Resources
26 January 2025
6:30pm
Woes for the Babylonians
A good few years ago now I remember chatting to a guy after church one evening. He’d been bringing himself along for a while, but he was increasingly unhappy with what he was hearing. And he said “I don’t believe in a God who judges. And if this church believes God judges people who don’t follow him, then I really don’t think I can stick it out here.” We had a good conversation that night. I told him he was always welcome to keep coming and to keep asking his questions, but after he left that evening I never saw him again.
I don’t like thinking about judgement, I don’t like talking about judgement. After all, who does? But look at the Bible, and on God’s authority you have to accept that judgement is real and that hearing about it (though difficult) is very important indeed. And that’s why we shouldn’t skip passages like Habakkuk 2. By this point in the book we’ve seen that God has told Habakkuk that he will use the Babylonians to judge his people (Judah) for the way they have been living. And Habakkuk couldn’t believe it, because how could God allow an even worse nation to judge his own people?
Last week we saw the beginning of God’s vision to Habakkuk showing him that after using the Babylonians to judge Judah he would in turn judge them. And we saw that this judgement would be a picture of a bigger judgement to come when God would end all evil forever. Our passage tonight is part two of the vision which spells out more of the detail of that judgement in five woes for the Babylonians. And like I said last week, the Babylonians in the Bible came to stand for any culture or country throughout time that opposed God and his ways. So these woes have lots to show us the nature of God’s judgement, and the ultimate judgement that’s still to come.
To be upfront, I’ve struggled with this text all week, in many ways it’s felt like it’s slipped through my fingers. There’s a lot here, and we won’t have time for every detail. Instead we’ll pick out the main flow and “zoom in” on the key bits when we need to. Before we get going, let’s pray… Please do have Habakkuk 2.6-20 open in front of you, you’ll find those verses on page 786. And here’s the 1st Woe:
1. Greed
And these aren’t watertight compartments, but broadly speaking, this woe is about greed. So, look down to the second part of Habakkuk 2.6:
…“Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own—for how long? —and loads himself with pledges!
i.e. debts which will charge a high level of interest. So when the Babylonians conquered a country – they’d plunder it to feather their nests and fuel their war machine, and then they’d exploit whoever was left with high interest loans. People didn’t matter – profit was what counted. Have you ever noticed that the closer a country gets to an election the more the issues narrow? Lots of issues seem important at first, but eventually the economy becomes a major (maybe even the sole) focus. What does that show about us? How does the saying go? “Money talks”. It’s greed that causes wars over land rich with natural resources. It’s greed that contributes to banks crashing and economic crises. Greed lies behind so much evil. And as far as God is concerned it won’t go unnoticed. Habakkuk 2.7-8:
Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be spoil for them. Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you...
So, that’s one aspect of God’s judgement – retribution: the Babylonians will be punished for their wickedness. And sometimes, we will want to run a million miles away from this idea – a bit like that guy I mentioned at the beginning. We might think we’d prefer a God who would never judge, but I wonder if deep down that’s what we really want. Especially in a world where there is so much evil and injustice, and just like in Habakkuk’s day, it seems like people get away with it.
I grew up in a part of our country that was gripped by violence for decades. And I remember seeing a man on TV once, his son had been murdered and the killer was still at large. I remember him saying “I want whoever killed my son to be found and punished – I want justice”. When we listen to accounts like that, doesn’t everything that within us say “I want justice for that man too”. What do you want justice for? Pursuing justice can easily become the wrongful pursuit of revenge. But we have a right sense of justice within us that tells us that evil ought to be dealt with appropriately, and it cannot be right for it to go on unpunished forever. So God’s judgement is good news because it means that how I treat you, how you treat me, and how we all treat God actually matters: It all means something. And God (the one person who’s in possession of all the facts) will judge rightly. That is the good news of judgement – that evil won’t go unchecked or unpaid for. Onto Habakkuk 2.9 and the second woe:
2. Insecurity:
Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high,to be safe from the reach of harm!
The Babylonians insecurity resulted in evil gain – the destruction and exploitation of others to keep themselves safe from the reach of harm. So imagine a typical Bond villain’s liar with the walls, the armed guards and the Alsatians, and you’ve got the idea here. The fortified castle high on a hill which seems completely impregnable – it can barely be reached, let alone destroyed. History tells us that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon built walls round Babylon of enormous scale. The walls round his palace were a scarcely believable 136 feet thick. The Babylonian empire would have appeared (like its castles) completely unstoppable, a dynasty that could go on and on forever. And yet, Habakkuk 2.11:
For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork respond.
It looks indestructible. And yet, God compares it to a badly built house that groans and creaks on a windy day and one day will collapse under its own weight. It looks good but in the end it self-destructs, and that idea is carried into the third woe against violence.
3. Violence
Habakkuk 2.12-13:
Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity! Behold [i.e. “LOOK this is a key point”], is it not from the Lord of hosts that peoples labour merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing?
I have two young boys, and our house is full of Duplo. The other week I went to work with a bit in my pocket! And I have to endure that pain that reverberates through the body when you stand on a stray brick. We spend a huge amount time building wonderful Duplo castles. My boys hope they’ll last forever, but they never last very long. The Babylonians would have their time. And God would allow them to have a unique role as his instrument for judging and disciplining his people. They had their chance, but in the end, God would judge them for all their wickedness. The Babylonians violently oppressed others, until they were hit by the Persians. But later in history the Persians were hit by Alexander the Great...And so it goes on.
History shows us again and again: Hussein, Mugabe, Franco, Amin, Pol Pot, Stalin, Gaddafi, Mao, Mussolini, Hitler...Evil – terrible evil and violence that ruins lives – rises and it falls. Nations look impregnable, evil looks like it’s going to win, injustice appears to go on forever, dictators oppress sometimes from generation to generation. Evil rises and rises. It feels like it could fill the world, but history shows us that it never happens. Habakkuk 2.13 – in the end, they all come crashing down. And all the labour and weary work God says will end in fire – it will all be for nothing and seen to be for nothing. Because (whether now or later) God in his judgment will knock them all over like you or I would knock over a Duplo castle. It’s only a matter of when. And God uses all of this (the rise and fall of nations) to show us that evil will not win – the Taliban will not win, Putin will not win, North Korea will not win. The evil agendas of the nations will not fill the earth. Something far better will. Reading from Habakkuk 2.13 again:
Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that peoples labour merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing?
Habakkuk 2.14:
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
So this another aspect of the good news of God’s judgement – his vindication. Because one day, Jesus will come to judge and usher in a new world and God won’t be ignored, or mocked, or forgotten – he will finally be honoured as he ought to be. And if the knowledge of the glory of the Lord is going to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea then there will be no room for anything else. Every nation, and everyone, hostile to the glory of God will be removed. All sin and all that sin destroys will be removed from God’s presence and from his people forever. God’s righteous glory will fill the earth. What a day it will be! And the false glory, the sinful pride of the Babylonians and nations like them, will be condemned. And they will be utterly shamed for the evil way they have lived. Which brings us to the fourth woe. Which, as it happen, is about:
4. Shaming others.
Habakkuk 2.15-16:
Woe to him who makes his neighbours drink— you pour out your wrath and make 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 round to you, and utter shame will come upon your glory!
The Babylonians in their greed exploited other nations. To fuel their insecurity they oppressed them. They used violence to conquer them. And then like puppets on a string, they delighted in humiliating and shaming them for their own enjoyment. But the Babylonians (and those like them) will have all their terrible evil brought into the open. No stone will be left unturned. And in the light of God’s righteous standards, all evil will be uncovered and the perpetrators will be exposed and shamed. The cup mentioned in Habakkuk 2.16 is an Old Testament symbol, a word picture, for God’s wrath – his righteous anger at sin. The cup will come round to the Babylonians and they will be forced to drink from it and taste the bitter judgement of God. It’s a vivid image. How do you react to it?
One reason we don’t like judgement is because deep within us we know that we deserve it too. We might not have committed the atrocities of the Babylonians, but in our own ways we’ve look out for ourselves, we’ve trampled over others, and we’ve ignored the God who has made us and loved us. The crime novelist Ian Rankin once did a documentary (Evil Thoughts) exploring evil in our world, and he concluded this:
We prefer to demonise certain people and put evil in a world of monsters because it protects us from confronting the fact that these people are just like us...
Isn’t that exposing? Because we prefer to think of evil as being something “out there” but if we’re honest it’s far closer to home than we realise. God’s cup could be passed from nation to nation, and person to person, again and again and again. And God the righteous judge says that every single one of us would have to take it and drink. None of us are any better. But that wasn’t God’s plan - his plan was to send Jesus. In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus spoke of a cup. The cup of wrath which symbolised the sins of the world and God’s judgement of them. Three times he prayed to his Father (Luke 22.42) “Remove this cup from me”. And yet he prayed “Yet not what I will, but what you will”. Jesus knew that the only way to bring salvation to our messed up world was for him to drink the bitter cup of God’s judgement and to drink it to the end. On the cross he drank that cup for you and for me - every last drop. By taking God’s anger at sin on himself. He took the punishment, he took the judgement so that we don’t have to. One day Jesus will come again to judge the nations and to crush the rebellion. But Jesus came first to save the nations and to save rebels – even the worst of rebels, whoever they may be.
The only alternative to the cup of wrath is the cup of salvation which Jesus holds out to us. Make sure that’s the cup you drink from. Trust him with all that’s wrong with our world. Trust him with your sin. Finally, the fifth woe which is about idolatry – because that was the very heart of the Babylonians problem.
5. Idolatry
And the flow of thought with this one really begins at Habakkuk 2.18-19:
What profit 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 silent stone, Arise!Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it.
An idol is essentially anything you put your trust in that isn’t the living God. And these verses drip with irony because idolatry is listening to the teaching of something that is speechless and cannot teach. It’s giving immense power in your life to that which is ultimately powerless. And it’s worshipping something that the worshipper has created themselves. The Babylonians lived for power, wealth, status and honour. It led to greed, insecurity, violence and shaming others. It led to all sorts of wickedness. It ate them up. It never paid off. It resulted in their judgement. What are the idols of the nations of our world? Economic success? Power? The advancement of Allah? Military might? A world-renowned reputation for success in…X, Y or Z? Often things of our own creation that will not pay off, and that will be exposed and destroyed. What about you? Who do you worship? We all worship something, because we’re all made to worship. And if we don’t worship the one true God something else will fill that vacuum. The late Christian Tim Keller wrote:
When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping...[Counterfiet Gods, Timothy Keller]
The insidious nature of idols is that anything can be one. But idols are teachers of lies who cannot speak and have no breath at all – there is no comparison to the living God. Because it looks like evil is winning – and yet God is in control of it and working out his good purposes despite it. And one day he’ll come in judgement to end it forever. So it’s fitting that this chapter of Habakkuk ends with Habakkuk 2.20:
But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.
Like the guy I mentioned at the beginning, we might struggle with the idea of God’s justice. To various extents, none of us like the idea of it. But God’s justice is good news. And in the end, everyone will see that God is perfectly good and perfectly just. And they will no longer be able to say, or argue, otherwise. So the only right response now is to humbly admit that God is the righteous judge of all and that we are sinners who depend on Jesus’ incredible mercy and forgiveness of us. God is God and we are not. That’s the humble silence of living by faith. Let’s pray.