Well, good morning. Turn in your copy of God's Word to Habakkuk. Look at words of the prophet Habakkuk coming into chapter 2. We've been in chapter 2, but we will look at the rest of chapter 2, I pray.
As you look at the title of our message, let all the earth be silent. I think it'd be a good time for us, just for a few moments, let us be silent this morning and consider our own hearts, focus our attention upon the Lord as we prepare to sit under the preaching of the word. Let's just pray in silence.
Oh God, we thank you for your care for us. Make the word come alive to us. Help us to understand the depths of who you are. Help us to put away the things that are not pleasing to you and to put on the things of Christ. Lord, may we come before you in reverence and awe. Teach us to worship you, Lord, in spirit and in truth. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray, amen.
Well, let us read the text. I'll read in your hearing and you can follow along. I want to start with the Lord's full reply to the prophet. This is the Lord's second reply. And it picks up in verse two of chapter two. Hear the word of the Lord. Then the Lord answered me and said, record the vision and inscribe it on tablets that the one who reads it may run. For the vision is yet for the appointed time. It hastens towards the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it, for it will certainly come. It will not delay. Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith.
Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man, so that he does not stay at home. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol, and he is like death, never satisfied. He also gathers to himself all nations and collects to himself all peoples. Will not all these take up a taunt song against him, even mockery and insuations against him, and say, woe to him, who increases what is not his, for how long? And makes himself rich with loans. Will not your creditors rise up suddenly? Will not your creditors rise up suddenly and those who collect from you awaken? Indeed, you will become plunder for them.
Because you have looted many nations, all the remainder of the peoples will loot you. Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the town and all its inhabitants. Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to put his nest on high, to be delivered from the hand of calamity. You have devised a shameful thing for your house by cutting off many peoples, so you are sinning against yourself.
Surely the stone will cry out from the wall and the rafter will answer it from the framework. Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with violence. It is not indeed from the Lord of hosts that people toil for fire. Is it not indeed from the Lord of hosts that people toil for fire and nations grow weary for nothing?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Woe to you who make your neighbors drink who mix in venom even to make them drunk so as to look on their nakedness. Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness. The cup in the Lord's right hand will come around to you. Violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you and the devastation of its beasts by which you terrified them because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the town and all its inhabitants.
What profit is the idol when its maker has carved it? It's in its own handiwork when he fashions speechless idols. Woe to him who says to a piece of wood, awake, and to a mute stone, arise. And that is your teacher? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all inside it. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him. Amen.
Thus ends the reading of His Holy Word this morning. The prophet here, the Lord answering the prophet, is describing this proud one, this rebel, this one who would not submit to the Lord and live by faith, but the one whose soul was not right within him.
And we see in these initial descriptions, if you come with me to verse 5, And he talks about this haughty man and wine on his drinking parties. In fact, Nebuchadnezzar was big into that. And remember what happened to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar being the king of Babylon, the Chaldean king who would come upon the nation of Judah.
He says his soul is not right within him. He does not stay at home. He's not content with his lot in life. He leaves. He's not content with whom God has given him, but he'll go after others, and he'll mix his wine, and he'll go after a drink, and he'll be all involved in the frivolousness of life, and he is engaged in folly. He's discontent.
This proud one, that's why he's greedy for more. That's why he's wanting to uncover the nakedness of the neighbor. That's why he's involved in all these things that the haughty person is involved in. And verse five sets up, verse five and six set up all of these woes that are against this person.
His appetite is like Sheol. We know in the book of Proverbs and Psalms how the Sheol, the grave, is never satisfied. What does that mean? It means like there's not enough death. It just keeps on coming, and here this haughty or proud person is never satisfied.
He amasses more and more, and we see this slippery slope of sin described in the woes. There's five woes that come here. You might ask, what is woe? Well, woe is the Lord's divine sentence against the guilty sinner. Woe is a dreadful thing. Think of, maybe you remember the storm of last week. Maybe you kids remember the storm and the thunder and the lightning. Well, think of a woe as a divine judgment, a cloud overneath that is about to rain down The worst storm you've ever seen times 100, times 1,000, that's woe. This is judgment coming that you should shake in your boots at this time when you...
What this proud person described here in these woes, it illustrates the misery of a person who thinks that they can do fine without God. And he starts out, in verse six through eight, and I've named each of these to help us in categories of sinfulness, but the first one, what does it say?
It says he increases what is not his. He's a taker. He wants what you have and doesn't want you to have it. It says, Dwindler, he's a thief, right? That's what a thief does. They want, and so they take. And this person is a taker. He says, woe to him who increases what is not his, but then it says, for how long? The question being, how long will he go on like this? The person probably thinks he can go on forever, but the Lord has an end to this one. He says, the plunderer, the one who plunders others, will be plundered, and the looter will be looted.
You know what looting is? We don't see it a lot, but you might see it on the news sometimes. When cities go dark and the electricity is turned off, or some things happen, and all of a sudden at night, everybody comes and starts breaking into things and looting, taking whatever they want. as if it's theirs, as if it's just free for all. It's everybody's goods I'll come in and take.
And he says here, the looter will be looted. He's describing here the wages of the violent one. Remember the prophet Habakkuk first came to the Lord and he says, violence, I see violence everywhere. Well, the violent have violence coming upon them one day in divine retribution. in vengeance that God will bring out. This covetor here, this first woe, it speaks of greed.
Greed is the one who does not trust in God. Think about that. If I do not trust in God and it's all about me, well, I'm going to look for this and desire this and I'll scheme for this. Because then I'll store up things so that when things get bad, I'll be better off than the other person. Because my trust at this point is in myself. I don't see who God is. God is not in my thoughts to this person. But we're gonna see this slope, this downward slope. The first is greed, and then we are coveting.
The next one, woe to the extortioner. The extortioner, it says from verse 9 to 11, you see this portion, he gets evil gain for himself. He doesn't get gain by service for someone else or whatever other things that you might do in a righteous sense as we make a living for ourself, but he gets evil gain. He'll take it however he can. You know, I'll speak bad about this person and cause their business to go down so that somehow my business will go up. Or I'll do things in a way that's dishonest because it's all about me. He's an extortioner. And notice what this person does. He's unjust. He has no desire to be just or to live life before God because he doesn't have God in his thoughts. And what does he do? He builds a high house. He builds his nest.
And I can be up there on that high house and nobody can get to me. Maybe I'll put some walls and some gates. And then down a little further on my property, I'll have a moat and then I'll have another gate and I'll be secure then because it's all about me. I'm self-secure. How many of us can at times think this? And everything around me so secure that, and security upon security upon security, because I'm not trusting in God. Because I need to do it. I need to put the buffers there and make sure that I'm stable because I've got my control, right?
Isn't this the way that the natural man thinks? A man without God, a man without trust in God, he is completely interested in greed, self, the security, self. But what the Lord says in verse 10 is his shame is coming. The sin against others will be brought back upon himself. What comes around goes around. Woe to him. Notice it talks about the peoples a lot. It talks about the... Verse 5, the end of verse 5. Gathering nations to himself. Man wants glory for himself, power. He wants more and more. He seeks to...
So that when things will get bad, because we know things will get bad, I'll have this amassing and I'll be able to get through the poor times. Do you remember how Jesus approached in Luke 12 and inducted? And he began reasoning to himself saying, what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? Well, then he said, this is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and all my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, you fool, this very night your soul is required of you.
And now who will up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God. And he goes on to talk to the disciples about do not worry about the things, the natural things that you need. But he's addressing here in our fallen nature of wanting what is not ours, taking. But God is not this way. God's ways are not our ways. In fact, His ways are higher than our ways. seems to increase or to build.
Woe to the oppressor or the overpowering oppressor. He's taking, amassing for himself and he's founded a town. In the scriptures we see where Cain killed his brother and the very next thing he does is go and build a town, build a city. Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with violence. And he talks about the peoples, how they toil for fire and nations grow weary for nothing because they're working for themselves.
They're doing things for me. They're trying to fill the earth with the stuff of them. that they will be remembered, that they'll put a name on this building and a name on this town and my life will mean something and they're trying to fill the earth with themselves. God answers and he says this, for the earth will be filled, but not with you, little man, with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Have you ever been out on the ocean and you see the water and it just goes and it goes? His Majesty will be known throughout the earth. And that He will fill the earth with His glory. And all men that give glory to Him will remain in there. But it is not about man's pomp and man's glory.
We must think, well, did Habakkuk just come up with this? But I think it's given to us in other places of scripture as well, this same promise. And we should turn to at least three of them. That real quick, and then Isaiah 11 after that. In Numbers 14, so this is Moses, verse 21. Let's start back a little, let's start back at 19, 18.
The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of your lovingkindness, just as you also have forgiven this people from Egypt even until now." Here Moses, as the priest before them, is asking the Lord, pardon their sins of this people according to your hesed, your lovingkindness, your covenant love. And the Lord said this, so the Lord said, I have pardoned them according to your word.
But indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. There it is. Surely all the men have seen my glory and my signs, which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put me to the test. And then he goes on, Isaiah 11. And also Psalm 72, and I had not seen this before my study, so I thought it was helpful for us.
So here in Isaiah 11, this is speaking of the time after Christ's second coming. The wolf will dwell with the lamb, verse six, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat and the calf and the young lion and the fatling will lie together and a little boy will lead them. Also a cow and the bear will graze. Their young will lie down together and the lion will eat straw with the ox and the nursing child will play in the hole of the cobra and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den. They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Do you long for that day? I know I do. Psalm 72, one more and then we'll move along. I'm turning there too, so I don't have my pages marked. to make sure we're on the same page. All right, Psalm 72, verse 18 and 19. Verse 17, may his name endure forever. May his name increase as long as the sun shines.
And let men bless themselves by him. Let all the nations call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who alone works wonders. And blessed be his glorious name forever. And may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen. The prayers of David are ended. What we see here is God's glory displayed, that He is working towards that end, that He is one day going to have all of His glory spread from all of creation. This is where God is going. Man's pomp is not the end, God's glory is. And we go from the covetor to the extortioner to the oppressor, and then the fourth woe, woe to the, I wasn't sure what to title this one, the schemer, or maybe the fornicator, or maybe the adulterer.
All those would be fine for this blank. In verse 15 to 17, look with me there. Woe to you who makes your neighbors drink, who makes your venom even to make them drunk, so as to look on their nakedness. They want to cause someone to be inebriated, to cause someone to be out of their mind so they can take advantage of that person in a sexual nature. We've seen this before even in our day of even people with all the money in the world deciding that they would violate someone in this way, but God is saying, I will deal with them, I will judge them, not only by even punishment here in this life, in prison sentences, but in the life to come if they do not get right with God. But this person is all about their own self-satisfying, my felt needs. If you won't give it, I will take it. That's what he's saying here in this scheming.
He's wanting to get them drunk, to go into adultery with this person. Adultery being any sexual activity outside of the marriage. To using what God has given for good in the marriage to pervert it. To make it perverted, to make it something that it's not, to make it ugly and what we don't even want to talk about perverting. It's man's lusts. Lusts for power, lusts for money, lusts for sexual...
What God is saying, the cup of mirth, so the cup of drink and the cup given to someone else, but notice what God says about this cup. The cup of the Lord's right hand will come around to you. That means the cup of God's wrath will come to this person.
Do you remember what the disciples said to Jesus? Let us sit on your right and your left. And what did Jesus say? Can you drink the cup that I'm about to drink? He's speaking of the cup of God's right hand, the cup of wrath against sin that Jesus was going to drink all the way down for those of his people. But if you are not of Christ's people, you will drink the wrath of God's right hand, the cup of judgment, and you'll never get to the end of the cup. It'll be continuous. It'll be dreadful. It'll be woe and woe and woe with each drink.
Because this is what is due for the sinner, due for you and I. But God, God had a plan. The plan was the plan of redemption, to buy back those who did deserve death, to bring them back from the, to not have to drink the cup of the Lord's right hand of His wrath because He's holy, but that God Himself would drink the penalty that you and I deserve. That this devastation is gonna come upon these people who are doing this bloodshed and violence to the land, to the towns, to God's creation, to God's image bearers.
This arrogant and proud person. is represented in Babylon. We've said this last week, that Babylon is representing the proudness of mankind. Nebuchadnezzar being the pinnacle of that as the king. Remember, Nebuchadnezzar said, look at Babylon, look at all I have built. Remember how quickly Babylon went from nothing to greatness. I think their reign was something like 200 years. Not very long. But God raises up kings and takes them down.
And this arrogant, proud Babylon is the symbol of this. The symbol is carried on through scripture when you get to Revelation 16-18 and you'll see the doom of Babylon. Babylon representing the man's power and man's pomp and man's glory. Think of Babel.
Well, we'll raise a tower. We'll get up to God. We'll ascend on high. Just keep on building. We'll have the highest tower. We'll be the greatest. We'll have a name for ourself. And God took that one down. And God took the next Babylon down. And God will take the final Babylon down. So come out from her. Come out from Babylon. Don't stay in the city of destruction, in the state of your own proudness. the state of your own arrogance and desiring your own glory. This is a warning for us, a warning for those at the time that Habakkuk is writing, that Judah was proud. Judah was going its own way, disregarding God's law, disregarding His worship. and they were going down this slippery slope of Babylon from covetor to extortioner to oppressor to fornicator and schemer and then where does that lead?
It leads down to another horrible sin that is natural to mankind and that is idolatry. In fact, we see of the adultery in the fourth woe to spiritual adultery in the fifth woe. That's what idolatry is. It's spiritual adultery. It means we desire to worship something that is not God.
Someone or something. But that's what man has to do. You say, why? Because man is created in the image of God, and man is created to worship. If you will not worship the one true God, you will still worship, but what will you worship? We will worship things of our own hand, what I have built, or myself, or someone else that I'd like to look like, right? That's what mankind is prone to do.
We notice that even in the text from our Sunday school lesson with Laban and even Rachel and these little gods, they made these little gods and they, well, this is what saved us. You just made that thing. And we might say today, well, we don't make them. Calvin says our hearts are like idle factories. We make in our own imagination gods as things we worship. We might not build a shrine and bow down.
It might not be noticeable, but it's the things that you focus on, the things that bring you happiness, the things that you, if they were taken away, you wouldn't be able to live. It could be good things. Well, my comfort's my house. My children could even be that that I worship. And Lord, I'll continue to worship you, but you've take those away. Well, what's become your God? My job? My spouse? Somehow I find my significance in something other than God. Do you see what's happening?
Do you see how easy it is for us to just slip down there? And we slip down there because we started with greed, because we started with, I'm discontent, and I will be content if I have this. Look, our contentment needs to be from God and God alone. There is nothing else that will fill that contentment. It'll make you miserable. Go to Ecclesiastes and read how Solomon tried this and tried that, and none of it, it was all vanity of vanities. It made him wanna just despair of life. And you will have that same despair if we don't come to the one true God, if we don't come to Christ. You will be discontent. And as Christians, we can lapse back to that. We take our eyes off Christ and we start to think about things.
Well, I gotta build up this. I gotta protect this. I gotta bring this person down so I can take that. And we act like we're living in Babylon. We act like Babylonians at times. And God here is saying woe to the spiritual adulterer. Woe to the person who worships politicians, rulers, who worships athletes and famous people, and the good-looking and the rich and famous, and they think, well, that's what I want.
If I had that, then my life would be great. No, it wouldn't. Their life's a mess, too, if they're not in Christ. No, if the Lord blesses you with things and comforts, give God glory. If He blesses you with talents and gifts, give God glory and use them to the glory of God, knowing that that's what you're created for.
But what we do is we start to say, look at me and look what I've done and we need to be humbled. And God will humble, God will bring low those who are exalted, but we ought to humble our own self. Notice this decline, and I'll say it again, the covetor, the extortioner, and we're going down to the oppressor, the schemer, and the idolatry, it flows into idolatry. I almost wanna say, I wonder, even in our own nation, the way that it's going in the direction Would the Lord say woe to America, to the idolatrous practices that we see all around us?
We can name off a million things. The idea that somehow we're a Christian nation, I don't see that. I see Christians, thank God, that God has remnant Christians here, but we are living as it were in Babylon. We are not in Zion. We are in Babylon. We are in a land that is wicked. And we see the wickedness around us, and we should pray for the people who are described in these woes.
Maybe be able to go to them and proclaim to them who God is, and that there is a Savior if they would turn, if they would humble themselves. And to our leaders as well, that they would humble themselves before God. And if things are doing well in the country, to give God glory. And if there are gifts of good minds and things that we can build upon to help the next generation to give God glory, to desire to see the knowledge of God throughout the world, filling the earth instead of names for ourselves.
Oh, for that to happen in our day, that we would learn to be silent. And that takes us to the end in verse 20. But the Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him. This is showing us that in man's pomp, when the prophet saw the wicked being blessed and the righteous being afflicted, God's saying, I'm going to rectify, I'm going to I'm working at something that you don't know. And that one day the earth is not going to be filled with Babylon and man's pride, but my glory, the glory of Jesus Christ, that every knee in heaven and earth will bow before Jesus Christ. It'll be willingly or you will be made to. But there's coming a day when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the earth.
That's to the brim. No sinners, no wickedness. Oh, how we long to that day. And the Lord has left his church believers here now to spread that. How else shall they know unless someone goes to them? How else do they go in some other sense? So the Bible talks that we are to go with the gospel. We are to go with the word of God to those who do not have.
When we see them on this destructive course of sin and more sin, sin always leads to more sin. That's why he has these five woes. I want us to see three things as we conclude from this. Three things, what we saw from the woes, which is what I saw, is man's taking, man's boasting, and man's rule, or his assumed rule. So, man's taking next to God's grace giving. Man takes and deserves favor, mercy through his son, grace.
Man's boasting compared to God's glory. They're not even on the same page. Man thinks he's all that, and God sits back and laughs. God's glory is over all, and then man's rule compared to God's government. What can man do? It's a laughing matter, but man thinks that he's somehow sovereign. There is only one sovereign, and it is the Lord God. He is sovereign over all, over all that happens.
And man's duty, when we think about this, is to be silent. Silent brings to our minds awe and reverence. Silence, to shut our mouths. It also brings the idea of worship, of bowing before a sovereign king. Think about the times in the Scriptures when man has come underneath the holiness of God. And it's, Lord, depart from me, a man of unclean lips. It is humiliation and lowness. And the idea of silence before God brings us also to submission. The idea of submission, meaning I desire to obey my King in all of my life. Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. As I mentioned from Ecclesiastes several times, I'll close with chapter eight in Ecclesiastes. Well, first he communicates, Solomon does, a little bit about Habakkuk's problem in verse 14 of chapter eight. He says this, Solomon says this, there's a futility which is done on the earth, a futility.
That is, there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked. On the other hand, there are the evil men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I say that this too is futility. What he's saying is good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people in his mind.
But he comes in verse 12. Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and may lengthen his life, Still I know that it will be well for those who fear God and who fear him openly, but it will not be well for the evil man and he will not lengthen his days like a shadow because he does not fear God. Oh, that we would learn to fear God. to be silent before God.
In fact, this is God's conclusion to this passage. His illustration and His application to this passage is verse 14 and verse 20. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And then the Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.
God is to be greatly feared, feared for His holiness, for His grace and His mercy, for His unreserved glory, let's do His name, majesty, for His unchallenged government and His rule over all and how He's working out his eternal counsels, even right now in the lives of you and I, in the lives of our time now, as he was in the time of Habakkuk. And God will one day fill his creation with the glory and majesty of himself. Amen.
Oh Lord, we long for the day when you will make all things right where all will bow down in reverential worship and glorify your name. And when we see your name blasphemed today, and we see the rampant idolatry around us, we have a desire to share your word with them and pray for them. that, Lord, you would save their soul, that they would get off of their throne, that they would lay down their pride and fear God. Lord, teach us more and more to fear you in holy reverence. May we give you honor in all of our ways, in all of our lives, not just on the Lord's day, but every day. Sanctify us, I pray.
We thank you that you have not created a world that's spinning out of control, but Lord, you are working out your sovereign plan and that one day all the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of yourself. May that day come soon. In Christ's name we pray, amen.
