The Wonder of Habakkuk 2:18 - What's Your Graven and Molten Struggles

Bible Wonders of Habakkuk.

Oh, the riches. Oh my goodness, the riches of the 18th verse of the second chapter of Habakkuk. It's the Zaddi verse. And wow, once again we're getting an idea here of righteousness, which has to do with that letter Zaddi.

But sometimes you find righteousness by seeing what ain't right. And certainly I'm sure you'll agree with me that we're going to see a lot of what ain't right in this particular verse. And I think it's absolutely beautiful that we're certainly talking about other gods in the last, it's a nice transition from the 16th verse to the 17th verse of this idea of the pay and how it relates to these idols and things that we're going to see here. So the 17th verse, the Zaddi verse is, again, it's just, this is so rich. So it says, what propsteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it? The molten image and teacher of lies that the maker of his work trusteth therein to make dumb idols. And of course, you know, when you first listen to that or think about it, I know when I did, I was like, well, you know, I don't struggle with idol worship, but I don't think, and I don't, you know, not familiar with any molten images that are in my life. And I'm certainly not thinking of any graven images that are in my life.

And so it seems like this doesn't have anything to do with me. Well, old Rafiki told me, look harder. And I think the harder you look, the more you see yourself in these pictures. And the beauty of it is, is once we see it, then we can see, ah, that ain't right.

This is, this is not the right path that we're on here. So really, really cool. I have been sort of on a search to see where our souls and our spirits fit into things. So you have a soul, you have a spirit.

And we've talked about a few times before, but we're going to talk a lot about it in this because it relates completely to the idea that your spirit is a uniter machine and it wants to be united with things. It just has this desire to make friends. It has this desire to be married. It has this desire to make babies. All these things are spiritual in their own way.

Okay. And then you have a soul and that soul is a believer machine. It longs to believe. In fact, it's going to believe things one way or the other.

It's going to believe what's right or it's going to believe what's wrong. And so from a deep, deep study of these two ideas of a graven image or a molten image, we find that one is going to relate to our soul and one of them is going to relate to our spirit. And so we'll start off with the idea of graven.

Okay. And after again, much, much study of looking at all these letters and the beginning of the word graven starts with a pay. So you get this picture that this thing has been fashioned to look like a God. And it has a somic in the middle of it.

In fact, both molten and graven have somics in the middle of it because it's this idea of support. So you're going to support yourself with this image of God, so to speak. And when you look into that, you know, as I said, as I went deeper with looking at it, you know, we through, you know, relationship is is how we fashion sometimes our identity. And and that even though you may think, well, I don't have any graven images, in other words, I haven't engraved, I haven't carved out any images lately.

Well, let's think about that a minute. That when you think about like in my case, I'm the Christian car guy. That's one of the things that I have carved out, you know, that I have planned and worked in order to create and dug and dig and all this stuff to be the Christian car guy.

Whatever all that includes is very much connected to my identity. And and I would love what Nikita says that that God did for him. You may know Nikita Kolov, the Russian nightmare. He has a shaved head and it was very much part of his wrestling professional wrestling image. Well, at one point in time, God told him to shave his head. I mean, quit shaving his head and let his hair grow out so people wouldn't recognize him. In fact, that he has shaved off his Fu Manchu.

So people would not recognize him as the Russian nightmare so that he would see, you know, sort of how he'd grave in this image. And what happens when you're no longer the Christian car guy? What happens when you're no longer that guy that everybody thinks you are right?

And where are you getting your support? And how have we made these, you know, idols, so to speak, that it's funny when you think about it, that our in our image, our graven image is this idea of is our false identity in so many different ways. And, you know, that is very much connected to who we are. And so when we lose our jobs and those kind of things, often we have a real identity crisis, right? And it's a really good thing, again, like poor Nebuchadnezzar in the grass.

You know, he immediately lost this whole idea of everything he had trusted in, which was certainly that he was the king of Babylon. So moving on to molten. OK, now, molten means to pour. And it's a significant issue in both these concepts that the idea of pouring has to do with liquid.

And again, when you're on fire, you need to pour something on it. OK. And the idea of pouring here is we are our souls are always looking to get covered. We're looking to believe something. So we think we're OK. OK. And and in a lot of ways, you know, this is our pose. You know, the masks that we wear when we go to tell a lie, that we're not really you know, we're just trying to cover our nakedness.

And you do that by this idea of pouring and also since in the case of a golden calf and that kind of thing, you're pouring out gold. You know, money is a hiding place for a lot of people. They think their support is in their money. There's their molten image.

OK. Or maybe they think. That they're hiding place is is is other worldly things that where they where they hide themselves or, you know, actually, as I thought more about this. You know, when I'm not being completely honest with people about who I am and my lack of authenticity. Is in the same thing, I'm looking to cover myself just like Adam. You know, I was ashamed because I was naked. So I hid, you know, and so where we cover ourselves is in our clothes.

Right. And not unlike that, we wear masks in so many different ways. This, too, is a idol in its own way because you're posing to be something that you're not and it's not authentic. But it's very much connected in this case to your soul, because your soul is on fire and it needs cover. OK. And it's fascinating when I when I thought about this, that is very much also connected to what Jesus was doing for us when he gave us communion. OK. And I really love, love, love this idea that when you are looking to unite with something, you hunger.

When you eat something, it's being united, actually, with every single soul in every single, you know, cell of your body is going to be united with what you hunger for. And if you're going to commune with Jesus. Right. This is very much connected to our spirits. And obviously we're supposed to worship him in spirit, meaning being united with him in spirit. And and when we eat his body. Right. We're this is very much a spiritual issue. OK. And we're uniting in spirit as we break bread, so to speak, with Jesus.

But then you certainly pour out the libation. Right. You pour out the blood offering, which gets back to that whole idea of bloodthirsty in order to cover our nakedness. And so, you know, this forgiveness of sin that comes through the shedding of blood, you begin to see this pouring out of all the way that he's covering us. He's restores our soul. Right. Because if you remember, in the twenty third Psalm, you know, it starts out with our spirit because he's going to make us lay down in green pastures. And then he's going to lead us beside still waters. Then he comes right back with that restores our soul.

Right. You see the picture as we pour out our little graven images that we think we're getting our support. You know that that our masks are our poses are our lives that we tell about ourselves. We're all looking to cover ourselves, our our molten images. OK. And I don't know about you, but I you know, I just I'm all over this verse like, wow, there is I could spend a long time looking at the ways that I try to cover myself. And I can spend a lot of time trying to figure out how I'm carving out my image and both of which I'm what I'm not trusting.

I'm not you know that. But beautifully, I should tell you that the word molten starts with a man because it has to do with like water and something that you're going to pour out. But it, too, has a sonic in the middle and it has the letter hoof, which has to do with covering. Right.

But the sonic, again, is where we're getting our support. So in both cases, we're being supported in the way we're covering our souls or we're being supported in the way that we're feeding our spirits. OK. And oh, my goodness, we feed it with our false identity and we drink it, you know, with all these different mass that we wear and things a lot to unpack here and prayerfully consider.

Like, you know, I know I know that, again, this is the static verse. So God's showing us here's what's not right so that you'll know what is right. What is right is the bread and the wine. OK, what is right is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ. And in so many different ways, you know, here is where our faith comes in that we got to believe that that this blood makes us right. That has us covered. And we got to believe we need our daily bread from Jesus. Right. As we study the word, we get more and more right because that's the daily bread. And that's right bread. You can't miss when you study the word of God.

You just can't. And so it's beautiful that here this static verse comes after the pay in such a beautiful way. And we get such an understanding of communion or I do.

I've seen this in a new light this morning, which is absolutely spectacular. Again, if this brings light to you and it comes to your heart to share it with somebody, please do that. And I do thank you for your prayers because I can't help but believe that your prayers are helping me get these unbelievable downloads. And it's answered that prayer right in the in the gimel section of the 119th Psalm. Open our eyes to behold wondrous things out of thy law. I hope you can see those wondrous things with me this morning. Thank you so much for joining the journey with me. You're welcome.