Habakkuk 2:12-14

Habakkuk chapter 2, verses 12 to 14 for our text and study this morning. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood and establishes a city by iniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of Host that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. May God bless to us His sacred and holy word this morning. During Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s Day in the 1800s, sailing down the Thames River, you would occasionally see a green flag sticking out. of the water. It’d be tattered because it had been there for a long time and it would have the words the word wreck on it. It seems that the flag would be floating in the breeze over a piece of mask or a funnel of a steamer which was just visible above the water. It was marked a shipwreck so you would avoid it as you sailed down the river. sadly it seems that many lives ought to be marked with one of those little green flags shipwreck because they prove ruinous, they would prove ruinous to other people associated with them. The vows center, the self-righteous, the covetous, the miserly, the apostate, the drunkard, all of those might wisely have a flag placed over them. they are indeed a wreck. Our text is God’s reply to a backcook. He has complained that the wicked, the Babylonians, were not being punished for all their sinful ways, that they seem to be getting away with it. And the Lord’s answer is for the moment, I’m going to use the Babylonians to chastise my people Israel, and then, eventually they will be punished. In this section of scripture, we have a taunt song in which there are five woes pronounced against the wicked, the Babylonians in particular, for their various sins. Our text contains the third woe. And the third woe is for the sin of ruthlessness. Here is another reason why your life may end up erect. you are a ruthless person. Now God warns you here about being ruthless in verse 12. It says, it woe to him that build a town with blood and establisheth a city by iniquity. The Lord carefully considers the means by which you achieve your end in this life. You notice the phrase is here, blood and by iniquity. From the very beginning of biblical history, the word blood was used for blood shed. You remember that the violent death of a human being would be spoken of as the shedding of blood. Cain, when he killed his brother Abel, found God denouncing him, what hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood cryeth unto me from the ground. Human blood seems to have some type of voice here when it shed, it speaks, it cries out to God for vengeance. Now, God saw the blood of untold number of peoples who were slaughtered in order to build the Babylonian empire. The Babylonians ruthlessly slaughtered people in their conquest. No mercy was shown in the taking of human life meant nothing to them. The Babylonians certainly had no general treatment for the aged or for the young. They had no qualms about ripping open the pregnant women to assure the death of the child within. And the Babylonians carried on their work by iniquity. We know that they used whatever sinful means they could in violation of God’s law. They were able to lie to people, to terrorize people, to exploit people, to abuse them, to sexually harm them without any concern about what was right or what was wrong in the eyes of God. What is important for us to note here is that God is paying attention to how people do things. the means they used to accomplish the ends that they have in this life. I was reading a book about the history of Islam. And as you read about Muhammad in the past, his political power began to grow, and he and his followers began to raid and the loot passing caravans. As long as they were non-Muslim, everything was okay. You could rob, you could kill them, you could steal from them, no problem. The Koran, their holy book, counseled no mercy until their enemies were all defeated. Thus, the jihad, the holy war, which still troubles us today, began. Shetting blood, terrorizing people, is a way of life. For the Muslim. You look at the Muslim history, it’s full of bloodshed. It’s full of sinful actions. brutally chopping off heads and raping women and cruelly torturing men and blowing up buildings and an indiscriminate slaughter of people is a means by which they want to build an empire. But they’re doing the same thing the Babylonians are doing. When people ruthlessly exploit others, God is careful. paying attention. Whether it be using unjust weights and measures, whether it be deceitful advertising, whether it be exploiting the workers, God is paying attention to all these things. It’s not how successful you are in this life. It’s how you achieve your success. That’s important. Is there bloodshed involved? Is there iniquity in how you climb the corporate ladder or major business, then you cannot hope to escape divine punishment and there is a woe that is pronounced against you. So the Lord carefully considers the means by which you pursue an end. Notice, a pre-sense of pretense of doing good, doing something good or great, does not excuse your ruthlessness. They built a town. They established a city. They’re doing great things. The Babylonians used the blood, sweat, and toil of slave labor from conquered nations to build themselves towns, cities. Visitors to the city of Babylon and other Babylonian towns and cities saw unrivaled magnificence and splendor and splendor in what they were doing. It was hugely impressive what they had built, but this could not justify the ruthless treatment of others in doing it. Just because they were doing something great and achieved something marvelous does not mean that they were doing it rightly. People often achieve great things. Build magnificent structures. But if you do, so ruthlessly exploiting the workers, then God is going to call down judgment on your efforts. People often achieve great things as an expression of human strength, of human determination. Look at Nebuchinezer. Is this not great Babylon that I have built? Yes, but how did you build it? King Nebuchadnezzar. How did you build it? Remember what Daniel said. Break off your sins by righteousness before God’s judgment falls upon you. Of course, he didn’t do that, and he was turned into the beast for a bit, for a period of time. If a city is not found upon moral and spiritually correct principles, it’s ultimately doomed. The scripture says, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build labor in vain, unless the Lord’s behind the building of a nation or a city, it ultimately will fail. All ruthlessness toward others will be severely punished by God. In Esopp’s fables, there’s a story about the snake and the wasp. And a wasp settled one day on the snake’s head. It was stinging him and annoying it. And the snake attempted to shake off the wasp, but he couldn’t get the wasp off his head. It was stubbornly clinging to it. Now the snake being crafty, thought of a plan by which he could get rid of the wasp. He would lay his head with the wasp bill on it under the wheel of a passing wagon and it would crush the wasp. Sadly, the snake failed to realize in destroying the wasp, he would destroy himself. It’s madness to think. that you can deal ruthlessly to others and it not destroy you ultimately. It’s madness to think that you’re not going to perish like the wasp and then the snake in what you’re doing. What you’re doing. It’s madness to think you can deal ruthlessly with others and somehow God’s righteous retribution isn’t going to fall on. You know, it shows great wisdom in your labor to achieve something great that you consider whether or not God is with you when you’re doing what you’re doing or whether you have his curse upon you. You know, what need there is for us to pray for political leaders because they’re making decisions every day that are going to affect not only us, but people around the world. And when they do the wrong thing, and when they do something ruthless, or evil, it’s going to affect our nation. And even if they’re, even if they think they’re accomplishing great things, it doesn’t matter if they’re doing it with a wrong with the wrong motive. So God warns you here about being ruthless. The second thing we notice, this, is this. You find God is determined to frustrate the purposes of the ruthless. Verse 13. Behold, Is it not of the Lord of Host that the people shall labor in the very fire and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? You never fully realize until it’s too late that the Lord of Host opposes the ruthless. Behold, is it not of the Lord of host? Now that word behold, it always is to get your attention. Pay attention to this. Look at this carefully. Mark this down. The behavior of the ruthless must be seen in terms of God’s sovereign control over all things. Yes, they’re busy building the cities. They’re busy building the towns. They got to their slave labor and their labor and they’re laboring to make the brick and the fiery kilns and so forth. But what’s going to come out of all this? What is God going to do? It’s going to end up to, it’s all going to end up to be. vanity. That’s what he says. He declares that he is working against the ruthless to frustrate their purposes. Nebuchinezer says this is the great Babylon that I have built. When it’s all over, when it’s said and done years later, what does Babylon look like? It’s completely deserted. Wild animals are in the streets. The aisles are up on the buildings and so forth. It’s desolate. There’s nothing left. God frustrates the efforts that are being made. It’s interesting. Hitler said he was going to build a thousand-year Reich. Didn’t even make a decade. It was gone. Bombed out. Destroyed. All their efforts to establish themselves in which they employed slave later from conquered people are going to be undermined by God. You cannot hope to succeed in a work in which you find God is against you. Yet the ruthless don’t always realize that God is against them when they’re doing it. Disaster befalls them. There was once a king named Dionysius who ruled over the city of Syracuse, which was the richest city in Sicily. One of the king’s best friends, Damocles, envied the king’s good fortune, so the king offered to make him king for the day. You can be, you can be king. They put the crown on his head, you know, he put the royal robe on, everybody was given all the attention that the king would get, and they had this huge feast. And he sits down at the feast, and he’s at the head, the king’s chair, at the head of the table, at this big, large banquet hall, and all large crowd of people there. But as he raises his cup to drink his wine, he looks toward the ceiling, and there is a large sword hanging over his head by a single horsehair. And he’s sort of frozen in place, and its glittering, sharp blade is seen. Damocles was unnerved by all this. At this point, Dionysius explained that this is what he faces every day as a king. Death is hanging over him. He never knows when death is going to occur. Someone might try to put him to death. Frighted Damocles never again wanted to change places with the king. Friends, you never want to change places with the rich and the powerful who ruthlessly obtained their exalted position in life because God’s sword hangs over them. God’s woe is pronounced against them. No matter what they accomplish, you don’t want to be in their shoes. And that’s what we should recognize here. If you read Psalm 73 very carefully, and that Psalm is one of my favorite Psalms because it talks about how God is good to Israel, even such that are of a pure heart in God’s sight, the true Israel of God. He talks about the wicked. He talks about how envious he was of them. But he goes to the house of God. He hears what God says about the end of the wicked. And then he realizes, whoa, God has put them in slippery places to bring them to destruction. So that it’s not so good to be in that situation. I was envious. I wish I could be like that. I wish I had the wealth they had. I don’t have all the things that they have. the houses and the lands and the properties and even their family. they’re not sick. Everything seems to be going good in their life. I want to be like them. And then he realizes, no, I don’t want to be like them. God has set their feet on the ice, so to speak. And they’re going to fall to their destruction. The same thing here. is what we find. You don’t want to be in their shoots because they are doomed. One of the older writers on Psalm 73, he says that they’re exalted like a shellfish in the claws of an eagle, only to be thrown down upon the rocks and devard. That the eagle would swoop down, grab a shellfish, take it up, way up high in the air, over rocks, drop it, and when it falls, it breaks open and the bird can eat the insides. He said, they’re exalted only to be brought to destruction. I thought it was an interesting picture of what God does when he deals with the wicked. You never fully realize until it’s too late. The Lord of Host opposes the ruthless. Because in Psalm 73, they didn’t realize they were on slippery places. Many people don’t realize as they go. through this life and their ruthless behavior just how dangerous their footing is. Notice this, that God makes all your strenuous endeavors to accomplish your end to come to nothing. They labor in the very fire and they weary themselves for vanity. The Lord of Host says in Jeremiah 51-58, thus set the Lord of Host, the broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken in her high greek. gate shall be burnt with fire, and the people shall labor in vain, and the folk in the fire, they shall be weary. All that brickmaking, all that building, all the labor that went into it, and in the end, as we said, you got a town, it’s a ghost town. Think of the foolishness. If you were finishing the inside of a house, if the outside was on fire. And that’s sort of the way it is with the wicked. Think if you were a labor on a large farm and you’re out there tilling the ground and working hard all day long, but a tsunami’s coming in from the ocean is going to put 20 feet of water over top of everything and wipe it all out and all your labor is going to be gone. That’s the way it is here with the ruthless. You can’t live your life and in disobedience to God and expect a good outcome. You’ll be bitterly disappointed. God will cause all your blood, your sweat, your tears, your labor to come to not. It’ll be vanity. I have seen the wicked and great power spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and though he was not. Yeah, I sought for him, but he could not be found. Psalm 37. So you find God is determined to frustrate the purposes of the ruthless. And finally, you are assured the disheartened. destruction of the ruthless promotes the advancement of the kingdom of God. Verse 14, for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. You find the Lord eventually delivers his people and he gains glory throughout all the earth in doing so. Human empires glorify man. and God’s glory tends to be obscured by what man is doing. Everyone’s eyes are in man’s great achievement. Look at Babylon. It’s the first world empire. Everybody envied the Babylonians. God’s glory is a visible manifestation of his attributes before men. They’re not directly accessible to the eyes of God. However, when God’s hand is seen and doing something, great than we recognize God’s glory or something impossible. People acknowledge the glory of God. The greatness of Babylon was felt throughout the entire known world at that time. Its downfall could not but be talked about by all the nations. And here lies the secret. Why God something is not. sometimes allows the ruthless to become great and powerful. It is in their devastating fall that God brings glory to himself. And so we see this is the case here in our text. In the human realm, your reputation is made by the strength and the ability or the greatness of your opponent. The more exalted your opponent, the more praise is heaped upon you. It’s best. big news everybody hears about it. You know, David killed a lion and a bear while he was out in the, taking care of the sheep, out of the pastures. Who all knew about it? Maybe a few people. When he kills Glyath, in front of all the armies of Israel and the Philistines, everybody knew about it. Everybody’s saying his presence. That became the thing. A balkyce. may defeat many opponents in his career, but his fights against the best boxers in the world. His championship bouts, which make him great in the eyes of others. So God here is seen to bring down to earth the greatest nation in the world. He already announces it in his word. Look at Daniel 2, for instance. He talks about it. the destruction. He talks about how Babylon is going to be brought to Nod. Jeremiah, Isaiah. Look at the prophets. Look what God says about Babylon. Look at Ezekiel. They all talk about the destruction of Babylon. You remember that when the Israelites set the two spies into Jericho and they were spying out how they could take the city that Rehab says to the spies, I have heard. We’ve heard about what God did in Egypt. All the plagues were sent upon the Egyptians. How did God brought you out of the land. She feared the Lord because of that. She heard what God had done. It brought glory to his name because of the power that God exhibited against the great nation of Egypt. And the same idea here is found with regard to Babylon. So you find that the Lord’s eventual deliverance of his people will gain him glory throughout all the earth. Now you find also God’s purpose for the whole earth to have the knowledge of his glory is ultimately fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Look with me at Isaiah chapter 11 and verses 1 to 10. We have the very same phrase found here in verse 9 of this chapter. Let’s look at Isaiah chapter 11. This is speaking of Christ here. And there shall come forth, a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of and of the fear of the Lord and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears. But with righteousness shall he judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. Reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips. shall he slay the wicked. And the righteous shall be the girdle, and righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness, the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb. The leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. A little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed. The young one shall lie down together. And the lion shall each straw like the ox and the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp and the wean child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be filled with, shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse which shall stand for an ensign of the people and to it the Gentiles seek and his rest shall be glorious. Now in this chapter we have a description of the anticipated reign of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. This comes to pass when the ruthless world kingdoms of the metallic image of Daniel, remember, are destroyed by the stone cut without hands which refers to Christ in his kingdom and how that stone grows and fills the earth we read about in Daniel chapter 2 and goes to the uttermost parts of the earth. Ultimately, if the glory of God is to fill the whole earth as waters cover the sea, leaving no room for anything else, that everything and everyone hostile to the glory of God has to be destroyed. Thus we read here in our text about the Lord here with the breath of his lips shall slay the wicked. There’s going to be a day when every source of evil will be removed from our world. No harm will remain. The kingdom of God will come in its fullness. All evil will be eradicated. We look according to his promise for a new heavens, a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. All the glorious manifest stations of God against his enemies, like the Babylonians, are just a shadow or type of the day when he’s going to remove all evil from this world. And Christ and his kingdom will be established on this earth completely. And what is done on earth will be the same that’s done in heaven. Everything will be done to the glory of God. Christ will be known to the world by the gospel and all his enemies shall be brought under his feet. Even the Gentiles, he talks about seeking the Lord here. We have the great commission being talked about here. The kingdom advancing and ultimately the final removal of all that’s evil from this world. So your hope as a believer is that one day all the violence, all the ruthlessness that you see presently in the world the bloodshed, the corruption will no longer exist. This hope comes from a knowledge of the glory of God. An acknowledgement of the Lord’s rightful place and submission to him. The promise of the new covenant in Christ is this that they shall know me from the least unto the greatest, said the Lord. This is eternal life that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sin. The question you have to ask is do you know the Lord? That’s the most important thing. Have you come to acknowledge and embrace the glory of the Lord as he is revealed in Scripture? Because only those who know the Lord are going to enter into this glorious sin-free world to come where all others are going to be destroyed and cast into the lake the fire. Well, wrecked ships in the Thames River in Spurgeon’s Day were marked by a green flag so you would avoid them. They were wrecks. The ruthless person who will do anything to achieve his goal might wisely be marked with the green flag because it’s going to be a wreck before long. And it’s the type of life we should avoid. God warns you here about being ruthless, and will frustrate the purposes of the ruthless, ultimately the destruction of the ruthless, promotes the advancement of the kingdom of God on the earth. Well, let us close. Let the word of prayer.