In 1972 Atari,
Inc. released one of the first video arcade games, named Pong. It was a very simple table tennis style game,
with a paddle on each side of the screen and a ball that travels back and forth
as players line up their paddle with the ball.
One of the men responsible for Pong, Nolan Bushnell, also one of the
founders of Atari, is credited with the following aphorism about video game
design: “All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.” This theorem, which is sometimes credited
exclusively to Bushnell, was in reality just a reflection of ancient human wisdom. One of the oldest games in existence, “Go”,
has been around for over 3,000 years.
This game exemplifies the principle that was popularized by Bushnell in
the past few decades. In “Go”, two
players are equipped with small stones, one set white and the other black. They take turns placing these stones on a
board made of a basic 19 by 19 line grid.
The winner is the player who manages to claim more intersections and/or
surround and capture more of the opponent’s pieces. A game can’t get much simpler than that. And although it may appear pedestrian on
paper, Go is so challenging that to this point no one has been able to program
a computer to play it better than the best human masters. Perhaps the most famous example of a game
that is deceptively simple is the classic game of Chess. The rules of Chess, while more complicated
than Go, are remarkably easy to teach.
It’s so easy in fact, that often children are taught the game at an
elementary school age. As an example, I
have taught my daughter, who is six, how to play. Although it will be a few years before she
can hold her own against a decent opponent the fundamentals of the game can be
grasped quite handily.
Beyond the
realm of gaming the principle of “easy to learn, difficult to master” extends
to most aspects of human life. This includes
religion and theology. Many of the
lessons taught by God as He reveals His character to humanity are really
extraordinarily simple in concept.
Consider a few of The Ten Commandments.
“You shall not kill”. “You shall
have no other gods before Me.” “You
shall not steal.” Just as with the game
of “Go”, it doesn’t get any simpler than that.
The challenge comes not in understanding what the Bible teaches, but
applying it and living by it faithfully.
We can see this
exact same standard at work in the fifth woe that God directs against Babylon
through His mouthpiece Habakkuk. As He
brings this section of the book to a close the Lord delivers a description of
human delusion and hubris that is elementary in its obvious truth. He begins in verses 18 and 19 of chapter 2:
“What profit is the idol when its maker has
carved it,
Or
an image, a teacher of falsehood?
For
its maker trusts in his own handiwork
When
he fashions speechless idols.
Woe
to him who says to a piece of wood, ‘Awake!’
To
a mute stone, ‘Arise!’
And
that is your teacher?
Behold,
it is overlaid with gold and silver,
And
there is no breath at all inside it.
This woe is
unique among the five listed here in Habakkuk chapter 2 because its structure
and flow is different from the others.
Instead of immediately outlining the crime being denounced God delivers
a sort of prologue before issuing the condemnation. He, in effect, sets up the situation with a
depiction of the lifestyle and motivations of sinful Babylon. And only after establishing this context does
the Lord deliver the actual woe of condemnation. The preface begins with a rhetorical
question. What profit is this thing that
people do of carving idols and making images?
There are two
different Hebrew words used here. One
refers to the carving or sculpting of an object. The other word is describing the crafting of
an idol through pouring hot metal into a cast.
An accurate English translation would render these as “graven image” and
“molten image”. Examples of this can be
seen in Deuteronomy 4:16 and Exodus 34:17 respectively. Functionally, the significance of both types
of idol are identical. Whether someone
carves a block of wood into the shape of an animal or casts molten metal into
the form of a man, their objective is the same.
The inclusion of both types of idol in this verse indicates a sort of
blanket approach by the Lord. It’s as if
He is saying “it doesn’t matter what methods you utilize, which materials you
use, or what your ultimate goal is, if you engage in this type of sin then the
truth of Romans 1:22-23 applies to you: Professing
to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God
for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed
animals and crawling creatures.
So, back to our
rhetorical question. What benefit is
there to the Babylonians, or to anyone, who engages in this sort of idol
worship? It is clear from the text that
there is no profit at all. In fact, God
goes even further in this depiction of profitless endeavors. He drives the point home with a description
of the sinner’s mindset that is so ludicrous that it should be painfully
embarrassing for them. The audience, in
horrific fascination, watches this train wreck of a life devoted to idolatry
spiral out of control as the sinner begins to engage in ridiculous behavior
worthy of an asylum for the insane. He
approaches these speechless idols he has crafted. To the block of wood he kneels down and
begins to speak to it. ‘Awake’ he cries with fervor. Turning to a rock he implores it, ‘Arise!’ But the material objects, overlaid with gold
and silver and with no breath at all within them, remain silent. They stand as silent witnesses to the
colossal stupidity of man.
At this point we
need to stop and consider a question that, although not explicitly stated in
the text, is very clearly implied. That
question is “why?” Why would people do
this? Why would they engage in such
lunacy? Why would they waste time
spinning their wheels in a fruitless and endless cycle of self-informed
delusion? The answer to that question is
fairly complex and needs to be answered in two parts.
The first point
to consider is this. God has placed
within man a natural urge to seek after eternity, as Ecclesiastes 3:11 makes
clear: He has also set eternity in their
heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the
beginning even to the end. So man is
bound to seek after eternity, but John 1:3 reveals that it is defined by God alone:
All things came into being through Him,
and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. And in Romans 1:20 we find that not only has
God defined all things but He has placed His stamp upon it: For since the creation of the world His
invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly
seen, being understood through what has been made. In fact, not only is the stamp of God
everywhere but His very presence is everywhere.
King David rejoiced in this truth in Psalm 139:7-10: Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I
make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the
sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of
me. And lest we conceive of the
notion that God is simply a silent witness everywhere in creation, Isaiah
plainly prophesies that every action that occurs does so by the specific intention
of God’s will in chapter 46 and verse 10: Declaring
the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been
done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My
good pleasure’.
With these
principles in mind, it is evident that if one attempts to explore eternity it
is impossible to escape the reality of God.
This presents a conundrum for man.
He is driven to look beyond himself into the philosophical realms of
existence. But he is alienated from and
hostile to the One whose dominion he is in.
Man’s opposition to this One is so severe that he cannot bear the
thought of even admitting God’s presence let alone giving Him the respect He is
due. Thus man is placed into a “catch
22” type of situation where he is compelled to think and search beyond his
finite existence but if he does so honestly and objectively he would be forced
to deny his entire world view and all he holds dear; namely himself. So man takes an alternate route. He seeks to fulfill the impulse by
structuring it within the confines of a philosophical box of his own
construction. This enables him to define
the terms, the limits, and the boundaries of how he will perceive reality. In other words, the man is in control and
gets to call the shots, at least in his own mind. This is exactly what God means when He says “its maker trusts in his own handiwork when
he fashions speechless idols.”
Further, by
engaging in such practices the crafters of these idols bear out the truth of
the complementary phrases found in verse 18 and 19: “an image, a teacher of falsehood”, “and that is your teacher?”, and “behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at
all inside it.” The point God is
making here operates on two levels; one on the surface and the other buried
deeper within the realms of philosophical import.
We will tackle
the deeper truth first, the clues of which are sprinkled throughout these two
verses. The reality is that no, the wood
and the stone are not the teachers here.
Almost shockingly, it is the Babylonians themselves. They have entered into a closed system that
lacks the benefit of outside influences.
And in so doing they have shut off the only avenue of progress that is
available. Allow me to explain. Webster defines instruction as “The act of
teaching or informing the understanding in that of which it was before
ignorant.” So let’s picture all of
mankind as a giant information system, capable of processing and interpreting
data so as to make truth claims about the nature of reality. If this human information system is ignorant
of a truth there are two avenues through which it can obtain said truth; it can
experiment and through a process of reasoned deduction arrive at a conclusion,
or the truth can be given to it by an outside third party who has already come
into possession of the truth seeking to be discovered.
With that
framework in place the question needs to be answered: which of the two paths to
truth should man take? We know from the
second half of Ecclesiastes 3:11 above that arriving at an accurate theological
and philosophical conclusion about the nature of reality through
experimentation is not possible. In
addition to that we also know that the heart and motivations of man are
corrupt. Jeremiah 17:9 puts it like
this: “The heart is more deceitful than
all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” The point is that the inner spiritual nature
of a man is so hideously distorted that even the man himself doesn’t understand
his own heart. And it is because of this
corruption that God also says, in Proverbs 3:7: Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil. The implication is that one who does not fear
the Lord, in this case exemplified by a propensity for self-wisdom, is guilty
of embracing evil. Therefore the only
conceivable path to finding the truth about matters beyond the temporal is to
rely on a third party; namely God. But
man has closed himself off from this exclusive source of truth. In effect, he has constructed a box out of
his own imagination, crawled inside, sealed it tight, and engaged in a
collective racial hallucination of his own design. What we have is a situation where man has
become his own teacher. That is the
point God is stressing here. It is not
merely that man is seeking instruction from wood or stone. Of course he isn’t. He is really receiving instruction from
himself.
Frankly, this
is shockingly absurd. The sheer idiocy
and lunacy at work here is significant and it works its way upward to a visible
surface level of application. We have a
being, a man, who senses deep within that there is more to life than just that
which is readily apparent on a material level.
But this man, although sensing there is truth out there and being driven
to seek after it, is not in possession of the answers to the questions that
arise from this dilemma. In fact, not
only are the answers unknown but even the tools to find the answers are
unattainable. Yet in spite of the
obvious limitations and apparent hopelessness of the situation, the man decides
to turn inward for instruction. Who of
us, seeking to learn a new field of study in life, would be so obtuse as to
shun academic instruction of some sort and simply gaze into the mirror, waiting
for intelligence to bounce backward off the glass and soak into our brains?
As if this
picture wasn’t bad enough, the stupidity of man still isn’t finished displaying
itself. Because, if he admitted to
himself what he was doing even he would have to come to grips with the
foolishness of it all. So he constructs
an image for himself, in the form of wood, stone, metal, plastic, etc. He knows perfectly well that this image was
made with his own hands. He can see that
it is covered with gold or silver. It is
blindingly obvious that there is no breath of life in the image. The psalmist, in describing these idols in
Psalm 115:5-7 offers this description: They
have mouths, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but they cannot see; they have
ears, but they cannot hear; they have noses, but they cannot smell; they have
hands, but they cannot feel; they have feet, but they cannot walk; they cannot
make a sound with their throat.
There is no doubt or question over whether these idols are living. They are clearly not. Yet man, confronted with the aforementioned
reality that to turn to a source other than himself is to admit the existence
and sovereignty of God, which he refuses to do, convinces himself that these
inanimate objects are imbued with a divine presence of his own imagination.
So in one sense
we can interpret this as a sarcastic rebuke against the idolatrous
Babylonians. As an ignorant husband
might say to his wife, “You’re not wearing that dress, are you?” so we might
imagine that God is saying to the Chaldeans, “You’re not using that for a
teacher, are you?” The Lord is almost
sarcastically pointing out how childish man is acting. The Lord is no stranger to sarcasm when
appropriate. In Isaiah 44:16-17 He
rebukes the ignorance and folly of men with a description of a piece of wood: Half of it he burns in the fire; over this
half he eats meat as he roasts a roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Aha! I am
warm, I have seen the fire.” But the
rest of it he makes into a god, his graven image. He falls down before it and worships; he also
prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god.” In a similar manner here in Habakkuk, God is
in part poking fun at people who would engage in such practices.
But what is
truly fascinating is the next two verses in Isaiah: They do not know, nor do they understand, for He has smeared over their
eyes so that they cannot see and their hearts so that they cannot
comprehend. No one recalls, nor is there
knowledge or understanding to say, “I have burned half of it in the fire and
also have baked bread over its coals. I
roast meat and eat it. Then I make the
rest of it into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood!” He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has
turned him aside. And he cannot deliver
himself, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” This is, quite frankly, perplexing. In one breath the prophet Isaiah confirms
that God is the one responsible for the confusion and lack of understanding of
men. He has blinded their eyes and
muddled their hearts. The context of the
original Hebrew is that of someone grinding stone and dust to make plaster,
then using it to cover over something. Yet
in the next breath it is revealed that it is man’s own deceived heart that has
turned him aside, thus precipitating the image of feeding on ashes. Just as ashes cause choking and gagging in
the mouth, so does man’s deceived heart cause a similar reaction in his spirit. And in his self-delusion he is incapable of
saving himself. How can this be? How can God be responsible for blinding
people and the people be responsible for deceiving themselves, both at the same
time?
The answer is
not one that tends to sit well with us.
We of such preening arrogance and pompous self-assurance demand concrete
answers. We insist upon being given our
imagined rights. But instead of catering
to our whims, the Lord instead commands Israel to remember and rejoice in their
God, that He has redeemed them and saved them against all the odds that were
just outlined in opposition to the possibility of their redemption (Isaiah
44:21-23). This response lands on us
with a remarkably unsatisfying feeling.
We were asking how these two seemingly contradictory elements, God’s
intention and man’s action, could possibly co-exist. And the Lord, mystifyingly, does not answer
the question. He merely steps back and
says, in effect, “Be still, and know
that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
And in a
similar fashion, in the final verse of this woe in Habakkuk chapter 2 the Lord
chooses to contrast the ridiculous and
insane ignorance of men who bow down to dead, lifeless idols in a desire to
delude themselves into believing they are not really just delivering their own
misinformed instruction with a simple statement of monumental significance:
“But the LORD is in His holy temple.
Let
all the earth be silent before Him.”
There is a
direct contrast here between worship of God and worship of false images. The fabricated gods dwell in the temples
built for them by humans. But the Lord
resides in His own temple. Acts 17:24
teaches that “The God who made the world
and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in
temples made with hands”. And
whereas in man-made religions the idols are mute, relying on their priests to
speak for them, in the course of worshipping the true and living God men are to
be silent before Him while He speaks and they listen. Zechariah 2:13, in very similar language to
Psalm 46:10 above, makes this clear: “Be
silent, all flesh, before the LORD; for He is aroused from His holy
habitation.” The ultimate issue is
that it is God alone who instructs.
And when He
does so, as mentioned, we are directed to silence. This is an interesting proposition. Silence.
What does it mean that the Lord wishes us to remain silent? What is it about being quiet that is so
important here? First of all, we have to
clarify that in this context God is not talking merely about making any kind of
noise. He is specifically saying to not
speak. We know this because it is the
act of speech that is identified earlier in the passage. The idolater speaks to his graven and molten
images, imploring them to awaken and act on his behalf. So what is it about speaking that is of
concern to the Lord here? Consider for a
moment what is implied when we talk. It
is innately an aggressive action. The
thoughts, desires, and interests of the speaker are being presented and
advanced in an effort to either convince others to see a different point of view,
share new information, voice an opinion, or a myriad of other objectives. Even in a situation where the speaker is
answering a question the idea is still to promote self by, at least
temporarily, taking over the conversation.
Granted, we don’t typically think in these terms, but we ought to start.
This
characteristic of speech presents dual problems in the context of receiving
instruction from God. On the one hand is
a physical concern and on the other is a spiritual reality. The fact of the matter is that when we talk a
lot the tendency more often than not is to get ourselves into trouble. In Proverbs 10:19 Solomon advises: When there are many words, transgression is
unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise. The preacher expands upon this thought in
Proverbs 29:20: Do you see a man who is
hasty in his words? There is more hope
for a fool than for him. The
elemental truth here is that we simply lack the capacity to safeguard our
tongues properly. Due to human pride and
the workings of our sin natures, as the volume of words coming out of our
mouths increases so also does the likelihood that some of those words will
begin to contradict the truth of God’s character. And when that happens we are capable of such
unimaginable destruction that it should cause us to be very afraid. James 3:6-8 presents the human tongue,
standing in here for the act of speaking, as a very dangerous instrument: And the tongue is a fire, the very world of
iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire
body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. For every species of beasts and birds, of
reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. But no one can tame the tongue; it is a
restless evil and full of deadly poison.
This is an incredibly harsh description.
But we would do well to heed the warning given here. There is tremendous power in words. They are capable of breaking peace,
prolonging war, destroying self-image, crushing hope, distorting truth, and
stealing glory from God which is undoubtedly the most egregious evil of
all. Now it is also true that with words
formed by our tongues we are capable of much good. But according to biblical wisdom we ought to
be extremely wary of the damage that can be done by our mouths and our
tongues. And this is precisely the point
God is making by commanding us to be silent before Him. We should cease our endless prattling and
place ourselves at His feet to learn from Him how to speak properly.
And even beyond
the physical there is a spiritual truth that is also revealed to us in this
ordinance of silence. Jesus used an
interesting phrase at the very beginning of His famous sermon on the mount in
Matthew chapter 5. In verse 3 He says
this: Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The phrase “poor in spirit” bears further investigation. What does it mean to be poor in spirit? The translation is quite good. Poor is literally the state of being destitute
of wealth, influence, position, or honor.
And spirit refers specifically to our inner selves; our souls if you
will; that eternal component of our being that will exist beyond the physical
death of our outward flesh. That’s all
well and good, but what does it mean to be destitute in spirit? How can we apply this in a tangible
fashion? In Philippians 2:5-8 Paul
describes a pattern of behavior that the Lord Jesus exemplified through His
very existence in the incarnation: Have
this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He
existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be
grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made
in the likeness of men. Being found in
appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of
death, even death on a cross. This
then is the answer; humility. As has
already been stated, the act of speaking physically conveys a personal agenda
of some sort. But the intentional act of
silence carries with it the complete opposite.
We’re not talking about simply being at a loss for words. What is in view here is an act of the will
whereby we cease from speaking, both externally with our mouths and internally
with our spirits. And this places us
into a perfect position to be filled with the truth of God instead of the lies
of self.
And with that
the Lord God of heaven and earth quietly shakes the foundation of our
self-absorbed convictions by commanding us to shut our mouths, cease our idle
speculation, and acknowledge His supremacy.
But therein lies the rub. Such a
seemingly simple and easy command. Yet
when sin is added to the mixture of life it becomes a bitter pill that is
impossible to swallow. We are in
distress. We know we are dying. We feel in our bones that we lack the answers
to our questions. We believe in our
heads that if we just ingest this innocuous little tablet then we would live. But we just…can’t…get…it…down. Prior to being born again, of course, we are
literally hell bent on opposing the will of God and would never dream of
keeping silence before Him so as to listen to His instruction. But even after conversion, our sin nature
that Paul calls “the old self” battles against our “new self”, raging against
the presence of the Holy Spirit within us and obstinately making futile
attempts to win the war. The Apostle
captures this conflict perfectly in Romans 7:22-23: For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a
different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind
and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. He then goes on to lament “wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this
death? Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord! In this way Paul
points toward our eventual glorification when we will be freed from our
corrupted bodies of flesh through the atoning work of Christ. But in the meantime, in this life, on this
earth, in these bodies of sin and death, our charge is to take hold of that
which is “easy to learn, difficult to master”.
Frankly, in our own efforts and abilities the phrase should be modified
to this: “easy to learn, impossible to master.”
We have no hope of success on our own.
We are fully incapable of successfully carrying out even the most
innocuous of the Lord’s instructions.
This was precisely the point of the Mosaic Law; to make it clear and
obvious to all who attempted to obey it that obedience in and of oneself is
unmanageable. The only solution to our
dilemma is the Son of God, Jesus Himself.
Our only hope is to cast ourselves upon Him with great desperation and
tenacious resolve. By immersing our
minds in the record of Christ’s life and searching out the deep things of the Father
through the revelation of the Spirit we can learn how to do “the impossible”
and remain silent before the Lord.
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