [Isaiah 56:1], but Habakkuk to 1—‘the righteous shall live by his faith [Hab. 2:4].’ ”9 Jewish scholars felt that these words—only three words in the Hebrew text—fairly summarized the message of the whole Bible.
There we have it, the key to salvation, the key to living a life that pleases God, the key to being at peace with whatever is happening in the world. By faith. By faith in Jesus Christ, we find peace with God, by faith we can live in honesty and in keeping with God’s Word, having this protection, that whether cancel culture gets us because we stand for righteousness, if our community rejects us, if our job fires us, if we lose friends because we desire to live a righteous life, no matter what, we trust that God will deliver us in the end. So we can live in peace, even when the world seems to be falling apart.
Jesus said it was belief in Him that saves: John3.36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Paul wrote that
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.”
I saw a couple weeks ago a short video. It was a guy with a youtube channel, a rabbi. And his videos, at least some of them that I saw, are him saying why Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah. And in the video I watched, he listed what he said were the three biggest problems with the Christian faith, and one of his top 3 was that the concept Paul elaborated of justification by faith was foreign to Jewish thought. But I have to say, and this is sometimes dangerous territory, because someone may very well say to me, “sit down and shut up, and don’t tell us about the Jewish faith, you aren’t a Jew”. Ok, that is fine, but you don’t need to be a Jew to see that The Torah, the law and the prophets speak clearly on justification by faith alone.
And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
And so the apostles understood this. And we see this explained in the New Testament:
just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?
and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
Thank goodness we aren’t judged on our deeds! Habakkuk saw the evil in God’s people. He wanted them cleansed. He saw the evil in the Chaldeans, and he wanted justice to come to them. But there was a difference between these people. Not only were the Chaldeans for more prolific as sinners than Israel, they did not live by faith! And God has chosen as his standard of who he will save and who he will not save, the condition of it all, as faith.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
I say it a lot, I will declare it loudly until I have no more breath, the entire thing, the whole of salvation, is a work of God. because as you can see clearly in scripture, even the faith is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. This faith required for righteousness, this faith we need to be justified, is a gift. So if you have received this gift, worship God with all of your heart and soul and mind. If you are not aware if you have this gift, look into God’s Word, appeal to Him to show you this truth, ask him to grant you the faith to believe. Or maybe your faith has been weakened. No worries, you can ask, like the man who answered Jesus’ question of whether he believed. He answered Jesus, “I believe. Help my unbelief”
“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.”
The Wine, the wealth, the arrogance, the greed, of the Chaldeans will come to an end. A great line from the Gladiator comes to mind, Maximus looks at that arrogant Emperor and says “The time for honoring yourself will soon come to an end”
And so it is the case for all those who do not live by faith in God, but rather by faith in themselves, the time for honoring themselves will come to an end, and all they will be left with is the wrath of God, and the eternal, conscious torment, the never ending death that comes as the wages of the sin they lived in.
IF you would live by faith, you must die to self. If you would live by faith, you trust that following God’s way of living is always the best option. That living in truth and grace is superior to physical strength and power.
There are a lot of definitions of faith in our world today. What definition will you go with? I want to go with the biblical definition.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Do you have assurance of things you hope for, do you have a conviction in your heart to believe in things you cannot see? The righteous shall live by his faith. May we do this, and live our lives, to God’s glory