What Sorrow Awaits...

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Monday, November 4, 2019

“What sorrow awaits you who build cities with money gained through murder and corruption!  Has not the Lord of Heaven’s Armies promised that the wealth of nations will turn to ashes?  They work so hard, but all in vain!  For as the waters fill the sea, the earth will be filled with an awareness of the glory of the Lord.  

“What sorrow awaits you who make your neighbors drunk!  You force your cup on them so you can gloat over their shameful nakedness.  But soon it will be your turn to be disgraced.  Come, drink and be exposed!  Drink from the cup of the Lord’s judgment, and all your glory will be turned to shame.  You cut down the forests of Lebanon.  Now you will be cut down.  You destroyed the wild animals, so now their terror will be yours.  You committed murder throughout the countryside and filled the towns with violence.  “What good is an idol carved by man, or a cast image that deceives you?  How foolish to trust in your own creation—a god that can’t even talk!  

What sorrow awaits you who say to wooden idols, ‘Wake up and save us!’  To speechless stone images you say, ‘Rise up and teach us!’  Can an idol tell you what to do?  They may be overlaid with gold and silver, but they are lifeless inside.  But the Lord is in his holy Temple.  Let all the earth be silent before him.”  Habakkuk 2:12-20[2]

A true prophet only speaks the words God puts in his mouth.  And it’s a bit more than threatening to hear over and over, what sorrow awaits, especially when the voice thunders from Heaven’s throne!  The targets of these warnings are leaders of nations that have the lust to control other lands through violence and manipulation.  

The payoff for such evil will look like the landscape of the Sahara, or the denuded Brazilian forests.

This message of Habakkuk is all about climate change, but not the physical actions of slaughtering endangered animal species or cutting down Lebanon’s cedar forests.  This is about systemic evil that ignores God’s Word, thinking our Sovereign Creator is like the idols carved from the cut-down trees, unable to speak or have any consequential factor in the affairs of men…especially powerful leaders of powerful nations.  The prophecy falling from the lips of Habakkuk decry the evil earthly leaders who are stockpiling misery against the day of judgment.

While this prophecy was spoken to the corrupt leaders of the Chaldeans, who had invaded and devastated Judah in the 7^th Century^(B.C.) it also speaks a word to our culture.  The prophet has asked ^(1:12-17) if wrong and violence are to continue forever.[1]  It doesn’t seem right for the ungodly Chaldean nations to triumph over God’s people, but the Lord’s answer to Habakkuk’s question is that the violence of the invaders is going to be used by God to bring Judah to her knees, and, like the Northern Kingdom a century before, they will know the devastating consequences of forsaking their God. 

In the end God will bring retribution on the likes of the Chaldean raiders, but Israel will be forgiven and restored.

The word for 21^st Century leaders is cautionary; if you use the manipulative, lying, bullying as did the strong-willed Chaldean/Babylonian invaders, you become them! 

And their fate becomes yours; what sorrow awaits!

For You Today

Strong-arming weaker nations and bullying your way through life will bring its reward, but it won’t be pretty!  Truly strong leaders are those who trust in Christ, and fear God.  These are the ones who are silent before Holy God, who is in His sanctuary. 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

[2] For another post on this text see:  Fingers With a Brain

[3] Thompson Chain Reference Bible notes (B.B. Kirkbride Bible Co, Indianapolis, Ind., 1964 ), 205