Well, hello all and welcome. Let me add my welcome to the others you've received this morning.
If I've not met you before, my name is Steve Jeffrey. I'm the senior pastor here at St. Paul's
and I'm so glad you tuned in for us today. As you have just seen, we're up to Habakkuk chapter 2.
If you haven't got a Bible there, if you'd like to open it up, grab it, iPad, whatever it might be.
Also, if you go to St. Paul's app, you will also find the outline for today's sermon there.
We're up to Habakkuk chapter 2. Now, if some of you may be aware of this, Malcolm Naden was the
most wanted person in New South Wales up until his capture and arrest a little over about eight years
ago now. He was on the run from June 2005 until March 2012 when he was finally captured in the
middle of the night in this little cabin, remote cabin west of the little town of Gloucester.
He was, in fact, a source of embarrassment to law enforcement agencies in our state as he eluded
them and escaped capture for about seven years. So imagine after their frustration of trying to
catch him and not being able to catch him, they decided that the best way to finally deal with
their biggest issue of securing the capture of Malcolm Naden and bringing him to justice was instead
to call in the military and to issue nuclear strikes everywhere from Newcastle to Armidale and,
you know, 500 kilometers and I just wipe out the whole section of the state in the attempt to get him.
Now, that particular strategy has its strengths. You finally get the guy who's eluded you on so many
occasions. You get rid of a whole bunch of feral animals and potentially a few illegal crops in there
hiding away in the bush. Of course, the major negative which virtually the whole world would
have a problem with is that you wipe out everyone and everything in that space as well. Now, as we launch
into the book of Habakkuk, and if you've been with us in the last couple of weeks, you probably would
have seen this already. It appears on the surface that that is God's solution to the evil and the
carnage and the sin in this little book of the Bible called Habakkuk. If you've just joined us,
we're partway through it already, and it's a pretty straightforward book. It's actually pretty
interesting and highly practical, even if a little confusing at times. It is about how to face
times, times of evil and difficulty. They might be evil times, difficult times on an international
scale or a national scale, or they might even be deeply personal times of evil and hardship,
when everything in life comes crashing down for us. This little book prepares us for the times when
it comes, as it did for the man Habakkuk. Now, Habakkuk states his main issue with God's solution
to the evil of his own people Israel by sending in the schoolyard bullies of that time, the Babylonian
empire. And he says this in chapter 1 verse 13,
Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
See, Habakkuk's question is this, God, how can you possibly use the more wicked Babylonians to deal
with the less wicked Israelites? How can you do that? And his question is, what about the Babylonians?
Are they just going to get away with their evil? I mean, you're going to deal with Israel's evil.
What about the Babylonians evil? Will they get punished as well? That's where we were left at the end of
last week. And so what we're launching into now is God's answer to Habakkuk's second and big complaint.
So if you've got the St. Paul's app open, you'll see that I've got three main points there.
And God judges all sin and evil, the source of all sin and evil, and thirdly, God's solution to our
sin and evil. So firstly, Habakkuk chapter 2, God judges all sin and evil. Now, as you launch into
Habakkuk chapter 2, which was just read out to us, you will notice that Babylon is mocked there in five
separate statements of woes. You can see it as you read through five separate woes.
Even though Babylon at in that time looked invincible to Habakkuk and to everyone who could
see they looked invincible. Even Babylon was brought down. Even Babylon was brought to an end in 539 BC.
And so each of these five woes, or you know, you might want to call them curses,
it details the crimes perpetrated by Babylon and God's response to those. And those crimes of Babylon
just have such, they resonate with much of what we see still around this world.
The first woe is in verses 6 to 8 of chapter 2. And it's directed towards those who acquire goods
dishonestly. What happens to those who are acquiring their goods dishonestly? The Bible turns the table on
them. The victims become the victors. So notice verse 8 particularly. Because you have plundered many
nations, the peoples who are left will plunder you. So what God does here is he relates to Habakkuk
the basic principle of justice. The basic principle of justice. And it is the punishment should fit the
crime. The punishment should fit the crime. And you see the same pattern right through these five woes.
Verses 9 to 11. We have the plotter who exploits for personal gain or national or family or even family
dynasty glory. This is about the pursuit of glory. What's the punishment for those who do everything
in order to advance their glory, to make their name great, that people would praise them?
Verse 10. Shame instead of glory. The person who lives to make their name great, their name will become
less. Nothing. Verses 12 and 13. We have the promoter of violence. The foundation of Babylon society was in
fact bloodshed, the blood of their enemies. And their punishment is in verse 13. Has not the Lord
almighty determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire? They were burning, sorry, they were
building an empire that would be merely fuel for the fire of God's judgment.
James 5. James 5. James chapter 5 verse 5 in the New Testament speaks of rich oppressors who have fattened
themselves for the day of slaughter. That's all they've achieved, their own demise.
verse 15. Verse 15. We have the immoral. They glorified themselves by shaming their enemies. And what it says is that
they will receive shame instead of glory. The last woe is in verses 18 to 20 and it refers to the idolater.
Idolatry in the Bible is when we worship something less than ourselves and something that is far less than God.
That's idolatry. Worshipping something that is less than ourselves and far less than God. It is speechless. It is powerless. It is therefore useless.
And these Babylonians created idols to give them wisdom and guidance. Their punishment is silence
and no help at all. So what we see in these five woes is that the punishment fits the crime.
And it's by this principle that both Israel and Babylon will be judged. That's God's message to Habakkuk.
God is committed to justice. The wicked will not get away with their evil. God will hold all people
accountable for their actions and punish them accordingly. That's the good news because there's
something in each one of us that says we want justice to be done.
So secondly, what is the source of all this evil and sin and carnage?
What's the core issue here for the Babylonians? What's the source of their evil behavior?
And likewise, the Israelites as well. And you and me.
For the Babylonians, it's too easy to read about these guys and just go,
oh, they're just such awful people. They are brutal people.
They deserve what they got in 539 BC. I would never do that sort of stuff.
We're modern people. We don't believe in that sort of thing.
That is until we look at verse 4 and verse 18.
And we touched on it briefly last week.
It goes on in verse 5 to say he, this is referring to Babylon,
So at the very center of the nation of Babylon,
and likewise Israel and you and me, is this pride, arrogance, an arrogant emptiness almost.
It says here at Babylon, they gather nations to themselves.
They conquer and they kill for their own glory in attempt to build themselves up and to puff themselves up.
They are using people to promote their own glory.
And in verse 16 it says they seek to clothe themselves in glory.
You see, at the heart of the evil Babylonian culture, at the heart of every culture,
at the heart of every life, is an arrogance and a pride that leads to a life of pursuing personal glory,
personal gain, making the world revolve around me.
Now, many of us don't immediately see ourselves in that.
Much easier to identify it in other people.
Much easier when we see pride in other people.
A few would, I think, surpass the boxing legend Muhammad Ali in self-promotion and self-glory.
You go on YouTube and you can see this everywhere.
And for those who are around long enough to hear him speak,
who have been around a while and have heard him speak, would see that clearly.
One person said of Muhammad Ali that he thought that the sun came up every morning just to hear him crow.
Even the rising of the sun was about him.
He roared on and on about how he was the greatest.
He bragged about his good looks.
He declared that nothing was impossible for him.
Here's just a couple of more of his more memorable quotes, if you like.
I'm young.
I'm handsome.
I'm fast.
I cannot possibly be beaten.
He also said, it's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
And this one, bragging is when a person says something and they can't do it.
I do everything that I say I'm going to do.
And this one, top it all off.
I'm the most recognized and loved man that ever lived.
Because there was no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around.
So people far away in the villages didn't know about them.
That's a pretty bold statement.
You see, pride is easy to see when you've got that sort of thing on display.
It's not as easy to see our own hearts.
And the reason the Babylonians did what they did and why we do what we do,
even if it is, frankly, like me today, preaching, us gathering together, singing,
moving ahead in our careers, creating artworks, whatever it is,
it's because we are to a great degree insecure and trying to cover ourselves with honor and glory,
trying to fill that aching void that I need to be something.
Now, I, from a young age, grew up being affirmed for my practical skills.
As a child, I would constantly be using my dad's tools and inevitably losing them in some way.
I would pull lawnmowers apart.
Wasn't always so skilled in putting them back together, but would certainly pull them apart.
I regularly modified and fixed my first car and would probably take a certain sense of pride.
It would be an element of embarrassment for me if I had to take it to a mechanic to get it fixed.
I figured I could do it myself.
Now, when I was first married a number of years ago,
my wife, Natalie, was unaware at my, if you like, my skill set in this particular area.
And at one particular point, the very early days of our marriage,
we had this old car, little old car, little bomb car, wasn't worth much.
But this little car, the clutch went on it, broke on it, and so I needed to replace it.
And I decided that I was going to do it myself.
I'd done this sort of thing on a number of occasions in the past, thought it was pretty straightforward.
And I was under the car, preparing to pull the clutch out of the car,
all jacked up, ready to go.
And my dear wife appeared in the door of the garage and said to me,
do you know what you're doing?
Oh, I mean, talk about a knife to the ego at that point.
The challenge there to my ego, my sense of worth, my sense of manhood, my pride, my glory.
I was very unhappy about it being questioned, even if it was innocently questioned in that moment.
And so I got out from under the car, walked inside and proceeded to tell her,
and needed to tell her, in fact, how good I was at this sort of thing.
I was doing it to save money and just simply because I can and let me show you.
And before the end of the day, this car is going to be working, going to be driving again,
and we'll show you how good I am at this sort of thing.
So I packed up my bruised ego, went back under the car to prove to her that I knew exactly what I was doing,
and she needed to recognise that in me.
I envisaged taking her for a drive later in the day to demonstrate properly what a working clutch looks like
and my mechanical prowess at the same time.
But in my distraction and frustration in that moment,
I made the mistake of undoing the wrong set of bolts.
And when I pulled the clutch out, what I did was I, in fact,
dropped all the ball bearings out of the whole entire gearbox,
which come dropping on me and all over the floor.
Now, as skilled as I thought that I was,
that's something I can't fix.
I do not have the know-how to fix that.
It would require a gearbox specialist to put that entire thing back together.
And it would cost me more than the value of the car.
And so by the end of the day, instead of taking my wife for a drive,
showing her how good I was as a mechanic,
instead the car was being put on the back of a wrecker truck taken to the wreckers.
The core issue in that moment was my pride.
That pride that resulted in sinful, evil behaviour,
that resulted in me not treating my wife in the way that I should treat her.
And pride is a refusal for me as a human being,
this is the core issue,
for me as a human being not allowing God to be God.
It's a grab at God's status for his glory and trying to keep it for myself.
It's independence from him.
It's a reliance upon myself and my own resources.
And according to the Bible,
this is the cosmic, delusional fantasy of all fantasies.
And it leaves us restless.
It leaves us empty at our centres.
We live lives of fear and anxiety and bluff.
We look everywhere for people to puff up our shaky egos.
It's the foundation of sin,
the source of all evil in the world.
And so I have to ask you, wherever you are right now,
can you see that in yourself at all?
If you don't,
can I just keep tuning in,
keep coming to church,
read the Gospels.
So what we have here is we have pride is at one end of the passage.
And interestingly enough,
at the end of the passage,
we have idolatry in verse 18.
When you live independently of God,
there is never a vacuum.
Something else is worshipped instead.
Something else is put in God's place
to give you a sense of identity and worth.
Every culture and life that is not based on the glory of God
is based on an idol of some description,
an inordinate desire,
a replacement.
And it will take something good
and it will raise it to the ultimate.
That's what idolatry is.
It takes a good gift from God
and raises it to the status in our lives
where it becomes the ultimate thing.
And we do it because of pride.
For instance,
if you enjoy running
and running fast is the way that you feel about yourself
and it's the way that you pick up your fragile ego,
then running becomes the ultimate for you.
But it will never satisfy.
It'll run your body into the ground.
Every one of us takes a good thing
and makes it an ultimate thing.
And we look to that thing to be God for us,
to give us what only God can give us.
It creates a seed of destruction
that will never be satisfied.
There is never any rest.
Pride is in the heart of every human being
and it's the source of every evil.
And so we're no different than the Babylonians.
Our outcomes and our practices might be different,
but at the core we're the same
and therefore we deserve God's punishment
just as they did.
So what's God's solution then?
Is it just a nuclear strike?
What's his solution to our sin and our evil?
Habakkuk knew that everybody in the world was a sinner.
Everyone had pride at the heart.
He also knew that the holiness of God,
the perfection of God,
meant that he cannot ignore it.
He can't just turn a blind eye to it.
In the same way, we don't turn a blind eye to it.
Habakkuk 2, verse 4 teaches
that the only thing that can save us is faith.
So faith in what?
Faith in God's mercy.
And that's in fact what he prays in chapter 3,
which is for next week.
We won't jump into that right now.
And yet, Habakkuk could not see ahead far enough
to how God is going to do that.
He could not see into the future
of how God was going to preserve
both his holy hatred for sin and his justice,
as well as his mercy and his forgiveness for the sinner.
How is God going to hold both of those things together?
You see, sin, like a debt,
requires a penalty to be paid,
either by you or by me.
You come along and steal my iPhone,
either you have to pay me back for that,
or I have to absorb the cost of that.
Someone has to pay a debt.
Someone has to carry the responsibility of cost.
And sin, like a debt,
always requires a penalty to be paid.
There's always a cost that needs to be paid.
And the only way for God,
the only way that he can pardon us
and not judge us is by him absorbing the payment.
This is how the New Testament puts it.
Hebrews chapter 9, verse 26 says this.
This is talking about Jesus.
He has appeared once for all
at the culmination of the ages
to do away with sin
by the sacrifice of himself.
Just as people are destined to die once
because of their sin
and after that to face judgment
because of their sin,
so Christ was sacrificed once
to take away the sin of many.
Jesus, the innocent one,
the only innocent one,
does away with our sin
by willingly taking it upon himself.
Only an innocent one
can suffer for the sake of others.
Jesus turns God's anger away from us
by allowing it to fall on him.
Our destiny is to face the judgment of God
to get from him what we deserve.
Instead, what we see
the second half of verse 28
in Hebrews chapter 9
is he will appear a second time.
Talking about Jesus.
Not to bear sin
but to bring salvation
to those who are waiting for him.
The future is salvation
instead of judgment.
There are those
who are waiting for Jesus
by faith
and by implication
there are those
who are not.
The destiny of the proud
and the idolatrous
like the Babylonians here
in Habakkuk 2
is spelled out for us
in the very next chapter of Hebrews.
Hebrews chapter 10 verse 26
if we deliberately keep on sinning
after we receive
the knowledge of truth
no sacrifice for sins is left
but only a fearful expectation
of judgment
and of raging fire
that will consume
the enemies of God.
Anyone who rejected
the law of Moses
died without mercy
on the testimony
of two or three witnesses.
How much more severely
do you think
someone deserves
to be punished
who has trampled
the Son of God
the work of Jesus
underfoot
who has treated
as an unholy thing
the blood of the covenant
that sanctified them
and who has insulted
the Spirit of grace.
For we know him
who said
it is mine to avenge
I will repay
and again
the Lord will judge
his people
it is a dreadful thing
to fall
into the hands
of the living God.
On that day
it will appear
clearly
to all
how utterly
naive
utterly naive
it was for
billions of people
millions
billions of people
potentially
to live
their lives
as if
the God
who made
this world
for his glory
would never
hold them
or call them
to account
for how little
he has meant
for them
as they have
pursued
glory
for themselves.
This squares
with all
the message
of the Bible
and also
deep down
in our hearts
where we have
a desire
for justice
to be done.
And so
I urge you
urge you
for everyone
who's listening
to me on this
I urge you
are you
ready
to take
your stand
in the divine
courtroom
and hear
the judge
pass an
internal sentence
on you?
Are you ready
for that?
There will
only be
two
verdicts
in that
day
and one
or the
other of
them
will be
passed
on every
single
person
who
has
ever
walked
the
face
of
this
earth
either
condemned
or
justified
made
right in
God's
eyes
through
the
sacrifice
of the
Lord
Jesus.
For
those who
are by
faith
waiting
for
Jesus
there is
hope
in
these
verses
that
shape
our
waiting.
If you
understand
these two
hopes
even in
the
darkness
you can
face
absolutely
anything
this world
throws at
you.
The hope
of verse
20
is that
in all
the dark
times
God
is
sovereign.
It says
the Lord
is in
his holy
temple
let all
the earth
be silent
before him.
This God
is not
done.
He is not
lifeless.
He is not
a lifeless
idol.
He does
not
make
false
promises
that
leave
us
empty.
This
God
rules.
He is
saying
that no
matter
how
bad
things
get
this
God
is
in
control.
He is
not
gone.
Even
when we
totally
screw up
our
lives
he can
turn
that
around.
Bad
things
will
happen
but
God
is
in
it.
He's
controlling
it.
Bringing
it
about
for
his
good
purposes
and
he
never
leaves
his
throne.
Even
in
seasons
like
this
where
this
world
is
getting
a
sense
at
the
moment
that
it
is
not
out
of
control
that
should
be
sending
signals
deep
into
our
hearts
to
each
one
of us
to
realize
we
are
not
in
control
but
he
is.
The
second
part
of
the
verse
in
verse
20
is
a
call
for
the
Babylonians
for
Judah
for
us
to
submit
ourselves
to
this
God
and
his
goodness
not
just
in
the
good
times
but
in
the
times
that
we
don't
understand
and
to
wait
upon
him.
The
ultimate
hope
is
in
verse
14
for
the
earth
will
be
filled
with
the
knowledge
of
the
glory
of
the
Lord
as
the
waters
cover
the
sea.
The
day
will
come
when
all
evil
is
removed.
All
the
carnage
will
come
to an
end.
Sin
gone
for
and
only
God's
kingdom
will
remain.
All
rival
kingdoms
such
as
the
Babylonians
in
their
day
will
be
done
away
with.
This
will
be
finally
be
fulfilled
when
Jesus
returns.
His
is the
only
glory
that
will
last
forever.
This
verse
tells
us
that
someday
we
will
soak
in
it
because
of
Jesus.
His
glory
will
become
ours
as
he
glorifies
us
those
who
trust
in
him.
Jesus
took
our
shame
so
that
when
we
put
our
trust
in
him
God
clothes
us
with
glory
and
honor.
No
more
shame.
We
seek
our
own
honor
and
therefore
we
deserve
shame.
and
Jesus
took
our
shame
so
that
we
could
receive
his
glory
and
honor.
And
it's
the
only
glory
it's
the
only
honor
that
can
ultimately
satisfy
the
longings
of
our
hearts.
Something
a glory
and
honor
that
is
stable
that
is
secure
that
is
unchangeable
in a
changing
world.
You
see
the
answer
of
Christianity
is
it's
the
beauty
and
the
magnificence
of
God
that
matters
the
most.
The
honor
of
God
the
applause
of
God
the
love
of
God
the
applause
and
the
love
of
the
praise
worthy
is
what
fills
up
our
hearts.
The
glory
of
God
the
applause
of
God
the
honor
of
God
it's
the
only
glory
and
honor
that
lasts
forever
and
gives
us
rest
for
our
souls
in
a
turbulent
world.
And so
next week
we will
see
how
Habakkuk's
humbling
trust
in God
shapes
him
for the
onslaught
of a
difficult
world.
Thi
way
to
t
ha
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