The Wonder of Habakkuk 3:6 - Confusion Seperates

This is the Truth Network. Bible Wonders of Habakkuk. Oh, we are continuing.

How fun. Continuing with the Vav verse, which in its own way means to continue in the third chapter of Habakkuk. It would be the sixth verse, and I'm going to read it in the King James Version, but then I'm going to go ahead and read it. I'm going to read it in the Rashi or the Jewish version, because to me the translation is more helpful.

And we'll dig right on in. So the idea of the Vav again is a continuation, and I'm sure that it continues through time as you read the Vav sections of the 119 Psalm. And so you'll see completely how this connects to this verse. I think it's almost miraculous how the Holy Spirit just guided Habakkuk to use these ideas in these verses. Not unlike King David did in the 119 Psalm and other verses in other Psalms. So the sixth verse reads, he stood and measured the earth. He beheld and drove asunder the nations, and the everlasting mountains were scattered, and the perpetual hills did bow. His ways are everlasting. Again, you can see that everlasting idea that happens there as this is just a continuation of the larger story. And I love, love, love, love, I really do, what Rashi wrote on this.

So helpful, I think. So I'm going to go ahead and read the Rashi version and then read his interpretation, because I think it's well worth the study. So their translation of this in English reads, he stood and met it out to the earth. He saw and caused nations to wander, and the everlasting mountains were shattered.

The everlasting hills were humbled. The procedures of the world are his. And so here is his commentary. Which says he wanted to examine minutely the cause of, excuse me, the case of the generations of the flood, to meet out to them and measure for a measure.

And he met it out. He stood to be understood in the sense of Isaiah 3 13. The Lord stands to plead, and he stands to judge the peoples.

He waits and examines the case minutely. I love that. And then it says he met it out to the earth, and it says they sinned with heat, and they were judged with boiling water. And then he said he saw the generations of separation, who since they were of one language, all came upon the plan. It was written in Genesis 1 11, excuse me, in 11 one, and all the earth was of one language.

I just think that's spectacular. We've been talking about how this is, Rashi sharing the larger story, and the larger story is that the nations were all of one language. But as he scattered them, he did that by giving them, according to this, you'll read in a second, 70 different languages, which caused them all to move about. And it says that he caused nations to wander. And it says, and here's Rashi's aversion. It says he caused them to jump into 70 languages. And it is said in Leviticus 11 21 to jump with them on the earth. In Job 37 to one, my heart trembles and jumps from its place.

And he's making reference to that idea of making the nations go asunder that they're literally jumping due to the fact that they can't understand each other anymore. And again, getting back to the everlasting story. And then I love the everlasting mountains here. He says the heavenly princes of the nations. And so when it says he made the mountains tremble, that word mountains is beautiful in Hebrew. It's the expression of headwaters. And so princes, to an extent, are that expression.

And again, the fact that he confused their languages meant that the headwaters could no longer associate with one another. And so he sent them asunder, so to speak. And it says the procedures of the world are his.

He demonstrated to them all the procedures of the world are his. In other words, and that word procedures might be translated the wanderings. And of course, we see this a lot in the unfaithful, as we saw in previous chapters of Habakkuk, that when you have no faith in anybody, you run around scared, you become paranoid. And as people, you know, unfortunately lose faith, then they wander more and more and more and more.

And it's interesting that apparently the Lord, according to this, is involved in all this wandering and all these procedures. I can't help but think about, as I studied this and thought about it, that, oh my goodness, is this so true that in my own life, right, I moved literally before I came to Winston-Salem over 40 times in 33 years. So I moved from Albuquerque to Colorado to Texas to Georgia to, you know, I lived in many, many, many states. I was born in Pocatello, Idaho, lived in Colorado, three or four places in California. I lived in Chicago, lived in Grand Blanc, Michigan. I lived in Savannah, Georgia.

In other words, I lived in Winston-Salem and Greensboro and Raleigh and Kernersville. And, you know, in other words, wandering has been a big part of my life up until I came here. And what's amazing is that after I got to know the Lord and married my wife, we have settled in this place and have been here. It was faithless.

It was so full of wandering because you're searching for something and you don't know the whole time. The Lord is close. In other words, I love, love, love the idea of the letter Kuf because it has to do with proximity and holiness. As we get closer to God, right, there's no need to wander because you feel safe. You feel safe with your family.

You feel safe at home. I think that it very much has to do with this idea of expression, which, you know, the letter hey comes before the letter vov. That just, you know, that's what we just studied last time.

And so now we're here with this letter vov and this expression is continuing. But the Lord, when he breaks off communications between people, obviously they were in a position to hurt themselves, right? And so he confused their language so they wouldn't hurt themselves. When we begin to truly understand one another, we can grow closer and we can grow closer to God as we understand him more.

How do we do that? By studying his word, by getting to understand his expressions, by understanding the building blocks of language that he gave us in Hebrew, which was the first language and which he did confuse. All the others came out of it. And to me, you know, as you may have heard me speak of this clear back in some of my earlier podcasts, on the 119th Psalm, that I read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And in the beginning of that book, he said in that book would be the secret of Andrew Carnegie's millions. And again, the idea of his millions was actually his riches from my standpoint, a kingdom standpoint. And he said inside every chapter was a secret and it would come to your mind when you're ready, but he wouldn't come out and tell you. He wanted to discern what the secret was. And the secret was that when people get on the same page and when they truly communicate and come into harmony, come in the community and the same thing, they become phenomenally powerful. And here's the example that he gave, which is to me a perfect example of what happens. This is the opposite of what happened in Babylon and opposite of what caused the people to be set asunder those princes.

This is to bring us all back together in the community. And here's what happened with Charles Schwab was apparently not an EF Hutton guy, but actually a manager of steel mills. And there was a steel mill that was the most under producing steel mill in all the mills. So he went in there right at like three o'clock in the morning or something like that, right when the shift changed from the night shift to the morning shift. And as the night shift was coming off, he asked them, how many pourings did you make last night?

And they said seven. And so he took a piece of chalk. And right there on the shop floor, great big cement floor, he made a gigantic seven.

And he just walked out. And so what happened was, you know, obviously the next shift comes in. What in the world is this big seven doing in the middle of the floor?

Well, oh, the big boss came in, Charles Schwab. And he wrote that seven because we did seven pourings last night. Well, you can imagine that the next shift, what could they do? They work together so that they could make eight pourings. The next group wrote a big eight, right? And then the next shift came on. What's the big eight right there? Well, that's the pourings that they did. They did seven.

Whoa, we better do nine. And the next thing you know, the worst producing steel mill in all of Andrew Carnegie's steel mills became the number one producing steel mill as everybody got on the same page and made the main thing, the main thing, however you want to look at that. The idea of the cook, the holiness coming together in him, then we can undo what happened when he broke off our expression to one another. I mean, this is so beautiful. And in our proceedings are of him. In other words, there's no doubt in my mind, he had me wander so that I would meet my wife, that I would have my kids.

And undoubtedly, my ancestors wandered so that someday that I would come about. In other words, God's in charge of all this. And it is the everlasting hills. In other words, this goes on and on because God is initiating us. He's redeeming us. And it's all going to be beautiful for those of us who have faith and believe him and fall in love with him. Thanks to many saints before us like Habakkuk and this amazing prayer. Thank you so much for listening.