Habakkuk 3:1-19
- David Fairchild
- Mar 5, 2006
- Series: Habakkuk
INTRODUCTION
We have been in this great book of Habakkuk listening to a prophet’s dialogue with God as he struggles with his deeply perplexed faith. The prophet is struggling with understanding how such a great and mighty, holy and just God can sit in seeming indifference as the people of God wantonly pursue their unjust and lawless deeds. Habakkuk is sick of what He sees. He’s sick of the theft, sick of the murders, sick of the lawlessness and injustice which characterizes those who are supposed to represent God. He is tired of it, and He has come to God on many occasions to pray for an end of what sickens Him.
What perplexes this prophet all the more is God’s unexpected response to the prophet’s prayers as God calls Habakkuk to look and see what He is about to do. God is going to answer Habakkuk’s prayer to end it all. God then tells His prophet the plan which He has for His idolatrous people. God is going to send over a wicked, pagan, violent nation to sorely discipline His people for their sin. Habakkuk is greatly grieved, and the prophet moves from distancing himself from his people, to crying out to God for them and on their behalf. God’s plan is not what Habakkuk had in mind. This would be equivalent to my going to God in complaint over our sin and wickedness as a church, and God responding by telling me that He had a plan to deal with our sin. The plan included His sending over Mike Tyson, Hugh Heffner, and Bill Clinton to rough us up and then lecture us about not being violent, promiscuous, or unfaithful to your wife. We would wonder if that was such a good plan after all.
It is much worse for God’s people, and much more concerning for the prophet who hears of God’s plan to deal swiftly with the sin of His people by using the sin of godless murderers to overtake His people and break them of their self-sufficient pride. To many, God often seems as if He takes too long to deal with injustice when it is done against them. Yet when God acts, He acts with such swift and powerful strength that it overwhelms those who have eyes to see what He is doing. Habakkuk’s heart is broken because of God’s response, and he lodges his second complaint to God about the Chaldeans and their reputation. God then brings Habakkuk to a place where He has no other choice but exercise his trusting faith in the goodness of God and in doing so, God says that not only must Habakkuk, but all who desire to be just before God, place their faith in God and live.
Many forget that a contemporary of Habakkuk was Jeremiah who had prophesied against Judah, the southern Kingdom, and warned them that if they did not turn from their faithlessness, God would come in might and wrath and deal with them. God spoke words of truth to His children and withheld His judgment in patience and forbearance, and desire that His children would turn from sin and trust in Him.
After these two complaints, God doesn’t respond by explaining himself to Habakkuk, but instead tells Habakkuk how He is going to deal with the Babylonians. This declaration is not only for the unbelieving Chaldeans, but is also a warning to all who would place their faith in themselves instead of the living, Creator God.
The major themes of this book are found not only in the overarching story of God’s sovereignty over all things, including evil, but also within certain passages that have proven extremely important to God’s people—specifically in 2:4 where God declares that “the just will live by their faith” and 2:14 which we looked at last week, where God declares that He desires the fame of His name to cover the earth as the water covers the sea as the remedy for all the pain, sin, injustice and lawlessness. After these great themes, God then calls all the earth to be still in silence before Him. Instead of speaking a multitude of words which are filled with conjecture and speculation, the only response for men and women who have spoken to their Creator is silence. Any further questions or complaints at this point would be paganism which assumes by many words it bends the will of the maker to its own. Silent meditation is how these conversations end, and in chapter 3 we are shown a most beautiful result which can only come from silence before the Almighty—praise and worship! After Habakkuk has had his questions answered, and after He has been silent in reverence and awe, a song is born from his heart.
This is where we are this morning. We are going to read this beautiful and striking song which has come from this complaining and confused prophet who now has become, yet again, a singing and trusting worshipper in His God.
STUDY
Habakkuk 3:1-19
Verse 1- “A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionoth.”
I have found in my own personal life, as well as in the life of those I know, that when we are silent before God in loving adoration for Him and closeness to Him, we become more creative. For those who are the artistic type, you may have experienced this. The more you spend with the Creator, the more you are creative. It only makes sense. God has called us as men and women to bear forth His image on this planet which He made for our home. He gave Adam and Eve this mandate in the Garden of Eden, and we are effective at reflecting His beauty in creative ways when we are with the source of beauty, our Creator.
Shigionoth is term which is used in a musical setting, and were not really sure what instructions this gives, other than it shows us that this prayer is really a song. In this song you will also see the word “Selah” used three times in this song and 71 times in the Psalms.
Selah is a dramatic and powerful musical device which prompted the music to stop or the people to cry out “forever” like a “yes Lord, let it be always.” It was a powerful way for the people to join together in praise to respond to a profound truth regarding the God we worship. Sometimes it was only silence, sometimes it was musical silence with God’s people agreeing that it would be so “forever” as the musicians raised their instruments in triumph.
Salvation belongs to the Lord—Selah! I cried out to the Lord and He answered me—Selah! The Lord has made Himself known—Selah! The Lord of Hosts is the King of Glory—Selah! You forgave the iniquity of my sin—Selah! This is how God’s people agreed and proclaimed their desire to let it be forever. We might use the term “amen” in our time. As we work through this passage, each of the three times that this term is used, perhaps you can worship God by saying in your heart, “Let it be, forever!” This is a call for mission in our time, much like Habakkuk prays in song in this next passage.
Habakkuk’s Cry for Revival
Verse 2- “O LORD, I have heard (with great attention) the report (fame) of you, and your work, O LORD, do I fear. In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.”
Habakkuk here says, “YWVH, I have heard of your fame with great attention, YWVH, I fear you.”
There have been great seasons where you have come, O God, and displayed Your glory. I am intimately familiar with Your history and the reports of Your works of splendor. God, I stand before You trembling as I ask for it to be so in my day. God, in these days where sin and injustice seem so rampant, what I desire God is for You to make Your name famous yet again. I desire that You come in power and might, bringing justice. And God, I desire that as You come in unmitigated wrath, remember mercy.
How many of you have this same desire? How many of you, like Habakkuk, have heard of God’s great fame in history, and have read stories of His mighty work, and it makes you long for it to be so again? Some of you struggle with God’s acts in history, either because you see them as too strong a display of wrath, or because you don’t see those same acts today. You read about God working in history through the church in foreign lands, and even in revival in our own land just a couple of centuries ago, and it fills your heart with desire to see it today. And like Habakkuk, you want it to be so in a time when His works seem veiled. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God has shown up in history to display His power, and He still does so in our day. Yet, His acts of power in our day cannot be seen without eyes of faith. Any working of God in a time that assumes it can write of any supernatural work in naturalistic ways will never be satisfied with God’s acts, even if He were to come to us today in the same way we will read about in a moment. To see God displayed in power requires a sight not first of eyes, but of heart. It requires that we trust God in faith, and in doing so we are made to see.
Do we want God to be in our time what we have heard about in History? Is that the cry of your soul? Do you come to God in fear and awe, like Habakkuk, when you read of these reports, and do you humbly ask for it to be in your day? It is not that God does anything vastly different through history. He has always shown up to save His people, and there are numerous occasions through history when He simply does what He always does, but it happens in greater measure. More people come to know Him. More grace is poured out in visual ways. Entire populations of villages and cities are called to faith and trust in God. This is still happening in parts of the world today. There are movements of faith breaking out in Guatemala and other parts of the world, where those coming to faith in this mighty God are happening at a rate of 50,000 people a year in specific regions. If we had eyes of faith to see, and the interest to participate, perhaps we would experience the answer to this song 2,600 years later. God is working and moving in our city and in our very own church. If we were to investigate with interest and had concern of such things, we might find with amazement what God is up to.
Habakkuk prays in this song that God would show up, make His name famous, and when He comes in wrath that He would remember His mercy. This is a prayer for the Gospel. You see, Habakkuk understands that when God comes, He has to deal with sin. God’s justice must be executed and when He does so, His wrath is displayed. How many of us realize that God has a holy and righteous displeasure and hatred for sin? How many of us realize that God does not wink at sin and ignore it? How many of us realize that our loving God is also a God of great wrath? Even if our sensitivities are disturbed, you cannot read the Bible and miss the stories of God’s dealings with sin. How does He deal with those who persistently oppose Him until His patience for them has run its course? How is God going to deal with those who oppose Him at the end of days when His time and opportunity for repentance and faith have run out? God shows up in great wrath. But guess what? Habakkuk also knows another side of God because He is a child of God who has experienced God’s grace. Habakkuk asks for the Gospel when He says, “in your wrath, remember mercy.” If we pray this prayer for God to come quickly, do we realize that when He does, He must deal with sin? If Christ were to show up this morning in His second coming, all of the individuals we love and know who have not trusted in God’s only provision for sin, which is the sacrifice of His own Son, would be subject to God’s Holy wrath.
We pray for mercy because we know that without God’s mercy we are without hope. A man who stands guilty before a righteous judge, cannot demand a pardon, he can only beg for one. A guilty man realizes that justice is receiving what you deserve, and mercy is not receiving what you deserve. Those who have placed their faith in Christ have tasted of God’s mercy because they have tasted of God’s grace—which is receiving as a gift what they do not deserve. Grace and mercy are given to you by faith as a free gift, costing you nothing. However, grace and mercy are not a doing away with justice. Justice is still seen through to the end, because God is just in all His ways. God executes His wrath and justice upon His Son so that by faith, you and I can be experience mercy (not getting what we deserve) through His gift of grace (receiving what we don’t deserve).
You see, God not only comes in wrath, but He comes as one of us in human history and He takes our sin upon Himself so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). Do you realize the significance and cost to God to deal with evil? He is unlike any other god in that He gets intimately involved in our suffering and in so doing cares deeply enough to suffer on our behalf. Upon the cross, Jesus feels human exile from His Father, and takes our shame and abandonment upon Himself as He cries out to His Father, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). And after suffering for us a pain we could not imagine, an injustice we will never experience, and a turning away from His Father which we will never fully comprehend, Jesus, aware of the events and of the significance of what He experiences says, “It is finished” (John 19:30). This is the only grounds upon which we have experienced God’s mercy. It is experienced by Jesus not receiving mercy from the Father on the cross. A price has been paid, it was at a great cost, and it was paid in the blood of God who came in the flesh. For you, if you have trusted in Jesus, in His wrath, He has for you remembered mercy.
If you have experienced this kind of mercy, what then should be the cry of your heart for others you know? “O Lord…in wrath (God is Holy), remember mercy (God is gracious).”
One of the ways to kindle this flame into a blazing fire is to remind the people of God who God is, and what He has done throughout history. This is where Habakkuk goes next.
Habakkuk sings a song of remembering how God has shown up when His people are exiled and in slavery because of their sin. God shows up when His people have no strength and no ability to save themselves. God shows up when their enemies seem too powerful, and they have no other hope for salvation except to cry out to God and wait for Him to rescue them. When a person desires freedom, true freedom, they first must see themselves in truth and acknowledge their slavery.
If there are any here this morning who know what it feels like to be a slave, any who have come to see that they are without strength to free themselves, I pray that you acknowledge your true state and run to your only hope, Jesus the Christ, the mighty One who can rescue you and bring you from fear to faith.
God’s Works in History
GOD DISPLAYING HIS GLORY Verses 3-7
Verses 3-4- “God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. Selah. 4 His brightness was like the light; rays flashed from his hand; and there he veiled his power.”
Habakkuk is poetically describing the brilliance of God’s mighty power. He describes God as Holy, with splendor, in brightness and rays flashing from His hand. Yet even in this manifestation of God’s great power, it is still veiled. Teman is a poetic reference to the events surrounding the Exodus, when God appeared to His people at Mount Sinai to be with them and give them His commandments. God had rescued His people from slavery and brought them out to the foot of this Mountain where God gave them the 10 commandments through Moses for the people to live lives of faithfulness and joy instead of wickedness and misery.
Over a million people were liberated and brought out to worship their God in freedom. Habakkuk has read of the story as it has been told and retold for years. The prophet wants to see it again. Habakkuk wants to see his people brought out of their slavery to idolatry and called to God’s feet to worship.
Verse 5- “Before him went pestilence, and plague followed at his heels.”
When God brought His people out of 400 years of slavery into freedom, He did so by crushing His enemy and the enemy of His people, Pharaoh, through a succession of plagues. He displayed His power over the weather, over the animals, and over the viruses which brought pestilence and plagues. Pharaoh had set himself up in opposition to the true God by assuming he was a god himself. He assumed he answered to no one but himself, and God demonstrated yet again that He would use even a sinful man like Pharaoh to demonstrate His power (Romans 9).
Habakkuk has heard of God’s great rescue of His people by the crushing of their enemy and he wants to see the same in his day. Six hundred years later, Jesus came to do that very thing, and through the desire of His heart to see the great enemies of God defeated in his lifetime, the one great enemy of God, Satan, was dealt a death blow upon the cross.
Verses 6-7- “He stood and measured the earth; he looked and shook the nations; then the eternal mountains were scattered; the everlasting hills sank low. His were the everlasting ways. 7 I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction; the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.”
Habakkuk has heard of God’s coming and knows that when He shows Himself, the earth shakes and trembles, the nations bend and yield themselves to Him, and hills bow down before Him and sink low. Kings bend and yield to Him in fear and trembling. Armies bow down before Him.
We often think so much of ourselves and so little of God, until God shows up and reveals Himself in power, and then we are left with nothing to say as we bend and yield ourselves to His power. We should be as Isaiah; when seeing a vision of God’s holiness and glory (even right now as it is revealed so powerfully through His word) we acknowledge our sin and bow in His presence and see ourselves coming undone before Him. When we come to an awareness of God’s splendor, it should cause a simultaneous fear and reverence, and also a strange and compelling drawing to Him. When God displays His glory for His people it is both frightening and irresistibly attractive.
Habakkuk wants to see God show up and show the people what kind of God He is so that the people would bend their knees and bow their heads in awe and loving fear of His majesty.
Paul tells us in Philippians 2:9-11 “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
One day, in answer to Habakkuk’s prayer, every knee will bow before Jesus either in loving submission with hearts conquered by grace or as a defeated foe who will bow in fear of His judgment.
GOD AS A MIGHTY SAVIOR Verse 8
Verse 8- “Was your wrath against the rivers, O LORD? Was your anger against the rivers, or your indignation against the sea, when you rode on your horses, on your chariot of salvation?”
He speaks of the day when God’s people were leaving their slavery in Egypt and were pursued by Pharaoh and his armies. They were surrounded by certain death if they attempted to cross the sea and yet would be run down and slaughtered by the army encroaching upon them.
Men, women, and children were too weak too defend themselves against the arrows and chariots, the swords and spears which were quickly coming to destroy them. Even when declared free, these enemies did not want them to realize their liberation.
God miraculously parts the sea and sends a strong wind to dry the ground so that every last one of them could cross is safety. Then God closes the waters behind them and swallows up their enemies for all to see. God’s might and power is displayed not only in their being saved, but also in the destruction of their enemies.
They walk through their greatest fear to freedom and when they arrive, Miriam, Moses’ sister, leads them in song and celebration which is the point of redemption and freedom. When God’s people realize who God is and what He’s done, songs of praise flow from their lips. This is the great reward of God’s people being freed. Freedom is not the goal, God is! Freedom is merely a means to a greater end which is the worship of God. Our goal in being freed from our sin is that we now have God and can worship Him. Can you imagine almost a million people experiencing this great act and how triumphantly and joyfully and gratefully and loudly they would have sung?
This is what God intends for His people when they are taken from sin, Satan, death, and folly. God intends for His own to worship Him in song and life.
He also speaks of the Jordan river. When God’s people were freed, they broke out in song, yet soon after found themselves whining like spoiled children. And instead of that generation entering the Promised Land, they were forced to wander for 40 years until that generation had passed, and instead of Moses leading the people to the Promised Land, Joshua was passed the baton to take this younger generation to the land God promised. Yet another body of water separated them from the land of promise. The river Jordan was at a flood stage, and God told this generation to consecrate themselves and spend time with Him. God calls them to confess their sins, consecrate themselves and He will show up in power. God tells the priests to take the Ark of the Covenant and set it upon their shoulders and carry it into the river. Even at flood stage, God tells them to put their feet into the water and God will go before them and stop the flowing of the water. This is tremendous faith. If God doesn’t show up as He promised, not only will the pastors of the Old Testament be washed away and die, but God (as they would have understood the significance of the Ark) will go white water rafting down the Jordan.
They do as God says; they confess their sins and consecrate themselves, and God is faithful to His promise and shows up in a powerful way. They put their feet to the water and the river parts for them. They walk into their land of promise, their new home. God always shows up in such a way that the only one that can receive glory is Himself. He loves to display His power in our lives when we are up to our necks and can give no one but Him glory. He wants His name and glory to be known and shown to all the earth.
Habakkuk moves on to describe this God in song that is stunning to our modern sensitivities. If a song like this were to be written in our day, I doubt it would find much airplay on Christian radio stations in San Diego. Habakkuk describes His, and our, God as a mighty warrior who comes with such unlimited power to destroy His foes and save His people, that it is breathtaking.
We often like to picture God as either completely removed from the dealings of humans at an intimate level, or we bring Him to our level and make Him nothing more than a neutered lap cat that will sit in our laps and let us rub his head and make us feel better. When we describe God the way that this prophet does, many people become disturbed because they have created a god according to their imagination and not according to how He reveals Himself in His word. God is gracious and patient, but God will one day come to an end of His patience because He will not let sin and evil prevail, and when He does, He will come as a warrior to defeat those who oppose Him. He is a pacifist; after He destroys all His enemies then there is great peace. Some of you may not like this description of God because you think this type of strength is unfair. Yet we betray our own objections when we are wronged and expect that justice is served and we are vindicated. How much more does God have the right to display His justice than we do in seeking our own?
GOD AS MIGHTY WARRIOR Verse 9-15
Verses 9-15- “You stripped the sheath from your bow, calling for many arrows. Selah. You split the earth with rivers. 10 The mountains saw you and writhed; the raging waters swept on; the deep gave forth its voice; it lifted its hands on high. 11 The sun and moon stood still in their place at the light of your arrows as they sped, at the flash of your glittering spear. 12 You marched through the earth in fury; you threshed the nations in anger. 13 You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck. Selah…14- You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors, who came like a whirlwind to scatter me, rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret. 15 You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters.”
This is a powerful and frightening picture of God dressed in battle gear, upon His horse, coming for His enemies with bow in hand. This again speaks of the Exodus and how God saved His people, but it is not limited only to that story. Again, God comes in heroic grace to His people and devastating might to His enemies.
Habakkuk sees God as One who is sovereign over the entire cosmos—a God whose incredible power causes the wind and waters to respond to His spoken word, a God who can cause the sun and moon to stand still, a God who comes for the salvation of His people through the vindication of the Davidic King, Jesus, who came as a friend in His first coming with hand extended and miracles performed to show that the Kingdom of God has come upon this Earth. This same Jesus who defeated death by rising from the dead three days after His crucifixion, will come back on a horse in great power and fury to judge the living and the dead. His loving hand that was extended in friendship will be turned into a fist to strike the heads of those who have offended a holy and just God. Those who refused to humble themselves before their Creator will not be able to stand against this Warrior King.
We have to realize as Christians, our Gospel is good news because it is a declaration of who God is and what He has done in crushing our enemies and giving us a righteousness that is not our own. This Gospel comes and demonstrates that the most horrid pagan is no better off than the self-righteous religious. Both are trusting in themselves, and neither are living by faith in Christ. One attempts to ignore the obvious by acting as if God is not there, the other misses the obvious by declaring that God exists, yet acting as if he can save himself. As we looked at last week, idolatry takes on many forms. Some of them seemingly righteous and some blatantly unrighteous, but both forms will be destroyed since both attempt to usurp the salvation bought for us through Christ alone.
Jesus is the anointed One who, though He was killed, God saved Him from the grave and declared to all of creation that He held the power over life and death, and only He can save from our last great enemy—death. Since the Father demonstrated His power by rising His Son from the dead, if we trust in Christ’s death on our behalf, and His victory which He won, you and I can now live as a delivered people who cry out from the depths of our soul songs of praise and lives of worship in hearts of great thankfulness.
As Habakkuk contemplates this awesome history of God’s mighty works, as he thinks about God’s just wrath and His loving mercy, as he recounts the stories of God’s deliverance of His people and the hope that one day He will come for them, he reacts physically to all of these descriptions.
DECLARING HIS FAITH Verses 16-19
This is the culmination of 2:4
Verse 16- “I hear, and my body (inward parts) trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us.”
Habakkuk’s reaction to this warrior God is incredible, though understandable. He has just complained to God about what He sees and received answers beyond His emotional capacity, and to top it all off, He sings a song of the power of His God and His body can take no more. He heart pounds, his stomach trembles, his lips quiver and his bones ache in pain as his legs shake beneath him.
What attitude or disposition does this prophet have toward his God now? One of great and inspiring faith. Habakkuk declares that in all of this, he will wait quietly for the day of God’s judgment to come on his enemies and that will sustain him. A sure trust that God is good and perfectly just, and that God will neither leave them in their destruction nor let the enemies escape His divine hand of punishment.
Notice who Habakkuk is trembling over—is it the Chaldeans? NO. Habakkuk is trembling in great fear over the mighty power of God, and though God brings this right judgment upon His people, Habakkuk now finds a greater measure of faith birthed through this dialogue and reminder of God’s grace to sustain Him through the dark nights to come. And now, here is how the righteous will live by their faith.
Verse 17-18- “Though the fig
tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the
olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the
fold and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the
God of my salvation.”
The point at which Habakkuk began to exercise his faith is not right now, but back in the beginning when he came to God with his burden and spoke to God about it. By taking his frustrations to God, and by listening to His responses, his faith was built to a place that it was not previously. Now he can wait in trusting patience for God to do what God deems best in a season of his life that is far more difficult than what he assumed and yet he is far stronger in his faith than when he began.
I love that Habakkuk is singing this passage. I believe that this is the language of love and these types of experiences can only be described by the human lips in celebration through song. When we see Adam and Eve before the fall, the only human words we have before the temptation are Adam’s words to Eve that, “She is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23). We are also told in the glimpses of Heaven in Revelation there at some 10 new songs that are to be sung at the end of days.
Here Habakkuk speaks of his trust in God even if the fig, vines, olive and fields give no food, and even if the flocks are cut off from the fold and there are no animals in the stalls to sustain them for life, Habakkuk will yet trust in God and rejoice in the LORD. Realizing that his hunger will be caused by God’s judgment upon them, yet He will still rejoice in God. What is it that he will take joy in? “In the God of my salvation.”
If all of your livestock and vines, fields and trees are bare and produce no food, you will physically die. You will have nothing to sustain your physical life.
Does this sound familiar to Job? “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him…” (Job 13:15). When Job found out that all his livestock and all his wealth, and all of his children were taken from him, he responded by saying, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21). When his wife told him to curse God and die, he responded by saying, “Shall we only accept good from God and not adversity?” (Job 2:10). Read Job chapter 1.
It is much, much easier to worship God when life is good and all is well. When you are healthy, your friends are near, and your bank account is full. It is much more difficult to worship God when you are sick, lonely and poor.
When everything you desire does not come to pass, can you still worship and rejoice? How is it possible to praise God when things are hard? The key is that you praise God for who He is and in doing so you can praise Him in any season. If your relationship with God is dependent upon what He gives you, then when He takes it away, your worship was never really for Him but for the things He has given you.
You are to praise God for what He has done, not just for what He is doing today. You praise God for not only what He has done, but what He promises to do. So that when you are in a dark night of your soul, you can look at His faithfulness in history, His sure promises for the future, and you can withstand the day, even rejoice, because He is the same God. And if you go through the experience of Job and of Habakkuk, what you will find if you really love God is that those circumstances have done nothing more than blow away the clutter so that you can worship God more intensely for who He is.
If God never shows up again, and if God never does another thing, He has already given us His Son, and His Son is of greater value and worth than any material possession we could ever have.
If your goal is to be successful, you will not be able to praise God when you are not. If your goal is to be wealthy, you will not be able to praise God if you are poor. If your goal is power, you will not be able to praise God when you have none. But if your goal is to simply be close to God, then you will be able to praise Him no matter what happens. And like Habakkuk, you will grow in your faith and find yourself thankful for your time of trial because it brought you closer to God. How many of you have experienced that? Sickness, loss, a broken relationship, or a number of things which devastated you, yet drew you closer to Him and through that you threw yourself at His feet and became a worshipper.
God is a God of salvation, and Jesus is enough for us to sing about forever even if He was all we had.
Verse 19- “GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.”
Habakkuk sees that the sovereign Lord is His strength. He is sovereign over all things and His strong hand gives us great comfort because we know He is a loving Father that bends all things to His own glory and will. If you attempt to gain all of your strength from your education, relationships, money, power, authority, or intellect, or any other idol we pursue more than God, at some point you will grow tired and lose heart. At some point your strength will be lost. But those who draw near to God no matter what happens in their lives find a reservoir in God to draw from that is never ending.
How many of you have seen the heights that a deer can climb? They are swift and able to scale up steep mountains and can stand on high places. This is what Habakkuk is singing in faith to His God. That even when Habakkuk sees an impassable mountain before Him which seems only to be growing, God’s strength which empowers Him will also give him feet as swift as a deer for him to climb in faith and stand to see clearly. Trials, strife, difficult circumstances, evil, injustice, weakness, sickness, and all the rest piling themselves up in our lives, which seem so daunting, are scaled in faith by a strength that God provides as we trust in His provision and power and we climb. Faith sees the promises of God and the strength derived from it and as we take on eyes of faith we are aware more and more of what God can do and less and less of what we cannot.
Kaleo, are you at a place where you want to follow in Habakkuk’s steps and no matter what happens you want to be with God in worship? You will never understand this book until you have been as frustrated as Habakkuk begins and as trusting of God as he ends, and you sing.
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