The Wonder of Habakkuk 2:9 Potential Disaster

This is the Truth Network. Bible wonders of Habakkuk. There's no doubt God continues to blow my mind with this way that Habakkuk, again, is where he led me this year. And not only that, but apparently God just really knew what it would say to my heart, the way that these verses align so well with the understanding of the Hebrew alphabet and the verse that they were on. And so today's verse is the ninth verse, which would be the idea of the letter Tet, which the letter Tet is the beginning of the word Tav, which means good. And so a lot of times you'll think that when you see the word Tet, it means good, but it also means potential.

And so the number nine, the idea of nine is that there are nine months to get a baby and babies are born with all kinds of potential. And they have the potential to be the next Billy Graham, or they do, in fact, have the potential to be the next Adolf Hitler. And so here I think you will see, I hope you'll get the download that God gave me on how much this verse has to do with potential. And oh, my goodness, it's just an eye opening thing, and honestly, it really kind of set me back on my seat and made me recall that Habakkuk asked to be reproved. And so, you know, for Robbie Dilmore, here came a whole bunch of reproof, because what it says is, Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil. And again, that's a really confusing verse.

For me, it was. It took me a long time to just understand what it's saying. But if you'll just, you know, forgive me for giving you the Reader's Digest version, then what it's saying is, if what you are doing is building your house on essentially evil covetousness, and the reason that you're doing that, in other words, you're using your wealth or whatever it is that you're setting up to protect yourself so that you can make yourself bulletproof, essentially, and protect yourself from any fiasco. Well, you're talking about building your house on the sand, and that has a lot of potential for being a disaster. Well, if you could imagine what you're doing here, and of course he is talking about Nebuchadnezzar and how he did use evil to build his house, to build his wealth. In other words, stealing and treachery of all different kinds that were being used to build his nest, so to speak, so that he would be bulletproof.

Well, he was anything but bulletproof, as certainly his son discovered. And, you know, that's the idea, unfortunately, of the potential of what you're doing. You may not even live to see the potential of what you've done for your house or for your family, but there's no doubt that when it's evil, it will not stand.

It will come to ruin, as we see time and time again with these empires that were raised, and at some point in time, all this is going to come to naught. But I don't know how you may have experienced this in your life, but I certainly have experienced it in mine. And the fascinating thing is, it again speaks to the righteous shall live by faith, because if you truly believe that God is going to provide for you, you don't do stupid things.

Perfect example, okay? This is just unfortunate that it happened, but when I got fired at Northpoint Chrysler, of course I got scared, like anybody. Like, what's my next step? And Chrysler came to me and wanted me to buy the dealership in Mocksville, and they told me that they would help me with the money. You know, well, that's famous last words, because when the time came and I went to Chrysler Financial, I was like, well, you don't have enough money to do this. Well, I told them that to begin with. Well, you're going to have to raise this money. So as I thought about how I'd raise the money, I went to an attorney friend of mine that I'd known from a previous employer, and they told me, oh, you've got to raise this money. See, what's happening here is we're building a nest, okay?

And this particular nest would crumble on my entire house, by the way, and affect my whole household, and Robbie's name would be Mud, there's no doubt in a lot of levels. But nonetheless, it started out on this idea of, like, man, I was scared. Like, what am I going to do? How am I going to take care of my family?

I've got to be able to do something. And this lawyer suggested the idea of selling this stock in the dealership, sort of with the idea that I was investing the same amount that the stock, you know, with shares, let's say they were all worth, you know, $10,000. Well, if I had 10 of them, people would assume that I had invested $10,000. Well, that was an assumption on their part, because the attorney said I could buy my shares for whatever I wanted to buy them for and I could sell the ones with anyway. That's a long story to get into what happened was I essentially went out and sold these other shares of stock with the other stockholders believing that I had the same amount of money in there, because I thought that they would never invest if they didn't think that I had a lot of money involved. Again, not living by faith here and not dealing in good faith. You know, I've regretted this move many, many, many, many times. And certainly as I see this verse, I can see that what happened was I coveted this idea of having this dealership clearly and finding this way of being able to take care of my family. But it was an evil covetousness. In other words, I did it in bad faith. And as a result, I can assure you, it may have taken 10 years for it to crumble, but crumble it did. And there was a whole lot of mud being flown around.

And in the end, I did make it right to all the stockholders, you know, within two or three years, the original transaction, but it didn't change that the whole thing was built on sand. It just was. And so as I think about this verse, you know, certainly it's it's clear that if you don't live by faith, you know, if you're a Nebuchadnezzar or an Adolf Hitler or Stalin or whoever that, you know, you're building your empire on stealing and extortion and that kind of stuff is not going to stand.

It just isn't. But how about when you when you're doing your taxes, like, do I want to cheat on this or do I trust God? He's going to provide for me. Or, you know, when you're handling some other transaction that you're thinking, well, they tried to cheat me. I'm going to cheat them. However it is that you are trying to build your feather, your nest or put yourself out of harm's way. If you don't do that, you're the potential of disaster.

Let me just say from personal experience is pretty significant. And so I love, love, love what Habakkuk started this out. You know, I will stand on my watch and I will see what he says to me when he reproves me. In other words, Habakkuk knew that God was going to reprove him.

And so as I've been listening to this, obviously, here's an amazing reproof. Robbie, Robbie, trust me, you don't have to do anything. Cheating, stealing, you know, pay your bills, do the things that you're supposed to do. You will be OK. Right. The righteous will live by faith.

And oh, by the way, you'll build a house. And when and when you bring this covetousness into your whole household, well, then, oh, man, then your kids can for all sorts of stuff that people see. And we make our names mud, so to speak, as we talked about in previous verses. So I just love how we're being gathered in great faith, according to the word that I got for this year. That part of that great faith is really putting my faith in God and faith in God and other people and not by coveting evil things in order to build myself a nest where I'd be bulletproof.

You're far from it. Thanks for listening. And now again, you know, I really appreciate those of you praying for the podcast, sharing it when God puts it on your heart to do that. It means so much that we have an opportunity to share this light. Thanks so much for listening. God bless.