Part 1: The oldest global pandemic
A beloved brother has been engaged in some serious fasting recently. In the throes of suffering, he texted me yesterday morning:
So…this whole fasting thing….while in the middle of an attempted 7 day fast, and contemplating the significance of our Lord’s 40 days in the wilderness…it struck me that He is our Ark. He is our salvation. Noah’s 40 days and 40 nights was a shadow of our salvation to come. Jesus’ 40 days and nights was the destruction of all human flesh, except those saved by the mercy of God.
God destroyed the sins of the world with that deluge…and He purified the earth of all corrupt flesh and it’s influence. It was a shadow of the real purification …the Man-Ark who suffered the 40 days and nights of anti-deluge…..40 days and nights of no rain and no stored provisions…..40 days and 40 nights of neglect and starvation to destroy all provisions of the flesh and its sin.
Excerpted
His words put me in mind of the lament of Habakkuk:
O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?
You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?
I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.
And the LORD answered me:
“Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.
For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
“Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
Behold, is it not from the LORD of hosts that peoples labor merely for fire, and nations weary themselves for nothing?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
Habakkuk 1:2, 13; 2:1-4, 13-14 (ESV)
The flood cleansed the earth of violence and bloodshed, but not the germ behind that pollution. That germ was pride. In Noah’s time, God poured out 190 proof wrath upon the world. But that 5% mercy in solution with it allowed pride to survive the flood.
Pride is the desire to rise above the mass of humanity, to compare ourselves favorably against others, to denigrate them and dominate them. It manifests itself through outright oppression and violence, but that’s just one of its faces. Pride can appear in a large, but limited set of behaviors. So, it’s insidious but also predictable. The unwary might not recognize pride in another person, but pride can’t help but to repeat its modus operandi. As Habakkuk identifies:
Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink—you pour out your wrath and make them drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!
Habakkuk 2:15 ESV
Did you catch the reference?
Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.
Genesis 9:20-22 ESV
In our overly-sexualized society, we tend to see something perverse here. While Ham’s actions were warped, his drives were all-too-commonplace. Like the people Habakkuk described, Ham sought to raise himself by shaming his father. Such arrogance can’t be punished or enticed out of our race. It’s enmeshed in our nature at the place of our flesh.
What could the solution be?
In response to the prophet’s complaint about violence God gave Habakkuk the cure for pride – faith. This faith will be delivered in the form of a new flood. It will be a flood not of water but of “the knowledge of the glory of the LORD.”
Unlike in the days of Noah, there will be no ark to keep people aloft from this flood. The previous flood failed to cleanse the earth because it left 8 alive. This flood will complete the job.
To be continued...
Wrestle With God 