Lessons from the Old School - The Prophecy of Habakkuk

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Answering the Big Question: Why this book?  Why Now?

 

  1. A knowledge of the Old Testament
  2. We need to hear Old School Truth - Ancient wisdom
  3. We need the God of the Bible, not the God of the Bible Belt...or our own imaginations.  

We need to be shocked, shaken, and encouraged to trust a Sovereign God.  Habakkuk's vision of God wrecks our self made gods.  There is an edge we need from this book which rocks our wimpy world in which we want to define God by our own sensibilities

  1. We need to live Old School - within and in light of the narrative/story of the gospel, not simply the American story of comfort and self fulfillment.

The Old Testament

The Old Testament.  Yes, that big part of the Bible full of blood and sacrifices, kings and heroes, laws and regulations, worship and lament, clarity and mystery.  Though it makes up close to two thirds of our Bibles the Old Testament remains a bit unknown or disconnected from the lives of many contemporary believers.  I'm not so sure if it's the strange laws of Leviticus regarding bodily emissions or seeing God wiping people out that tends to make people shy away.  Yet one thing is certain, God in his wisdom has given us the Bible as a unified whole, made up of sixty six books.[1]  The story line is consistent from beginning until end; the creator God at work to redeem the world through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Yet before we look at some of the huge importance held by the Old Testament, I want to make one thing very clear.  There is one God who created the world and this God does not change.  He is who he is and has told us so: I am who I am and I am the Lord, I do not change (Exodus 3:14, Malachi 3:6).  One of the unfortunate misunderstandings about the Old Testament is that it reveals a different God than that of the New.  Or that God has grown up or evolved over the course of the Bible.  I want to emphatically state that the God of the Old and New Testaments is one and the same.  It is not like God was having a bad hair day, was going through puberty or forgot his Nicorette gum during the days of the Old Testament.  The Old Testament does not reveal a 13 year old God throwing temper tantrums at divinity junior high.  Likewise the God of the New Testament is not a fluffy nice bunny rabbit who was never offended by the sins of people.  No, God is loving and merciful in the Old and wrathful and just in the New, just as he is wrathful and just in the Old and loving and merciful in the New.  This is important and should not be missed.  The God who created all things, called Israel out as a nation, brought forth the Messiah through this nation and lineage is the same God who will bring about the Kingdom of Heaven at the end of the age. 

The Importance of the OT

*      Redemptive Historical Context Scroll Example
*      A Complete Picture of Jesus who is called the Christ HD Jesus

For a complete introduction to the Old Testament, the Minor Prophets, and Habakkuk - see our article here. 

[1] For those interested in a brief treatment of how the sixty six books arrived in the Bible see Reid S. Monaghan, One Bible, Many Books(Power of Change, 2006, accessed December 31 2006); available from http://www.powerofchange.org/blog/2006/11/one_bible_many_books.html.
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