SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/1/2016
7:18 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Lord’s
Counsel
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Habakkuk 1:5-11
Message of
the verses: “5 "Look among the nations! Observe! Be
astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days-You would not believe if you were told. 6 “For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,
That fierce and impetuous people Who march throughout the earth To seize
dwelling places which are
not theirs. 7 “They are dreaded and feared; Their justice and authority
originate with themselves. 8 “Their horses are swifter than leopards And keener
than wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping, Their horsemen come
from afar; They fly like an eagle swooping down to devour. 9 “All of them come
for violence. Their horde of faces moves forward. They collect captives like
sand. 10 “They mock at kings And rulers are a laughing matter to them. They laugh at every
fortress And heap up rubble to capture it. 11 “Then they will sweep through
like the wind and pass on. But they
will be held guilty, They
whose strength is their god.’”
Let’s begin with an endnote from Warren Wiersbe he
has at the end of verse one: “Paul
quoted this verse at the close of his message in the synagogue in Antioch of
Pisidia (Acts 13:41; and see also Isa. 29:14).
It was a warning to the people not to treat the Gospel lightly and
thereby reject it. The original
statement to Habakkuk referred to the coming of the Babylonians, but Paul
applied it to the saving work of Jesus Christ and the offer of the Gospel. Both were incredible works of God.”
Now what God gave to Habakkuk in this section is a
revelation and not an explanation and as Dr. Wiersbe writes, “for what we always
need in times of doubt is a new view of God.
The Lord doesn’t owe us any explanations, but He does graciously reveal Himself
and His work to those who seek Him.” Now once again Dr. Wiersbe has an endnote
after this statement: “What Habakkuk suffered
is a small way, Job suffered in a great way, and God’s answer to Job’s many
questions was simply to reveal Himself to Job.
We don’t live on explanations, we live on promises, and the promises of
God are based on the character of God.
The turning point in Job’s experience came when he put his hand on his
mouth, stopped arguing with the Lord, and began to worship the Lord (Job
40:1-5; 42:1-6). Habakkuk had a similar
experience. There’s nothing like a fresh
view of the glory of God to give you strength for the journey!”
God was going to do something amazing, incredible,
and also unheard of, something even the prophet would be shocked over, and we
know that God states that He is going to use the ungodly Babylonians to punish
Judah, a sinful nation for sure, but not as sinful as the Babylonians. Now as we read this section of Scripture we
can see that the Lord used a number of pictures from the realm of nature to
help Habakkuk understand the power of the Babylonians. These descriptions are
found in verses 8-9, showing the strength and ruthlessness of the Babylonians
as all they wanted to do was to conquer peoples and nations.
The only One who could stop them was God and He was
using them to do His bidding by punishing the people of Judah. Dr. Wiersbe writes “The Babylonians had no
respect for authority, whether kings or generals. (One of their practices was to put captured
kings in cages and exhibit them, like animals.)”
We can guess that this was not what Habakkuk wanted
to hear from the Lord, for he probably was hoping that God would send a revival
to Judah so that the nation would not have to be punished by the Lord, but this
was not in the plan of God. There are
reasons why the Lord was going to do this, reasons we can figure out as He had
made a covenant with the nation of Israel, which included Judah and they had
broken the covenant and God’s longsuffering had run out and it was time for Him
to act, which He did. Let’s look at 2
Chronicles 36:14 to help us understand why the Lord was going to do what He was
going to do and we will conclude with that quote.
“14 Furthermore, all the officials of the priests
and the people were very unfaithful following all the abominations of the
nations; and they defiled the house of the LORD which He had sanctified in
Jerusalem. 15 The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and
again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His
dwelling place; 16 but they
continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His
prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, until there was
no remedy. 17 Therefore He brought up
against them the king of the Chaldeans who slew their young men with the sword
in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin,
old man or infirm; He gave them all into his hand. 18 All the articles of the
house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the LORD, and
the treasures of the king and of his officers, he brought them all to Babylon. 19
Then they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and
burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable
articles. 20 Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon;
and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of
Persia, 21 to fulfill the
word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its
sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years
were complete.”
2/1/2016 7:50 PM
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