And so let’s pray, “We thank You, holy God, for Your word which You have revealed to us in creation, through Jesus our saviour and our sacred Scriptures. We pray this morning that you will speak to us afresh through this word and that it may dwell in us and amongst us. Amen.
So Habakkuk is the eighth of the minor prophets. Thus we are two third of the way through this series so I thought we might be due for a little recap.
We started with the book of Hosea. In the 8th century BCE, in the Northern Kingdom of Israel before their fall to the Assyrians Hosea is called “to take a wife a whoredom.” Indeed, this is provocative language, and it is a provocative story, and we do need to be very aware of the unhelpful, even dangerous, gender stereotypes and tropes about marriage that are present in this book. But as I said then Hosea is not a book about men and women and marriage. It is a book about God’s passionate love for His people and His creation. The prophet’s story is pointing us to God’s faithfulness despite humanity’s unfaithfulness.
The time and location of the second prophet Joel is unknown. The book describes a devastating locust plague. The prophet compared the swarms of locusts to the arrogant and violent nations of his day that ravaged and oppressed his people. I compared them with the ongoing impacts of intergenerational trauma in this time and place.
The book of Joel explores the destruction that sin wreaks in our world but it also points to a time to come, “the day of the Lord,” as Joel calls it, when God will defeat evil, both in our world and inside ourselves and the land will be restored and creation will be made new.
Like Hosea, the third prophet Amos, is situated in the 8th century BCE, in the Northern Kingdom before their fall to the Assyrians. It is a time of relative strength and prosperity for both Israel and Judah. However, much of this wealth and prosperity was fuelled by unjust practises and as always it was not evenly distributed. The prophet Amos critiques this vehemently. His impassioned and poetic cries for justice and mercy and equality for the poor point us to God’s heart for the oppressed. His words, “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” continue to be used by movements for social justice today.
We do not know the exact time of the fourth and shortest prophet Obadiah but he has a message for the Edomites, the descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau, now enemies of Judah. Obadiah rebukes them for standing aside while Judah was attacked and plundered, for gloating and rejoicing over the misfortune of those who used to be kin. Obadiah condemns their pride, saying, “the pride of your heart has deceived you.”
While, the message of Obadiah has this specific audience and context, this message about pride has remained relevant and contemporary across the ages.
I skipped over Jonah but Benjamin reflected on him last week. Jonah was most likely an 8th century prophet with a message for the gentiles in Ninevah, the capital city of the violent and oppressive empire of Assyria.
The book of Jonah is unique among the prophetic literature in that it comes to us as a story. A story, most of us know, about the prophet who spent three days in the belly of a great fish for trying to run away from God when he was first called to go to Ninevah. The fish spits him up on the shores of the great city and so Jonah obeys and he tells the Ninevites, “forty more days and Ninevah shall be overthrown.” Somewhat surprisingly the people of Ninevah believe Jonah and believe in God and repent. And so God spares the city.
The prophet’s story points us to the universality of God, that God has always been the God of all people, and all nations, and all creation and that as Benj put it, he calls his people to cross social boundaries, to physically stand with the other. In light of last weekends anti-immigration protest this message is relevant and contemporary indeed.
The sixth prophet Micah was a contemporary of Hosea and Amos. I focused on Micah’s vision of a time to come when all peoples and nations shall stream to the mountain of the Lord, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. A time when nation shall not lift up sword against nation and they shall learn war no more. Rather they shall sit under their own vines and fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.
Again, Christian movements for peace and gun control continue to draw upon this vision. While it might seem impossible right now, Micah continues to challenge us to not give up hope on the possibility of peace.
The seventh prophet Nahum of Judah is sometimes referred to as part two of Jonah. 100 years after Jonah it seems the people of Ninevah have returned to worshipping other gods. The Assyrian Empire has conquered the Northern Kingdom and taken them into exile. Nahum returns give them a message of their coming downfall to the Babylonians. It is a message of divine judgement. But God’s judgement against sin is preceded, accompanied, and followed by God’s mercy. Forgiveness is always a possibility, even if this time the Ninevites do not take it up.
I recognise that the readings throughout this series have at times been harsh and bleak. The prophets call out the violence, the injustice, the idolatry and the immorality they see in their world and in the hearts and minds of the people. They pronounce God’s judgement on sin and faithlessness which comes through the rise and fall of nations and the ultimate exile of Israel and Judah from their land.
But I hope that you are also coming to see that for the Biblical prophets this is never the end of the story. In place of the violence, the injustice, the idolatry and the immorality the prophets proclaimed the peace, justice, faithfulness and mercy of God and they call us to work towards these things in our time and place. In all this they anticipate Jesus.
For God judgement is not condemnation. Even in his wrath God is for us. The purpose of prophet’s message is to make people aware of how the ways they are behaving is damaging their communities, themselves and the creation (something this season of creation is also reminding us) and will ultimately lead to their ruin. But there is always hope. Forgiveness and restoration are never off the table. They will have the last word.
Which brings us to Habakkuk. Habakkuk lived in the final decades of Judah, Israel’s southern kingdom. The Northern Kingdom had fallen to the Assyrians in the previous century. The Assyrians had then been conquered by the Babylonians and they are a rising threat to Judah.
Like Israel, Judah’s leaders have become corrupt. They are indifferent to the laws of God and the wellbeing of the people. Idolatry and evil are rampant among the leaders and the people. However, unlike the other Hebrew prophets, Habakkuk doesn’t accuse Israel or even speak to the people on God’s behalf. Instead, all of his words are addressed to God. He questions why God appears to be idle in the face of this iniquity.
And God responds. He says that he is aware of the deep corruption among his covenant people and that he’s summoning the armies of Babylon to bring justice down on them.
But Babylon, Habakkuk responds, is more violent and corrupt than Judah. They have deified their own military power and treat humans like animals, gathering them up like fish in a net. They devour nations and people groups to further build their empire. How can such a holy, good, and just God possibly use such corrupt people as his instruments in history?
God then tells Habakkuk to get some tablets and write down all that he sees and hears, sending him a vision about an appointed time in the future that may seem slow in coming but that will come. A time when God will one day bring Babylon down using the never-ending cycle of revenge and violence created by nations like them The fact that God may, for a time, use them doesn’t mean that he endorses everything they do. Babylon will fall along with any nation that acts like them.
God’s promise is then elaborated by a series of five “woes” that describe the typical forms of oppression and injustice perpetrated by nations like Babylon. The first two target unjust economic practices, like how wealthy people charge ridiculous interest to keep others trapped in debt, building their own wealth through crooked means. The third woe is a critique of slave labor and those who treat humans like animals, threatening them with violence if they aren’t productive enough. The fourth woe targets the abuse of alcohol by irresponsible leaders. While others suffer under their bad leadership, they’re partying and wasting their wealth on sex and booze. The last woe exposes the idolatry driving such nations. They have made money, power, and national security into gods, offering allegiance to them at all costs and becoming slaves to their own empire.
Now, the practices described here aren’t unique to Babylon, and that’s the point. Given the human condition, most nations will eventually become Babylon. God’s answer to Habakkuk becomes God’s answer to all later generations, to anyone who lives in a world ruled by other Babylons. This leaves us with an unsettling, open question: Will God let this cycle go on forever, letting Babylon-like empires ruin each other and his world?
This question is what the last chapter is all about. It opens with a prayer of Habakkuk, where the prophet begins by pleading with God to act in the present like he has in the past, bringing down corrupt nations.
Habakkuk continues by describing the future defeat of evil among the nations as a future exodus. This vision enables Habakkuk to end the book with hopeful praise. Even if the world is falling apart from food shortages, drought, war, or whatever, he will choose to trust and take joy in the covenant promise of God. He recognizes just how dark and chaotic the world and our lives can become, but he also sees how this invites us into the journey of faith, trusting that God loves this world more than we can imagine and that he will one day renew it.
Friends, I have some news. I did try to connect this to Habakkuk somehow but it was all a bit of a stretch and truth is it did not make it any easier so I am just going to come out with it.
As most of you know Martin and Nina moved to Adelaide earlier this year, mostly for soccer. We decided that we would wait and see how things turned out for them before I would make the decision about what I was going to do. Well things are going pretty well for them and they want to stay on there and so I have decided to move down to be with them.
This has been an excruciating decision for me to make because I love this town and I love this church and each of you so much esp of course the family I have here as well. Working here for the last 10 years has been one of the greatest joys of my life and in some ways I still feel called to be here. But despite that I do not really want to live 1500 km’s from my beloved husband and daughter and thankfully they do not really want to live that far from me either. And God has made it clear that they are my first call and so He will sort something for me.
And so last week I met with the head of placements down to let them know I will be available as of next year.
I am really sad about this, and perhaps some of you are too, but it is going to be 5 more months at least (potentially more) and I remain deeply committed to be fully present here for this time and so as I said to the council who I have already let know, let’s try not to be too sad yet. There will of course be a closure of ministry service and we can do all that then.
Janet Staines the general secretary is also aware and the ministerial committee and they will be fully supporting the church through the process of again forming a JNC and getting a new minister. Of course this does not have to happen immediately but the council will be planning a congregational meeting at their meeting later this month. Do not fear, this is truly the best church in the country so I have full confidence you will get someone great. And God of course is here. He loves this church more than me even and will continue to renew it and each one of you here.
