Jesus Christ the Saviour, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 24, 2011. Scripture is from Luke 24:13-31 (Mini-Sermon) and Habakkuk 2:2-20 (Main Text).
Please turn to Luke 24, which is where I want to start the message today. Now if you’ve been here for a few weeks, you’ll know that we are actually going through Habakkuk in this series that we are doing, called: “What is the Gospel?” However, as a way in to that, I want to quickly look at one small story in the middle of Luke 24, kind of like a mini-sermon within a sermon.
Luke 24, starting on verse 13 is the story of two disciples – one of them, Cleopas, and the other unnamed – meeting the Resurrected Christ on the Road to Emmaus. It says in verse 16 that their “eyes were kept from recognizing him” when Jesus began speaking to them.
Jesus asks them what they are talking about, and Cleopas gives this almost incredulous response: he says in verse 18, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
Jesus, just calmly and cooly asks “What things?”
To this the two give a pretty good recitation of what had happened so far. Let’s look at verse 19, which is where they start…
“Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.
But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.”
Can you imagine this situation? Two of Jesus’s disciples – not part of the twelve, yes, but still two students who were presumably pretty close to Jesus, their teacher and master, meet him on a roadside and don’t recognize. More than that, they seemed pretty ticked about his ignorance of the major events that had been going on around Jerusalem in the past few days. Major events that affected these two disciples quite personally.
Now to be sure, verse 16 is pretty clear in stating that “Their eyes were KEPT from recognizing him”, so you can kind of cut them some slack, because it does seem like Jesus meant for them not to recognize him at first. But then the reason why that is, is in their account of who Jesus is and what his mission on Earth was. You see what’s clear from what they said, is that despite all of the time that they spent with Jesus, all those teaching sessions that they had, they still didn’t get it. We see this in two ways..
1. They gave an inadequate description of who Jesus is. Verse 19: “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people…” All true, yes, but incomplete. One glaring lesson that they should have figured out much sooner, is that Jesus Christ is more than just a mighty prophet… HeGod Incarnate.
Earlier in Luke 7, after Jesus healed a widow’s son by raising him up from the dead, the crowd responded in this way. Verse 16 says this: “Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us!’ and ‘God has visited his people!’”
You see the difference there? Jesus raises someone else from the dead and he is a Great prophet *and* he was God visiting the people… He was Immanuel, “God with Us”. They had already seen this. They had already heard it. In fact, presumably, they had already proclaimed it. But here, now, Jesus raises himself up from the dead, and they simply forget who he is.
They gave an inadequate description of Jesus That’s the first thing they got wrong. The second is this…
2. They had an incorrect view of Jesus’s “messiahship”. And what I mean by that is this: They still did not understand HOW it was that Jesus had set out to save people. What kind of messiah he was supposed to be. We see this in verse 21: They said, “We had hoped that he (meaning Jesus) was the one to redeem Israel”.
Now, ok, I know they said redeem. I know that it sounds like they believe Jesus was there to save them. But the kind of saving is where they get it wrong. What they were thinking when they said that is not that Jesus would be redeeming mankind from sin, but that Jesus would militarily and politically deliver Israel from the hands of the Romans, just as, for example Moses delivered Israel from the Egyptians in Exodus.
They didn’t get it. No, Jesus was not a conquering, military hero, there to take care of their temporal situation. But a mighty saviour there to conquer their true enemy, sin, for all of eternity!
Yes these two disciples, their eyes were closed. They didn’t recognize Jesus for who he really is, and that’s a scary thought, because if these two disciples, two people who saw, spoke with, and were taught personally by Jesus could miss the mark in that way, ANYONE could. Anyone can learn everything possible about Jesus and still not get it.
There is this American Biblical scholar, who is right now, probably one of the world’s top experts in the field of New Testament studies. His name is Dr. Bart Ehrman, and you might know about him already, if anything just because I have already talked about him in a previous sermon, a few months ago. But anyway, Bart Ehrman became a University professor and a well respected Biblical scholar by going to the the best Christian schools.
He did his undergraduate degree at Wheaton College, his Masters degree at Moody Bible Institute, where their motto is “Bible is our middle name”. And then, he did his doctorate under the famed New Testament Scholar, Bruce Metzger, at Princeton Divinity School.
For those of you who don’t know who Bruce Metzger is, if you are here today and have pretty much any translation of the Bible that isn’t a King James Version, he’s one of the reasons why you have that Bible in your hands right now. Bruce Metzger’s work in New Testament studies directly affected the translation of pretty much every contemporary versions of the Bible produced after the 1960s or so, and Bart Ehrman was, you can say, one his prodigies.
But here’s the thing. You would think that Ehrman, given all the time that he has spent studying the New Testament, learning about Jesus and the theology of Paul and the other disciples, and such, that he would at least be a pretty strong Christian.
Unfortunately, he’s anything but. He actually now considers himself an agnostic – someone who believe that there is a God but there is no way to know him for sure; and, now he spends most of his time and energy questioning the credibility of the Bible. Some of the books he has written have become very popular among Atheists, for example, as a way to attack the Bible and Christianity.
It is very much possible to know a whole lot about Jesus but not know him. I know Bart Ehrman is an extreme example, but again, anyone can fall into the trap of having head knowledge that never penetrate their heart to turn into saving knowledge… These people will cry out during Judgement day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” Only to get the response: “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” So sys Matthew 7:22-23.
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But… But! Praise the Lord. He took it upon himself to reveal himself to us. Back to Luke 24, the story continues with Jesus then correcting the wrong views that the two disciples held about him.
In verse 25, Jesus says to them: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”
And then here’s the best part… It’s the reason why I wanted to quickly go through this passage with you: Verse 27 says, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
Shortly after this, the eyes of these two disciples were opened and they finally recognized did Jesus.
You know what’s so incredible about that: Jesus could have quite easily just shown himself to the disciples, and allowed them to recognize him immediately. I mean, he was there in the flesh right? But instead of doing that, he turns to Scriptures. It’s as if he’s saying “Look here! In this book! Look what it says about me.. Because this is how you can find out who I am!”
All scripture point to Jesus. The Old Testament, from the Law to the Prophets speak his name.
I thought that this was something really important for us to be reminded of before we look at our scripture today in Habakkuk.
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You will remember that Habakkuk has three main parts. The first two are complaints made by Habakkuk to God, and God’s answers to those complaint, and the third is a prayer that Habakkuk offers up to God after his second complaint is answered. We covered the first complaint and God’s answer to that 2 weeks ago, and saw that Habakkuk was complaining that God wasn’t doing anything about the evil that the people of Judah were doing. God was “idle” he said. God responds, “No I’m not idle, I’m going to punish Judah by allowing the Babylonians to invade them and take them to exile.” We used those verses in that sermon to discuss God’s holiness and saw that God was the Righteous Creator.
Last week then, we covered Habakkuk’s second complaint, which drew from God’s answer, and that complaint was “Why are you going to use an evil nation to punish a less evil one.” We used those verses to see how that Man is a Sinner deserving death as a punishment.
And so now, we turn to God’s answer to that second complaint, in Habakkuk 2:2-20, in order to consider “Jesus Christ the Saviour”.
Let’s turn there in our Bibles and see what God is saying to Habakkuk…
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Let’s read…
Verse 2: “And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.”
Verse 3: “For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end-it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.”
God’s response to Habakkuk begins with instructions about what to do with the response. Habakkuk is to write out God’s response, making it plain enough that anyone on the run (probably a reference to people running away in the coming judgement) would be able to read it.
Then God explains that while he is giving Habakkuk this vision now, some time will pass before it will come true. Of course, for us reading this text as history, we already know what this “appointed time” is. Judah falls to Babylon in 586 BC, while Babylon itself is not judged until 539 BC, nearly 50 years later.
Nonetheless, Habakkuk can be assured that God is faithful and that he will indeed follow through with this promised judgement. He will just do it in his own time. notice what he says at the end there, “It will surely come; It will not delay”. Clearly the coming judgement on Babylon will only SEEM to be delayed, but in reality, the Sovereign God’s timing is what determines if that is true or not.
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Verse 4 & 5…
Verse 4: “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.”
Verse 5: “Moreover, wine is a traitor, an 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.”
Here, God contrasts the Babylonians, “whose soul is puffed up” with the righteous people who live by faith. This verse is actually *the* verse that is quoted by New Testament writers when they are talking about living in Faith. It’s found quoted in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38-39.
This faith is one that continues to trust God and clings to his promises despite some dark periods of time.
Then, God turns his attention back to Babylon, described in verse 5 as the arrogant man, before pronouncing 5 woes and judgements against him.
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The first set of woes – three of them are found in verses 6 to 14. Let’s read it.
6 Shall not all these take up their taunt against him, with scoffing and riddles for him, and say, “Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own- for how long?- and loads himself with pledges!”
7 Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be spoil for them.
8 Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.
The first woe to the greedy who take what is not theirs. This is is obviously about thieves and robbers, but it is especially for Babylonians version of robbery, because of the way they invade other nations and, as verse 8 says, plunder them for their own gain.
Their judgement is that the rest of the nations whom they had stolen from, will then violently plunder the Babylonians. But more than that, God will also hold them accountable for “the blood of man” and the violence they’ve done on the earth.
Verse 9 “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high, to be safe from the reach of harm!
10 You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples; you have forfeited your life.
11 For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork respond.
This second woe is to the one who relies on their earthly treasure for security. They do everything they can to protect it, but the very walls they use to secure them will cry out as a witness against them.
This again is especially true of the Babylonians as they rely on the treasure they plundered from other nations.
12 “Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity!
13 Behold, is it not from the LORD of hosts that peoples labor merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing?
This third woe is against the violent and unjust. Again, clearly true of the Babylonians. And the judgement against them is almost imperceptible. It’s kind of a veiled threat. It clearly shows that God is sovereign over everyone as they do his bidding, but what is most interesting is the title that God calls himself in this instance. He calls himself the “Lord of Host”… Which basically means, the “Lord of the Armies”. The threat here is clear. God is strong and mighty and more than able to destroy the violent and unjust.
14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
This verse is a summary statement is declaring the greatness of God, ending the first group of woes. It is especially poignant here as it is talking about God’s glory filling the earth after talking also about his military strength. It is pointing forward to a time when God’s ultimate victory is fulfilled.
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The next set of two woes are found in verses 15 to 20…
15 “Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink- you pour out your wrath and make them drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!
16 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 around to you, and utter shame will come upon your glory!
17 The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, as will the destruction of the beasts that terrified them, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.
The fourth woe is about dishonoring another and has some sexual overtones about it. And so it can be seen as speaking out against debauchery and sexual perversion.
The judgement against them is drinking of God’s wrath, which brings first their shame, then their destruction and violence.
18 “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!
19 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.
Last week, we look extensively at Isaiah and the foolishness of idolatry, and here in the fifth woe, we hear echoes of that coming through. God taunts the idolatrous, and really hammers on the absurdity of their idolatry.
20 But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.”
God closes his response with this incredible contrasting imagery between himself and his glory, and idolatry and its stupidity. The speechless idols are the silent ones, which contrasts with God whose glory and splendor forces everyone else into hushed silence.
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Quite a downer huh? And here I thought I was supposed to get to the good news today, especially after the terrible news of Man the Sinner that we heard about last week.
And I’m going to be honest with you, when I first decided to go through Habakkuk with you, I had my doubts about being able to complete it at all. O thought i would eventually have to just suck it up and move in to the New Testament for this second part of the series… I mean, it was actually pretty easy at first. It’s really easy to speak about God’s Righteousness and Wrath, and then Man’s sin and just punishment of death in a book prophecy about the destruction of sinful nations… But I knew that today.. Come week three, I’d have to somehow turn it around and pull from these text of violence and despair, the good news of Jesus Christ the Savior.
But even though I had my doubts, I held on to that promise that we saw in Luke 24… That all scripture point to Jesus Christ.. All of its pages echoes his name.
So here’s what I’ve got for you… This punishment that Habakkuk 2:2 to 20, it’s what you and I deserve. I know that it is a pronouncement against the Babylonians, but that, in itself, is just an image of the judgement to come for our sins. But… here’s the good news in that. Just as God turns our mourning into dancing, and our sorrow into joy, so he turns our filth and our shame and our just punishment into Righteousness. And Jesus Christ, at the cross was the one he sent to do that.
2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
So what then of Habakkuk 2:2 to 20? Well it then in light of Jesus, becomes for us a picture of His victory over sin.. And there’s three ways I want us to see that..
The first is this:
1) Jesus’s victory over sin is plainly seen.
We see this, obviously in Habakkuk 2:2, where God commands Habakkuk to write out this prophecy, plainly on stone tablets, clear enough so that someone on the run might see it.
The grace and the glory of God is plain and evident, and if someone doesn’t see it, it’s not for lack of knowledge or information… They know! Romans 1:20 is pretty clear on that, it says “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
The question is… Do you see God’s grace and glory plainly in creation?
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was visiting from Vancouver, and he actually attended here because it was my first day of preaching… And after church, we actually went down to Niagara Falls and did the tourist thing there.. And one of those things was to go on the Maid of the Mist boat ride… If you don’t know about Maid of the Mist, basically it’s this boat ride that takes you to within maybe 150 to 200 meters of the base of Niagara Falls. It’s pretty intense, they actually give you this poncho so that you won’t get wet from the spray coming out of the Falls.
Anyway, I remember after seeing the Falls up close and personal like that, there was just 1 thought that ran through my mind.. “Glory!” That’s all I was thinking, “Glory to God!” I don’t see any other way to react after seeing such a marvelous thing of creation but to give glory to the creator right?
But, ok that’s an obvious example… But i have another one that I used a few weeks ago… Do you ever thank God just for being alive in the morning? That is such a plain and evident display of God’s grace and glory right there… The fact that I’m even alive! Thank God for the air that I’m breathing… Thank God that I’m even breathing at all! Thank God for the morning sunrise..
Yes, God’s salvation can be plainly seen. And we need to learn to look for it. We need our eyes opened to recognize God’s marvelous grace.
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The second point is this… 2) Jesus’s Victory over sin is complete.
This, we can see in the scope of the woes. Every sin imaginable is covered in those woes, and so the victory is over each and every kind of sin. Jesus paid for it all, and his salvation is available for everyone.
We see this elsewhere in the Bible, too. Colossians 1:19-20 says this, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself ALL things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
And then there’s 2 Corinthians 5:18 and 19: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”
Yes, Jesus’s victory over sin is complete. It’s complete in the sense that it is over every sin, and it is available for everyone. But let me just make 1 clarification about that before we move on.
Jesus’s victory over sin is complete, yes, but that completion is not fully actualized yet… There is one thing left about sin that has yet to be conquered is it’s very presence around us. And that, obviously isn’t going to happen until the final judgement… Which actually then, leaves us in kind of a place of limbo. It’s what theologians call concept of “already” but “not yet”.
I think the best way that that was explained to me was the way a friend of mine did. He said to me: June 6th, 1944 was D-Day, right? It’s the day the Allies, in World War II began what we no know to be the final phase of the war in Europe, the final offensive against Nazi Germany. Now, on the other hand, V-E Day, “Victory in Europe” Day was in May 8, 1945. That’s the day that Germany finally surrendered to the Allies…
So in the War in Europe during World War II there was an 11 month gap – almost a year, between D-Day and V-E Day. Between the start of this major offensive, and the ultimate victory. But, now, in retrospect, historians looking back at those events can say that really, D-Day was the beginning of the end. There’s a sense that really, on D-Day, the war was over. It just took 11 months to see that actualized. The victory was “already” but “not yet”.
That is the state that we’re living in right now. The victory over sin is “already” but “not yet”, and so because of that, we must always remain vigilant about it.
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There’s more to say about that, but I have to move on… The final point is this: Jesus’s Victory over sin is violent and destructive.
You see this of course in the judgement against the woes. Just as God’s judgement against the Babylonians was utter devastation, so God’s punishment for our sins had to be. And that’s why the cross was needed.
I don’t think any of us could even imagine how horrible a punishment crucifixion really was. I almost want to say that the Bible doesn’t do its horror much justice… But that would be wrong of course. It’s not the Bible’s fault that I don’t get it. The simple fact is, we are so far removed from the time when Crucifixion was practiced that we have simply lost the horror that would have been easily understood by someone from the first century…
So I want to quickly read a description of why crucifixion was such a horrible punishment. It’s from a book by Mark Driscoll called “Death By Love”…
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Now, ok here’s the thing. Death on the Cross.. More horrible that we can imagine. But, that still is only a picture of the even more horrific punishment that Jesus suffered. That punishment is summed up in one line uttered by Jesus on the cross in despair, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Worst than the cross. Worst than the punishment of physical death, Jesus suffered the spiritual death meant for us… the separation from God that our sin demanded. When Jesus took our sin upon himself, there was nothing that God could do but turn away from his beloved son.
But that’s just half of the story… Because the grave could not hold him. Yes the punishment was horrendous, it was violent and destructive. But Jesus is Alive!
The victory over sin is plainly seen. It is complete. and it is violent and destructive. And because of these things, we can declare “There is now therefore no condemnation in those who are in Christ Jesus”. Amen.
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