HABAKKUK Lesson # 2
QUESTIONING GOD’S ANSWER AND LEARNING MORE
Habakkuk 1:12-2:20
I. Greetings:
II. Introduction:
Note: Last week we spoke of asking God legitimate questions and even questioning His running of the world if we really are questioning and not just complaining. We then saw that the Lord gave the prophet Habakkuk an answer he did not really want. He wanted his community to be cleaned up of its wickedness (1:2-4) and God promised to bring judgment from the Babylonians (1:5-11). Now we will see how this “dialogue with God” continues.
When we start an honest conversation with people we are upset with but care about, it may lead us into areas we never imagined. The direction may not be pleasant but in the long run beneficial. So it is with God…. Let us see how the conversation goes with Habakkuk and the Lord of all the earth.
III. The Second Question: Why Use such horrible people? Habakkuk 1:12-2:1.
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 1:12.
Q What is the prophet saying about the Lord? How does he view God?
An = God is everlasting, Holy, his God, and Habakkuk calls him: Rock! God is eternal, faithful, trustworthy, hallowed, and God is personally related to this prophet. God is his God, not just God.
Q Why does the prophet think they will not die?
An = because God is the LORD, his God, his Holy One, from all eternity.
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 1:13
Q What does Habakkuk think of the Lord’s solution to Israel’s wickedness? What does Habakkuk think of the Lord using the Babylonians to judge Israel?
An = He does not think very highly of it. He is saying, surely God is too pure to approve such an evil course of action. He wants to know why God is using someone more wicked than them to judge them.
Q Has God ever done this to you? Has He ever judged you using someone more wicked than yourself?
An = Let them answer, and if they do not then share an example from your own life if you can. Try to let them express or understand the frustration of being corrected by folks worse than yourself. It is not that we claim innocence, but that we resent being corrected by someone or some group more vile and corrupt than ourselves.
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 1:14-17.
Q How are the Chaldeans or Babylonians described in these verses?
An = They abuse many people. The Chaldeans engulf other nations and worship their military might and enjoy the booty they collect from the nations they conquer. They over run others and rejoice in doing it. They worship the means of their control over others.
Q Do you know people who do that today? Do you know people who enjoy controlling and abusing to their advantage others?
An = Some people enjoy the power they have over others and it is power that is used to the hurt of others, not to bless others. Some use their position at work, at church, their charisma, sexual attraction, etc. They worship their skills or position, their sexual attraction, etc.
>>>> Have someone re-read Habakkuk 1:17
Q Have you ever felt like the prophet in this verse? Have you ever wondered if they will ever be stopped?
An = Let them express their honest feelings and do not let them just assure one another that the evil ones will get it, but try to help them to express their real frustration at seeing wicked powerful people seemingly get away with their evil ways.
Note: All of this is how the prophet feels, and he is expressing these feelings to God. He is coming out in the open with God how he really feels. The prophet is frustrated with God’s plans and what God is allowing in the world. He does not go into despair, he does not quit, he does not consign himself to fate, rather he complains to God who can do something about it.
He discusses things with God. Habakkuk prays. He also does one more thing….
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 2:1
Q What else is the prophet doing here? What does he stand on the rampart?
An = He awaits an answer just like the guard on a wall awaits in coming news. The prophet expects God to answer! In addition, he knows he might have been a bit too harsh in his complaining and he is willing and open to a counter critique. We must pray and pray expecting an answer and be willing to be reproved. Such a willingness to be criticized, to be subject to critique, reproved, means we seek the truth most of all21!!
RQ Do we really seek the truth when we complain?
Note: If we do we will be heard and answered. This is what happens to Habakkuk….
IV. The LORD’s Second Answer: You Hang-In, They Will Get Theirs. Habakkuk 2:2-20.
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 2:2-3.
Q What does the Lord want the prophet to do in verse 2?
An = To record the vision, to record plainly, clearly, so any can tell at a glance the truth and then they can pass it on.
Q What is the Lord saying in verse 3?
An = Wait, hang-in, hang-on, the vision of what is to come will take place. Do not give up hope. When God speaks and God promises; it will take place.
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 2:4-5.
Q How is contrasted in verse 4?
An = The proud one who soul or life is not right within him and the righteous who lives by his faith. There is the proud, not right and the righteous, with faith.
Q How does one live by faith in this chapter?
An = In the context, it is by obeying the Lord’s instructions to write the vision, even though it is in the future, and to have hope (faith if you will) that the Lord will honor His Word. He will bring justice and judgment on Babylon, those wicked people who seem to be getting away with everything right now.
Q So how do we have faith and be righteous today in light of this passage?
An = When we do not lose hope that the Lord will bring to justice those who seem to get away with oppression today. When we believe, the coming judgment of the Lord, when we believe that fairness and truth will win out because God Himself will guarantee it.
Q Who is being referred to in verse 5?
An = Any one who is proud or arrogant. Anyone who wanders, is never satisfied and gathers what is others to himself or herself. No doubt it referred immediately to Babylon, who wandered the Middle East, never satisfied and taking from other, smaller nations.
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 2:6-8.
Q What is the Lord promising will happen to Babylon or those hurting others right now?
An = Will not justice finally be paid by those who owe due to their sin. Those who hurt others now will be hurt themselves.
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 2:9-17.
Note: Notice that in verses 9,12,15 the paragraph opens with the word: “Woe”. This is a classic “Woe Oracle”. The prophet pronounces by the power and authority of
God’s Spirit and the prophet’s words speaks into reality the coming judgment. This is not mere expressing of displeasure, but the bringing into reality a judgment on those spoken against by the means of prophetic utterance.
In Habakkuk one has a glimpse of how powerful the Prophet Word. It is not mere “foretelling” but the very power of God being displayed.
Q What are the three types of persons having “woe” pronounced upon them in verses 9, 12, and 15?
An = Woe to him:
1) who gets evil gain for his house, (build personal security for their own)
2) who builds a city with bloodshed, (build their fortune by hurting others)
3) and who makes drink… (so as to embarrass and shame them)
Note: By the way there are actually five “woes” in 6-20 (6,9,12,15,19).
Q How do people do these things today?
An = We often think our number one justification for doing things is to “get ahead”, to build some security and to do for “our group”, “our race”, “our denomination”, “our church”, “our family”. God rejects such arguments. It is wrong to do to wrong to others. It is never right to disgrace others who are your neighbors.
To gain for our house (our extended relationships), to build our city, to expose others, we better beware how we will be judged by the Lord of Glory.
Q What are the consequences for such actions?
An = The very things we take for our homes we speak out against us (11)… amazing. The VCR’s, the bank accounts, the cars, etc. will speak against us.
All that we have gained with violence will be burned with violence (13). The earth will be filled with His glory, not our ill gotten gain.
We will be dishonored, disgraced. Our vile treatment of other’s decency will be turned on us. Imagine those who photograph children, or young vulnerable women for pornography’s sake. It will rebound on them.
Babylon disgraced and looted other nations, and it was done to her. Those who act like Babylon will share the same fate, so beware if a prophet speaks….
>>>> Have someone read Habakkuk 2:18-20.
Note: Many today say that they do not have to worry about what the Bible says because they do not believe in the Bible. They believe in buddhism, new age, are agnostics, etc. The Bible’s judgments they say do not affect them, they have their own religion. They have constructed their own beliefs and do not care what the Scripture says.
Q What does Habakkuk say about the false beliefs, false idols that men trust in and choose to believe in?
An = “Woe to him…” It does not matter how expense our false beliefs are constructed, they are still false. They are not alive, not true. Humans beings can believe what they want to, “But the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.”