It's a joy and a privilege to be here with you all again this morning as we come together to worship our Lord on this Lord's Day. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Nathan Gibbs. I'm the pastoral intern here at Covenant Fellowship Church, also a deacon and a student at Edinburgh Theological Seminary. As I've had the opportunity to preach here As we're with you all, I've been going through the book of Habakkuk together, and today we have come to chapter 3, where we will look at verses 1 through 15 together. Let us read that word now. Please stand with me for that. This is the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of our God from Habakkuk chapter 3, verses 1 through 15. A prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, according to Shigonoth. 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. God came from Timan, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise. His brightness was like the light. Rays flashed from His hands, 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 sink 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 chariots of salvation, you stripped the sheath from your bow, calling for many arrows. Selah. You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and writhed. The raging water 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 sphere. You marched through the earth in fury. You threshed the nations in anger. You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck, Selah. 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. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you inspired it, that you caused it to be written down for our sake. for the sake of the generations before us and the sake of the generations after us, that we might not labor in ignorance here in this world, in this pilgrimage, but instead we might know you through it. Lord, we pray that you would be with us as we study it this morning, that you would help us to understand it, but not just to understand it on an intellectual level, Lord, but that you would use it to impact, to change, to transform our hearts to make us more into the image of your son Jesus Christ. We pray these things in his name. Amen. You may be seated. As we've worked through the book of Habakkuk up to this point, we have seen a very serious situation set before us. Habakkuk, the prophet, comes before the Lord with this great plea. How long, O Lord, how long will you look at the evil that absolutely pervades your people and do nothing about it? We saw the background of that. What prompted these words, the horrible actions of Judah doing things like child sacrifice and the killing of God's prophets. We saw God's response to this cry of Habakkuk where he did not tell him that he would bring about some great revival within the nation of Judah but instead promised their judgment at the hands of the Chaldeans or the Neo Babylonians, as they're also known. We saw then Habakkuk's response to this, understanding it in a sense, but really pleading to God that this is going too far. Why would you punish the wicked with those who are even more wicked and violent? And then waiting, Habakkuk did patiently for an answer. And then we saw God's response in chapter two, where he promised that the righteous of Judah, the righteous of his people throughout the ages would be saved by faith. And that he would, in his time, judge even the Neo-Babylonians, the Chaldeans, those people who he had used to judge Judah. that they also would face a reckoning at his hands. Now here in Habakkuk 3, we see the Prophet's response to this wonderful revelation that he has received from God. And he responds by writing a psalm. This is the only psalm that is recorded in any of the prophets of the Old Testament. It's truly a unique example. It's even the only place outside of the Book of Psalms where we see Selah being used as a sort of musical notation. And Habakkuk wrote this, yes, in response to a particular situation, but the words that he uses enable it to be used both by his contemporaries and the immediately following generations as they worship the Lord for who he is, for what he has done, for what he will do, and which also enables us to use it, to study it, even to sing it for that same purpose. Here in this psalm we see Habakkuk calling the people of God to worship a God who is powerful, a God who is terrifying, a God who is utterly, completely glorious. But most of all, it calls us to worship a saving God, a merciful God, and a promise-keeping God. No matter how terrible the days in which the people of God live, they have hope, Habakkuk says here in this passage. So as we look at it today, we will look at it with two different points of view. It's not really a passage that can be divided up neatly into chunks, but instead we'll look at the two main themes. Firstly, salvation from Egypt. It could even be written salvation from slavery. And secondly, salvation in the Messiah. at salvation from Egypt and salvation in the Messiah. So the first thing that we see when we do a surface reading of this Psalm of Habakkuk, which you probably also noticed during the reading, is that it is absolutely full of symbolism. And there are actually multiple different layers that we can pull out of it, multiple different messages, multiple different references that Habakkuk is pulling from. The first and most obvious one is he's presenting a God who is omnipotent, awesome in his power, who marches up from the south, shaking the nations, shaking the mountains, coming forth to destroy the enemies of God and to save his people. But the sort of really three, I would argue, layers of symbolism that he uses to bring this message forward. The first layer of symbolism that Habakkuk uses is he portrays God, Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God of Judah, our God, as the God of Gods. The God of Gods. You are surely familiar with the concept that the people of Israel, the people of Judah were utterly unique in that they were a monotheistic people. They worshipped one almighty omnipotent God while all of their neighbors worshipped a huge pantheon of different gods who all have their different names and different backstories and different roles and things that they controlled and did in the world. And what Habakkuk here does is he strikes right at the heart of that conception. And that's important because throughout the earlier part of the book, we've seen the total and complete confidence that the Chaldeans, the Neo-Babylonians placed in their gods. In the second half of verse 14 in this passage we see that the Babylonians came like a whirlwind to scatter me, that is the people of God, rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret. In chapter 1 verse 16 we see that the Chaldeans, Babylonians sacrifice to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet for by them he lives in luxury and his food is rich and in chapter 2 verse 18 and 19 we see that they placed all of their trust in these idols that they construct with their hands Habakkuk says what prophet is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies. For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols. Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, awake! To a silent stone, arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it. So the Neo-Babylonians triumph over all of their neighbors, over all of their enemies, and they see that triumph as vindicating their beliefs, as vindicating their pantheon of gods, as indicating that their gods were more powerful than the gods of the Assyrians, than the god of Judah. And Habakkuk here shows that this is not the case whatsoever. He takes the attributes, the only attributes of these different pagan gods, and he applies all of these attributes to God. We see that first in verse four, where Habakkuk says, his brightness was like the light. rays flashed from his hand and there he veiled his power. Now you're probably think when you hear this and are familiar with Zeus, the head of the Greek pantheon and the bolts of lightning that he had that he would cast down to earth or maybe of Thor in the Norse pantheon and in fact this was common throughout all of the different pagan pantheons, that they had this one God whose role was to be in control of the lightning, of this sort of divine electricity that he would throw at his opponents and use in judgment. And Habakkuk here says, no, there is no God of lightning, there is a God, there is one God and lightning is merely a created tool, one of many that this God is in complete control of. Then immediately following we see in verse 5, before him went pestilence and plague followed at his heels. Actually both of these words, pestilence and plague, are actually They don't only have that meaning, but they're also the proper names of the Babylonian deities who were supposed to have controlled the different pestilences and plagues that would afflict the people of the world. That was their one job. That was the one thing that they were in control of. But again here Habakkuk says no, these things are merely two aspects of the immense power and sovereignty of God that he has complete control over and are tools that he uses for judgment. Then in verses 8 and 15 we see God shown to be in complete command and control over water and the sea. In verse 8, it says, 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 chariots of salvation? And in verse 15, you trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters. Now there were some pantheons that we might be familiar with, like Poseidon in the Greek pantheon, who was a god of the sea and could be prayed to in some sense. But the neighbors of Judah, they had this conception that the sea was completely beyond the control of their gods. It was this completely wild force of chaos that they could merely hope was not angry at them at whatever day they happened to go out to sea. And there are stories of Baal, the sort of head of the Pantheon and of the people of Canaan, going to war with this chaos monster in the sea. And triumphing only in part over it and certainly not subduing the sea for his people. This is why so many of the cultures of that reason were scared to death to go out to sea to build boats and to conduct trade upon it. Yet here Habakkuk shows that God is not even an equal of this chaos force in the sea and has to wrestle it and maybe subdue it in part, but instead he created it. He's in complete and total control of it. It is nearly his servant, his tool to the extent where he can ride his chariot over the top of it, trampling it with his horses. It is completely subjected to him. So Habakkuk shows the people of Judah who had been so deeply influenced by the pagan religions around them, and he shows their neighbors who are tempted to gloat over them and their defeat, and see it somehow as a defeat of the God of Judah, that no, this God is utterly beyond the gods of the pagan pantheons, is in complete control of every single part of his creation. A second theme that we see running throughout this text is the theme of the Exodus. And that's really no mere happenstance that it is included here. Throughout the Old Testament, God again and again and again introduces himself to the people by saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt. who brought you up out of Egypt. That is one of the main ways that he identified himself to his people. This Exodus event was absolutely crucial to how God portrayed himself to his people and to the relationship between God and his people. We see here in this passage in verse 10 and in verse 15 a really also a strong reference to God's parting of the Red Sea. In verse 10 it says, The mountains saw you and writhed. The raging waters swept on. The deep gave forth its voice. It lifted its hand on high. the deep being the sort of the deepest most wild parts of the ocean that lifted his hands on high just as God piled up the waters for the parting of the Red Sea. Then in verse 15 again you trample the sea with your horses the surging of mighty waters. God subjected the ocean to his control and parted it for his people in this really the decisive moment of the Exodus, the moment where God brought his people out of Egypt, giving them freedom from the slavery to which they had been subjected. giving them victory over the people who had subjected them by the destruction of Pharaoh and his army and showing his complete and total lordship over his own people, freeing them from the master who had subjected them and bringing them in subjection to himself. And the place where that was really formally brought about and formalized was at Mount Sinai, which we see Habakkuk referring to here in verses 3 and 4, where he says, God came from Timan and the Holy One from Mount Paran. And both of those are referring to the area south of Israel, to the mountains in that region, and via poetic language to Mount Sinai. 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." That is a clear reference to the great storm that came upon the top of Mount Sinai. as the Lord met with Moses, as the Lord covenanted with his people and gave them his law and told them how he was now their God and how they might follow him in obedience. We see the people writing about lightning coursing through the air and the people who were around the foot of the mountain were so afraid by this incredible theophany showing of God's presence that they did not even want to approach him and sent Moses in their stead. This is at Mount Sinai, really the, the, the, um, decisive time where God covenanted with his people. where Israel's journey started, where they began as a nation. Yet it was also because of this incredible divine display, we see also that Israel didn't enter this covenant as equals, making some kind of mutual agreement with God, with them being on the same footing as God. But it was a covenant given to them with authority. by God and one which he hold them accountable to. And then in in verse 9b we see a reference to God providing water from the rock for his people in the wilderness. It says you split the earth with rivers just as Moses with his staff split the rock with water coming forth. God's provision for a rebellious people. An important reference considering the fact that Habakkuk is writing for a people who are about to suffer deeply for their rebellion against God. That Habakkuk is showing God provides for his people even when they are in rebellion against him. God rescued his people from slavery before Habakkuk seems to be telling the people of Judah. Nothing could stop him. The ten plagues were a frontal assault on the gods of Egypt. Each plague was a victory against a different god who supposedly controlled that aspect of life. His parting of the Red Sea showed his complete dominance over the forces of chaos. The forces that even the pagans agreed their God didn't control. Nothing could stop him. Nothing could stop God from saving his people and nothing could stop him from doing it again. God's people would be vindicated and those who were not his people would be shown to be fools. And the third and final vein of symbolism that we see coursing throughout this psalm is the symbolism of the conquest, the entrance of the people of God into the promised land. We see that in the first half of verse 8 where Habakkuk says, Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord? Was your anger against the rivers or your inclination against the sea? So just as God had split apart the ocean for his people to cross through, so he also did with the Jordan River. Replicating his great victory over Egypt in the Red Sea, but instead of showing final victory over Egypt, began the victory of the people of God in the land of Canaan. that in verse 11 we see the sun and moon standing still. Sun and moon stood still in their place at the light of your arrows as they sped at the flash of your glittering spear. Again, this is another reference, this one to Joshua chapter 10 verses 6 through 14. Joshua chapter 10, 6 through 14. I'll read that for us. in this chapter of the conquest of the land by the people of God or rather by God for his people. And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal saying, do not relax your hand from your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us. So Joshua went up from Gilgal He and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. And the Lord said to Joshua, do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you. So Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal. And the Lord threw them into a panic before Israel, who struck them with a great blow at Gibeon, and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth Horon, and struck them as far as Azekah and Makedah. And as they fled before Israel, while they were going down the ascent of Beth-horon, the LORD threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died." My Bible just closed unexpectedly. and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword. At that time, Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel. And he said in the sight of Israel, Son, stand still at Gibeon. and mooned in the valley of Eidolon. And the sun stood still and the moon stopped until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since when the Lord heeded the voice of a man for the Lord fought for Israel. The Lord fought for Israel. Such an incredible picture of, yes, God's control over all things, even the most fundamental facts of creation that we take for granted. The rising and the setting of the sun through the Earth's orbit. But it was also incredible display of God fighting directly for his people, casting down hail from heaven, halting the rotation of the earth, the sun and moon standing still. This was a God Habakkuk is reminding his people who did not merely enable his people to be powerful and to, with that power, conquer their enemies, but instead actively defeated their enemies for them. And we see that image strengthened in verse 12 and in the first half of verse 14, where Habakkuk says, you marched through the earth in fury. You threshed the nations in anger. You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors who came like a whirlwind to scatter me." This image of God threshing, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but this way that the people in Habakkuk's time would separate the grain that they would use to make their bread from the plant in which it grew. was through this really violent process with these heavy sticks with ropes that they would beat the grain on the ground over and over and over again causing the grains to be loose. And this is the image of God beating the enemies of God's people in the same way, totally utterly. It doesn't show a battle of equals or a battle where God has to exert himself, but a battle where God effortlessly crushes God's enemies, the enemies of God's people. Whenever God was with Israel throughout their history, they triumphed because God was with them fighting on their behalf. triumphing over their enemies for them. God had won the victory for his people before and Habakkuk is saying these Neo-Babylonians are no different. He would thresh them just as he did the Egyptians, just as he did the Canaanites. Habakkuk prefaces this whole psalm with saying, I have heard the report of you. He had heard the reports of God saving his people from Egypt. He had heard the report of God bringing his people into the promised land. He had heard the report of God triumphing over his people's enemies. And because of that, Habakkuk is implying, and he'll say at the last part of the Psalm that we'll look at next time, It's because of that, that Habakkuk trusts God, even as this impending judgment comes upon the people of Judah. Because of what God had done for the people of Israel, the people of Judah could trust God, even in the midst of judgment and trial and pain. And in the same way, because of what we have seen God do throughout history, for the people of God throughout time, we can trust Him as He works in the church today. Even as it seems that we are reduced to such a small, insignificant remnant in the world around us, we can trust God that He is still working in our midst and He will still He will still work victory over the foes of His people. And we can also trust Him that even in the midst of discipline, of the discipline that He subjects us to because of our sin, He does not abandon us. As Calvin says, while He chastises them, He ceases not to be a father Judah's judgment at the hands of the Chaldeans did not equal the end of God's people. It equaled their preservation from sin, from apostasy, their preservation that the Messiah might come. And in the same way, even in the midst of the discipline that you experience. When God chastises you for your sins and failings, you can know that it is not Him exercising His wrath to destroy you. It is Him exercising His fatherly discipline to save you, to preserve you, to bring you safely home to Himself. to be made into the person that you were made to be. Because of what God has done for His people, because of God's promises to His people, you can trust Him in whatever He is doing in your life today, tomorrow, in every day until he brings you home. And that brings us to our second point, salvation in the Messiah. Salvation in the Messiah. There seems to be this big question mark still when looking at all of the judgments that God promises in this book. Is there really hope for the future? God, yes, God promises to destroy Babylon. But how? God's people will be powerless. The righteous will live by faith. But which righteous people will be left after this judgment? All the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. Yet God's people are going to be crushed by pagans. Yet Habakkuk declares confidently in verse 13, God will save his people. You went out for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck. Habakkuk declares this despite all earthly evidences. He knows that it is true. So how was this fulfilled? There was a typological fulfillment and there was a true fulfillment. Typologically, so in a, in a, in a shadow of the true fulfillment that was still to come, God fulfilled this property through prophecy through the person of Cyrus. Cyrus, the emperor of Persia. Yes, in this passage in Habakkuk 3, he depicts God himself marching against his enemies from Sinai with the earth shaking and the nations jumping in fear. And yes, God is the ultimate cause. He is sovereign, but God uses means, secondary causes, to bring about these great events in the history of the earth, and the cause that he used for this fulfillment was Cyrus. The kingdom of Persia, the kingdom of the Medes, two kingdoms that had come together in alliance, rose up against their oppressors, the Babylonians, and in one single night, as we see in Daniel 5, they crushed the Babylonian Empire and brought it to in end. And the kingdom of Persia was a much more tolerant empire than its predecessors. Unlike the Assyrians and the Babylonians, they didn't conquer peoples and then bring them into exile far away from the land that they were from and using horrible acts of violence against them, but instead they had a policy of leaving the peoples that they conquered alone for the most part, as long as they acknowledged Persian overlordship. And because of that, the people of God themselves were able to be restored. And it is here in verse 13, we see Habakkuk say, for the salvation of your anointed, really could also be translated for the salvation by your anointed. And in Isaiah chapter 45, we see the same Cyrus, king of Persia, called the anointed of God. The Hebrew word for anointed is where we get our word for Messiah. In Isaiah 45 says, Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed. I will go before you and level the exalted places. I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hordes and secret places. that you may know that it is I the Lord the God of Israel who call you by your name for the sake of my servant Jacob in Israel my chosen I call you by your name I name you though you do not know me I am the Lord and there is no other besides me there is no God I equip you though you do not know me that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the West there is none beside me I am the Lord and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. And then in Ezra chapter 1 verse 5, we see that Cyrus, just as Isaiah prophesies, is used by God to restore his people to the land. In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing. Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel. He is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem. The people of God were returned by Cyrus to their land. God did bring about the destruction of those nations that destroyed Judah and did restore and save his people. Yet, even in the return from exile, there was great disappointment. When they rebuilt the temple, there was no wonderful theophany as the Spirit of God filled the temple as there was when Solomon built the first temple. There was no kingdom of Judah or of Israel that was brought back to life. They were merely a department of the empire of Persia. And after Persia, they suffered under the yokes of new conquerors, of the Greeks, of the Romans, as we know from the time of Christ. This final great salvation of God's people by his anointed had not yet come to pass because Cyrus was only a type in shadow. The one who would truly save and vindicate his people was Christ. The Christ who crushed the head of Satan so you see in the second half of verse 13 you crushed the head of the house of the wicked laying him bare from thigh to neck a reference to the Proto evangelium the first declaration of the gospel in Genesis 3 15 where God says to the serpent I will put enmity between you and the woman and and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel." Christ did this by his wonderful work. He crushed Satan, the greatest enemy of God's people. As Paul illustrates in Colossians 2, verse 15, where he says, he, that is Christ, disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Him. Jesus Christ by His life and death paid the debt for our sin through His suffering and faithfully fulfilled the demands of the covenants that we broke that the people who Habakkuk was writing to broke. the covenant of works, the Mosaic Covenant, Jesus fulfilled these things perfectly. And because of that, He won the final victory. He made us, who are in Him, alive in Him, uniting us to Him. Because He rose from the dead and entered the presence of God, we will too. He has won that right for us, definitively. He has won you, Christian, an imperishable inheritance. Yet the world still isn't filled with the glory of the knowledge of God. There is still evil. Even today, while we enjoy the already of Christ's wonderful work of Christ's wonderful victory. We are still waiting for the not yet. We are waiting for his second coming, but we wait with a sure and certain hope. We know that there will be a new heaven and new earth where all things will be very good. and where we will be with our God forever. You, Christian, can wait with trust, with sure hope, with patience, knowing that God keeps His promises and that Christ has certainly won these things for you. Are you a recipient? of these promises? Are you a recipient of these gifts that Christ has won? Are you in Christ? Or will you instead find yourself on the receiving end of the judgment of which Habakkuk here speaks? When Christ comes again, he will not come as the suffering servant with a message of grace. He will come as the conquering King. There will be no more opportunity. It will be the time of decision, of judgment, of making all things new. But today, Today, the offer of the gospel is extended to you. Believe in Christ. Trust in Christ. Trust in Him and in Him alone for your salvation. He will not reject you. He will welcome you. He will make you a son or daughter of the Most High God. rather than suffering the eternal consequences of defeat by the Almighty God of the universe, you can enjoy the infinite fruits of His victory. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for the wonderful truth of your gospel. that not just in the four gospels, but throughout the entirety of the scriptures, we can see the wonderful work that you have done for your people and the wonderful work that you are still promising for the future. Father, we pray that this truth would give us strength, give us hope, give us patience in the here and now as we struggle through the pains and sufferings of this life here on earth. But Lord, remind us through your sacrament, through your body and blood, as we partake of it, that there will come a time where we will once again be united with you, where we will see your son where we will feast with him in heaven, where we will feast with him in the new heavens, in new earth, where there will be no more tears, but only joy everlasting. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.