Sermon Tone Analysis
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Text: Habakkuk 1:1-11
Title: God’s Question and Answer Session: Part 1
Textual Theme, Goal, Need:
Theme: God ensures justice is done throughout the world.
Goal: to warn the Israelites that their injustice will be brought to an end.
Need: The people of Israel are doing great injustice in the world.
Sermon Theme, Goal, Need:
Theme:
Goal:
Need:
Textual Outline:
Textual Notes:
Sermon Outline:
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Introduction
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Who is Habakkuk
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When is he writing
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To Whom is he writing
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Why
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You Won’t Believe Your Eyes
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Don’t Let this Happen to You
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Conclusion
Sermon in Oral Style:
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Before we get started looking more specifically into the text of the book for this morning, there is one issue that needs to be settled.
How should we really pronounce this guys name?
How was it pronounced in Dutch?
In English, I had heard it mostly one way: HAB ukkuk.
But then I heard a few preachers here and there starting to call him Huh BACK uk.
I am sure you have probably heard it both ways also.
So what is it really?
If you go back the Hebrew text they actually had a different pronunciation.
Hab ak KOOK.
So, really, however you want to pronounce the guys name, it is different everywhere you go.
But what we should know about HabakKOOK is that he is a prophet.
He receives messages from God that he writes down for the people.
As a prophet of God it is his job to show the people where they are failing to follow the law of God.
How they are making God unhappy.
*Then, even though there is all this going wrong, the prophet always brings that message from God that God’s grace and justice will triumph in the end.*
That’s the role of every prophet.
That’s what HuhBACKuk does in this oracle from God as well.
The first part of the passage is pretty straightforward.
It really is just the title for the prophecy.
*“**The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet received.**[1]*
The next verse moves us into the body of the entire book.
You will notice if you have your Bibles open yet that the book is split up like this: Complaint by the prophet, God answers.
Complaint by the prophet.
God Answers.
And then chapter three is the prayer.
This whole book is a dialogue.
It is nothing like a sermon which is a monologue.
This is back and forth, wrestling with the most difficult questions that were facing God’s people in that day.
It is kind of like a question and answer session with God.
But it’s questions and answers that the asker has a real interest in.
*These are fabric of the universe questions.
These are questions where the answers can mean the difference between life and death, belief and unbelief.
Hope or despair.*
*The main question is this: WHY!*
*Verse 2-4 sound like down right anger with God. “**How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?**
**Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.**
**Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.**[2]*
Habakkuk is about ready to throw the towel in on this hoping in the Lord thing.
He’s had it.
Why God? How long God?
What are you thinking not doing anything, God? How can you be God and just sit back?
*You would expect Habakkuk to be a little upset.
The people of God were anything but, it seemed.
**The worst part was that the law of God had been completely forgotten by the people and by the leaders.*
The Northern ten tribes had already been destroyed by the Assyrians about a hundred years before Habakkuk’s oracles.
And they were wiped out because they had forgotten God and his law.
Now the only two tribes left of God’s people are doing the same thing.
They have forgotten the law of God.
They are living whatever way they want to.
*Habakkuk is crying out violence because the people are not safe and because their society is unjust.*
Today we talk about the Law of God as if it is only the ten commandments.
*But remember for Israel in the Old Testament it provided specific laws on how to be a just society.*
One example of this in the Law you can find in the book of Leviticus.
*It was called the Year of Jubilee.*
It would have been one of the greatest moments in social justice the world had ever seen.
Every fiftieth year, land was supposed to go back to its original tribes and owners.
Debts were canceled.
People who sold themselves as servants would be released.
The whole nation of Israel would have a year were grace and forgiveness was the only thing demanded of people.
*In the 1000 years between Moses and Habakkuk, there should have been 20 years of forgiveness and justice.
You know how many they had?
Zero.*
The law of God was forgotten.
To make matters worse*, it wasn’t only the broad sweeping years that God intended to bring justice.
Injustice was done everyday by the rulers.
Injustice reigned.
God’s people were taking advantage of each other.*
Corrupt rulers.
Corrupt judges.
Corrupt masters.
Corruption.
Our world doesn’t operate much better*.
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