The Wonder of Habakkuk 1:9 - The Drying Inflamation Of The East Wind/Covid

This is the Truth Network. Bible Wonders of Habakkuk. Oh, what a treasure we have in verse 9 in Habakkuk chapter 1. We get to dig, oh my goodness, this verse is so spectacular.

The number 9, or the 9th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the letter Tet, which starts, you know, the word Tav, or good, and you look in the verses 119 Psalm, that have to do with this letter, and this number are very much good. And so you can see the goodness of this, even though it's going to sound really bad, the goodness of this is absolutely spectacular. So I'm just going to read it in English, and then we'll dig into the sand here. So, it says, they shall come all from, again, we're speaking of the Babylonians, I should say, before I get into this.

By the way, the cloud busters in general, however that may work in your life. It says, they shall come all for violence. Their faces shall sup at the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. Again, and violence has to do with uncontrolled water, like a flood, it comes, and it's just everything's out of control.

Chaos might be a good word for it. But when it says their faces shall sup, that means that they are literally very, very, very thirsty as the east wind is the wind that dries things up, that takes out all the water. And that's a critical understanding here, is that when we get to the sand, of course, we're going to be talking about desert. And that's what happens, is the east wind happens in the Mojave, it creates, as does the wind and the rain and all that, it creates sand. And sand is a big part of what this is, because it's a captivity. And they shall gather the captivity as the sand. Well, the reason why you have deserts is there is no water.

And the word captivity is also a spectacular word, and actually was the clue to unraveling the whole verse for me as far as unpacking at least the understanding that I have at this point. Clearly, as you leave Jesus, you get away from Jesus, He's the man, He's the living water, and the thirstier you get and the drier you get, the more that you technically become sand. Because the reason why a desert becomes sand is all the soil is blown away. There's no plants to hold the soil. There's no water to hold the soil. There's no life to hold the soil. little water to hold the soil. There's no life to hold the soil. so as all the life blows away, as all the water blows away, you end up with nothing but sand. And it's a very, very, very dry place.

Of course, add water and all can come back. It's a beautiful thing. And of course, Jesus is the water and away you go. But what's happened, obviously, is in its own way in Israel, the east wind had dried up, you know, substantially, the water, the godliness, the goodness of what had gone on in Israel, and it had become a desert.

And so now it was just going to harvest what it is that it had sown in so many different ways. So as I was, you know, thinking about this, like, oh my goodness, when you get thirsty, and oh, by the way, I learned this, and I think it's significant that that word captivity, the same root of that word, you will also find in the word for inflammation. And I never had thought about how when you're inflamed, you have inflammation. You know, I think of it as, you know, as somebody that has congestion or that kind of thing, but inflammation is talking about a flame, inflamed, right?

And thus you have the captivity. And so consumption itself, that word in Hebrew, has to do with inflammation. And I never had thought about somebody's lungs when they become inflamed. You know, that is what actually all the mucus and stuff is coming as a result of the inflammation, the fire that's there, which is, again, a lack or an imbalance of water because of the lack of peace. And so fever, interestingly, is very much connected to these ideas. And actually, if you look in Deuteronomy 28, when God starts talking about what's going to happen if you don't follow the law and you don't pay attention to him and you don't seek the Lord with all your heart and all your soul, because if you don't seek God, you don't get any water, no water, and things are going to become inflamed. And as this happens, oh, the burning as a result of whether it's your lungs or a fever.

And then unfortunately, I thought about COVID and so many things as I was thinking about this. But where it all led, you know, as I began to really meditate on this whole idea was, oh my goodness, Jesus himself on the cross, you might remember another one of the last words that he said was, I thirst. And oh my goodness, he is the water, right? He's the living water. And so here we have a situation on the cross where water itself was thirsty. Like, oh my goodness, as he experienced sin the way that he did, it was an inflammation he'd never faced before. And for the first time ever, water itself got thirsty as God turned his back on him.

I can't even imagine, you know, what all this way above my pay grade to consider it. But I can't help but think, oh my gosh, what he did for us, because he understood at such a more better level than we ever will, the need for God, the need for water, the need also for fire, because without fire, obviously, you know, things aren't refined. And we don't have life without water, but we don't also have life without fire. And so it's all part of the same thing. And the interesting thing about the word sand, as I really pondered that one, is sand has got the same similar letters, very similar. It's a hetna lamit and a vav, but the word lehem, bread, is very similar in the way that it's spelled.

It has the same letters, but the difference is lehem has the mem. That means that bread has water in it, but sand doesn't have any water. I mean, and thus, you see the difference between, you know, because I couldn't there ponder, like, how could this be sand? Because these letters just don't speak to sand to me until Holy Spirit kind of guided me as I was actually taking communion this morning to look at that word bread.

And I went, Oh, look, it's the same letters, but no water. And as I thought about that, man, oh, man, oh, man, why is it so important that you drink water when you have a fever? Right? Why is it so important when you're burning with sin that you need to turn to the Word of God? Why is it so important that we memorize scripture? Why is it so important we have the relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Father that we might bring that water in to help our inflammation?

Right? We do all these things with our physical bodies to reduce inflammation. What are we doing in our physical, in our, in our spiritual world to reduce inflammation? Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you that I was given this thirst, this thirst in order for Jesus so I could bring down my inflammation. Thanks for listening.