Woes

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We're in week three of Habakkuk, and what we've been learning is how in the world do you live in a world like this? Habakkuk was living in a world like this. We have been feeling we are going through some tough times, some dark moments, some things in history that just don't seem to be jiving. It doesn't seem to be getting better, or maybe your sentiment's different. There are some people who say, oh yeah, everything's good. Things are getting better. Things are improving. But the majority of people, it seems like, are having this mood of, hmm, which direction are things going in this world, and who's in control? Most Americans, I would say, think that we are going through some times of division, and violence, even, and coercion, and tribalism. Everybody's at each other and pointing the finger elsewhere. We're not sure how things are going to go, or if our children are going to have a better life than we've had. I think my parents, growing up, worked hard, and they felt like hard work was going to work. And then we went to college, and we did something, and they thought our lives were going to be better than theirs. And overall, it has been. I'm not so sure. I always feel that way about my children, and what they're going to face. Okay? Well, Habakkuk would understand all this. He really would. There were dark days for him. When he wrote this letter, this just three-chapter letter, there was a great moral collapse that had gone on. He was questioning what God was doing in Israel. There was corruption. There was idolatry. There was injustice of how everybody was being treated within Israel. And then, and outside of it, God had just said the last, the first, you know, how was God going to do? What was God going to do? He was going to then take an even more ruthless, violent, and ungodly nation, the Babylonians, to use that as discipline against Israel. And Habakkuk said, what in the world are you doing, God? How are you doing that? How is that ever going to work out? So, dark days. He wonders what he's going to do. And he struggles through all of this in this book, and we're in the middle of it here in chapter two. And I say, if you take the journey with Habakkuk today, through this book, it might not change the dark days that are around us, whether they are personally dark or nationally or internationally dark, but I think it'll give you the resilience to be ready to handle it. You won't be at loose ends to understand what's really going on. You'll be able to say things as they are. You're going to see it like it really is, but also not lose hope at the same time. To understand God does work through difficult times. So today we're learning two things, understanding the source of evil and also being consoled in the midst of evil. So let's read the text. This is Habakkuk chapter two, verses five and following to the end of the chapter. Shall not all these take up their taunt against him with scoffing and riddles for him and say, moreover, wine is a traitor and arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol. Like death, he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples, woe to him who heaps up what is not his own for how long and loads himself with pledges. Will not your debtors suddenly arise in those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be spoiled for them because you have plundered many nations. All the remnant of the people shall plunder you for the blood of man and violence to the earth to cities and all who dwell in them. 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 peoples. You have forfeited your life for the stone will cry out from the wall and the beam from the woodwork respond. Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity. Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that people's labor merely for fire 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. Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink, who pours out your wrath and makes them drunk in order to gaze at their nakedness. You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink yourself and show your uncircumcision. The cup in the Lord's right hand will come against you and the utter shame will come upon your glory. 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 to the earth to cities and all who dwell in them. What prophet is an idol when its maker has shaped it, 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 ...