Welcome to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.
Today we're continuing our Sermon series The Struggle is Real, where we explore the
Book of HabitCook.
And this week, we welcome our guest preacher Justin Stratus, as he takes us on a deep dive
into a rather intense passage of HabitCook, which outlines the woes for those who oppress
others.
Though it can be challenging to find hope in the midst of dark days and injustice, Justin
shows us the important truth of this passage, and God's answer to the question, how long
will they get away with this?
So let's tune in now and find out.
Today's reading is from HabitCook chapter 2, verses 5 through 20.
Indeed, wine betrays him, he is arrogant and never at rest, because he is as greedy as
the grave, and like death is never satisfied, he gathers to himself all the nations and
takes captive all the peoples.
Will not all of them taunt him with ridicule and scorn, saying, woe to him who piles up
stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion?
How long must this go on?
Will not your creditors suddenly arise?
Will they not wake up and make you tremble?
Then you will become their prey.
Because you have plundered many nations, the peoples who are left will plunder you.
For you have shed human blood, you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain, setting his nest on high to escape the clutches
of ruin.
You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.
The stones of the wall will cry out and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.
Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by injustice.
Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the peoples' labor is only fuel for the fire?
That the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover
the sea.
Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wine skin till they are
drunk so that he can gaze on their naked bodies.
You will be filled with shame instead of glory.
Now it is your turn.
Drink and let your nakedness be exposed.
The cup from the Lord's right hand is coming around to you and disgrace will cover your
glory.
The violence you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you and your destruction of animals
will terrify you.
For you have shed human blood, you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman or an image that teaches lies?
For the one who makes it trust in his own creation, he makes idols that cannot speak.
Woe to him who says to wood, come to life or to a lifeless stone, wake up.
Can it give guidance?
It is covered with gold and silver.
There is no breath in it.
The Lord is in his holy temple.
Let all the earth be silent before him.
The word of the Lord.
Morning everybody.
My name is Justin and I'm going to be your preacher today.
I usually don't begin my sermons with trigger warnings, but I am going to be talking about
some difficult stuff today.
So just a heads up.
It's an intense passage and I thought it required some intense examination.
Before we get started, let's pray together.
God we believe, help thou our unbelief.
Amen.
So Trinity Church, I've got a question for you.
How long can they keep getting away with this?
How long can evil go unchallenged in this world, in our communities, in our homes and
even in our churches?
On February 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.
And since then 35,000 people have been killed, 15,000 people are missing, 3400 people have
been captured, and nearly 100,000 people have been wounded.
How long can they keep getting away with this?
On May 22nd, 2022, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the
United States, released a report that revealed how SBC leaders retained a secret internal
database of 700 abusers, many of whom were pastors and youth workers who were known to
denominational leaders but whose identities were kept hidden from 2000 to 2019.
How long can they keep getting away with this?
Well as we've been hearing over the past few weeks, this was exactly the question that
the prophet Habakkuk posed angrily to God nearly 2,500 years ago.
If you recall back in chapter 1, the prophet expresses his frustration that God seemed
to be absolutely unconcerned about the growing levels of wickedness in Judah.
And so he asks God in verses 3 through 4 of that chapter, why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me.
There's strife and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law, the Torah, is paralyzed and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous so that justice is perverted.
Now what Habakkuk wants God to do is he wants God to root out the evildoers in his midst.
He's thinking of his fellow Judeans who were following the evil King Jehoiakum in ignoring
the Torah for the sake of their own personal gain.
But when God answers him in verses 5 through 11, what he promises is not the cleansing
of Judah but rather Judah's invasion by the dreaded Babylonians.
He says, I am raising up the Babylonians that ruthless and impetuous people who sweep across
the whole earth to seize dwellings not their own.
Now of course this invasion was not just going to affect the wicked in Judah.
It would take down the righteous as well as if you like collateral damage including Habakkuk
himself.
How on earth is this justice?
The prophet asks.
It's as if God were punishing the wicked in Judah by rewarding a people who were even
more wicked, the Babylonians.
And once again the righteous people would be swept up as grist for the mill of a frustratingly
unjust world.
Is that really what God wants?
How long will these people keep getting away with this?
And so Habakkuk sets up camp outside of God's closed office door and he waits and he won't
leave until he gets an answer.
And Habakkuk's wager is that this door can't stay closed.
God can't simply sit in silence and stonewall his people forever.
God has to answer.
Right?
Well God finally does answer.
I will do something God says, but not just yet.
There is still more waiting to do, which means for now Habakkuk, the ball is in your court.
What I want you to do if you are as righteous as you say you are is to live by faith.
I'm giving you a promise, God says, the wicked will die and the righteous will live, but
the only proof you're going to have for this is the proof of my own character.
And so essentially God answers Habakkuk's question as Jesus often did with another question.
Habakkuk, do you believe or are you ready to throw in the towel?
Is the will of God really worth the wait or will you allow the prosperity of the wicked
to stifle your resolve?
It's your choice, God says.
It all begins with verse six, chapter two verse six, which starts off with this rhetorical
question.
Will not all of them taunt him with ridicule and scorn?
Okay, so who is him in this question?
Well that's the empire, the Babylonian empire.
In fact, in Hebrew it's personified as a him, as a single entity throughout all the verses.
But the question is who is them in this passage?
Who is God promising will taunt the wicked in the end?
And the answer is it's the oppressed.
The oppressed people will taunt their oppressors.
And isn't that really fascinating?
What we have in this passage is a series of divine judgments being pronounced over the
wicked.
And that's not news, we see that all throughout the Bible, particularly the Old Testament.
But in this passage we have a series of divine judgments being pronounced over the wicked,
but delivered in the voices of the oppressed all the people who would be swept up by the
Babylonian empire, who would be dominated by the emperor Nebuchadnezzar, and used and
abused to build up his power and glory.
But what's so interesting is that God doesn't just curse the wicked, he lets the oppressed
do the cursing for him.
In other words, it's God's will to give the oppressed a voice.
It's God's will to give the oppressed a voice.
Question.
As the church, do we give the oppressed a voice?
Not always.
As that covered up Southern Baptist list of abusers shows.
We don't always give the oppressed a voice, but God always does.
Beware of churches which elevate the voices of the powerful over the voices of the weak.
May we be a church that believes in the justice of God enough to hand the mic over to the
poor and oppressed, and to listen to what they have to say.
So let's listen to what the oppressed in Habakkuk's day had to say as they taunted
the Babylonian empire in the context of their own faith in God.
Here again the words of the first woe, and I'm just going to walk through the passage
again and see what these folks have to say.
The first woe in verses 6-8.
Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion.
How long must this go on?
Will not your creditors suddenly arise?
Will not they wake up and make you tremble?
Then you will become their prey because you've plundered many nations.
The people who are left will plunder you.
For you have shed human blood.
You've destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
As in Habakkuk's time, so in ours, oppressors see the world as basically raw material for
the taking.
And when they take the world by force, lands and cities and every human being in them,
they believe that they have the power to remake the world just the way they like it.
The world they think revolves around them and once it starts to revolve around them,
there's no going back.
Think of the British Museum, which to this day refuses to return the plunder of centuries
of imperial conquest.
Why?
Well, because we live in a different world now and besides the conquered wouldn't really
know how to care for these priceless treasures.
Plus, that was hundreds of years ago.
That debt is long forgotten.
We're in a new scenario now.
But the plundered remember.
And God's promise is that he will honor their memory.
While the empire assumes it's owed these treasures as the spoils of conquest, Habakkuk knows differently.
The empire, the empire has racked up a debt.
A debt that needs to be paid to the conquered.
And one day the ledger is going to have to be balanced.
The implicit question posed by God to Habakkuk here is this.
Do you have the faith to wait for it?
Will you live by faith?
Is this world really nothing more than the plaything of empire?
Or does it belong to the God of Jacob?
On to the second woe, verses 9 through 11.
Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain, setting his nest on high to escape the clutches
of ruin.
You've plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.
The stones of the wall will cry out and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.
The second woe imagines the world after the Babylonian conquest.
When the conquerors have taken the spoils back to their homeland and can finally get to the
business of enjoying the fruit of their labors.
War is long forgotten and their allegedly peaceful reign begins.
Whatever atrocities they had to commit in the past to get what they have now, that's
all just a fading memory.
And now it's all big screen TVs, quiet suburban neighborhoods, luxury cars, growing stock portfolios.
But again, the oppressed remember just as the stolen goods themselves cry out even if
their voices are not heard.
There is not a gated community safe enough to escape the justice that's coming.
The challenge again to the oppressed, to Habakkuk is this.
Do you have the faith to wait for it?
Third woe, verses 12 through 14.
Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by injustice.
Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire,
but the nations exhaust themselves for nothing, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Now if it weren't enough that the oppressed have had their land and their goods stolen
from them, they also have had their dignity taken from them as they're forced to work
for the oppressors themselves, which is what the Babylonians did with every nation they
conquered.
They took their belongings, they took the belongings of the conquered and they made the conquered
work for them.
And again, we've seen this phenomenon time and again in history where the conquered are
made to serve the interests of the conquered, conquerors.
And here, obviously I'm reminded of the millions of enslaved African people whose forced labor
built up the West, enabling conquering nations to spread their power and influence over many
centuries.
Empires, they don't just grow naturally like a plant.
Empires colonize until the sun never sets on their holdings.
So it is, so it's always been, but will it be this way forever?
Habakkuk says no.
There is no empire that can hold power over the world forever.
Because he says the world's destiny is just this, the earth will be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of the Lord as waters cover the sea.
Or as Revelation 11 verse 15 puts it, a day is coming when the kingdoms of this world
are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and
ever.
Don't be fooled by the sprawling powers of the wicked and their ability to exploit the
labor of the conquered.
Which labor, Habakkuk says, is just fuel for the fire.
It won't last.
Fourth woe.
Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wine skin until they are
drunk so that they can gaze on their naked bodies.
You will be filled with shame instead of glory.
Now it's your turn.
Drink and let your nakedness be exposed.
The cup from the Lord's right hand is coming around you and disgrace will cover your glory.
The violence you've done to Lebanon will overwhelm you and your destruction of animals will terrify
you for you've shed human blood and you've destroyed lands and cities and everyone in
them.
Here's another tactic of the powerful.
It's all right here in Habakkuk.
It's amazing.
Here's another tactic.
Give the oppressed a little taste of pleasure to keep them compliant.
Have a drink, they say.
Watch some films.
Play some video games.
Enjoy some reality television.
And all the while like a con man targeting his mark, the oppressors laugh at how easy
it is to keep you in line.
Look at the text.
Surely it will stay like this forever.
People always have the upper hand.
But somewhere deep down in the minds of the people, that memory is still there.
The memory of conquest.
And so God promises that the shamers will one day become the shamed.
Look at verse 16.
Now it's your turn, the oppressed say to the oppressors.
Drink and let your nakedness be exposed.
Now here, according to the Hebrew, a more literal translation would be drink and let
your foreskin be exposed.
That's what it says, not nakedness, but foreskin.
Now as you know, circumcision was the sign of God's covenant with Abraham.
It's the sign that God had chosen them to be his people.
But as they were exiled to Babylon and forced to watch as the promised land slowly disappeared
in the rear view mirror, I imagine they started to question if they really were chosen.
I imagine they didn't feel chosen.
I imagine they felt like God had reneged on his promise.
But here's what God says.
Even despite Babylon's manifold successes and conquests, one day God says, I'm going
to reveal to the world that no matter how successful they seem, the Babylonians are
not my chosen people.
And so my covenant with Israel still stands.
You are the circumcised, he is the uncircumcised.
You are my covenant people, not them.
Whatever happens, I've not forgotten you.
And again the question is, do you have faith to believe that you are still God's?
Do you have faith to believe that you are God's?
And so the final woe, verses 18 through 20, of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman
or an image that teaches lies for the one who makes it trust in his own creation.
He makes idols that cannot speak.
Woe to him who says to would come to life or to lifeless stone wake up.
Can it give guidance?
It's covered with gold and silver, there's no breath in it.
The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him.
Again in Hebrew, better translation might be, let all the earth shush before God.
It's onomatopoeia.
Here we finally get to the crux of the matter.
Throughout this entire passage, God's been telling Habakkuk that the wicked will one
day be defeated.
But up until now, the reasons that he gives for this all have to do with something like
what goes around comes around.
Or if you do bad stuff, bad stuff's going to happen to you.
But that's too abstract to be comforting.
And that's why Habakkuk is complaining in the first case.
Why?
Because it doesn't always work that way.
Sometimes good things happen to bad people.
So Habakkuk isn't being asked to put his faith in a principle, right, that what goes
around comes around.
What we're given here is a concrete explanation for why God will ultimately step in and make
things right.
And it's this, God hates idolatry.
In place of worshiping the Lord of all the earth, the oppressors have invented replacement
gods, gods whose sole purpose is to serve their needs, the needs of the ones who make
them.
But that is precisely why evil can never, ever win.
Because the God of Abraham cannot abide the worship of another.
As Yahweh never tires of reminding the Israelites all through the Old Testament, Yahweh is a
jealous God.
And so when worship is refused to him or given to an idol, God steps in.
Or to put it another way, God's guarantee of his justice is God's passion for God's
glory.
That's why when God makes a covenant with Abraham, he doesn't just make a promise.
He, the text says, swears by himself.
He puts his own identity on the line, which means that God cannot abandon his people anymore
than he could abandon his own self.
Being faithful to people is not just an arbitrary choice on God's part.
It is who God is.
And so we return to that initial painful question that Habakkuk and so many others have asked.
How long can they keep getting away with this?
And the answer is not forever.
Now that's a difficult answer, because what we really want to hear is they will stop getting
away with it tomorrow or next Thursday, or heck, even 50 or 100 years from now.
I would take that.
But that's not what God says.
He swears by himself to sort out the problem of evil, but he doesn't tell us when that
will be.
All he asks is for us to trust him, but the righteous will live by faith.
Can this even be done?
Thank God, I think the answer is yes.
And he's given us witnesses throughout history who testified that it can, from the noble
army of martyrs, as the prayer book says, to the long-suffering believers who've kept
the faith alive throughout generations.
I mean, we are here today in this building because they lived by faith through the power
of the Holy Spirit.
They didn't give up.
Let me give you one example, and with this I'm going to close.
In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech at the Capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama.
Now this is a place where 104 years prior, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the president
of the Confederate States of America.
Right?
Group of Americans who succeeded so that they could preserve their right to enslave Martin
Luther King's grandparents.
The Capitol in Montgomery was the same place where two years earlier, in 1963, Governor
George Wallace famously proclaimed segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
That's where King is talking.
And there in that place, King asks the same question that Habakkuk and many, many others
have asked.
How long?
And this is what King said.
Yes, sir.
I know you're asking today, how long will it take?
Somebody's asking how long will prejudice blind the visions of men?
I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the
hour, it will not be long.
Because truth, Christ earth, will rise again.
How long not long?
Because no lie can live forever.
How long not long?
Because you shall reap what you sow.
How long not long?
Too far on the scaffold, wrong way ever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future behind the demon known, standing guard within the shadow,
keeping watch above his own.
How long not long?
Because the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
How long not long?
Because my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He's traveling out the business where the paper raps the storm.
He's loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible Swiss sword.
His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.
He is lifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat.
I'll be swift, my soul, to answer him.
Be turbulent, my feet, our God is marching on.
Glory, hallelujah.
Glory, hallelujah. His truth is marching on.