JUDGING INJUSTICE – 2: 6 - 20

Well, here we are getting ready to jump back into the . And I would like to start off with a reminder of that brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. He was the president of Iraq which was basically ancient Babylon. And Saddam Hussein was a ferocious leader. He tortured his own people. They hated him. He was a dictator and because of that he got away with lots of injustices for a time.

You will remember that he was captured. And then in December of 2006 Saddam Hussein would make his way to the gallows where he would pay the ultimate price, the price of his own life for the injustices that he committed in his life. Shortly before he died, Saddam Hussein ate some chicken and rice, had some hot water and honey, said a few prayers, read the Koran, and he would then make his way to the gallows. In fact, due to some footage through a cell phone, it can even be seen on YouTube today that this man really did fall at the gallows.

The name of the gallows was called Camp Justice. How ironic that the same gallows that he used to hang people on, he would one day hang upon them himself. And justice would finally be meted out. And as Saddam made his way to the gallows, the people were there shouting out taunts. They were so elated that he would soon die, that he would soon face justice.

And then we sit back in our own life and we wonder how are we going to move through the injustices that we have faced from other people. Maybe not as notorious or infamous as a Saddam Hussein but maybe you have been the victim of injustice. Maybe it has been sexual abuse. Perhaps you have experienced your reputation being made sordid by somebody with ill gain. Perhaps you are somebody who knows what it is like to have experienced another type of injustice such as racial slurs. I don’t know what it is that you have been through, and maybe you have never felt as though you could finally move through the wounds of those injustices.

Or maybe you are somebody who thinks you have gotten away with injustice. Maybe you were a sexual abuser, a person who is a thief, a person whose heart is rotten to the core, and you think you are getting away with it. But I want you to know something. Your day of justice will come too, as you will see in today’s Scripture passage that we are going to look at in the book of Habakkuk.

But I must say it is okay for a Christian to want justice, to desire justice, even more so to crave it. Justice is actually seen as noble. God is a just God; it is a part of who He is. And for us as Christians to cry out ‘justice,’ we almost feel like we are doing something wrong against our fellow humanity, until the injustice becomes so grotesque that it is easier for us to cry out for justice.

An example was the Jews in the concentration camps crying out for justice against Hitler. Or like those who sat under the atrocities of a Mao Tse-tung or a Benito

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Mussolini or a Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot or other brutal dictators. They are out there. These are people who have committed crimes against humanity. And then we think about this idea of grace. Isn’t grace the greater virtue? Well, I don’t think we can pit grace against justice when it comes to who God is. God is great and both qualities belong to Him. But what purpose will one of those qualities serve for the moment of the time. Does God want to show justice or does He want to show grace? I think God is a God who chooses and desires to show grace. And He is a merciful, loving, omnibenevolent God. But at times when people reject His grace and continue on in injustice, He will soon mete out justice.

So we come to a passage today that is perplexing. In fact, before we set out on the book of Habakkuk, this is one of those passages that I thought was going to be a toughie for me. And sure enough when I got in and began to study it I thought what in the world am I going to do with this. You need to know that this is not one of those passages that Dale Carnegie put in his book, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ But at the end of this, here is what you need to know. This is one of those passages that a pastor or a preacher of the word has to go, you know what, God, you first, you first, you first.

We are not here to tickle the ears, we are here to teach all of your word, and that is what must happen. Because it would be a lot easier to kind of go to one of those softer, fuzzier, warmer passages of Scripture. And you know what, one of the beautiful things about going through God’s word, is we do have those days where we can talk about His amazing mercy, His amazing grace and His love.

But there are these days where we see that God is fed up. He is just sick and tired or being sick and tired. And this is one of those days. I literally had to call my wife on this passage and say, ‘honey, I just don’t know what to do.’ I was at a loss here. This passage is tough. And my goal is when you hear it today that you will feel like what was the big deal about this, Bobby? That is where the art of communication is at the mercy of God for me to be able to teach this in a way that you go ‘okay, this makes sense.’ Because this is a tough passage. And it challenged me in my own preparations.

And one of the things that soon becomes obvious is, if you will study Chapter 2 and verse 6 through the end of the chapter in verse 20, the structure nicely unfolds itself. There are five woes. And a woe would be used by a prophet to pronounce judgment. And the way it would look and the reason for the judgment would be stated and then the announcement of judgment would be predicted. So it is like, here is what you have done and here is what is going to happen as a result.

And there are five of these woes, or there are five stanzas with three verses each. And these verses serve as a poem put to a song, or a ditty. So it is a song, but it is a taunt

Page 2 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 song; that is the genre we are looking at. It is a poem put to a song in the form of a taunt song. And what you see here is the Babylonians; these evil, unjust oppressors, are being taunted. They are being warned that justice is coming their way.

Now let’s step back for those of you who may not have been a part of this series. Here is what is going on. Habakkuk was an ancient prophet. When you hear the name Habakkuk, remember he was an ancient prophet and he was living in Judea. And his people were living very, very wickedly. They had gone astray from the ways of God. In fact, Judah was supposed to be a light to the surrounding nations to show them what it looks like to follow God. But they got off track and they wanted to be like the other nations. They slipped into idolatry. They slipped into grotesque sin.

And as a result Habakkuk is baffled. You know what he is wondering? God, why are you being so gracious with these people? Why not issue justice? In fact, Habakkuk’s real problem is with God’s grace. He wants God to deal with them. He wants to see God be a just God because he knows that God’s name is being blasphemed in the way that they are living.

So Habakkuk offered up two complaints in Chapter 1, followed by two responses from God. The first complaint was ‘what is up with Judah, God, they are living in sin. Will you deal with them?’ God responds and his response is a big gulp. His response was that He was going to use an even more wicked nation, namely the Babylonians, or the Chaldeans, and they are going to come in, and He said He was going to use them as a tool of His judgment on Judah. And Habakkuk was having a hard time before, and now he is having an even more difficult time. He found out that God was going to use the Babylonians to punish Judah. And he thought what is going on here?

So now Habakkuk wants to know this: Are you going to deal with the Babylonians? Now the Babylonians were being led by Nebuchadnezzar, and you need to understand that there had been problems in Babylon before Saddam Hussein. Nebuchadnezzar was a ferocious leader. And they went about taking advantage of other nations. And they went about bringing them into captivity and looting all of their stuff. And they became a very powerful nation at the expense of their injustices.

And Habakkuk is wondering if God was going to deal with them too. And in these verses today, you are going to see what it will look like for Babylon to fall. Now we know historically speaking, that Babylon fell in 539 BC to the Medes and the Persians. Remember the Babylonians would take the Jews into captivity in 586 BC. So here we are before the captivity, about 600 years before Christ. And Habakkuk is this prophet, and now we are going to see five woes unveiled.

The first judgment that we are going to see in how God will judge injustice is there will be judgment for evil gain and greed. Look with me if you will in Chapter 2

Page 3 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 starting in verse 6. You will remember in Chapter 2 and verse 1 Habakkuk issued his second complaint and is waiting at his watch post for God to answer. God answers in verse 3 by saying judgment is going to come. And now we are going to get a picture of what this judgment will look like.

So beginning in verse 6 it says, “Shall not all these take up their taunts against him with scoffing and riddles?” Let’s stop for a moment. Who are ‘all these?’ And ‘who is against him?’ ‘All these’ is referring to the surrounding nations that the Babylonians have just abused through their evil. So to understand this He is saying to shout out all the surrounding nations, and taunt the Babylonians with riddles. And so just as Saddam Hussein when he was on his way to experience justice, the people were taunting him. And here in Habakkuk there are going to be five woes of taunting. And the first one is this justice for evil gain and greed.

We see the first woe. “Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own; for how long, and loads himself with thick clay. Will not your debtors suddenly arise and those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be spoil for them.” Why? Because they have plundered many nations, and all the remnant of the people shall plunder them. “For the blood of man, and violence to the earth, to cities, and all who dwell in them.” So what we see here is what goes around comes around. They are going to experience justice themselves.

In Proverbs Chapter 22 and verse 8 we see this, “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.” You will reap what you sow kind of language is very familiar in the . We see it in the book of Galatians Chapter 6 and verse 7, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever one sows that he will also reap.”

Now, let’s understand this kind of a verse outside of being justified at the cross, outside of being saved. Apart from the cross, apart from recognizing you desperately need grace; you will be living a life whereby you reap what you sow. And even if you do not see justice coming your way now, it will come eventually. Now on the cross takes on our injustices there and we will talk about that later on in the message.

I don’t know if you have ever heard of Aesop the ancient Greek fabulist, but he tells this fable of a dog. One day this dog was roaming with a bone in his mouth. Nothing gives a dog more pleasure that walking with a bone, especially if it has meat on it. So in this fable Aesop’s dog is walking with a bone in his mouth, and he is happily thinking about chewing on and eating this bone. He is just going to chill out and enjoy it for the day. So this dog goes over a bridge and then he makes his way to a pond.

And he comes up to the pond, he puts his face over the water and he notices another dog in the water. And he notices this other dog has a bone as well. And he starts to growl at this other dog. In fact he no longer can enjoy his own bone because all he

Page 4 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 could concentrate on was wanting the bone from the other dog. So he growls louder and louder and louder, and eventually he loses his bone as he continues to bark at this other dog. And then he realizes as the ripple happens that there was no other dog and no other bone. He was that dog and that bone was his bone and now his bone is gone because that was a reflection. And Aesop’s dog would walk away having learned a little bit of wisdom, but he lost something that he had.

You always lose a part of yourself in the midst of greed. When you want to go after greed by taking advantage of others, greed will cause you to not enjoy what you have. You will begin to struggle with what you don’t have because you slip into greed. And this is what happened with Aesop’s dog. And this is what happened with the Babylonians. They were so greedy. They were taking possessions and spoil from other nations, but eventually they are going to lose it all. It is going to be taken away from them. Greed takes something out of you.

Now this nation of Babylon chose to build itself on greed as one of its core values. And when it comes to culture building we have to think about what kind of values we are going to use to build a nation. Every nation is constructed on a certain set of values. We can call it primary drivers. We have primary drivers that motivate us to grow a nation. And some nations are built on power. Other nations are built on greed. But the kind of nation that God wants for us to construct is one that is built on nobility, on virtue, on the good.

The ancient philosophers talked about this, in particular the Grecian philosopher namely Plato, who wrote the book, ‘The Republic.’ And that book is arguably the greatest philosophy book ever written. Guess what Plato talks about? He uses one small paragraph to talk about economics and ten paragraphs in his book on how to build a good society were on the good, and on building a good person. Plato believed, as did other ancient Grecian philosophers, that the way to build a good society was to build good people. And if you build good people, you will have a good society.

Now contrast Plato with Machiavelli, the 15th and early 16th century Roman philosopher who wrote, ‘The Prince.’ Machiavelli, far from being good, believed that you could do horrific crimes against humanity if you were the prince, if you were the ruler, if you were the leader. In order to keep a society at peace he believed that sometimes you needed to serve out injustice to the people.

So you have Machiavelli and you have Plato, two different ways to build a culture or a society. One is through evil and abuse of power. The other is through becoming a certain kind of person. It seems as though the Babylonians were more Machiavellian in their approach. And it seems like the way that America started out was more Platonic. It

Page 5 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 was more Plato, not platonic in the sense of non-sexual love, but more like Plato believed in the sense of building a good kind of person.

Now, when we step back and we bring all of this together, what I want to ask us on an individual level is what kind of society are we building here in America? I believe that our primary drivers are economics. It is about money and material gain and sexual freedom. And when you try to build a culture on sexual freedom, you will end up like Sodom and Gomorrah. And when you try to build a culture on greed and economics and finances, you will end up like Rome. You will go the way of the ancient Babylonians.

So we have to step back and go, what kind of culture are we going to build, because when power becomes your primary driver, you will become a dictator and you will abuse people. When greed becomes your primary motivator, you will take advantage of people, like with Skilling and Lay with Enron. These guys took such advantage of people in corporate greed.

But when becoming a certain kind of person, which is God’s goal, under the theocratic nation, in the , God gave the command to be holy as He is holy. In other words be good as He is good. God is the greatest good whom we are to conform to. And when we build culture, when we build homes, when we build businesses and when we build churches on being a godly person, then the godly person can have a lot of wealth and can have a lot of power because his primary drive is the good. And he handles power and money responsibly. And without the good being the primary driver, we crumble.

And my fear is our nation is about to crumble. In fact it is crumbling because we have the wrong driver. Our motive is not for the good. God is not our ultimate. God is not our greatest pursuit in life. In your own life what kind of person are you striving to be? What is it in you that drives you? Are you driven to conform to God or are you power hungry? If you are power hungry, you are an accident waiting to happen. If you are money hungry, you are an accident waiting to happen. If you are sexually hungry, you are an accident waiting to happen. You do not build cultures on sexually liberties. You do not build cultures on greed. You do not build cultures on power. You build cultures on godliness, on virtue, on nobility, on character. And character like that is the kind of culture that will last forever. A culture that is built on the good will go on forever and ever and ever – Heaven.

Let’s read verse 9 for the second woe. “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high, to be safe from the reach of harm. You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many people. You have forfeited your life. For the stone will cry out from the wall and the beam from the woodwork will respond.”

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Now, let’s go ahead if we can and take our zoom button and zoom in on verse 9 with me. “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house.” You go and take it by unjust means, “to set his nest on high.” This is some good language right here. It is rich metaphor. It evokes the image of an eagle that is perched up on its nest feeling safe from harm as it looks down upon its prey. Here too the Babylonians feel as though they are invincible. It is language of feeling indestructible, of exalting yourself up on high. It is feeling as though trouble is out of reach for them as they sit there in their nests. And what they need to know through this woe, through this song, through this ditty, is that trouble is coming. They will experience justice.

We saw in the book of Genesis that the tower of Babel began to be constructed and they thought they would just kind of stay put. God had told them to disperse but instead they wanted to stay collected together. And they began to build this tower and they said something like this. ‘Come let us build ourselves a city and this tower with its top reaching the heavens.’ They wanted to get nestled up there in a little nest. ‘And let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’

And we know how that story went. Babel turned into babble all right as the languages were confused and they were sent off to the ends of the earth. They wanted to make a name for themselves. Listen. The Christian has one name we should want to make bigger and brighter and show more glorious, and that is God’s name. It is living to show how He is magnificent, how He is great, how wonderful He is and how glorious God is. And that should be the motive.

In the book of Obadiah, which is a one chapter book, we learn about ancient Petra. And Petra is one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. When we go to Israel next year, or in 2015, we are going to do a stop at Petra, which is in Jordan. And Petra is this ancient city that was built into the side of a mountain. And it symbolized humanistic endeavours, what humanity can do. In fact even in the Renaissance era humanism was to show what man can accomplish, the greatness of man. How we don’t need God. Look what we can do even in and of ourselves. But here the Babylonians felt safe up in a nest as those in Petra felt safe on the side of the hill, and as those at Babel felt safe in building their own tower. But like all good things, they must come to an end unless it is the ultimate thing that God has in store for us.

This past week I had the privilege to read Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth.’ As I was reading through it, it had the same kind of effect on me as when I read ‘Othello.’ If you have never read Othello, you have to do so. I’m reading Macbeth and some of the irony and all that goes on is just unbelievable. And as I was reading Macbeth, you will remember that the story is about a king by the name of Duncan, the king of Scotland. And Duncan’s time is running out because Macbeth gets a prophecy that he is supposed to be the next king. So when Macbeth goes home and tells Lady Macbeth about his

Page 7 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 prophecy that he is to be the king, Lady Macbeth gets anxious. And she says, well, you know that Duncan is coming to our home. Let’s take his life. Spoken like a real supportive wife, right? If you want to study a cruel, vicious woman just study Lady Macbeth. She was heartless and callous.

So together they start brainstorming about how they can pull off the perfect crime. And when Duncan shows up, and while he is asleep, Macbeth goes in and takes his life. And then Macbeth also takes out the two guards outside Duncan’s door and he blames Duncan’s death on them. And it seems as though he has gotten away with the perfect crime until guilt begins to set in. He grows paranoid.

And Lady Macbeth doesn’t seem as though she cares but eventually guilt catches up with her also. In fact one time she is in the presence of a doctor and she is washing her hands and saying, ‘the blood won’t come off, the blood won’t come off.’ And she keeps washing and washing her hands. And she can’t get rid of the blood. But there is no blood there; it is only a figment of her imagination, only a haunting of the past, only the guilt of her sin coursing through her body. And then eventually Lady Macbeth will commit suicide. And in famous, or in all too known Shakespearean tragedy, Macbeth also meets justice for his injustice as his life is taken.

See, Macbeth thought he could pull off the perfect crime. He thought he could get away with his injustice, and he couldn’t. In the same way those Babylonians, those ancient Chaldeans thought they could get away with their brutalizing way of living, but they couldn’t. It caught up with them. They tried to find security through their homes and their stuff. But true security only comes through recognizing what our identity is once it is rightly related to God through what Christ did for us at the cross.

Third, judgment comes for crimes against humanity. In verse 12 we pick up the third woe. And we hear them continue on in their song of celebration, in their song of taunts as they say, “Woe to him who builds a town with blood, and founds a city on iniquity.” Notice the word ‘town’ and notice the word ‘city.’ It refers to crimes against humanity for building governmental projects. Earlier we are learning about their individual housing, but here the government is building up cities and they are building up their towns by taking advantage of people at the expense of other peoples’ hard earned work.

Verse 13, “Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that people labour merely for fire?” In other words they think that they are going to get away with this but it will be consumed, it will be burned up. And continuing on, “and nations weary themselves for nothing for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” And perhaps it is a hint of the end of time where the world will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. Where we will be filled with the

Page 8 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 sense of God being just, His ways really are right. He really did have it together after all. He didn’t need any help in turns out. And so we will see that God is just in the end.

So let’s look at this verse again in parallel with the 6th commandment. “Woe to him who builds a town with blood.” Murdering, the sixth commandment is broken. We are talking about capital crimes here. So this kind of helps us to want to step back and think about the fact that Babylon is going to experience judgment. And we know that Judah is going to experience judgment as Babylon is used as a tool in the hands of God.

But you know sometimes people see all this war going on in the Bible and there is a question going on right now - is God a genocidal God? Genocide has to do with mass destruction, killing people in masses. What would you say to someone? For instance this is a big problem right now that is being raised by Atheists against in the Bible, and I don’t think we should gloss over these types of questions. Some people say they were fine reading the Bible until they got to the book of Joshua. And then they heard Joshua being commanded to go and destroy the Canaanites including all the women and the children. And they are thinking God is a genocidal God, He is a moral monster. And they are thinking how in the world could I possible believe in that kind of God?

Well, what would you say if someone asked you that at work tomorrow? How would you answer that particular question? I think one thing you could say is well, fair enough when we look at the Bible, there is some war going on, isn’t there? I mean is God a war God? How do we handle these types of issues? I think you could say, at first blush I see how you see that, but we always have to interpret Scripture in light of Scripture. And we need to remember that from the very beginning God warned them to go His route. and they would be blessed, and if they don’t they will experience curse. So from the beginning Adam and Eve rejected God’s ways.

And then we see even with Sodom and Gomorrah that Abraham began to cry out to God, God, would you please spare Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of 50? And then he prays God all the way down to sparing them for the sake of 10. And God says, sure. He said He wouldn’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there were 10 righteous people there. But there weren’t, so God was just in doing what He did. And Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because they were a godless, filthy, corrupting kind of society.

And then we think about the flood and we go, oh my goodness, only eight people got on the ark. But that was because no one else wanted to get on it. They had plenty of time as the ark was being built to get on board. But they mocked Noah and they mocked God. They weren’t interested in getting on; still implying that God was just because all the other people were living in wickedness.

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So we fast forward and we know that Abraham said “Will not the judge of the earth do what is right.” We also learned in Genesis that God wouldn’t destroy the Canaanites until their sin is full. And that ended up being 430 years by the time Joshua would go into Canaan. So God was gracious for 430 years with these nations as they sacrificed children. That is longer than we have been a nation. We look back on that and go I can’t believe God would issue that command to go and destroy the Canaanites. Well there were plenty of people going why won’t God act? Why are you being too gracious? So when God waits we accuse Him of being too gracious and when He doesn’t wait we accuse Him of being unjust. He can’t win with us sometimes. Do you ever notice that?

So then what ends up happening is Joshua goes in and they are told to drive out the nations. Interestingly enough in extra Biblical literature did you know that we don’t have any accounts of children or women being destroyed? It is quite plausible that is the case because when Joshua went into military conquest that the only people that died in that were the Canaanite warriors who came against them, and that the woman and the children escaped and they left. Because surely an event this big in history would have some of this stuff recorded, or we just haven’t unearthed it yet.

But even if God did do this, the purpose in doing it doesn’t make Him immoral. He wouldn’t do it unless He had just causes. In the same way we are all going to die at some point or another. It might be at sixty. It might be at eighty. You might die of natural causes or you might die because God is meting out his justice on you. But God is the giver of live and God is the taker of life. God has no joy in the death of the wicked. Rather He desires that all would repent. But what ends up happening is people don’t want to repent. They want to go their own way. They want to think about the way they would set up a society and culture if they were God.

So in the end we forget that even the values that we value so much today in our own culture are influenced by Judaeo Christian values. So in the end when you think about whether God is a genocidal God, no, God is a just God who issues just punishment. And what about those children then if some really were killed? Well, as some believe, they would say that death was promotion that they would have gone to Heaven. I know there is a theological debate around that, but I think that many people would say that those Canaanite babies would have gone straight into Heaven. And we as Christians have to stop acting like Heaven is a bad place to go.

Now let’s go on to our fourth woe of judgment which is judgment for drunkenness and sexual sins. Pick up in verse 15, “Woe to him who makes his neighbours drink; you pour out wrath and make them drunk in order to gaze at their nakedness.” This kind of reminds you of Lot and his daughters, or of Noah getting drunk. “You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink yourself and show

Page 10 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 your uncircumcision.” Remember the Babylonians wouldn’t have been circumcised because they were not part of the covenant people. “The cup in the Lord’s right hand will come around to you and utter shame will come upon your glory.” In other words you will be judged for your injustice. “The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you as will the destruction of the beast that terrified them, for the blood of man and the violence of the earth to cities and all who dwell in them.”

Now look again if you will at verse 15, “Woe to him who makes his neighbours drink; you pour out wrath and make them drunk in order to gaze at their nakedness.” This is talking about sexual abuse. The Babylonians would get the people that they had taken captive; they would get them intoxicated, strip them down and sexually take advantage of them. It was iniquitous. It was a transgression of the worst sort.

And today we have our own type of sexual sin that is taking place. Sex trafficking is a homogeneous enterprise right now. It is one of the fastest growing criminal activities, second behind drug trafficking. And from some statistics drawn from the Polaris Project last accessed on February 4th, 2013, we learn that the United Nations estimates that 2.5 million people around the globe are in forced labour, including sexual exploitation. Estimates of 1.2 million children are being trafficked for sex each year. 161 countries are affected by human trafficking by either being the source, a transit point, or the final destination. In 2006 there were only 3,106 convictions for sexual trafficking, which means that only one person is convicted for every 800th persons who have been afflicted. It seems as though they are getting away with it.

The Salvation Army claims that sex trafficking annually generates an estimated 7 billion worldwide. On-line prostitution advertising generates approximately 33.6 million in annual revenue. An estimated 293,000 American youths currently are at risk for becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation. The majority of these victims are runaways, or thrown away youths who live on the streets and become victims of prostitution. Human rights investigations by Shared Hope International discovered minors were sold an average of 10 to 15 times a day, 6 days a week. The average age of those going into sex trafficking is 12 to 14 years old.

Finally, one statistic closer to home, every month 7,200 men pay for sex with adolescent girls in the state of Georgia alone. All I can say is one word – injustice. In fact, sexual trafficking is a huge sin right here in the Charlotte region. And I want to say to anyone here today, if you are someone who is a sexual paedophile, you need to get your act together. You need to get some help and you need to repent of the sin and not take advantage of young people. I would say in the words of the taunt song that they said of the Babylonians, “Woe to you as well, if that is you.” The taking advantage of little kids is something that needs to be repented of quickly.

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And we come finally to the conclusion of the taunt song as we learn the final point that judgment for idolatry will transpire. Now unlike the other sections, again five stanzas, three verses each, this particular verse doesn’t start with a woe. The other four started with a woe, and you need to understand that if you were to try to start in verse 19 where the woe starts of breaking the section, we would miss it. Instead we need to bring in verse 18 because that goes with verses 19 and 20.

Verse 18, “What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped, a metal image, a teacher of lies. For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols. Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake. To a silent stone, Arise. Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver and there was no breath at all in it. But the Lord He is the holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.”

In other words, recognize that He is God, not all these overlaid wooden idols that were being made and being overlaid with gold and silver. God is the one who will judge that. And so we see that number one, this is not a popular passage. There is no way for me to just make this light for us, folks. I would be doing a disservice to Scripture. What we need to realize in this is there is something about God that will deal with our sin if we don’t repent. And it would be disingenuous, dishonest or it would be me reshaping the text to appease you. And a pastor can’t placate. We have to share what God’s word says even parts that are hard to digest.

And so we all have to look at our own hearts, we all have to look at our own lives. And this idolatry carries on even into the where we see Paul writing in the book of Romans Chapter 1 and verses 22 through 25 where he says, “Claiming to be wise they instead became utter fools and instead of worshipping the glorious ever living God, they worshipped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshipped and served the things God created instead of the creator Himself who was worthy of eternal praise. Amen.”

Now we look at all that and go well, we are not all into that stuff. We are not really into idolatry here in America. There is a Greek word for that - baloney. We are into idolatry here in America in all kinds of ways. Did you know that in India that they look at us as very idolatrous people? They have over 300 million gods in Hinduism and they look at us and think we are just steeped in idolatry. In fact they see us as idol worshippers when we get before our television set and we worship the athletes on TV. They see us as idol worshippers who have our idols in Hollywood, as we get so excited to go see our new stars when the newest movie comes out. They see us as idol worshippers as we strive for power and building our big mansions. They see us as so flooded with

Page 12 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 idolatry that many of them can’t even stomach the idea of coming to our land because we are so idolatrous.

It is just we have made our idolatry look okay in our own eyes. And when we look at India, or when we look at Babylon, we think this look hideous, this looks weird. But we need to understand that ancient Babylon would think that we look hideous, and India would think that we look weird. We can’t think that we are the normal and we are the ones who have it all figured out. We are amongst the panoply of people. There are all kinds of people in this world, seven billion people, with many nations. And we can’t just think that we are the ones that are civilized, that we are the ones that have the right perspective.

And we can’t think that finally, after all the thousands of years of human history that we have arrived. That is not the case. We, too, struggle with our own idols. We struggle big time. And maybe you are thinking how do I know that I have idols? Well you detect your idols through the things that you covet. In Ephesians Chapter 5 and verse 5 it tells us, “Whoever is covetous is an idolater.” So the things that you covet in life are idols. It could be another person’s spouse that is your idol. It could be a certain job that you covet and you are not well on your insides. There is something that doesn’t feel complete until you have it. That is your idol. It could be all kinds of things. It could be money, it could be popularity. Anything can become our idol in our life. You see whatever is ultimate in your life is your idol. And you can have many ultimates in your life, but there is only one ultimate that crushes idolatry, and that is when God is our ultimate ultimate.

Albert Schweitzer said, “Anything you have that you cannot give away, you do not really own, it owns you.” Augustine said something very profound. He was that 4th and 5th century great theologian from northern Africa. He said, “We must have our loves rightly ordered.” He meant that our loves must be force ranked. And what he was getting at is God must be our ultimate. God must be supreme in our lives.

Timothy Keller in his bestselling book ‘A Reason for God,’ which was a New York Times bestseller, said this about idolatry, “If you center your life and identity on your spouse or partner, you will be emotionally dependent, jealous and controlling. If you center your life and identity on your family and children, you will try to live your life through your children until they resent you, or have no self of their own. If you center your life and identity on your work and career, you will be a driven workaholic and a boring, shallow person.

If you center your life and identity on money and possessions, you will be eaten up by worry or jealousy about money. If you center your life and identity on pleasure, gratification and comfort, you will find yourself getting addicted to something. If you

Page 13 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 center your life and identity on relationships and approval, you will be constantly overly hurt by criticism and thus always losing friends. If you center your life and identity on a noble cause, you will divide the world into good and bad and demonize your opponents.

If you center your life and identity on religion and morality, you will if you are living up to your moral standards be proud, self-righteous and cruel. If you don’t live up to your moral standards, your guilt will be utterly devastating.”

C.S. Lewis, in a letter written in 1951, gives us this advice about idols. “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in. Put second things first and we lose both first things and second things.” And then in Matthew Chapter 6 and verse 33 we see the words, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” When it comes to our lives, we need to look and fess up. We are chasing secondary things. I told my wife, as we talked the last couple of days, that my heart is grieved. I said my fear in our culture today is God is the commercial in our lives and not the main story. And the main story in our life is entertainment. I believe we are building our culture on sexual liberty, entertainment and greed. That those are our core values.

And I fear that we as a church have swallowed those values right up. And we find comfort in the name of ‘everyone else is doing it.’ And so it makes us feel good about sin when we can see other professed Christians licking at the earth, to use the phrase of Malcom Muggeridge. We find comfort in the fact that other people have lowered God’s standards so that they could feel good about the God they have made in their own image versus going up to the standard of who God is. And we are doing it in the church. We are shrinking God down. We are making Him okay with our values. We are trying to make Him fit into our worldliness. And as a result we are dying as we chase secondary things. And as I go on Facebook I see more panting, and more excitement, and more joy about the Auburn upset of Alabama than I do about Christ Jesus coming out of a grave.

To use the phrase of Francis Chan, “We are lukewarm and loving it.” Sadly, I don’t even think we are aware of how lukewarm we are. We have been so shaped by our culture that we have a form of Christianity that serves as an abomination to real true passionate Christianity like what is taking place in Africa, or in northern India, or in China, or in other parts of Latin America. They would look at our Christianity and weep because they would see a group of people chasing secondary things, and where secondary things have become the first thing.

And I told my wife that my heart grieves because I think that there is more excitement and more joy in entertainment than in Christianity. I see Christians get more excited about ‘Catching Fire’ coming out at the movies than they do about catching a fire for the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think that we need revival more than ever before as a

Page 14 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 country. I think our foundation is lost and we have put up new pillars, instead of building a culture on the good we are building it on sexual licentiousness, we are building it on greed, and we are building it on power. And we have a problem before us.

And you know what it is going to take? Repentance and turning to God. It is going to take family unit by family unit. And it is going to take dads to step up to the plate and lead. And say what are we going to repent of? Why are we trying to look just like the nation? Now here is what I am not saying. I am not saying we can’t have some commercials in our life of entertainment. I think that entertainment is fine. But if entertainment becomes our main story, then that becomes the drama of our lives. And I believe that God needs to be the main story, and then we can have some commercials as we go.

I hope your heart feels crushed right now. My heart feels crushed right now too. We need repentance. We need Christ like never before. I fear that when I talk about being excited about God, many Christians look at me in the face and don’t even know what I am talking about. They don’t know what it feels like to just experience the sweet presence of Jesus in prayer, to know and meet the Saviour of the world in the word. Lord, be merciful to us. God must be our greatest good.

Well, let me wrap it up. We have been talking about Babylon and this nation that is going to be judged. But let’s personalize it because that is what we want to do with Scripture. We want to ask ourselves the application question. So here are some wrap-up thoughts. Number one: Be careful to not want something so badly that you are willing to mistreat others to get your wants.

Second: Just because you may appear to be getting away with sin now doesn’t mean you always will. In fact, you won’t. Third: Do a personal inventory of your own life and ask if God was to pronounce a woe on you for a particular sin or sins, what would it be? You know I think that this would be a good application for individuals and for families, and for dads to lead in this way. To just have a family conversation around this question and say, if Jesus were to walk in this room right now, what do you think He would personally say to you about your loves being rightly ordered? What are the things you think He would want to communicate to you? Sometimes we are so detached and distant from God we will still have Him saying things that our hearts want to hear just because we are not in His presence. That is why we need some good old fashioned fasting and prayer and hunting the heart of God for Him to just show us where we have been anesthetized by holiness could help. But talk about that. And then be willing to ask, am I really willing to mean business here and to deal with it?

Finally: Joyfully embrace Jesus who took our woes on the cross and was shockingly judged for our injustices. That is what happened. He died for our injustices

Page 15 of 16 pages 12/1/2013 JUDGING INJUSTICE – Habakkuk 2: 6 - 20 on a cross. And He wants us to know when we look at that torturous cross that that is where the life is. “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.” But we believe the abundant life is in entertainment and in Hollywood and on television. And I am not saying you can’t have some of it, but what I am saying is we have way too much of it. We are so stuffed with it that we have it up to our eyeballs and we don’t even see how blind we are. We need to repent. Let’s pray.

Father, we are learning about the woes on Babylon and I wonder about the woes on us. I just pray, Lord, that you will forgive us of our sins. Forgive me for lukewarm moments. Forgive me for missing it. Forgive us when we try to find comfort in what the masses are doing, Lord. That provided no comfort during the flood, going with the masses. You weren’t in the majority. I pray, Father, that you will help us to turn from our sins.

I pray for anyone today that doesn’t know you that they will say something like this in the quietness of their heart: Jesus, forgive me for my sins. Be my Lord. Be my Saviour. And help me to live for you, to love you, to honour you, and to follow hard after you.

And Lord, I pray for the church. I pray for all of us, Lord, that we will truthfully examine our hearts. God, I just want us to make the most of this life that you have given us. I pray that you will forgive us for spiritual indifference. I pray that you will forgive us for not sharing the gospel with non-believers. I pray that you will forgive us for being more excited about stuffing our faces than getting in the word of God. I pray that you will forgive us for our neglect and our selfishness. I pray that you will forgive us for our divisive tongues, for our lack of generosity in giving. I pray that you will forgive us for living for ourselves. I pray that you will forgive us for sexual sins. I pray that you will forgive us for mental sins. I pray that you will forgive us for physical abuse sins. I pray that you will forgive us for chasing greed and for chasing power.

I pray that you will forgive our nation, God, and revive our hearts. I pray that you will forgive us for experiencing change only as long as the emotion is there. I pray that you will forgive us for not weeping over our sins, for not confessing, for not being more broken up about the way we live. I pray that you will forgive us, Lord, in our home life where we mistreat each other. I pray, Lord, that you will forgive us for losing sight of what matters most. Oh God, you do judge injustice, and Jesus took our injustices on the cross, but would you be so kind to mercifully show us your grace. But not grace to keep doing what we are doing, but would you love us so much that our hearts will be touched with the deep need of recognizing that we need you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The preceding transcript was completed using raw audio recordings. As much as possible, it includes the actual words of the message with minor grammatical changes and editorial clarifications to provide context. Hebrew and Greek words are spelled using Google Translator and the actual spelling may be different in some cases.

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