A Confident Faith

Habakkuk’s Questions and God’s Answer About Judah and Babylon

Completes, Lord willing, the prophecy of Habakkuk, which we've been in for some time now. And we've saved the whole of chapter 3 for the message this afternoon. This prayer that Habakkuk makes to the Lord God, having in this prophecy come to God and ask these questions, which some weeks ago we examined.

And hearing the Lord's answer and just the awesome and the horrible nature of that answer that came. By horrible I mean this in the way the 16th century reformers meant it, not in a bad way, but beyond belief.

Awesome. Horrible as in incomprehensible. Where Habakkuk asked in the opening of the prophecy, and I'm paraphrasing here, Why, Lord, do you for so long tolerate and show such patience to such obvious and blatant sin?

Now his question had to do with Judah. His question had to do with the people of God in the southern kingdom, and most primarily with the leadership there. The princes, the rulers, the priests, the kings.

Why, Lord, are you silent for so long when their sin is so easily established? And God's answer is, essentially, I'm neither patient nor impatient because God does all things at the right and the perfect time, and I'm not tolerant of sin at all.

In fact, Habakkuk, a nation that is hasty and violent is coming, and they will be my instruments of judgment against this nation whose sin you seem impatient for me to become more impatient with. And upon hearing that, Habakkuk basically says, this cannot be.

How can you, who are of two pure eyes than to behold evil, use a people worse than the ones you're going to judge to judge that people? So in this back-and-forth between the prophet and God, Habakkuk finally goes at the beginning of chapter 2 and says, he's going to stand on the watchtower, he's going to wait and see what God the Lord will answer him.

And having heard the answers, and having had this dialogue with God, we have in chapter 3 this outburst of praise for God. I said this several weeks ago, that there's some thought in the commentators, the scholars, that Habakkuk was actually of some priestly caste.

Within Judah, within the temple service, and we, as we went through it, we found some pretty good evidences for that. His intercessory nature of his prayers, and how he went to God on behalf of the people, the way a priest should.

And perhaps chapter 3 of Habakkuk would support that theory even more. As if he was in the priestly tribe, if he was a Levite, many Levites were trained in music, trained to lead the people in worship through and by music.

And so he has a song in chapter 3, which is the end of the prophecy and the final answer to all things. And at the end of it, we come to the final application for ourselves. And we will get, I'll tell you now, but we will get there as we go through it.

Rejoicing in the Lord When All Earthly Supports Are Taken Away

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 herds in the store. In other words, in the stalls, excuse me, in other words, if all my own means of sustenance, if everything I can grab on to, if everything I can accomplish with the work of my hands, the fields planted, the agriculture that was supposed to be so productive for them, the herds, the flocks, which gave them milk and meat in the time, if all these things are taken away, and church, we need to ask ourselves, if our cars break down, we live in California, if the earth should, as it did in the days of Israel's wandering, open up and swallow our home, if this economy should fail and our jobs should dry up, if everything we thought we had, we were so secure in, because I earned it.

My wife and I are right now dealing with a refrigerator that went on the blink. We just have terrible fortune with appliances, and once again, Lord willing, it's getting fixed. Perhaps starting an hour ago, our son is at the house to let the repairman in.

If that refrigerator failed completely, if my checkbook didn't have funds enough to pay for a repairman, if I had no church that was generous and granted me a salary, if my car didn't work, what would I have left?

What would you have left if all these things, all these foundations, all these pillars to our confidence were taken away? Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. This is the confident faith of Habakkuk.

God willing, this is the confident faith of each of us here in this church this day. It's a prayer in verse 1 of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shugianoth. At the end of the prophecy, at the end of the chapter, he says this is to the choir master with stringed instruments, and this is one of the reasons we see his ability in music, his musicianship, which would have been typical of a trained Levite.

One scholar suggests that verse 2, which we'll read in a moment, is the title of the piece, and that there are three stanzas, and that each stanza has an introduction that is marked off at the end of the introduction with the word Selah.

Selah, a very difficult word to actually translate, and it doesn't have much testimony outside of Scripture, but it seems to me, pause, stop, take a breath, and think about what you've just read. Think about what God's Word has just told you.

I want to go through this in four parts, and the first is the refrain of verse 2, and then the three stanzas in order. So verse 2, the title, a refrain, it's, we sing it again as we do many of our hymns, where at the end of the stanza we do the refrain, then go back to the next stanza.

It's that way with this song, where verse 2 might be that stanza that precedes the, excuse me, the, the title, the refrain, that's what I was looking for, might be the refrain that precedes each stanza.

So the refrain is this, and I think it is good for us to take a moment and look at this. Oh Lord, this is verse 2, I've heard the report 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.

See, he had been told the mighty works of God, and they fill him with awe, they fill him with wonder. By his day, the last of God's miraculous interventions had been quite a long time before. If he was indeed a Levite, he would have certainly known the scripture, and any Jew would have known the Exodus story, which is what is alluded to here.

When he cries out, what he cries out for is that God will again work this way for his people. Having heard in his prophecy that Babylon is coming, and Babylon is going to take them into exile to an Egypt of sorts, and believing this, even while Babylon is not yet there, while Judah is still in their own land, he says in wrath remember mercy.

Work again for us as you had in the Exodus. The answer to Habakkuk's question about the Lord's excessive patience with Judah's sin left him startled, it left him awestruck, and Babylon, far worse, would be the instrument of judgment.

And then as the Lord's answers unfolds to him, he finds out even more about Babylon. That Babylon, for their excesses, the excesses which they haven't done yet, but we can look at them from Habakkuk's eyes as if they'd already been done because God had said, for their excesses in carrying out the judgment for which God ordained them, will be judged themselves.

So in a swirl of bewilderment, the prophet can only land where we all must. As we said at the beginning, if all these things are taken away, if God chose to judge this country, this state, this city, this church, by those worse than ourselves, which I think if we had a realistic view of ourselves, wouldn't be that hard to find, would it?

Where would we end up? Where would we land? Where would our faith be? We'd land on the mercies of God. We'd say it is a good God who only does what is right and good. The judge of all the earth will only do what is right.

Faith believes that no matter how hard is his chastising hand, he is good and everything he does is not just good, but is for our good, as his blood-bought children, purchased by the blood, the precious blood of his only begotten Son, his precious Son.

Romans 8 .32 says, he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? And perhaps as it was for Judah in this day, the giving to us of all things is to take away some things, which is then to give us the foundation from which there's nothing to fall back on, nothing to rely upon, but whom?

But God. And how? By faith in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Trusting his Spirit to work in us, to keep our eyes open to his cross, to show us his way, to keep us confident in him. And perhaps as it was in Judah's day, our overconfidence in our own self-generated assets, the things that we have upon which we stake our confidence.

We wake up in the morning certain that we can go to work because we have enough money to put enough gas in the car to get us there and earn even more money. When those things are taken away, is not God actually giving?

Because what he's giving to us is a chance to have nothing to fall back upon, but him. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him, with Christ, graciously give us all things?

The prophet believes what he had read in the scriptures, the oral traditions by which these were committed to memory were very strong. So God's past acts, the things that we have recorded in our Bibles, what Habakkuk had even his day.

We might think primarily of the Exodus, or excuse me, the Pentateuch. But we have the history of the beginning of the world, and then focusing down upon Israel. We might think of Exodus, which is alluded to here, and the redemption of God's people out of Israel, or out of Egypt, and into Israel.

God's past acts are as his current acts, and will be his future acts, are all perfectly consistent with God's nature. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So why do we look back on the past?

Well, as Habakkuk did, we say when all these things are taken away, when all these pillars in my life are removed by God, I can look back on what God has done in history, in my personal history, in biblical history, in all history, and say everything God does is consistent with his nature.

It's done for my good, and therefore, if I know that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, he never changes. There's no shadow of change, and there's no variation in him. As James says, we can meet these things with a Habakkuk-like confidence.

Forever and a day, we might say that Christ's death has assured our salvation. That's the history. That's the redemption. That's the Exodus, as Habakkuk looks upon the type of that great redemption we have when Israel is brought out of Egypt.

He looks back upon that and says, act like that again. We look back upon the cross, which is consistent with God's nature, to Habakkuk, which is consistent with God's nature in what he did in the Exodus, and we can look and say, because of the cross of Jesus Christ, where God did not spare his own son for me, but he graciously gave him up for me, I know he will give us all things.

He will give me all things, and that for my good. We can look back upon the cross, that great salvation that God effectuated, done by the same God who Habakkuk worshiped. We could say it's something like this.

We could say, oh Lord, I have heard the report of your son's cross and his resurrection, and this work, oh Lord, fills me with awe. In the midst of the years, revive it in me, so that I might live in his power, in the power of his resurrection.

In the midst of these years, make it known abroad. In wrath poured out on Christ, you set sinners like me, sinners like us, on your mercy. What God has done in the past tells us of his nature and sets our hope for the future.

Habakkuk remembers God's mighty act of redemption. That's the exodus, and based upon that history, he looks ahead even to the Babylonian disaster with a faithful assurance. We cannot ask God what tomorrow will bring.

We're told over and over, it's none of our business, really. Jesus says, why do you worry? You can't change the color of a single hair on your head. You don't know anything about tomorrow, except perhaps statistical probability.

James says, say Lord willing, I will do these things because you don't know. What can we look to? God's past. Our past with God, because God doesn't really have a past, so I misspoke there just a bit.

We can look to what we have recorded in the past of what God has done, and how he has acted. So that's the refrain. That's all wrapped up in that refrain, in that introduction to all the stanzas. The first stanza starts in the first half of verse 3.

God the Warrior in the Exodus and the Stanza of His Sovereign Power

God came from Taman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran, Selah. His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. His brightness was like the light. Rays flashed from his hand, and there he veiled his power.

Before him went pestilence, and plague followed at his heels. 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. I saw the tents of Kushan in affliction. The curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. 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?

Mount Paran is actually on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula. It's where Israel came out of the Red Sea, and this is why I was saying before that the Exodus is what Habakkuk is looking back to. And God here is both warrior and his Redeemer.

The pestilence and the plague look back to the ten plagues that destroyed Egypt. But not just then. As we said, Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God's ways never change. God's nature is the impetus for all his works.

Excuse me. It was God the warrior who gave Abram victory over the five kings in Genesis 14. It was God the warrior who defeated Egypt with plagues and with forces of nature with hail and darkness and hordes of locusts and frogs and the like.

In Judges 5 there was torrential rain that he sent. In 1st Samuel 7, a thunderstorm. In 2nd Kings 18 to 19, Jerusalem's defeat is circumvented when the plague kills 175 ,000 Assyrians. Elijah prophesied famine and later land-curing rain.

At Mount Horeb he saw God in wind and fire. We read in Matthew that Jesus' cross was attended by darkness and an earthquake. We notice in verse 6 that the hills are called everlasting. And then right away we read God's ways were the everlasting ways.

Nothing lasts forever, says the old group Kansas in that hit song of theirs. Nothing lasts forever except the moon and stars. It was a good song, but it's not true. Nothing lasts forever except for God and his ways.

So this refrain, O Lord, I've heard the report of you. In your ways, O Lord, do I fear. In the midst of your years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. Now stanza two.

God’s Sovereign Purpose in Salvation and the Stanza of the Anointed

You stripped the sheath from your bow, calling for many arrows. Salah. You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and writhed. The raging waters swept on. The deep gave forth its voice. It lifted its hands on high.

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. You marched through the earth in fury. You threshed the nations in anger. You went out for the salvation of your people and for the salvation of your anointed.

So we read here is all nature bowing to his will. He made nature and nature will accomplish his purposes. Verses 9 through 11 speak of his sovereign power and then verses 12 and 13 of his purpose. And what is his purpose?

The salvation of his anointed. Now anointed does not refer to Jesus. He's the anointed one. But he doesn't need salvation. He is salvation. Anointed is the King of Judah. Anointed is the high priest and possibly even the people that the Lord has placed in their care.

Joseph read to you this morning about Jesus or about Moses throwing the blood of the covenant upon the people. Anointing them, if you will. Whichever is meant, all the earth combines towards the intentions of its maker, which is to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works, which is Titus 2 14.

And here in Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 12, you went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. So why does God halt the sun in his course or cause rivers to flow? Why do earthquakes split open the earth?

Why is Kilauea right now, that volcano, spewing out lava? It's all bowing down to the will of God who is directing it all to the salvation of his people. I can't tell you how a volcano or an earthquake or a hailstorm or a tornado or hurricane or anything else works to my salvation, but I can tell you that God's Word says it does.

And I believe when we see Christ as he is, we will understand it. God's wisdom will be made plain. It will be made manifold to us. We will understand it. I think we'll have that huge, that unbelievable aha moment.

When we see how the tsunami several years ago, what was that, 2004? That destroyed nearly a quarter million lives. We're gonna see how that worked to salvation. And not just generally to people's salvation, but to your salvation if you are in Christ.

My salvation now that I am in Christ, it all works under God's power, under his sovereign will for us. Ephesians 3 .10 says that God created all things so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Why did God create? God created the earth so that it would house the church, the church of the redeemed. And why? So that his power, so that God's power might be made known. I think Habakkuk obviously would have agreed with Ephesians 3 .10.

Excuse me. In fact, I think that's pretty much what he said. The psalmist says that the hymns are in this constant hymn declaring God's glory. We might add that he has invested that glory in the salvation of his people.

The salvation in redeeming us and giving us eyes to see and faith to believe in Christ Jesus our Lord. Christ is the glory of God. Christ is the one who lived for God's glory at every moment and at the cross became the laser-like beam that highlighted God's glory in the salvation of his people.

Excuse me. Romans 6 .4 says that Christ was raised by the glory of the Father. 1 Corinthians 15 .43 says we will be raised in that same glory. That's why Habakkuk can look to God's marvelous interventions in nature and say it is all being coordinated for the good of our eternal souls.

And so the refrain, O Lord, I have heard the report 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. Stanza three, the last one.

God Crushing the Wicked and the Final Hope of the Cross

You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck. 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.

You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters. It's just this. God the warrior will destroy his enemies. Habakkuk is still looking back to the exodus and that is his buttress of hope for what is coming for his people.

Because of what God did then, he can anticipate the coming Babylonians with help. He is certain that Judah will survive. Why? Because it's a happy feeling to think we'll survive? No, but because God has said so in our history with him.

As we look back on his past works, we weren't there in the exodus. We weren't there at the cross. But by faith we believe that that history is ours. And that history confirms for us all of God's word plus what has not yet been fulfilled in us.

So he summarizes the whole matter in verses 16 through 19. I hear and my body 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.

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, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places to the choir master with stringed instruments.". The original language actually says his belly trembled.

Deep down that inner core of his being, that faraway place that only God can explore, that's where God's word penetrates. The trials which we may go through can bring anger, they can bring resentment.

When God's chastising hand forcefully changes our course and causes us to acknowledge our sin, our flint-like foreheads deflect his spirit's work, and the flesh rises up against the new heart to drive us back to our old ways.

And that happens so often to us. We just get resentful. We get bitter. We've seen people walk away from the faith because they cannot accept God's harder providences. They cannot accept that God's chastising hand is upon them for their good, to bring them to a knowledge and acknowledgement of their sin, to bring them to repentance, to know once again the forgiveness of God by the blood of Christ.

Habakkuk pays for us a better way. He shows us the path of the faithful. He trembles at God's word. He feels rotten in God's presence and then with the fig tree refusing to offer any fruit, with all of trees remaining bare, with flocks and herds all gone, all the means of sustenance have gone dormant, he hopes in God.

God whose record makes it a light and a momentary trial. And this is the path he pays for the church. This is a path he offers to us to remember God's past, to remember our past with God, and to know that because of that and his unchanging nature, he has worked for our good and that we will come through and better said he will bring us through to the end that he determined for us.

There's a pattern here. God sent his people into Egypt where they were enslaved and about 430 years later he visited them and brought them out to a good land, which the scripture says was large and free.

Habakkuk prophesies of the exile to Babylon and we know from the latter-day prophets that they were brought back again into exile and redeemed just as it was in Egypt and it's really no different for us.

Are we not born or were we not born slaves to sin? Romans chapter 6, the whole chapter would say yes, resoundingly yes, and willingly those slaves. Are we not born dead in trespass and sin? Ephesians 2 with Psalm 51 will say yes, resoundingly yes.

And as Israel longed to return to their slave fair of garlic and leeks, so we return over and over again to our sin like dogs to vomit. But then as he had before, God redeemed those who had been foreordained as his own.

That's Ephesians 1 .3. Ephesians 1 .3 says that before anything ever was, God the Father chose a people by name to be redeemed by his Son and brought to faith in him by the working of his spirit. So this pattern of exile, slavery, darkness, sin, iniquity, and then God's glorious and mighty and powerful works of bringing his people, his chosen people, his predestined people, out of that and back into the sheepfold as Jesus says in John chapter 10, just repeats over and over in this sort of crescendo of intensity until it comes to the cross where final redemption and our eternal destiny and fate was set.

Are we impressed with what Habakkuk says that God commands oceans and fault lines? Let's wonder more that he is powerful to change a sinner's heart, that core of the inner man more implacable than any river, deeper in darkness than any depth, more violent against God than any volcano.

And yet God overcomes even that stone hard cold heart. Titus 3 .5 says that it is according to his mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Verse 13 in Habakkuk 3 says that God crushed the head of the wicked anticipating what? Genesis 3 .15, which says Satan's crushed head is the final meaning of what Habakkuk said about God crushing enemies' heads.

As Habakkuk looked back to the exodus and there found the basis for hope, we today, we look back and see the ultimate case for our hope, the cross. The cross. Why do we hope in God? Because he told us, he said in the scripture that the cross is where redemption or final salvation would be won.

And that is our past, that is our history. That's what the Bible tells us. And so we look back to that and that's our basis for hope. That's our basis for faithful patience, endurance under all the trials that God would have for us.

Habakkuk knew of the hard times to come in detail because of God's direct inspiration to him. Now you and I don't have that kind of revelation in that kind of detail. Excuse me, you and I do have. You and I have equal revelation, excuse me.

No less personal, no less detailed, no less certain than what the prophet was told. God spoke to the prophet by voice and spirit. To us he speaks with equal clarity by the same spirit in his word. He tells us that Jesus' cross accomplished all that is needed for our salvation.

The scriptures tell us that by God's grace we're saved through faith and that by that faith we now sit with Christ in the heavenly places. 1 John 4, verse 2 says that one day when Jesus appears again, we will be like him.

We shall see him as he is. How do we know that? We know that by faith. We know that because God's word says it. We confirm that because the history that we have recorded in scripture and in our hearts, our personal histories with God, confirm it.

This all leads us to the table set before us this afternoon. This table which is really a reenactment of this great deliverance of God for his people. This table which reminds us of that cross that Jesus Christ died for our sins and God raised him up again for our justification.

That's Romans chapter 4, verse 25. This cross which God opened our eyes to see, to know that Christ Jesus died for me, the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. This history we can look back on and say this confirms tomorrow for me.

Do I know what tomorrow brings? No. But I know if God takes it all away yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. This salvation which we hear this afternoon. Remember this table, the bread and the wine meant to strengthen our souls by once again infusing us with the hope of the gospel.

We'll partake in a few moments and when we do let us rejoice that the rottenness that Habakkuk speaks of when he saw God and the coming judgment against his people, he says rottenness entered his bones.

We can rejoice that rottenness entered Jesus's bones. The rottenness that should have been ours was his as he hung on the tree on the cross. Let us rejoice that when everything was taken from him that it was his lips as he hung on the tree that quivered out and said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Him.

So that we as we should have been would not be forsaken. His lips made that cry that ours might not. He forsaken as he suffered for our sins in order that we might not be forever forsaken by God that we can join the prophet say, yet I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

And because of the cross of Jesus, his death, his burial, his resurrection, because of that we can join our prophet whatever comes with the cross of Christ in view. We can say with him, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places. So let's go to song once again and worship. Let us prepare our hearts for this table knowing that this table reminds us of this great act of redemption, this work of God, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And let this table be for us a strengthening, a reminder of this mighty act of deliverance, this final act of deliverance that God effected for us in his son. And let this table strengthen us through the week that is to come.

As the hardships come, as the trials come, as all the pillars might be taken away or start to get a little shaky for us, let us remember this afternoon here in this place that as we take of this bread, we remember Christ's body broken for me.

As we partake of the wine, we remember his life, his blood poured out for me. And let this be the perspective that we place upon everything else that comes to us in the week to come. That's the reason we come to the table every Sunday now.

We've been doing it this way for a couple and a half years after for a long time doing it just once a month because it strengthens us. It reminds us of something that is real and literal and true that Christ Jesus did die for us.

And because of his death and our faith in him, God is well pleased with us and well disposed towards us. And whatever comes upon us, we know is in his goodwill. And if he gave his son, if he did not spare Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, his beloved son, if he did not spare him, how will he not in him freely give us all things?

Let this be our strengthening. Let this be our support. Let our faith in the hard times that may come tomorrow be in this. May this be where our eyes go back. So with that, please turn to hymn number 175, Man of Sorrows.

And with that, we will prepare our hearts to take the table.