The Five Woes
Habakkuk 2:5-20
Pastor Jefferson M. Williams
First Baptist Church Chenoa
5-26-19
Review
We have been making our way through the little Old Testament book of Habakkuk and God has been speaking to us through this prophet’s questions and cries.
Let me remind you that the name Habakkuk means “to embrace” or “to wrestle.” He wrestled with hard questions and the deep things of God and finally embraces God’s sovereignty over all.
Chapter one he begins with a series of questions. He looked around at his culture and asked why would God allow so much immorality and violence? Was God on vacation? Did He not care?
God’s answer is absolutely stunning to Habakkuk. He would use the ultra-violent, godless Babylonians to correct His idolatrous people.
Habakkuk cries out, “I object!” He agreed with God that Judah deserves judgement but, good grief, the Babylonians are so much worse! What God is planning doesn’t seem right or fair.
Habakkuk positioned himself on the watchtower and waited for God’s answer. God tells him to write the message down on tablets that a herald could run throughout the land and proclaim the message to the faithful.
What was the message? Judgement is coming for Babylonians. They would be utterly destroyed. It would happen. You can count on it. Judah was to wait in patience hope for God’s promised intervention.
Last week, we spent the entire sermon time looking at just one verse. Let’s look at that verse again:
“The enemy is puffed up - his desire is not upright; but the righteous will life by faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4)
There are two kinds of people. There are the “puffed up,” the arrogant ones that feel like they don’t like they need God. They feel no need to submit to Him or obey Him.
Then there are a the righteous. This righteousness is not in themselves. It is a gift of God in response to their faith. If we place our full faith and confidence in the perfect life (obey the law completely), perfect death, (in your place), and perfect payment for your sins (that you could never afford), He credits His righteousness to you.
You can not earn it, you do not deserve it, and you cannot brag about it. Simply out of mind-boggling love God reconciles us to Himself.
That’s the beginning of the message that Habakkuk was to write down. This morning, we will look at the rest of the message. Turn to Habakkuk 2:5-20.
Prayer
Hostage Situation
Imagine that you are taken hostage and are put into a room with several other individuals. The bad guys come to bring you some food and one of the prisoners starts laughing hysterically. The guard asked them what is so funny. The prisoner responds, “I just feel so bad for you. Truly, I feel sorry for you. Your judgement is coming. It will be swift. It will be devastating. It’s going to be bad. Everything that you have done to us is going to be done to you!”
Prisoners don’t usually lament for their captors. That’s not a normal reaction. But this message of God was designed to create survivors out of victims.
Greed is Good
“…indeed, wine betrays him; he is arrogant and never at rest. Because he is as greedy as the grave and like death is never satisfied, he gathers to himself all the nations and takes captive all the peoples. “Will not all of them taunt him with ridicule and scorn, saying…” (Habakkuk 2:5-6a)
The Babylonians were drunk on the power and ambitions of world domination. The word “betrays” actually can mean “cloak and dagger.” Wine has a habit of betraying the one who drinks too much of it.
They were arrogant and never satisfied with their last conquest. They swallowed up nations and had an insatiable appetite for destruction and death.
Gordon Gekko [Michael Douglas in “Wall Street”] could have been a Babylonian:
“The point is ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”
But make no mistake about it. God will hold them responsible. All the nations that were terrorized by them will now laugh in their face with ridicule and scorn. The mighty, invincible Babylonians will end up being a joke.
Five Woes
The message that Habakkuk was to write down contained five “woes.” A “woe” was a mocking statement that could be translated, “Alas” or “how terrible.” They are a ironic lament for the death of the wicked.
Jesus pronounced woes on the Pharisees and on the towns who did not listen to His message.
They are applicable to Babylon but also to us today when we have no words for the atrocities all around our world.
There are five laments for the “puffed up ones.” They are composed of two parts - the declaration of wrong and then the promise of impending doom.
Woe 1 - The plunderers will be plundered
“‘Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion! How long must this go on?’ Will not your creditors suddenly arise? Will they not wake up and make you tremble? Then you will become their prey. Because you have plundered many nations, the peoples who are left will plunder you. For you have shed human blood; you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.” (Habakkuk 2:6-8)
When the Babylonians would approach a town they would ask the city’s leaders to pay them and then promise not to burn down the town, in other words “extortion.” Then they would most likely burn down the town anyway.
The Babylonians thought they were taking from the nations they conquered but God said it was simply a loan. And now the loan will come due with interest!
The question that reverberates in this book “how long?” Is answered with the word “suddenly.” It would be shocking to the Babylonians how quick the tables would be turned.
The unjust power that was used to create their extravagant wealth will be used to undo them completely. Babylon will be plundered in exactly the same way that they plundered others.
Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos are in the Guinness book of World Records for the greatest robbery of a government. When the Philippines finally ousted her husband, she was found to have amassed over 1,000 pairs of luxury shoes while the people lived in poverty.
Paul understood this principle:
“God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you.” (I Thes 1:6)
Woe 2 - Building a house with unjust gain will lead to shame
“Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain, setting his nest on high to escape the clutches of ruin! You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life. The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.” (Habakkuk 2:9-11)
Biblically, it is a noble task to build a house but not with ill-gotten gain. The Babylonians were intent on building a dynasty that would protect them for disaster, like a bird’s nest set high on a mountain. The enemies that they didn’t completely destroy were forced to pay crippling tribute. Whether by force or by fraud, they had always won.
Hitler regularly went to his “eagles nest” in Berchtesgaden. It was an opulent manor house where he entertained top Nazis and other leaders. Just the thought of these monsters taking tea in a beautiful home in sickening.
But now their honor would be turned to shame.
Proverbs echos this:
“The greedy will bring ruin to their households, but the one who hates bribes shall live.” (Prov 15:27)
The word “forfeiting” is related to the Hebrew word for sin which means “to miss the mark.” They will have to live with the shame of a wasted life.
Today, the Eagles Nest is a restaurant and you can tour the lower rooms that were destroyed and vandalized by Allied soldiers. Hitler’s study is now a storeroom for the cafeteria.
Woe 3 - Building a city with bloodshed
“Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by injustice! Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?” (Habakkuk 2:12-13)
This woe builds on the first two. They pile up stolen goods and built their civilization on violence. Now the Babylonians would be judged with the same intense ruthlessness.
This is the first time that God is mentioned in the woes. They didn’t just perpetrate these injustices against other cultures but also against God Himself.
All of their striving will amount to nothing. The civilization will be laid waste and will be replaced with complete devastation.
Solomon said it this way:
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.” (Prov 14:34)
The prophet Jeremiah, who lived about the same time, wrote:
This is what the Lord says, “Babylons thick wall will be leveled and her high gates set on fire, the people exhaust themselves for nothing, the nation's labor is only fuel for the flames.” (Jer 51:58)
Covered in Glory
Right in the middle of these five woes we find verse 14:
“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord and the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14)
Habakkuk seems to be saying that only when the problem of the wicked is resolved will the universal spread of the knowledge of God’s glory will be seen.
It will come. God has promised that. It may linger but it is certain.
Isaiah, writing about a hundred years before Habakkuk, described the new heaven and the new earth as a place where:
"The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6-9)
Woe 4 - Exposure, shame, and disgrace
The Babylonian leaders would amuse themselves by getting prisoners drunk and then raping them publicly, leaving them win a state of deep shame and humiliation.
But God will turn their glory into shame. For what they delighted in doing to others will be done to them.
John records an angel pronouncing doom to Babylon at the end of the age:
“A second angel followed and said, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great which made the all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.” (Revelation 14:8)
The phrase “disgrace will cover you your shame” paints a picture of the Babylonians will be found drunk, naked, lying in their own vomit.
The cup of the Lord’s right hand represents His wrath and justice. We will be coming back to this idea in just a minute.
They were not only to be judged for shedding innocent blood but also for “denuding” the lands and killing all the animals. They cut down the trees of Lebanon which were said to be the most beautiful trees in the world. God says that the trees will overwhelm them, which could mean that they will literally fall on them and crush them.
Woe 5 - Worthless Idols
“Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman? Or an image that teaches lies? For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak. Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it.” (Habakkuk 2:18-19)
This final judgement doesn’t begin with the word “woe.”
The Babylonians worshiped the god Marduk, who would eventually be called Baal.
The idols they worshipped were made by their own hands. They couldn’t hear or speak. The Hebrew is literally ”speechless nothings.”
An idol is an extension of their foolishness of trusting in their own strength.
Isaiah said it this way:
“All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame. Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit nothing? People who do that will be put to shame; such craftsmen are only human beings.Let them all come together and take their stand; they will be brought down to terror and shame.” (Isaiah 44:9-11)
Hush Now
Habakkuk begins chapter two complaining about how it didn’t seem fair the way God was doing things. But he ends it in a very different posture of heart:
The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth be silent before Him.” (Habakkuk 2:20)
God is not deaf, dumb, blind and powerless like idols of stone and gold. He is enthroned in His temple, the place of His Presence and Lordship.
In English, you really can’t tell the tome of this sentence, It is a mocking doxology. He is telling the Babylonians, as we say in the south, “Hush your mouth!”
It is the silence of recognizing the true God by the Babylonians. But it is also the silence of acceptance of the judgement of God again Judah for the sins of its people.
Habakkuk doesn’t get his questions answered. He has moved from wondering, to waiting, and to worship.
This doxology will lead us into an incredible song of worship in chapter 3. But that’s next week.
What Can We Learn?
I want to quickly look at three things we can learn from these verses.
God disciplines those He loves
I've said it several times in the past couple of sermons - God was going to use the Babylonians to correct His wayward children. In other words, God was going to discipline Judah.
What’s the purpose of disciple from a Biblical perspective?
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:7-11)
The discipline that God provides is for our good. Why? So we can share in His holiness. Will it be pleasant?
Nope. Many times it will be painful. What does it produce? Discipline produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who God loves enough to train them by it. It is part of the sanctification process.
Remember that God is much more interested in making us holy than happy. We love to quote Romans 8:28 but we don’t alway go on to 29:
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” (Romans 8:28-29).
God’s goal is to make us more like Jesus. Just like a sculptor, He will sand, chip, break away anything that isn’t like His Son.
It’s been said that God doesn’t allow His children to sin successfully. David who knew God’s discipline first hand wrote of the effects it had on his faith:
“I will not die, but live, And tell of the works of the Lord. The Lord has disciplined me severely, But He has not given me over to death. Open to me the gates of righteousness; I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to the Lord.” (Psalm 118:18)
Can you say with Job that you are thankful for God’s discipline in your life?
“Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal. (Job 5:17-18)
2. American Idols
In one of my favorite stories in the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines and placed inside their idol Dagon’s temple. The next morning, they found the statue of Dagon on its face before the Ark. They prop the idol back up but the next morning the statue of Dagon is again on the floor, with its hands and feet broken off. The moral of this story is: if you have to super-glue your god back together your god has issues! (Read I Samuel 5:1-5 for the whole story)
We laugh at that story. How ridiculous! We look down on cultures how paint their faces and go crazy at their shrines. I’m so glad that we have moved beyond such silliness.
In America, we just as idolatrous as the Babylonians. We’re just more sophisticated. We don’t worship little gods made of stone and gold. We worship at the altar of self.
Several years ago, we took a group of students on mission to Memphis, Tennessee. We repaired a house, worked in a soup kitchen, and had great times of fellowship and worship together. Being from Memphis, it was my pleasure to take them sightseeing. They fell in love with The Peabody Hotel ducks, had burgers at B. B. King’s restaurant, and saw where I grew up and went to school. But no visit to Memphis would be complete without a trip to Graceland.
We walked the outside wall of Graceland and read what fans from all over the world had written. Some messages were funny, others were moving, but one caught all of our attention. As we gathered around to read what this Elvis fan had left behind for us, the whole group got very quiet. Written in black ink – “Elvis is my personal Jesus!”
Several students began discussing the theological implications of what they were witnessing. My friend Ken finally spoke up and said, “This is idolatry plain and simple. I’m leaving, who is with me?”
They marched back to the van and begin asking me why I even brought them to such an ungodly place. I reminded them that I was their student pastor and they needed to “Love me Tender.”
“Elvis is my personal Jesus!” Kenny was right. It was idolatry. It was exchanging the King of Kings for the King of Rock n Roll! And it is exactly what Paul said would happen in Romans 1.
What’s the point? If anyone, or anything, sits on the throne of your life other than Jesus, that is called idolatry.
Tim Keller lists some questions to help you identify whether something is an idol in your life:
What consumes most of your thoughts and feelings?
What are you most afraid of?
What brings the highest amount of frustration or anger into your life?
What are the things you feel like you can’t live without?
What is the one thing that can change your mood in a second?
3. The Wrath of God
Hold on a minute Jeff! Surely you are not going to talk about the wrath of God. I am and don’t call me Shirley.
Steven Lawson wrote:
The preaching of divine wrath serves as a black velvet backdrop that causes the diamond of God’s mercy to shine brighter than ten thousand suns. It is upon the dark canvas of divine wrath that the splendor of His saving grace most fully radiates. Preaching the wrath of God most brilliantly showcases His gracious mercy toward sinners.
AW Pink wrote: “The wrath of God is the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin.”
In Psalm 45:7 God is said to “hate wickedness” and is angered toward all that is contrary to His perfect character.
Lawson again:
Every preacher must declare the wrath of God or marginalize His holiness, love, and righteousness. Because God is holy, He is separated from all sin and utterly opposed to every sinner. Because God is love, He delights in purity and must, of necessity, hate all that is unholy. Because God is righteous, He must punish the sin that violates His holiness.
The prophets used the various forms of wrath 580 times in the Old Testament. The last prophet, John the Baptist, spoke of fleeing from “the wrath to come.”
Jesus spoke more about hell than He did heaven and warned people of eternal destruction where there would be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Paul warned unbelievers of the “God that inflicts wrath” (Rom 3:5) and declares that only Jesus can deliver us from the wrath to come( I Thes 1:10).
Peter wrote about the “day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” ( 2 Peter 3:7) and Jude wrote of “punishment of eternal fire.” At the end of the Bible, in Revelation, John describes the “wrath of the Lamb.”
With those Scriptures ringing in our ears, turn back and look at verse 16:
“The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory.” (Habakkuk 2:16)
The “cup of the Lord’s right hand” represents His wrath against the Babylonians. Judah would be disciplined because they were His children. Babylon would feel the full force of His justice because they had no interest in following, submitting, or obeying God.
Today is no different. We are all born sinners. And Romans 9 calls us “objects of God’s wrath.” Something had to happen or we were going to totally lost.
In the garden, Jesus asked God if there was another way. He asked the cup to pass from Him. What cup? The cup of God’s wrath.
But for those who by faith place their full faith and trust in the finished work of Jesus on the cross, that cup in empty. Why? Because Jesus drank it dry on the cross.
God’s wrath for your sin and mine was poured out on Jesus on the cross and we can be reconciled to God through faith.
I’d like to end with a poem I found by M. Leanne Todd:
There I go again:?quick to stumble, break, and fall.?Another choice of word?that’s slipped and heard?so full of swearing gall.
And there I go again:?poor steward of time and wages;?so wasted, spent;?dare I repent?before the Rock of Ages?
Now there I go again:?harboring rage against my neighbor,?whom I’m to love?if I’m made of?the Spirit for Whom I labor.
God of Heaven,?tell me this—?do I betray you with a kiss…
from unclean lips,?so coarse—profane??I am not fit?to call Your name!
Much less to have?Your mercy, new,?that falls on me?with mourning due…
so crisp and clean,?‘fore men confessed,?all my sins?as grace refreshed;
and Godly sorrow swallows pride?with?I AM?holy, satisfied,
Not by a pious claim of mine?for none are they to find.
?Though of no merit,?I will inherit?a Kingdom, most divine!
Because God’s rage against me?has been meted out;?and not on me?but on a tree?where Christ defeated doubt!
And so to Him I reach for,?despite my deep chagrin…?His hem, I touch,?absolving much!?It’s there, I go again.
