SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/11/2016
9:54 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Selfish
Ambition
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Habakkuk
2:6-8
Message of
the verses: “6 "Will not all of these take up a
taunt-song against him, Even mockery and insinuations against him And say, ’Woe
to him who increases what is not his-For how long-And makes himself rich with
loans?’ 7 “Will not your creditors rise up suddenly, And those who collect from
you awaken? Indeed, you will become plunder for them. 8 “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.”
We begin the third main division in Dr. Wiersbe’s
outline for the second chapter from the book of Habakkuk and it is broken up
into five sub-divisions, and we will look at the fist on in this evening’s
SD. This Division he entitles “Declare
God’s Judgment” and it covers the rest of the second chapter, verses 6-20.’
Dr. Wiersbe introduces this section writing “To the
faithful Jews in the land, God would be a refuge and strength (Nahum 1:7; Psalm
46), but to the godless Babylonians invading the land, He would be a judge and eventually
punish their sins and give them what they deserved. In this ‘taunt song,’ God pronounces ‘woe’
upon five different sins, all of which are prevalent in the world today.”
The first of these sins that we will look at is what
our focus says “selfish ambition,” and as Dr. Wiersbe writes this sin is prevalent
in today’s societies in the 21st century.
I suppose that if one is an ambitious person at his
job and does not step on another person’s toes to get a promotion and is a
qualified person for that promotion then there is nothing wrong with being
ambitious, however if one has this motivation to be a greedy, selfish, and
abusive person to get what they want then it is sinful. Paul uses the word ambition in Romans 15:20
in a good way when he writes “It has always been my ambition to preach the
gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone
else’s foundation (NIV).” Let us look at
2 Corinthians 5:9 “Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or
absent, to be pleasing to Him.” Now this
is surely an ambition we all should have.
Now as we look at our text today as it is written
about the Babylonians we can see that they were consumed by selfish ambition
and also that they would stop at nothing to accumulate wealth and also to
expand their kingdom. They had much
stolen goods, and they plundered from helpless people and the Lord warned them
that the owners of that wealth would one day rise up to condemn them and that they
would collect what was due them. The
Babylonians gained much territory and they seemed to get over confident and
would one day be defeated by the Medes and the Persians. This event is documented in the fifth chapter
of the book of Daniel and I have Spiritual Diaries on that section when I
studied Daniel a few years back. I
suppose that the old saying”what goes around, comes around,” is true as we look
at Babylon. The saying is true for
Babylon impart because of selfish ambition.
2/11/2016
10:20 PM
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