Study – Grow – Know

Habakkuk Comes to Terms with God’s Sovereignty

September 29, 2017 at 7:14 AM 3 comments

I really enjoy history and I like to watch many types of documentaries. Because of my musical background, I watched part of a documentary on metal music that had its origins in Los Angeles in the 1980s. I don’t like metal music, but I’m always curious to see how things like this happen.

For the most part, the people who were part of the bands that created the “metal” sound are extremely bright individuals, which goes against type. Without effort, they put together sentences coherently and are able to express themselves better than the average person I’ve run across. It destroys the stereotypical head-banger with long hair and no brain image. In reality, it takes a great deal of creativity to be able to play musical instruments, write music, and come up with a brand new musical genre.

Before you get the impression I support and/or condone metal music, let me say again that I don’t. In fact, there are many genres of music that I simply don’t like. I find them caustic, abrasive, and off-putting. When I look at these people and their onstage antics, it’s difficult not to think of demons pulling the strings.

In the documentary, one individual – a singer of one of these bands who is now 51 years old and still singing – essentially stated that the good Lord had blessed him with the ability to belt out the songs since he was a teenager and at over 50 years old, was still singing (my paraphrase). He followed that up with how blessed he felt because of it. Wait…what?

While I applaud the man for giving a nod to God for his singing ability, I cannot help but wonder how some of these folks think. On one hand, yes, God gave him the ability to sing. In fact, it is clear from Scripture that God sends the rain on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45), meaning He offers blessings, gifts, and talents to both groups of people. Some are born with musical talent and creativity, while others have talent in other areas; business acumen or something else. This is all because of God, not them. While they might fan their talent into a flame so to speak, the fact that they have a gift means something was given to them by Someone else. While we might argue that it’s in a person’s DNA or genetic make-up, the larger question is who created that DNA? God did. But when God doled out gifts, did He expect people to sink to the lowest common denominator in using it? Hardly and yet, to these folks, there is nothing wrong in their thinking.

Too many people believe because they have some talent, while they acknowledge God’s hand in the matter, that’s as far as they go with it and they essentially use their talent for their own ends. If they believe in God at all, they believe He wants them to use their talent(s) to the fullest and to them it doesn’t matter the venue. They just need to use it. So, fronting a metal band with nasty, denigrating, or suggestive lyrics, dressing androgynously, drinking until you can’t stand up, partying until all hours of the night, and everything else that goes with it is perfectly fine with these people because of the gift God gave them and the expectancy to use it. In other words, rather than using their gift to bring glory to God, they’re using their gift to bring glory, fame, and hopefully, financial gain to themselves, while they toss a thank biscuit in God’s direction.

Not long ago, I heard a member of a major rock group state that he believed God wanted him to work with an organization to help bring dying kids their last wish. He believes himself to be a Christian and I’m not judging him on that. My concern is how does helping a dying child’s last wish come to fruition bring that child any closer to God in Christ? Does it open the door to that child’s salvation? Plainly, it doesn’t. It simply brings their last wish to fruition and if they’re not a Christian when they die, they go into eternity without Christ. That is the simple, biblical fact.

Recently, Hugh Hefner passed into eternity from his home – the Playboy Mansion of Beverly Hills – at the age of 91; one of approximately 150,000 people who also died the other day with him. Hugh Hefner was, by all accounts, very intelligent and somewhat of an intellectual. He made a business from a magazine that highlighted shapely women with next to nothing on. He turned that into an empire. He was able to turn an idea into a multi-billion dollar industry from an initial $1,000 loan from his mother. He eventually lived what most would call the good life until September 27, 2017. Surely, he had his reward in this life. As he stands before God in eternity, will his intellect, his intelligence, his reasoning or his extreme wealth that he had in this life benefit him in any way, shape, or form? The short answer is no.

As Hefner slipped into eternity very likely without Christ, he woke to the shocking and horrifying reality that dying without Jesus as Savior/Lord is not the way to enter eternity and he also learned that there are no do-overs once entered into the eternal sphere. Without being in a relationship to Jesus in this life (the very definition of salvation), there is only one path for that individual in eternity and it is judgment that leads ultimately to the Lake of Fire (Matthew 25:41; Revelation 19). Unfortunately for Hefner and many others who entered eternity the same day, it is now desperately too late.

Folks, I don’t know about you, but I am very afraid for people like the ones described above. They go through this life arrogantly believing that there is either no God at all, or they reinvent God in their own terms. In essence, they become the master to their idea of who God is (their puppet), if they believe in Him at all. Certainly, their view of God falls far short of biblical truth and revelation. At best God is often simply a “force” that wants the best for us. The idea that God is a Person and fully sovereign over all His Creation likely never crosses their minds, yet that is what the Bible reveals repeatedly.

I read through Habakkuk yesterday and learned again that God is in charge. He controls the outcomes of all things, while allowing human beings to enjoy their so-called free will. There is nothing humanity can do to alter God’s plans. There is no outcome that God is not glorified through. There is no one that can truly “best” or usurp God. It cannot happen. Satan has been trying since he fell and the Bible reveals that he will continue to fail to the end.

In Habakkuk, the prophet essentially asks God why He allows all the evil to exist in Judah among his fellow Jews. Why are they so corrupt? God provides the answer and tells the prophet to write it down. The answer is that God was going to use the rising Babylonian Kingdom to chastise Israel on a temporary basis, for their growth and purification. This led the prophet to ask God why He was going to allow that evil, unrighteous, and unjust kingdom of Babylon under Nabopolassar to be God’s arm of chastisement against Israel? It didn’t seem fair. The prophet was confused as the whole thing simply did not make sense to him.

God responded by revealing (a key word here), the truth that He and He alone is sovereign in all things. Though He would use Babylon to chastise Israel for a short time (temporarily), God would then destroy Babylon (permanently), because of their evil, their arrogance, and their treachery. The prophet began to understand and so should we. Bear in mind that these things had to be revealed to these prophets. They were not aware of these truths. We have no excuse because we have all of God’s Word to us.

The Bible is very clear on a number of major doctrinal themes and one of the overarching themes in Scripture is that God is sovereign. In every book, whether major or minor prophet, epistle, poem, or narrative, we see God’s hand directing Israel and all of humanity and He does so without really going against a person’s free will, which is why He can hold people fully responsible for their actions.

God intimately knew and understood Nabopolassar, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Alexander the Great, Antiochus Epiphanes, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao (and the coming Antichrist), better than they knew and understood themselves. He knew their weaknesses and strengths. He knew their tendencies. He understood their drive. He simply used those things within them to bring about the fulfillment of His will for His glory.

There are three chapters to Habakkuk. If you have not read the book in a while, please do so. We see the prophet go from frustrated, to confused, to understanding, to acceptance, to a greater awareness that God is fully sovereign. The prophet was humbled (which is the natural outcome of grasping the truth of God’s sovereignty), because God stooped to reveal to Habakkuk what he needed to know. That knowledge was not simply for Habakkuk alone or God would not have told him to write it down. It was for Habakkuk’s Jewish contemporaries, as well as Jews who came after them, and it is for us today.

God still speaks through His Word even though there are many clamoring after this person or that one seeking a new “word” from the Lord. The people who do this likely rarely open His Word to begin with because they want God to speak to them directly. I can attest to that because when I was in the Charismatic Movement, it was all about what God was doing/saying now. The Bible was important, yes, but the emphasis was on “something new” from God.

Habakkuk is just as relevant for us today as it was when first penned. It speaks of God’s sovereignty over all His Creation. Christians especially need to grasp this truth because it will change the way we think. It will re-purpose us to consider things from God’s perspective, not ours.

Today, too many in society throw a few accolades God’s way and keep on living a life of sin. By that I mean they never enter into a relationship with Him that allows them to receive salvation. They misunderstand the parable of the talents to mean that what God has bestowed upon us must be used to the fullest extent and it doesn’t matter the venue. They are wrong. Horribly wrong and I pray they wake up to that truth before they die.

At the end of this day, another 150,000 people will have slipped into eternity, most of them without saving knowledge of Jesus. Though they might have been rich in this life – rich in talents and rich in material possessions – they stand before God with their carnal soul naked. All their talents, their aspirations, are all seen for what they were – bereft of eternal life because they failed to reach out to the only One who could save them from their sin.

Entry filed under: Atheism and religion, christianity, Cultural Marxism, Demonic, devil worship, Emotional virtue, eternity, israel, Judaism, Maitreya, new age movement, Political Correctness, Politically Correct, Politics, Religious - Christian - End Times, Religious - Christian - Prophecy, Religious - Christian - Theology, salvation, Satanism, second coming. Tags: arrogance, god is sovereign, humility, sovereignty.