Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

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?

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,

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.

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:

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.