The date is
December 16th, 1944. The
Second World War is being fought from the forests of Europe to the beaches of
the South Pacific. In the European
theater Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany is being opposed by an allied coalition of
nations consisting primarily of Great Britain and the United States in Western
Europe, and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.
After the allied invasion of Normandy in June of 1944 the western allies
have steadily pushed the German forces back toward their homeland. Paris has been liberated and all signs point
to the imminent collapse of the Nazi war machine. But unbeknownst to the allied commanders,
Hitler has come up with one last gamble to counter-attack and try to salvage
the remains of his crumbling empire. The
overall objective of the German plan is the harbor of Antwerp, Belgium. This is a major strategic asset, control of
which would allow Germany to cut allied supply lines and thus significantly
reduce their ability to advance. Because
the primary muscle of the German army is in tanks control of roadways is
critically important to their success.
Thus the only way to capture Antwerp before the Allies can recover and
bring their powerful air superiority to bear is to seize the roads through
eastern Belgium. All seven major roads
in the Ardennes mountain range happen to come together at the small town of
Bastogne, making it vitally important.
The Germans need to capture it to continue their advance. The Allies need to hold it long enough for
reinforcements to arrive and stall the German attack.
Bastogne is
lightly defended by American forces. The
Allies were under the impression that only a single infantry division was
opposing them in this area. Much to
their dismay, the Germans send 25 divisions through the Ardennes in a lightning
surprise attack. After six days of fighting
in which the beleaguered and mostly surprised American defenders have been
decimated by the German advance the town of Bastogne has been completely
surrounded. It is defended primarily by
infantry. They are outnumbered
approximately 5 to 1 and are low on cold weather gear, ammunition, food,
medical supplies, and senior leadership.
Due to poor winter weather aerial re-supply as well as tactical air
support is impossible. In every way
imaginable the situation of the defending forces is hopeless.
On the 22nd
of December, the commander of the attacking German forces sends a demand for
surrender to his American counterpart.
In this message he cites overwhelming numerical superiority and the
danger of civilian casualties. He
further threatens to annihilate the defenders with a devastating artillery
bombardment if they do not surrender within two hours. The American general in command of Bastogne
sends the following reply:
To the German
Commander.
NUTS!
The
American Commander.
With the
irreverent and dismissive American response ringing in his ears the German
commander launches a full scale assault upon the town of Bastogne. But amazingly the defenders manage to defy
the odds and hold off the German assault long enough for elements of General
George Patton’s 3rd army to arrive and rescue them. Hitler’s “Battle of the Bulge”, as it comes
to be known in history, grinds to a halt.
Only a few short months later the war in Europe is over at last.
The gutsy
determination and seemingly illogical action taken by the American Army in the
face of almost certain defeat is the same sort of attitude that the prophet
Habakkuk displays as he closes out his contribution to the pages of
scripture. There is a very clear sense
in the prophet’s writing of a determination to do what is right and an acceptance
of whatever may come. His conviction is
not without fear and trembling, but it is sure, solid, and unbreakable. In many ways it echoes his previous
statements from earlier in the book. How
can this possibly be? How, in the face
of overwhelming obstacles and what should be crushing despair, can Habakkuk
continually maintain faith and trust in His God? Furthermore, can we today do the same? This fundamental question is very much the
theme of the whole book. And it will
finally be answered for us here at the very end. To find out how let us proceed to the
text. We will begin with verse 16 of
chapter 3:
I heard and my inward parts trembled,
At
the sound my lips quivered.
Decay
enters my bones,
And
in my place I tremble.
Because
I must wait quietly for the day of distress,
For
the people to arise who will invade us.
Habakkuk once
again reminds us and affirms the fact that he has heard the voice of the Lord
speak to Him. He has heard the report
that has come from heaven especially for his ears first, and then the nation of
Israel second, and finally the church of the living God. There is a very important implication
inherent in hearing God speak. That is,
one must listen in order to hear. In
Proverbs 2:1-5 Solomon gives us a tour de force explanation of the importance
of listening to God: My son, if you will
receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear
attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for
discernment, lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver and
search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the
Lord and discover the knowledge of God.
When we think of listening to something it is usually perceived as a
passive act. We are on the receiving end
of whatever we are listening to, whether it be someone speaking, music being
played, or a movie being shown. But what
the preacher is describing here is anything but passive. He uses words like incline your heart, cry
for, lift your voice, seek, and search.
We are to be active listeners to the Lord our God. We are to seek His voice purposefully,
deliberately, and unceasingly. Even when
we are instructed to be still, as in Psalm 46:10: Cease striving and know that I am God, there is very much a sense
of intentionality in our silence and a determined cessation of striving. We must choose to be silent and incline our
heart toward God, crying out to Him for discernment just as Habakkuk did in
chapter 2 verse 1 of his book, and seeking after His wisdom as assiduously as
if we were digging for hidden treasures.
If we have any hope of emulating the prophet’s response to the Lord then
we must begin as he began, by listening.
Having said
that, God makes no guarantees that when we hear Him speak it will always be
soothing to hear and easy to accept.
Notice the prophet’s response.
What Habakkuk is describing for us is nothing less than a complete
emotional and physical meltdown. The
phrase “inward parts” could alternatively be translated as belly or
abdomen. The trembling he speaks of
could also be rendered agitated, quivered, or churned. And it is this last definition that might
give us the best understanding of his meaning.
Imagine your stomach as a vat.
This vat is filled with acid.
Rather than a calm and placid surface it is roiling, boiling, and
churning with agitation. You feel
nauseous. Every food you have ever eaten
appears poised to come up your throat and out of your mouth. Your esophagus burns from the constant action
of stomach acid splashing back and forth and hurling droplets upward. You are in every sense of the word, well and
truly sick. The physiological reaction
extends beyond your insides to your lips.
They are locked into an uncontrollable trembling. You are on the verge of a flood of tears to
rival a torrential rainstorm. Your
misery doesn’t end there however. A
sense of decay creeps into your skeletal structure. The bones that give your skin and muscles a
framework seem to be crumbling inside your body. You feel limp, light headed, you are on the
verge of passing out. And your entire
body is shaking violently. If you can
picture yourself having a reaction similar to this then you will have some idea
of what Habakkuk is describing for us.
He feels utterly spent.
The obvious
question is why. What is it about what
he has heard that is causing the prophet so much distress? In a word: foreknowledge. God has granted Habakkuk a vision of future
events. They include both the
destruction of Judah and the eventual salvation of the faithful remnant. And while that promised rescue serves as a
beacon of hope in his mind, it is exceedingly difficult to calmly and
objectively get past the horrific devastation that will precede the
restoration. To make matters worse
Habakkuk really cannot confide in anyone else.
As he puts it: I must wait
quietly. This means he must
submissively bow his head and wait for the inevitable. Even were he to fulfill his function as a
prophet of God and share this vision with his fellow Jews, the evidence from
his contemporary Jeremiah is that no one would listen to him. The nation of Israel demonstrated time and
again that it was perfectly willing to stop up its collective ears and ignore
the warnings of the prophets. Jeremiah
chapter 26 records an incident in which the Lord prophesied through Jeremiah
against Judah by saying: “this city I
will make a curse to all the nations of the earth.” The people were so enraged by this that they
seized Jeremiah and intended to kill him.
Undoubtedly, if Habakkuk had occasion to do any public prophesying, he
would have received a similar response.
So whether through physical silence or being ignored the prophet was
very much humanly alone in his grief.
There is some
interpretive disagreement among scholars over exactly what Habakkuk is waiting
quietly for. Some translations, such as
the one given above, point toward the invasion by Babylon. In this rendering the “day of distress” that
the prophet is waiting for is tied to the forthcoming attack by the
Chaldeans. He is unhappy over the
catastrophic events he knows are coming.
Other translators take a different approach. They would say that the day of distress
Habakkuk is waiting for is the one to come against the invaders
themselves. God, in the five woes of
chapter two, very clearly laid out an eventual punishment for the wickedness of
Babylon and all who are like them. If
one takes this approach then the passage would be depicted similarly to the
following: “yet I will wait quietly for the day of distress to happen to the
invaders.” In spite of this variation I
am going to intentionally side step the question because I believe it is of
little importance and also because there is a larger issue at stake here. Whether Habakkuk is waiting quietly for
Israel’s day of distress or for Babylon’s day of distress, the point remains
that he has been given a glimpse of the future, it terrifies him, and he has no
choice but to submit and wait for it.
And again,
there is a very important principle bound up in all of this unrest the prophet
is feeling. Namely, that his dread over
the horror to come is caused by his understanding of the transgressions his
people have committed that necessitated the horror in the first place. When we take that standard, lift it out of
the circumstances it is presented in here, and apply it to all of man’s
dealings with God, then what we are left with is the required first step to
finding salvation from God’s wrath; namely, repentance. As if echoing Habakkuk’s reaction to what is
coming, Psalm 119:120 presents a very similar picture: My flesh trembles for fear of You, and I am afraid of Your judgments. Elsewhere in Psalm 4:4 the same sentiment is
echoed: Tremble, and do not sin;
meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. It is an undeniable truth of scripture that a
realization of one’s sin before a holy God should produce disquiet in the
soul. In fact, as Paul explains in 2
Corinthians 7:10 the Lord purposely wills it to be so: For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance
without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces
death. The only way to even begin to
have a right relationship with God is to admit the guilt that we have incurred
in our depravity. Just as a child who
steadfastly refuses to own up to his misdeeds in spite of the iron clad
evidence against him causes a fracture of the parent/child relationship, so a
man who stubbornly avoids his sin guilt in spite of his own conscience
condemning him in concert with the Bible causes an irreparable rift in the
creator/creature relationship. In light
of that then, if we, when contemplating our own sin nature as well as
individual acts of sinning, do not experience sorrow such as Habakkuk felt,
then we do not truly accept or recognize the gravity of our offense. And therefore we fail to express true
repentance as prescribed by God.
Habakkuk of
course, does recognize his own sin and that of his people. He understands that mankind has no grounds
whatsoever to complain against God’s decrees.
Further, in Habakkuk’s mind God is well within His rights to do anything
He so chooses with His creations. This
realization and acceptance enables him to continue waiting quietly, even in the
face of the most complete and utterly catastrophic situation he can possibly
imagine, which he now presents to us:
Though the fig tree should not blossom
And
there be no fruit on the vines,
Though
the yield of the olive should fail
And
the fields produce no food,
Though
the flock should be cut off from the fold
And
there be no cattle in the stalls,
To our modern
minds the situation described by the prophet may seem rather tame. Fig trees failing to blossom? Olives not yielding their produce? Flocks stuck outside the fold? Big deal we might say. But what is important for the modern reader
to understand is that what Habakkuk is describing here is nothing short of a
complete breakdown of society through economic recession and starvation which
leads to civil disorder and eventually anarchy.
Every item on the
list above was a major part of life in the 6th century B.C. Fig trees provided the people with fruit and
was a dietary staple. Figs were such a
normative part of everyday life that they made it into the scriptures in 1 Samuel
30:12: They gave him a piece of fig cake
and two clusters of raisins, and he ate; then his spirit revived. The reference to fruit on the vines has
grapes in view. Grapes were used to
produce wine, a product with multi-faceted uses; everything from consumption at
celebrations to usage as a medicinal agent.
And don’t forget olive oil, which obviously comes from olives, and is
the “yield” being referred to. Olive oil
was to the Israelites what butter is to us.
Not only that but they used the oil for light in lamps, anointing of the
body (both for cleanliness and religious purposes), and offerings. Continuing Habakkuk’s pessimistic setting, he
envisions farmland going fallow and crops dying. This would have been an unmitigated disaster
for ancient peoples. With much less
access to imported resources than we have today, if the local farms stopped
producing grains and vegetables there would be an immediate negative
impact. This is precisely why famines
were such a frightening prospect for these people. It further explains their rationale in
prostrating themselves before a false god of fertility and agriculture such as
Baal, as we looked at in chapter one. In
the midst of this devastating starvation the sheep become lost. Either unable to find their way back to their
pens or intentionally removed from them, they become easy prey for
predators. This causes civilization’s
primary source of fabric for the making of clothing to disappear. People are unable to replace their worn out
garments. Clothes become increasingly
tattered. Additionally, the loss of
flocks of sheep indicates the absence of shepherds. Shepherding was a vital occupation in ancient
times. So to lose the shepherding
industry points to a catastrophic disruption of the fabric of society. Last but certainly not least, even cattle
disappear from the face of the earth in Habakkuk’s description. When the livestock are gone so also vanishes
milk, the primary source of dairy foods, as well as meat and leather.
As you can see
this is no small problem the prophet is describing. What he has in mind is complete devastation
in every area of life. This goes beyond
luxuries and gets at the root of basic human necessities. And it drives home two points from
scripture. First, it should remind us of
the danger of taking for granted the creature comforts we enjoy in our modern
day generally affluent lifestyles.
Deuteronomy 8:7-10, although it was written by Moses specifically for
Israel, serves as a timeless principle of the need to give thanks to God for
His blessings: For the Lord your
God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains
and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and
barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and
honey; a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will
not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can
dig copper. When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless
the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. It is a true statement that we are obligated
to give thanks to God for what we have because it all comes directly from His
hand.
Second, the
picture painted by Habakkuk should remind us of the danger of clinging to those
same comforts we just offered thanksgiving for.
Paul delivers this point in 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 when he reminds the
church at Corinth of the fleeting nature of material things: But this I say, brethren, the time has
been shortened, so that from now on those who have wives should be as though
they had none; and those who weep, as though they did not weep; and those
who rejoice, as though they did not rejoice; and those who buy, as though they
did not possess; and those who use the world, as though they did
not make full use of it; for the form of this world is passing away. Scripture, here and in many other places, is
unrelentingly blunt that we ought not to enslave ourselves to material
possessions or comforts because ultimately they are all fleeting and transitory
anyhow.
With those
truths in mind, let us turn our attention back to Habakkuk. What was his purpose in giving such a bleak
description of life devoid of many of things necessary to sustain it? He gives the stunning answer in verse 18:
Yet I will exult in the Lord,
I
will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
Do you hear the
prophet’s message ringing across the mists of time to the present day? Do you understand the ramifications of what
he is saying here? Do you grasp just how
incredible of a thing this is for him to say?
Habakkuk is saying that even if all comforts are stripped away. Even if all societal order is removed. Even if his own life is threatened by food
shortages, exposure to the elements, or anything else. In spite of all these situations, and in spite
of any other possible scenario that might arise, he is still going to worship
the Lord. Not only is he going to
worship, but he is going to exult in his God.
Zephaniah 3:14-15 gives us a picture of the type of emotion the prophet
is describing: Shout for joy, O daughter
of Zion! Shout in triumph, O
Israel! Rejoice and exult with
all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away His judgments against you, He has cleared away
your enemies. The King of Israel, the
Lord, is in your midst; you will fear disaster no more. After centuries, even millennia, of
anti-Semitism and troubles of every kind imaginable God is going to restore the
fortunes of His people Israel. He will
acquit them of their offenses and eliminate their enemies. He will even dwell with them as a surety
against future problems. For these Jews,
this faithful remnant, this is a day of unbridled celebration. They have faced turmoil most of us can barely
fathom. And now to have it all wiped
away and guaranteed never to come again will result in exultation and rejoicing
with all of their collective hearts.
This is the same idea Habakkuk has in mind when he says that in spite of
what he has just described he is still going to exult in the Lord and rejoice
in the God of his salvation.
But what is jaw
dropping about this is that the prophecy in Zephaniah describes a time when the
people have been rescued by the Lord.
They very clearly have visible evidence of their obligation to be
joyful. Habakkuk is still sitting in the
midst of the fire, as it were. He is
saying that even though I have no logical incentive, according to human wisdom,
to rejoice in my God I’m still going to do it anyhow. I don’t care what comes or how beat down I
get. I’m still going to lift a voice of
praise to the Lord. We can see this same
type of determined, almost “devil may care” (but for the right reasons!)
attitude in Daniel 3:16-18. The account
is of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego and their response to King
Nebuchadnezzar when he ordered them to bow down and worship his golden image: Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego replied to
the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning
this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to
deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will
deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He
does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going
to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” This then is the resounding anthem that Habakkuk
trumpets as his book comes to a close.
Come what may, I will do what is right.
Now then, the
question I asked at the beginning of the chapter has still not been
answered. This is the fundamental
inquiry that forms the bedrock of this book and is ultimately the most
important point to walk away with.
Simply put, how can this be? How
is it possible for someone to be in the midst of a situation so incredibly
horrific that the mind shrinks away from thinking about it yet still give
praise to the Lord? Now at long last, in
the final verse of the final chapter of his book, Habakkuk provides the answer:
The Lord GOD is my strength,
And
He has made my feet like hinds’ feet,
And
makes me walk on my high places.
For
the choir director, on my stringed instruments.
There is only
one way in all of creation for someone to respond as the prophet did. It isn’t through rigid determination. It isn’t by cultivating a gutsy devil may
care attitude as the Americans did at Bastogne.
It isn’t by being smarter than the next person. It isn’t through sheer force of will. What Habakkuk makes abundantly clear with
this single verse of scripture is that it is God alone who enabled his responses
in the face of certain calamity. The
prophet outlines a three point statement that is a comprehensive shaping of his
character by the Lord, leaving no part of his life untouched.
First, God has
made him strong. Many of the uses of
this word in the Old Testament are clearly referring to physical strength,
perhaps of limbs or of military forces.
But the context here is clearly pointing to a different sense of the
word. Habakkuk has been in an intimate
conversation with his God. He has had
several blows dealt to his preconceived notions of how events will play
themselves out for Judah. He has just
seen a remarkable vision of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in all His
majesty and authority. And he has just
affirmed in the previous verse that he is going to keep right on adoring and
exulting in God. This is all mental
rather than physical. There is no sense
of Habakkuk going out and doing any valorous deeds. No, he is fighting in his soul. His spirit is wrestling with these weighty
matters. And it is in this setting that
he delivers the line ascribing his strength to the Lord. A good way to make this distinction might be
to think of this as strength of heart.
Further, there
is a subtle distinction in the way Habakkuk phrases this that we must not
miss. Notice that he doesn’t say “God
gives me strength” or even “God is the source of my strength”. If the line had been constructed that way it
would focus the attention on the prophet by turning this strength into a gift
that God parcels out to those whom He will.
If this were the sense of the verse then although it had come from God
there would be a sense of detachment from Him that would be in view, as if He
apportioned out this power and then left the scene to lurk in the
background. But this is not what
Habakkuk said. In fact, a direct literal
translation of the Hebrew without any attempt to convert it to proper English
grammar would go something like this: “Jehovah Adonai strength”. Why is this significant? Because the prophet is directly tying himself
to God. It’s not that he has any
strength in and of himself. It’s not
even that God has given him strength that he now uses. The idea is that God Himself IS the
strength that is within the prophet.
There is a sense of unity and oneness here that will later be expounded
upon more fully by Jesus in John 17:22-23: The
glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just
as We are one; I in them and You in Me.
The second
alteration of character that God has performed in Habakkuk is to make him
swift. A hind is another name for a deer. So the prophet says that God has symbolically
made his feet like that of a deer. What
does this mean? Think about how a deer
moves when they are running. They are
light on their feet. They leap and bound
through the forest. There is a sense of coiled
springs within their legs. It is not
with a skulking crawl that the deer travels.
He triumphantly springs forth, unhindered by excess weight or human
emotional baggage. His is a lighthearted
jaunt. This concept is mirrored in
Isaiah 35:6 when the reaction to God’s salvation is described: Then the lame will leap like a deer. The point the prophet is making here is that
even as a deer leaps and bounds across a sunny field or through a dark forest,
so he shall leap and bound through both the light tranquility and the dark
turmoil of life. The implication given
by this imagery is that it is irrelevant what the specific circumstances are
that come his way. Times of war. Times of peace. Days of plenty and days of want. Captivity or freedom. Exile or security. The prophet will be able to meet whatever
comes with the same light hearted and joyful attitude because the Lord God has
made his feet like a deer’s feet.
The third and
final quality granted to Habakkuk by the Lord is that of success. The prophet says that the Lord makes him to
walk on his high places. This probably
conjures up some perplexing imagery.
From past studies we know that high places were pagan cultic platforms
upon which evil perversions were committed in the name of Baal, Asherah, and
Moloch. And while this use of the Hebrew
is correct there is also a more generalized sense of the word that refers
simply to a mountain or even a battlefield.
The idea is of a location where achievement can be had. A climber can successfully scale a
mountain. A general can victoriously
prosecute a battle. An example of this
usage of the same word can be seen in Deuteronomy 32:12-13 in the song of
Moses: “The Lord alone guided him, and
there was no foreign god with him. He
made him ride on the high places of the earth”. Alternatively, in Deuteronomy 33:29 we can
see the same word being used to refer to a pagan high place, yet with a sense
of resounding triumph for the godly: “Blessed
are you, O Israel; who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, who is the
shield of your help and the sword of your majesty! So your enemies will cringe before you, and
you will tread upon their high places.”
From this we
can clearly ascertain the prophet’s meaning.
The literal Hebrew is “height tread”.
An English equivalent might be “treading on the heights”. Habakkuk has been describing a comprehensive
authorship of his entire life. God is
his strength to overcome the difficulties of a fallen world. God has given him the agility of a deer with
which to face the obstacles of life. And
now he says that God makes him successful in his endeavors. God causes the prophet’s life to have the
significance and purpose that will transcend the temporal and meaningless
pursuits of this life.
The final line
of verse 19 once again reminds us that this is intended by Habakkuk to be a
song. It is to be performed with musical
instruments, a specific cadence, and perhaps even with a particular musical
style. The prophet is eager for these
words from the Lord to be treasured by his people for years to come. And what is the main point he is hoping they
will walk away with? What is the theme
of the entire book if we could distill it down into its fundamental
meaning? The overwhelming evidence from
the prophet’s writing is that it is God who is the source of all things. Both the good and the bad, the joyous and the
troublesome. God is behind it all,
before it all, and through it all. It is
God alone who will be our strength, make us swift, and grant us success. Once again we turn to the words of Jesus in
John 15:5 to authenticate what we are seeing in these words written some six
hundred years before His incarnation: I
am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears
much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. This idea drills down far below the surface
of human aspirations and endeavors. It
isn’t just that we need to turn to God if we want things to go well. This is of course true but there’s more to
it. If we took this mindset the
implication would be that we are free to go about our business apart from the
Lord, but if we want real success then we need to turn to Him. Instead Jesus and Habakkuk before Him are
describing a reality of life such that nothing at all is even possible without
God. He is the key driver for and the
definitive source of all human ambitions and intentions.
In Romans 14:4
Paul is discussing principles of conscience.
He instructs us not to look down on other people because they have
different convictions than we do about certain gray areas of the Christian
life. And then he writes this: Who are you to judge the servant of
another? To his own master he stands or
falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. To put it bluntly, we do not stand on our
own. We are incapable of achieving our
own success. If we attempt to obtain
victory in our walk with Christ by striving alone then we walk down the path of
works based failure that the Jews ran up against with the Mosaic Law.
Perhaps this
should be obvious. The gospel as it is
written in the Bible clearly teaches the understanding that salvation is a free
gift of God, completely apart from any works we perform. We understand that we deserved no grace or
mercy and that God in His great tenderness and compassion deigned to grant them
to us anyhow. We cast ourselves upon the
Lord and depend on Him to forgive us of our sins, save us from His great wrath
to come, adopt us into His family as sons and daughters, and promise us an
eternal inheritance that cannot be taken away and will never decay. We know all this. Yet sometimes following our new birth, as the
years roll by and a certain level of normality creeps into our lives we become
ensnared by forgetfulness. Although we
know that the credit for our deliverance belongs solely to God thoughts begin
to creep into our minds, perhaps even subconsciously, that we need to strive
harder, work faster, pray more, or minister more often in order to “win”. We struggle with temptation and, in spite of
the knowledge of grace, we somehow get it into our heads that to fight off the
temptation we just need to suck it up, gut it out, and bull our way through
it. Our own human hubris begins to creep
back into the forefront of our collective minds and we forget that which we
should always remember. We overlook that
which Habakkuk the prophet is trumpeting loud and clear from his writing. It is God alone who is responsible for all
that is. As Paul makes plain in
Philippians 2:13: for it is God who is
at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. There is very much a theme of divine
exclusivity resounding from the pages of scripture. God is the one who is at work, driving our
wills and empowering our efforts, all for the sake of His own preferences and
delights.
We must
latch onto this truth. We must
affix our fingers, locking them to the granite of this great teaching. We must clothe ourselves with the
reality of the principle being espoused here.
We must immerse our minds in the tranquil pool of this living
water. We must go overboard in
reminding ourselves and repeatedly coming to terms with this certainty. Because the sin nature that God has left
within us (even here He asserts His authority as the driving force behind
everything) will ceaselessly rage with hatred against the knowledge that God is
in the driver’s seat. If we do not
constantly keep our mind filled with the knowledge of God’s supremacy in every
facet of life then the tendency will be, as already stated, for that truth to
gradually slip out of view as water slowly drains from a leaky bucket. Sanctification is very much a cooperative
effort between a believer and the Holy Spirit.
But in a very real sense, the effort put forth by the believer isn’t so
much about actually doing “things”.
Rather, the work done by man should be to labor tirelessly to ground
himself in the truth of scripture while the Spirit works to enable, empower,
and embolden everything else.
So to answer
the original question: How did Habakkuk continually and faithfully assert his
faith in God even through the most desperate of circumstances? How did he remain unbreakable no matter what
trials he had to endure? The answer at
long last is that he didn’t. God did it
through him. This is the great theme of
the book of Habakkuk; man’s responsibility to continually affirm God’s
supremacy and sovereignty. God grant
that this will also be the great theme of our lives. To Him be the glory, forever.
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