Certainty in the Face of Mystery Part 3 | Habakkuk 3:1-19

All right, let's pray before we go further. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that

you are a speaking God, that you give your word to us that we might know you. And we

thank you that you speak to us in so many different ways, in parables and texts and

songs like we have today. And we ask that we might understand that and that we might

remember your word so that it changes our lives. Amen.

Before I get into the passage directly, I wanted to start by thinking about two Christian

ideas. And then we're going to take those two ideas and use them to discuss and understand

the passage. And those ideas are the twin ideas of hope and faith. Now, the first of

those, hope, is a bit of a tricky one because the Christian concept of hope kind of overlaps

with the way that we use it in everyday language, but it's also a little bit different. So we

use the word hope. Like if we're talking about hope, we might say something like, I hope

it won't rain on the weekend. So if I say that, I hope it won't rain, I don't really

know whether it's going to rain or not. I'm saying, well, if I am saying I hope, at that

point I probably haven't checked the weather report, I'm kind of indicating that I don't

know. I just mean that I don't want it to rain on the weekend. My desire is that I can

have my picnic or whatever's going on. So it's a word that expresses our want for something

or desire for something to happen in the future. And that's part of the idea of a Christian

hope. But hope can also mean the thing itself, the thing that we desire. So not just the

act of desiring it, but focuses on that end thing. So not just my wanting that it's a

sunny day on the weekend, but the sunny day itself. So that would be more like saying,

I have put my hope in a sunny day. So I place my hope, my hope is on that thing that is

the sunny day. And that's kind of closer to a Christian understanding of hope. Hope is

a future thing that we both desire, but also that we commit to. It's kind of the end point

that our journey is focused on. It's the thing that we're working towards. And it's a really

good thing for us to stop in our lives and to think about what our hope is. What have

we put our hope in? What is the goal? What is the objective that we build our lives around?

For many Australians, our great hope is retirement. Okay, that's the great hope of our working

lives. So we look forward to a time when we're no longer going to need to work, a time when

we finally have the house paid off, if you can imagine such a thing. And then, you know,

with that paid off, then it's a time that we can buy our boat or our caravan or whatever

other toy that our mortgage has prevented us from laying our hands on. It's a time when

we're hoping that our kids will be more independent and not causing us too much grief. And then

we can head up to Kalbarri or down to Gracetown or fly to Bali or do whatever our hearts desire.

Another word for hope is our reward. It's the thing that we want to obtain. And we're

going to put a fair bit, we're going to put up with a fair bit in our working life because

it allows us to achieve that great hope. On a smaller scale, you may not be thinking that

far ahead, especially if you're younger. On a smaller scale, we just live for the weekend.

Some people might put their hope in a kind of notoriety or some level of recognition

or importance. And often we can gain that from our career itself. That's the thing that

we're hoping for, is to achieve things in this life. And the reason that we do that,

the reason that that's so strong in us as Australians, is because we're flooded with

images of talent and achievement in whatever realm that we look into. So it's not like

we live any more in small villages where we would just see the people around us and then

value, therefore, those people and their commitments to the community. That's what would be prized.

But we live in a global village where we can't just see the people around us, but we see

the best of the best and have reference to them all the time. So we're bombarded with,

we study the great writers and the great artists. We know about the great scientists. The news

tells us about the great entrepreneurs of our age. And then we have Taylor Swift. And

if you haven't seen 10 images of Taylor Swift this week, then well done to you. And can

I join you in whatever hole you're living in? I'm not trying to bring down Taylor Swift,

but what I want to just point out is the way that she is her own brand. And that is a kind

of this complete package of talent and beauty and notoriety and fame and celebrity. And

we see that and we're bombarded with these images and we can't help but just want a small

slice of that in whatever field that we would like to achieve in. Other people put their

hope in marriage, put their hope in having children because that's the thing that makes

them feel secure and significant in life. And all of these things that I've mentioned

to a greater or lesser degree can be good and all of them are redeemable. But the question

is what do we put our hope in? What's the greatest object that our life is moving towards?

What's the carrot, if you like? So you know about the carrot. You've seen the picture

of the guy who's sitting on the donkey and he's got the stick and then kind of the string

with the carrot. So there's always this carrot in front of the donkey and the donkey will

just keep walking as long as he thinks he's getting closer and closer to the carrot. But

what's the thing in our life that's driving our decisions, our life? What moves us forward?

What's the thing that if you took it away from us then the journey of life just wouldn't

be the same? And they're all worldly things. They're all things that the world runs after

and we too may fall into. But as Christians we put our hope into things that are beyond

us, beyond this world. And we can kind of express that and the Bible expresses that

in many different ways. It can talk about us putting our hope in God or put our hope

in Christ or put our hope in his kingdom in the new creation, the life after this one.

And one of the things that's really worthwhile doing and just say it was a Sunday and just

say you had a free Sunday afternoon, one thing that you could do is if you have an electronic

Bible like on your phone or your computer or the internet or something and you can do

a search on it, put the word put and hope together in the search so that it'll find

all the verses in the Bible that has those two words. And then spend time just reading

all the things that we're to put our hope in. There's lots of them. But 1st Timothy

chapter 4 verse 10 puts it this way, it says, that is why we labour and strive because we

have put our hope in the living God. So that's the Christian hope, putting our hope in the

living God. But I said before that hope has a twin and that is faith. Okay, so if hope

is the thing that is focused on the goal, the end point, then faith is trusting day

to day that we're going to receive that thing. Faith is the active working towards our hope.

And so the writer to the Hebrews puts it like this, so this is Hebrews chapter 11 verse

Hebrews 11:1

1. So you could turn to that or just if you're writing it down jot it down to have a look

or listen to it really carefully because listen carefully to what it says about faith and

hope. It says, now faith is confidence in what we hope for. So it's the confidence that

we have in that thing, the thing that we hope for, that goal. Faith is confidence in what

we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. So we cannot see the thing that we

hope for. We can't see Christ's glorious return. We can't see the perfection of the new creation.

But faith is what gives us confidence, not just that it's going to come but assurance

that when it does that we're going to be a part of it. Okay, so we've talked a bit about

where we place our hope, but we need to think also about how we find our faith. How do we

continue to believe in the coming of God's perfect kingdom, a kingdom of righteousness

and justice when we see injustice around us in the world? How can we continue to put our

hope in a good God when we suffer? And how do we live a life that forsakes all the wonderful

looking shiny and beautiful things of this world for the sake of pressing on to be counted

worthy of the gospel on the last day? Where do we find that faith? And that question is

answered by Habakkuk and so we need to get into that now. And in order to do that, in

order to find answers, we need to first notice that we need to notice what we have here in

this chapter 3 and how all the bits fit together. And once we do that, we start to be able

to see its meaning more easily. So if you look at the start and the end of chapter 3

of what we have, you'll see that we have here a psalm. It's very much like what we find

in the book of the psalm. So if you look at the first line, it says a prayer of Habakkuk.

So that's the way that many of the psalms start by announcing that it's a prayer of

somebody. Then it says on shig in on off, which is probably a musical term. We don't

know but we assume that is, that's part of the psalm. And then if you kind of look, so

that's in the first line and then you look at like the bracket of it in the last line,

it says for the director of music on stringed instruments. So it's a prayer, it's a prayer

of Habakkuk, but it's one that's written in a poetic form and it's to be sung and performed.

And we've sung songs today, even one of them reflecting on this psalm. And the songs that

we sing have a structure, right? We have a way of kind of they fit together and a pattern

to them. So songs can have verses, so it could be a series of verses or it might have a chorus.

So you have verse, chorus, verse, chorus. If it's a more kind of modern song, then it

sort of has verse and chorus and it's got to have a bridge in there somewhere and then

back to a verse or whatever. That's the structure around what we have. And in this psalm, they

do things differently, but it has a structure too. And once we see that, it's easier to

get the meaning. And what we have here is a sandwich with a conclusion at the end. Okay?

So it's a sandwich in the sense that verses two and verses 16 are kind of parallel and

work together and they bracket around the bit in the middle. So that's kind of like

the meat in the sandwich, which is verses three to 15. And when we see the way that

verses two and 16 work together, that's kind of a helpful clue to what's going on here.

And then at the end in verses 17 to 19, we get a conclusion, which is a conclusion to

the psalm and a conclusion to the whole book of Habakkuk. So we have a kind of a sandwich.

It's actually a judgement sandwich with judgement in the middle. And it's a judgement sandwich

served in hope, with hope around it, with a side of faith, with faith at the end. So

we have judgement served in hope with a side of faith. And we're going to look at those

things. We're going to look at judgement and hope and faith in that order. But to do that,

we need to go a little bit out of the order of the psalm because we need to kind of recognise

that it is a sandwich and we want to keep verses two and 16 together. And really in

order to understand those verses, it's best to first kind of look at three to 15 and then

see kind of what holds two and 16 together. So what we're going to do is we're just going

to walk through fairly briefly verses three to 15 and look at the meat in the sandwich,

if you like. Look at the judgement. So in verse two, Habakkuk asks God to make his great

deeds known in his time. And then what we get in this middle part, verses three to 15,

we get this prophetic vision of God's great deeds, the very thing that Habakkuk's just

prayed for in verse two. And what happens in these verses is that they combine references

of what's happened in the past with visions of God's greatness and his glory and power.

And so if you look at verses three and verse seven, you'll see that there are place names

there. And those places are places that are associated with the journey out of Egypt.

So we have that kind of like as if the people are coming up out of Egypt into the land.

And then if you look at verse 15, we hear of trampling the sea and churning the great

waters and their words that key us in to remind us of the Exodus when God saved his people

from Egypt. And he allowed his people to cross the sea and then drown the Egyptian army.

And so we have here reminders of God's great deeds in the past. In fact, from Habakkuk's

point of view, that's the greatest deeds of God looking back into what is essentially

the gospel of Israel in the Old Testament, the Exodus and their salvation out of slavery.

And the passage then is along with those images, it's full of images of God's glory. So for

example, look at verse four. His splendour was like the sunrise, rays flashed from his

hands where his power was hidden. They're not just pictures of how great God is and

how powerful, but how terrifying God is. So look at verse five, he sends plagues and pestilence.

Verse six, he stood and shook the earth. He hooked and made the nations tremble. So these

are images of great power, of God coming in war against his enemy. In verse six, he marches

on forever. Oh, sorry, that's in verse nine. Sorry, no, in verse nine, he uncovers his

bow. He has called for many arrows. And then we might ask, why is God at war? Why do we

have these images of power and glory and war all mixed together? And that's the question

that's asked in verse eight. It says, were you angry at the river's Lord? Was your wrath

against the streams? Did you rage against the sea when you rode your horses and your

chariots to victory? And that's a rhetorical question. The answer is of course, no, God

doesn't get angry at rivers. God is acting against people. He's acting in judgment. The

answer comes in verse 13. Let's have a look at verse 13 there. It shows us the point of

this section. It says, you came out, come out is words of war in their way of thinking.

You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader

of the land of wickedness. You stripped him from head to foot. So all this power and war

and judgment in this vision is to remind Habakkuk and to remind us of God's awesome power when

he comes to judge, when he comes to judge the wicked and deliver his righteous people.

And this brings us back to verses two and verse 16, which as I've said, sit like brackets

around this awesome vision. So in the first half of verse two, it says, Lord, I have heard

of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. So that's what we've actually just seen

in verses three to 16. This fame of God, the awe, the awesome deeds that have been shown.

Habakkuk has heard of God's fame and Habakkuk has heard of God's great power in the Exodus.

And he says, I stand in awe of your great deeds. And this is what we have described

to us, God's great and awesome deeds. And then in the second half of the verse, we see

Habakkuk's request to God. So he's seen those deeds, he knows about them. And then he asks,

this is what he's asking God in his prayer. He asks God, repeat them in our day, in our

time, make them known in wrath, remember mercy. So Habakkuk looks to the past in order to

find his hope for the future. That's his hope. What he's praying for is the future. He knows

God, he knows God's great acts in delivering his people in the past. And he prays that

he might see similar things, the same things in his day. And this is more than a fleeting

hope for Habakkuk. This is more than kind of a wish on the wind. Look at verse 16, which

is an echo of verse two. In the first half, he thinks again of God's awesome judgment.

In the second half, he concludes his prayer from verse two. This is his conclusion to

what he's prayed. He says, yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come

on the nation invading us. So he's prayed that he'll see God acting in his day. And

then he concludes by saying that he's going to wait patiently. He has just chosen to

put his hope in God. His hope is there. He can wait patiently now. And how has he been

able to make that choice? He's been able to do that by being filled with this vision of

God that reminds him of God's great acts in history, this great vision that displays God's

nature, that displays his ability to act in his time. And that's how we need to put our

hope in God, by looking back and looking up. When we look back to God's great deeds, and

we see that in the Bible, and when we look up in prayer. And so we need to kind of put

this back together in the context of the book of Habakkuk that we've been working through

for the last couple of weeks. So in chapter one, if you remember, Habakkuk cries out to

God because of the injustice that he sees around him within Judah, within his own country.

And God replies and says that he's going to send the Babylonians, right? He's going to

send the enemies against Judah. And then he goes into some detail, he goes to length to

describe how terrible the Babylonians will be. So there is this fearsome judgment of

God that's coming on Judah, that's coming on God's own people. And in verse 16 that

we have here, he says, I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound, decay

crept into my bones and my legs trembled. So perhaps in part he thinks that as he thinks

back to remembering God's great works in the Exodus. But perhaps too, Habakkuk is referring

to his own fate that God has told him is coming, the fate of Judah. He is in Judah and these

horrific enemies are coming. And back in chapter one, Habakkuk questions God again, asking

whether it's really right that a holy God should use a sinful enemy as his means of

disciplining his people. And God replies and says that the Babylonians will be punished

in their turn as well all the wicked be punished. But the righteous person will live by his

faithfulness. That is to live with a trust that motivates obedience. So if you look again

at verse two, part of what Habakkuk prays is that within God's judgment on Judah, so

he's accepted that he knows it's coming. But within that, that God will remember his promise

of mercy and his promise to give life to the righteous through their faithfulness. And

in verse 16, he's waiting patiently for the invading Babylonian army to be the judges

of Judah to come against him. And his act of patience here, which is so different to

what we read at the start of the book when he says, how long, oh Lord, his patience is

a demonstration of the faithfulness that he has learned. He is the righteous man living

by faithfulness. He's learned to put his trust in God's deliverance. But notice that nothing

has actually changed. Nothing has happened to Habakkuk. His circumstances haven't changed.

He's still living in corrupt Judah and waiting for a foreign army to invade him. He hasn't

had an answered prayer. He hasn't seen a miracle. He hasn't been shown a special sign. But what's

changed for Habakkuk is his own perspective. So how can you put your hope in Christ as

your King? How can you put your hope in everything being set right in a final judgment? How can

you live a life that denies yourself for Jesus, putting all of your hope in eternity? And

the answer is that like Habakkuk, we need to look past what we can see and we need to

understand God's nature and trust in his promises. And we can see that when we look backwards.

God has fulfilled his promises to send his Messiah and he's raised that Messiah from

the dead. And we know that he will be faithful to send him again and raise us to new life

just as he raised Christ. And what we need to do now is to live out our hope faithfully,

which brings us to the last section, which expresses Habakkuk's fateful life of patient

waiting. And we have that in verses 17 to 19. Habakkuk says that regardless of whatever

he sees in this life, so regardless of whether he sees prosperity, whether destruction comes,

regardless of whatever tragedies come, he will choose to rejoice in the Lord. He has

confidence in what he hopes for. He has assurance about what he does not see. You see, if you

want to put your hope in God, if you want to put your hope in a new creation that you

can't see, then it would be foolish, wouldn't it, if we found our faith in things that we

can see. And that's where we go wrong in life. That's where our faith falls down because

we put our faith, we put our trust, we judge things based on the things that are seen,

not the things that are unseen. So if you are going to base your faith on your perception

that God is blessing your life, then your faith is going to fall apart really quickly

when things go wrong in your life. You've put your faith in the things that you've seen,

not in the unseen God, and it's going to fall apart on you. But we need to see that both

good things, whether we're being blessed or whether we're suffering, both are things

that can be seen. And neither should cause us to put hope or to lose hope in something

that is unseen. God is working beyond your riches. He's working beyond your poverty.

He's working beyond your sickness. He's working beyond your health. And neither of them indicate

anything about whether you're going to receive God's kingdom. If your faith is based on an

experience of church that you can see, either by the traditions and the comfort of the church

or by the hype or of feeling God in a church service, then your faith is going to shrivel

pretty fast when your church falls apart or when your pastor sins. Because what you've

actually done is put your faith in the church, not in Christ who is the head of the church.

And so when you see that thing, that thing that you can see falls around you, you will

lose your faith. Christianity is not a mystical experience. It's not an experience of being

shown blessings or curses. Christianity is based on the historical work of an unchanging

God. The one thing, the one thing that we have seen, the one thing that is seeable that

gives us great evidence of the Christ is Christ coming in the flesh. That's the seen thing

from the unseen. And we have that great evidence of the new creation in Christ's resurrection.

That's the one glimpse that we get and we have that attested to in the Bible. And that

is what we need to put our hope in. So we need to put our hope in Christ and we need

to live by faith because we know that no matter what we see, we know that God is good and

that his promises will come to pass. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you fill

us with hope day to day in our lives. We pray that you give us a great hope in the things

that are unseen, the things that are yet to come. And we pray that you give us faith that

might carry us through every suffering, every setback, every sickness, every challenge that

we have in our lives. We pray that you help us to hold onto the great gospel of your son,

Jesus Christ, and put our hope in him and nothing else. And we ask this in his name.

Amen.