SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/30/2016
11:07 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Prophet Worrying
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Habakkuk
1:1-3
Message of
the verses: “1 The oracle which Habakkuk the prophet saw.
2 How long, O LORD, will I call for help, And You will not hear? I cry out to You,
"Violence!" Yet You do not save. 3 Why do You make me see iniquity,
And cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before
me; Strife exists and contention arises.”
I have mentioned many, many times how much I enjoy
the writings of Warren Wiersbe as he can take spiritual truths and cause them
to make perfect sense and use words that I can understand, unlike some people
that I read. As stated in earlier SD’s
by me “he puts the cookies on the shelf where I can reach them,” and the
following is one of those cookies as we begin our study of the book of
Habakkuk. “One of the ‘Christian myths’
that ought to be silenced says that when you trust Jesus Christ, you get rid of
all your problems. You don’t.
“It’s true that your basic spiritual problem—your relationship
with God—has been solved, but with that solution comes a whole new set of
problems that you didn’t face when you were an unbeliever, like: ‘Why do good people
suffer and evil people prosper?’ Or ‘Why
isn’t God answering my prayers?’ Or ‘When
I’m doing my best for the Lord, why do I experience the worst from others?’
“Christians who claim to be without problems are
either not telling the truth or not growing and experiencing real life. Perhaps they’re just not thinking at
all. They’re living in a religious dream
world that has blocked out reality and stifled honest feelings. Like Job’s uncomfortable comforters, they
mistake shallow optimism for the peace of God.
You never hear them ask what David and Jesus asked, ‘My God My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me?’ (Ps. 22:1; Matt. 27:46).
“Habakkuk wasn’t that kind of a believer. As he
surveyed the land of Judah, and then watched the international scene, he found
himself struggling with some serious problems.
But he did the right thing: he took his problems to the Lord.”
Now as we begin our study in the book of Habakkuk
and follow the outline of Dr. Wiersbe we will see that the first chapter of his
commentary is what our “focus” is for today, and then under that is the first
main point entitled “Why Is God So Indifferent?” and following that we will
begin to look at some of his sub-points, of which the first one is “The Prophet’s
Concern” which we will look at today.
In the NASB95 which is the version that I use we
read in the first verse of Habakkuk “The oracle which Habakkuk the prophet saw.” In the KJV the word for “oracle” is
translated “burden” and John Gill has the following to say about this first
verse: “This prophecy is called a
"burden," or something
took up and carried, being
what the prophet received from the Lord, and went with to the people of
the Jews, and was a heavy
burdensome prophecy to them; declaring the calamities that should come
upon them by the Chaldeans, who would invade their land, and carry them
captive; and Habakkuk, that brought this account, is called a
"prophet," to give the greater sanction to it; and it was what he had
in vision from the Lord represented unto him, and therefore should be credited.
Abarbinel inquires why Habakkuk should be called a prophet, when none of the
lesser prophets are, excepting Haggai and Zechariah; and thinks the reason of
it is, to give weight to his prophecy, since it might be suspected by some
whether he was one; there being none of those phrases to be met with in this
prophecy as in others, as "the word of the Lord came," &c. or
"thus saith the Lord".”
When you think about the word “burden” it makes me
think of a couple of places in the Word of God that speak of a prophet or an
apostle actually eating the Word of God.
Jer 15:16 Your words were found and I ate them, And Your words became
for me a joy and the delight of my heart; For I have been called by Your name,
O LORD God of hosts.” Another time we
see a different reaction to the “eating of God’s Word” from the book of
Revelation: “Re 10:9 So I went to the
angel, telling him to give me the little book. And he said to me, "Take it
and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be
sweet as honey."Re 10:10 I took the little book out of the angel’s hand
and ate it, and in my mouth it was sweet as honey; and when I had eaten it, my
stomach was made bitter.” I believe that
we can conclude that after getting this message from the Lord that Habakkuk got
he had the same reaction that John had in the passages from Revelation chapter
ten, and that is they were a great burden to him when he understood what God
was going to do in Judah. John felt the
same pain after eating the little scroll as he then had to prophesize about the
judgments that were about to take place on the whole world.
The time that Habakkuk was living in was a dangerous
time for in his writing we see words like violence, iniquity, grievance or
misery, spoiling or destruction, strife, contention or disputes and also
injustice. There is a lot of injustice going on in our country at this time
too. As we look at verses 2-3 we see
that Habakkuk was burdened over the sin that was going on in Judah and so he
prayed to God about it, that God would do something about the sinfulness of
Judah. It seems that Habakkuk had been
praying about this for some time, but he writes that God was not listening to
him. God was listening to him, but it
seems to me that He waited for the proper time to talk to Habakkuk. In verse two we see Habakkuk call out to the
Lord, and then he cries out to the Lord later on in that verse, which means he
was screaming out to the Lord with a loud voice. Habakkuk was surely disturbed about what was
going on in Judah as he looked at all of the wickedness that he saw, and as he
was praying about this his burden grew more and more.
I wonder how many people in our country who are
truly believers have the same kind of burden as Habakkuk when they look at the
sinfulness that is going on in our country.
We have seen over 57 million babies killed in their mother’s womb since
the legalism of abortion began. This is
just one of the many sins that are going on in our country.
1/30/2016 11:46 AM
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