Habakkuk 3 - Preschool Studio and the Second Exodus

Well, welcome back to Strength for the Day.

And I'm here with my great friend, Pastor Dennis Fountain.

I'm honored that you would call me a friend. After all the other things you've called me.

Exactly. Listen, those were all off camera. They don't count.

But if you see any she bears, come attack me in the studio. We know exactly why.

Studio?

Yep. We're not going to tell anyone that this is a preschool classroom.

Hey, can't you tell by all the colors?

Yep.

Preschool.

Yep. It's a pretty cool backyard.

This is actually Bryon's office. Preschool room.

Yeah, it's age appropriate. Yeah, we are finally, after a long period of like four weeks...

It's been long...

. finishing the book of Habakkuk today.

Just so everybody knows, I did say we should have done it in like eight weeks, but Bryon wanted to stretch it out to four weeks, so...

Yeah. And man, it is a wonderful book.

Great book.

And we've learned about who Habakkuk is. He's a prophet. He's a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah, and he is concerned with the wickedness that's taking place in the southern kingdom of Judah.

And he says, God, why don't you do something? Why are you allowing there to be evil and robberies and violence? Why are you allowing all of this to take place in your country, in Israel?

And God says, don't worry, I'm going to take care of the evil through Babylon.

Not a good thing for Habakkuk to hear.

And Habakkuk goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. They are so much worse than we are.

We're bad, we're doing violence, we're robbing people, but at least we worship the one true God, which as you read through Kings and Chronicles, not even always true. No.

One second, I love how Habakkuk is like, hey God, what's going on? He doesn't hear anything at first. So he's like, wow, God, you gave me no answer.

And then God replies with, okay, I'm going to send Babylon. And Habakkuk's like, no, no, no, that's the wrong answer. God, this is not how I thought things were going to play out.

Go ahead.

And then they're in chapter two. And yeah, verse number one, Habakkuk, after God's answer of, hey, I'm sending Babylon to take care of business. Then Habakkuk goes, no, you can't do that.

They're so much worse than us. But I'm going to wait, because I know that you've got a plan that is not my plan. So I'm going to wait and see what your answer to my questions are and what I will answer when I am reproved.

He goes, okay, I know I'm wrong to say that you're wrong, but I don't know what the answer is yet, so I'm just going to wait.

And last week, we learned God's answer, where he basically says, okay, I'm sending Babylon to punish Israel, specifically Judah, but I'm going to punish Babylon. Because they've done violence.

They have done all sorts of horrible things to all the nations that were in that section. And he says, they are going to be held accountable for their actions.

And then he says it in a very dramatic way, and he ends with verse 20 in chapter two and says, but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let everyone on earth be silent in his presence.

So, there comes this thought that, okay, even the biggest, baddest countries in the world with the largest armies and the least amount of conscience towards human life and rights, like all of those incredibly magnificent places are nothing before

God.

And so.

I think we learn a lot. I mean, the lessons we've talked about already is Habakkuk pouring his heart out to the Lord.

Yep.

Great lesson on prayer. And then being content when you don't get what you want from God.

Yes.

And you know, understanding that God is not a, he's not a genie to just be like, hey, I wish for this and I better get it. And Habakkuk had to learn that lesson.

And him saying, I'll sit here and I'll know what to say because you're going to correct me in this or approve me in this. I think shows us humility. There's a lesson there.

And then in God's answers, back to Habakkuk, the sovereignty of God. Like, hey, I do know what's going on. And I think I probably say this statement way too often in our church, but I think it's good that nothing catches God by surprise.

Because, I don't know for our listeners or those viewing, I don't know if you're like me, but at times something catches me by surprise. And I almost assume that God is like me, like caught off guard. And I have to be reminded that He's not.

And so all of that has taken place. So what do we find when we come to chapter 3?

Yeah, when we come to chapter 3, the conversation between God and Habakkuk is kind of over now. And Habakkuk writes a new hit song.

Yeah.

And number one album, number one album in Israel, 580. Which direction is it go? 590.

590 BC. Yeah. 590 BC.

This was topping the charts. And I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek because the inscription that's given on this song is one that we find mainly in one other place in scripture which is Psalm 7, which is kind of referenced as like a dirge.

That this is a song that while it acknowledges who God is and his triumph comes in a time of sadness and weakness and brokenness personally. Yeah.

So it's kind of a, hey, I'm not seeing this take place right now, but in faith because of what God has said, I believe that it's going to take place.

Yeah.

And he even, it's kind of a medley, he rips off some other songwriters.

Plagiarism.

It's blatant plagiarism from Moses in Deuteronomy 33, and he blatantly plagiarizes David in Psalm 18.

Which I would say on the one hand, as kind of a brief thing before we get there, we can see that constantly in the minor prophets, when they call back to earlier portions of scripture, you look at Jonah and how he brings out some truths from the

Psalms here in this one, that one of our largest comforts when we don't understand what God is doing, one of our largest comforts when we are hurting is to go back to the word of God. And we can see that the people writing the word of God, when they

didn't know what was going on, or when they needed comfort, they went to the word of God. And so if they needed to do that, and if they did that, then we should definitely do that.

Right.

So let's read this song. And I think we'll come away with some continued great truths, some reminders of what we've already learned about.

Go for it.

A prayer of Habakkuk the Prophet according to Shiganioth. That's that word that's also in Psalm 7 kind of a dirge. Lord, I've heard the report about you.

Lord, I stand in awe of your deeds. Revive your work in these years. Make it known in these years.

In your wrath, remember mercy. God comes from Temin, the holy one from Mount Peran. His splendor covers the heavens and the earth is full of his praise.

His brilliance is like light. Rays are flashing from his hand. This is where his power is hidden.

Plague goes before him and pestilence follows in his steps. He stands and shakes the earth. He looks and startles the nations.

The age-old mountains break apart. The ancient hills sink down. His pathways are ancient.

I see the tents of Cushan in distress. The tent curtains of the land of Midian tremble. Are you angry at the rivers, Lord?

Is your wrath against the rivers? Or is your rage against the sea? When you ride on your horses, your victorious chariot.

You took the sheath from your bow. The arrows are ready to be used with an oath. You split the earth with rivers.

Selah. The mountains see you and shudder. A downpour of water sweeps by.

The deep roars with its voice and lifts its waves high. Sun and moon stand still in their lofty residence at the flash of your flying arrows, at the brightness of your shining spear. You march across the earth with indignation.

You trample down the nations in wrath. You come out to save your people, to save your anointed. You crush the leader of the house of the wicked and strip him from foot to neck.

You pierce his head with his own spears. His warriors storm out to scatter us, gloating as if ready to secretly devour the weak. You tread the sea with your horses, stirring up the great waters.

I heard and I trembled within. My lips quivered at the sound. Rottenness entered my bones.

I trembled where I stood. Now I must quietly wait for the day of distress, to come against the people invading us.

Though the fig tree does not bud, and there is no fruit on the vines, though the olive crop fails, and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls. Yet I will triumph in Yahweh.

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. Yahweh, my Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like those of a deer, and enables me to walk on mountain heights for the choir director on stringed instruments.

So here we have this incredible picture that Habakkuk is writing in poetry for us.

And what he does here is he's kind of giving, he's doing a lot of things in here, but the main overall vision is just as God brought Israel out of Egypt, he will bring his people in kind of a new Exodus out of Babylon.

Right.

And you can see that in many different ways. I want to highlight just a couple of things, and then ask you for some other things. So right there in verses three and four, where it says God comes from Temin and the Holy One from Mount Peran.

I didn't know before looking where either of those places were. And I assume other than that, there's some cross references that you have in there. I don't know if it mentions where those places are, but here he is stealing from Deuteronomy 33.

And these are both places. One, the first that's mentioned, and Taman is in Edom, so kind of south, is that southeast? Yeah, southeast of Israel.

These would be kind of a mountainous area over which the sun would come in the morning. And then you have Mount Peran, which would be kind of in Sinai and in the wilderness.

Again, kind of a mountainous region that the sun would come over these areas and cast the light of morning. They're in verse number four. His brilliance is like light, rays are flashing from his hand.

So it's like God is coming like the sun in the morning that he is ever present, even if there is currently darkness.

And then you can see plague goes before him there in verse five and pestilence follows in his steps, just like he did with the 10 plagues in Egypt that you had the locusts and you had the darkness and all those things that came with the Lord.

So this new Exodus is starting. He stands and shakes the earth there in verse number six. And in verse number seven, you can see the tents of Cushan.

That would be another kind of name for Midian and then the tent curtains of the land of Midian. So you have this double emphasis of these nomadic tribes would understandably freak out if there was an earthquake.

And so he's saying that God coming through startles these places.

And you can think even of when Israel was at Mount Sinai and God was giving the law to Moses, that you have that great shaking and the clouds and thunderings and lightnings that happened on Mount Sinai. All of that's being called to mind.

And then verses seven through ten, he brings in a specific attack against a couple of local gods. The one was a Philistine god. The other one is a Babylonian god that I'm trying to think of maybe a way in which this would be used nowadays.

And the only thing that comes to mind is the old Imperials song. What's the one? It has something to do with Buddha, like, oh, Buddha or something.

I don't know.

You're the music guy.

OK, well, I'll have to show you this one after. So he basically goes through the singer is Russ Taff from way back in the 80s, an ancient time.

Wow.

And listen, preschool class, remember? So you have this song and it's calling out all of the different gods of nowadays where you have Allah and people that are revered and worshiped, like Buddha and Confucius and others.

And it's saying, basically, you can't get to heaven through any of these gods. That's the only kind of thing that I can think about where a song that specifically calls out gods that people worship today.

Yeah.

And in here what he's doing in verse number eight is your rage against the sea. That word for the sea there is one that would be used of one of the Philistine gods.

And he's saying, hey, God's going to take out the local deities that if you go to Israel today, there's no one that's worshiping the ancient Philistine gods anymore. They've been completely wiped out.

And then down in verse number ten, the deep roars with its voice is specifically talking about the Babylonian god Tiamat, who was kind of a lower, lower level, kind of Hades chaos type water goddess, that there was a legend that the head Babylonian

god, Marduk, the sky god, battled Tiamat. And they had this crazy battle. It went back and forth. They weren't sure who was going to win.

And eventually Marduk pulled out the victory. And here Habakkuk is name dropping these gods and saying they are nothing compared to the Lord. Yeah, they are nothing compared to Yahweh.

And so here he says God is going to take out everyone that is persecuting and attacking Israel. Even the gods themselves are trampled and torn and shot through with arrows and stabbed through with a spear.

And then the last thing I want to mention here is in verse number 13. After he says you come out to save your people, to save your anointed one, he says you crush the leader of the house of the wicked and strip him from foot to neck.

You pierce his head with his own spears. I think it calls to mind one, the story of David where David cuts off the head of Goliath with his own sword.

And it harkens all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, where God promised that the seed of the woman, the anointed one, would crush the head of the serpent and gain that final victory for the Lord.

So all of this is in mind here, that to the knowledge that God would judge Israel through Babylon, but then God would judge Babylon and bring back Israel, Habakkuk gives this story, and he says, listen, God will do everything to bring back and to

redeem and to save his people, and it doesn't matter if it's gods or empires or the serpent of old, all of them are going to be powerless against God's victory and his rescue. So, knowing that, what are some things that we can learn?

Because we don't have to deal with all of these same things. We don't interact with all of these same things today. So, what can we learn from the passage?

So, I think my mind goes to two applications.

Like, and that's honestly, even as you started reading the passage, I'm thinking, oh, this is that such a good application. So, you said it's a prayer, Shigianoth or Sigioth, or however they want to say that in Hebrew.

You know, the meaning, they don't know exactly. The great definition of it, but a psalm or a song written about victory from a low point. So, here's what's cool to me.

All of us, and I just tell our listeners and those watching, we've all been in situations where we know, I know God can work, and I know he's in control, but boy, I sure do feel hopeless right now. Like, I sure do feel that I am at wit's end.

I'm at the bottom, laying on my back, looking up like the psalmist in Psalm 74, 77 said. Like, I just, I've hit the bottom, and I have nowhere to look but up. What does Habakkuk do?

And I love what he does. There's so many cross-references, but he pulls from the victories that have already taken place. So, I know God helped Moses.

I know God helped David. I know that God will help me. And I think that this is a great, kind of my first takeaway on it, is, you know, when you and I fall in that place where we're like, God, I don't understand what's going on.

And I've cried out to you, and you gave me an answer, and like Habakkuk, it did not, it was not the answer I was expecting. And God, I know you can win this, and I know you have victory, but what, I'm not seeing that right now.

So what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to fall back on the victories of the past.

Whether that's my victories of the past, or victories of those who have gone before me, or victories from the word of God, I'm going to fall back on the recognition that God worked then, and I know God is working now.

God worked for my father, my grandmother, God worked for my pastor, God worked for my friend, God, you worked for patriarchs in scripture. I know you're the same God, and I know you'll work now. I love that, I love that from Habakkuk.

Like, I'm in a weak spot. I have no idea how this is going to work out. Like, Babylon's going to judge us, and then you're going to judge Babylon?

Like, just skip it. You just judge us and let it be, and don't use Babylon.

Like, there are enemies, and you can almost hear Habakkuk kind of reasoning all these things in his mind, but he just comes back to the place, and he just says, but I know that there is victory in you.

And so, God, I don't see it right now, so I'm gonna look back. I'm gonna reflect on the blessings and the victories that have happened for our people. So, I see that as the first thought for us.

Like, in our times, when we don't see a victory, it's okay to look back and say, you know what, God's won victory before, and I'm gonna, I'm just gonna kind of remember those victories right now.

The second application I see is in verse 18 and 19, when Habakkuk writes, you're gonna make me like deer's feet or hind's feet or like the feet of a deer and you're gonna plant me on high hills. Well, wait, two things I'll say in this.

Verse 18, he says, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will join the God of my salvation. The Lord is my strength.

He will make my feet like hind's feet or deer's feet, and he will make me walk on my high hills.

All of those, all of the words that he uses are in like that complete present active tense of like, I'm not, it's not I'm going to eventually, it's like I am doing this now. I will trust in him.

Not I'm going, not I will as in, oh, I will do that tomorrow. I am doing it now. Even though I don't understand everything, I am resting in him now.

And then the verse 19, when he says, he'll make my feet like deer's feet or hind's feet. Of course, if you've ever been over to Israel, like, you know, there's different types of deer that you would see.

And it's interesting, he doesn't, Habakkuk doesn't say, God will make me like a mountain lion and I will attack my enemies. He's like, God's gonna make me like a weak deer.

It's not like the deer we have like even in Washington, you know, I mean, you can see it. There's some big deer. Like, it's not like that.

God will make me like a weak deer. And then when he says he will make me walk in on my high hills or in the high paths, I remember growing up, you grew up in Colorado. You ever go up to Esses Park?

You ever go up there and you see like those rams on the side of a cliff and you're like, how in the world did they get there? You know, I've seen that.

If you've never seen that, like just look it up, a ram or a deer on the side of a cliff, a mountain goat on the side of a cliff. It's something that only they can get to. It's a defense.

So Habakkuk is likening God to that. He's saying like, God, I don't understand this, but I do know my trust is in you and you will protect me only as you can. You're not gonna just give me strength so that I'm this great victorious thing.

I will find complete strength in you. And so that second application I see is just understanding like I can rest in God now.

Even though I don't see the victory, even though I'm not seeing the trophy being lifted and the celebration being done, I know that my God has this under control and I can trust him.

And you know, that's, I know we say it at church, but that's an elementary thought. But it really is where I think it's where the daily Christian battle is won or lost in the trenches of trust. Who am I gonna trust today?

And so when I look at this, like I look at the whole book of Habakkuk, I learned so many things on prayer, I'm challenged with trusting, I'm challenged in resting, but I think really that the thought of victory, sometimes we don't see it, but we can

rest on the victory of others and we can fall back to say, God, I completely trust in you, you will provide my great defense. So there's some thoughts there. I don't know, what do you think?

Yeah. I think the perfect kind of pairing to Habakkuk three is Romans eight, kind of written from a very similar kind of perspective for those believers that had undergone plenty of persecution and would even more so as Nero would take control.

And I think Paul's words there are wonderful echo to that for every Christian. What then are we to say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

He did not even spare his own son, but offered him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God's elect?

God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more has been raised.

He also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written, because of you, we are being put to death all day long. We are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things, we are more than victorious, more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am persuaded that not even death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, hostile powers, height or depth or any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And I think as we see Habakkuk, as we see these promises that as God has been faithful, he will be faithful. As he has been just, he will be just. As he has taken care of everything from the beginning of creation, he will take care of us now.

And so we can rest in the love of God and have a commitment today that even when I don't see or understand how he's working, I will trust in him. I will rejoice. I will speak about him to others.

I will continue to read in his word. We don't do it because we see the crops. We don't see it because we see all of the good things.

Instead, like Habakkuk, even if I don't see any of it, I will rejoice in the Lord. Why? Because he loves me, because Christ died for me, because he gave us everything in Christ.

So our response ought to be, God, nothing can separate me from you. Nothing will cause you to turn your back on me. And so I'm not going to allow anything to make me turn my back on you.

So I think just that devotion to the Lord would be a great thing that we can walk today in, of no matter what I feel like, no matter what's going on in my life, I'm still going to choose to follow and to love the Lord.

So it's a great thought, and we hope that today you would choose to walk in a trust with Him. So what's an actionable step I can take? I mean, how do I trust God?

Honestly, it's even in the smallest decisions of life, saying, okay, God, I don't understand why my sink went out today, but I trust you. God, I don't understand why I stubbed my toe this morning, but I trust that you can use this.

You know, and again, that's something maybe silly, but a simple step. And then, you know, the times that you have a situation that is hard to trust God, just look back at what he has done before and then make the prayer, God, help me trust you.

And hope you have a good week. Trust in the Lord. Next week, we start a brand new series and looking forward to that in the book of You Have to Come Back and Find Out.

See you.