We are almost going to conclude our series in Habakkuk. We want to turn again there in our Bibles to the last verses of chapter 3 in Habakkuk. Lord willing, when I return from ministry next week, the week following will be our final sermon in this series. I have found this series to be very beneficial and helpful. I hope that you have discovered that to be the case as well. I'm back against his prophecy on a marvelous note of victory. Chapter 3, verse 18, Yet I will exalt in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He has made my feet like hinds feet. and makes me walk on my high places for the choir director on my stringed instruments." Habakkuk is living during a time when God is disciplining his people. The Babylonian invasion is the rod of God's discipline. They're being removed from the land of Judah. Habakkuk rightly recognizes that as a discipline of God. But because it is the Lord who is administering this discipline, there is yet hope. As the writer of Hebrew says in chapter 12, verse 11, and following all discipline for the moment, neem seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. It's interesting that, as with Habakkuk, the writer of Hebrews here makes mention about the direction of one's feet and the strength of one's feet walking on straight paths while experiencing the discipline of God. Those loved by the Lord are disciplined by the Lord. And therefore, even as that discipline is being administered by faith, they can experience in anticipation the healing, the restoration and the benefit of being trained. And by faith, they can anticipate and experience the Lord's invigorating them to victory once the discipline has accomplished its purposes. Therefore, they can live in hope, being loved by the Lord. Now this is Habakkuk's testimony as his prophecy comes to a conclusion. And it's an amazing witness that he gives to us. Because all about him lies devastation. The Babylonian army is leaving a wake of total destruction. Habakkuk's life has been radically changed. He will never be the same. in this lifetime again. Judah is being deported. According to Jeremiah 25, 11 and 12 and 29, 10, the exile is going to last some 70 years. More than likely, after Habakkuk's lifetime, the promises of restoration will not be accomplished until Habakkuk has passed from the scene. When he looks at his life in this world, all he sees is deportation, exile, servitude to a cruel Babylonian masters, and that in a foreign and unclean place among idolaters. Think of a priest of the temple being removed to live in a Gentile pagan idolatrous place. It would be thoroughly revolting to him. And yet here he is, exulting, rejoicing, and strong, and pictured as a mountain goat scampering up the side of a steep slope. Perhaps you've seen these animals. They show amazing agility and strength. I remember some 20 years ago visiting in Israel and we took a tour from Jericho and walked in a wadi toward Jerusalem. It is a huge ravine carved into the rock by the water during the rainy season but we of course were in the dry season and some of these crevices that were made were very narrow and you would squeeze through these towering walls of rock jutting up on either side of you. In the wider spaces you could look up and see these little ridges like veins that were chiseled on the surface of the cliff branching out in all different directions. And those were paths that were made by these mountain goats, whose feet, like little jackhammers, pounded a path alongside the rock walls, shooting out hundreds of feet above you. At an angle that was 85 degrees or so, you wonder how the animal wasn't sucked off by the gravity and plunge to the ground. And then you see one of these creatures bounding around and bolting upward, catapulted by hind legs that cock and fire like pistons. They're shooting the beast forward and into these dizzying heights across the sheer face of what appeared at points to be vertical rock. And then the goat would just stop and poise itself astride this little lip that protruded just an inch or so wide on this path that had been carved by his hind's feet. I remember looking at the scene in front of me, and recall it even now, and thinking about this text. It was a passage that came to mind in my young mind and thought, look at that, and here now tonight I have opportunity to consider it with you. In verse 19, the Lord is my strength. He has made my feet like hinds feet and makes me walk on my high places." Review with me first of all tonight Habakkuk's Savior and strength. We saw last week that Habakkuk's Savior is Yahweh Adonai, the Lord, my God, the God of my salvation. Remember that Habakkuk is a priest of the temple. And there he is resolved, in verse 16, to wait quietly, submitting to the Lord's discipline, taking his appointed place in the temple, there where the Lord will give him protection and security, living his life in a Sabbath cadence of worship, a worship that is based upon the provision of God's sacrifice, that soothing, propitiating aroma that rises before the Lord, soothing and calming his wrath. Habakkuk, however, is a desperate man. And he's living in times of distress. Verse 16. He's in need of some real practical help. And he pursues the most practical thing of that is of most benefit to him. And that is the presence of his God. The presence of his Lord and Savior. His Rock. His Holy One, as he calls Him in chapter 1 and verse 12. The Lord God is my strength. He lives in covenant communion with his God. And he experiences covenant fidelity by commitment to worship and a walk of righteousness. And in so doing, he says, I'm strengthened. The Lord is my strength. My hind legs are like the legs of a mountain goat. His strength is really astonishing because the man is experiencing tremendous weakness. He tells us in verse 16, his skeletal structure feels like it's collapsing and he's unable to stand erect. He is a quivering glob of jello in and of himself. But the Lord is his strength. And in the midst of economic collapse and of deportation, even while enduring divine discipline, he will yet experience his hands being strengthened, his knees, although feeble, being strengthened, his straight paths for his feet, the limb that is lame will not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. When you look at him in this scene, as his prophecy comes to a conclusion, the landscape behind him is terribly bleak and barren. The debris strewn amidst the wreckage of a plundering army. buildings demolished, possessions no doubt discarded randomly in the streets, left by marauding invaders. The population is being ravaged and taken captive, led away to who knows where, people filing by, weeping, literally linked together like fish on hooks, stringed on a chain. That's the background of this portrait. But the man who is being profiled, this man is the righteous man by faith, and he is living by faith, righteously. And his expression, his behavior is incongruous. It's as though he's living from another world. He's being quickened by an alien energy. His strength is unnatural. Indeed, it's supernatural because the Lord Himself is Habakkuk's strength. We see, secondly, Habakkuk's victory. We've seen that Habakkuk's terms, exalt, in verse 16, and rejoice, are both, I'm sorry, in verse 18, they're both vocabulary drawn from the concept of conquest, of victory. It is victory that becomes the occasion for worshiping the God who is my salvation. On the event of rescue and deliverance and conquest, It is the worship of the God who was revealed in chapter 3. The God who is the warrior God who has come in victory. It is a celebration in advance of the historical defeat that Habakkuk knows will come upon the Babylonians, an empire that will collapse in less than a century. He already knows the victory of the prophetic woes pronounced in chapter 2. And yet here, in this most tragic setting, Habakkuk is nonetheless exuberant. He's spinning about in joyful praise and he's pictured like a mountain goat popping up and out of a deep valley of pain into which Judah is now marching in its deportation. You look at the man and say, what has got into you? His answer would be to point to the Lord his God before whom he is worshiping. He is my strength. He has shown us in this prophecy the certainty of retributive justice. He has assured me that the violence and the injustice both of Judah and of Babylon are but temporary phenomenons. They will last no longer than what the Lord has determined. And He has convinced me that He is here. And He is present. And He is coming. And He is disciplining. And He is saving. And He will accomplish His sovereign and gracious purpose right on time. For in wrath He will remember mercy. Habakkuk is a man of faith. For the righteous shall live by faith. And it is faith in the Lord. Faith fastened to the Word of God that Habakkuk is exercising. Because when Habakkuk says, he has made my feet like hind's feet and makes me walk on my high places, those are not words that are original to Habakkuk. As we saw last week in Psalm 18, these are the words of this Davidic Psalm, Psalm 18. We are instructed by Habakkuk's example that in this time of distress, in the pursuit of his God, he is feeding his faith upon the Scriptures. I find it interesting that oft times when we Christians come into times of distress and turmoil and pressure, one of the first things that we stop doing is reading our Bibles. Habakkuk would speak against that. He reminds us of these words written in the Psalms in Psalm 18, reading from verse 31. For who is God but the Lord? And who is a rock except our God? The God who girds me with strength and makes my way blameless. He makes my feet like hind feet and sets me upon my high places. He trains my hands for battle so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have also given me the shield of your salvation, and your right hand upholds me, and your gentleness makes me great. You enlarge my steps under me, and my feet have not slipped. I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and I did not turn back until they were consumed. This is the God who is Habakkuk's strength. As the psalm begins, I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress, my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. Habakkuk turns to the God of David, his rock, his shield, his salvation and strength. This is who Habakkuk praises. And in praise, in worship, this righteous man of faith is saved from his enemies. Now last week we surveyed Psalm 18. And it is useful to us to see that Habakkuk uses this psalm Habakkuk, the priest who is resolved to wait quietly in worship, takes a military psalm of the warrior king David. A psalm describing the Lord's rescue of David and David's strength in battle. But it is a psalm that also speaks to David's maintenance of his covenant integrity on the battlefield. For where he shows supernatural strength and obtains victory, you see him in verse 29, one man charging a whole troop, leaping over walls, bending bowls of bronze, sure-footed, trampling his enemies down. This priest takes this military psalm and says, this speaks to me in my commitment to be in my place. as a priest in the temple of God. Because where I am placed is in the battlefield. And as I uphold my God in worship, and He dwells among us, it is there that our victory is secured. He's telling a weak people who are being devastated by Babylonian invaders, whose culture and economy is in shambles. He's talking to such people who are like sheep being led to the slaughter, that their God is Yahweh the Lord, Adonai, the One revealed in New Covenant light to be Jesus Christ, and He is faithful. The vision of Him is the one of the conquering warrior God. And that vision is true and certain. He is coming. He is here. He is not late. He will not delay. We need to submit to His discipline and take our place in the day in which He has placed us and live by faith, believing and obeying Him and worshipping Him and waiting for Him. For there, as this God dwells among us, is our strength. There, as we maintain the sanctity of His name in the midst of the nations, there is our victory. There, He enables us to bound up the sides of the cliffs and to overcome in our high places. Now, the high places were significant in two ways in the Old Testament. In battle. To occupy a high ground is to take advantage of your enemy. In the Old Testament, when you took your enemy's high place, you dislodged him from the position of strength and were able to defeat him. The last words spoken by Moses before his death promised victory to the people of God and blessing to the people as they entered into the land. In Deuteronomy 33.29, 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 shall cringe before you and you shall tread upon their high places." These words spoken to a people entering the land promising them victory. Now, this very same reference of taking the high places are recalled by the prophet Habakkuk on the occasion of their leaving the land. They're departing the land. They're being devastated under the discipline and the invasion of the Babylonian conquerors. They're being driven out of the land. And yet, as Habakkuk leaves the land, he believes that they are yet triumphant. What faith! What faith? He believes that even though they're being separated from the land, that the words of Moses and the promised victory upon the high places will yet be theirs and God will indeed give them the promised land. And He will dwell with them in that promised land. This is a discipline. But it's the discipline of the Lord who is faithful to His promises. And even as we're leaving this land, this is the land that we have gotten by conquest. Because the Lord is our triumphant warrior king. So to be set on a high place, military speaking, is to have victory in battle and defeat of the enemy. But high places were also places of worship. Indeed, in the early days, Israel would worship the Lord at elevated locales. But after Solomon's temple was built, high places became notorious as locations for pagan idolatrous worship. Worship that hadn't been expunged from Israel was conducted on the high places where pagan influences polluted and contaminated the people. Often the fertility gods were worshipped at such places through debauched sensual rituals and even child sacrifices. So to take the enemy's high place was also to defeat his God. It was also to say that our God defeated your pagan God. So when Habakkuk envisions himself atop the high place, he is saying Yahweh wins and defeats all the Babylonian gods. And the Babylonians had a slew of gods. Every gate in the city of Babylon was dedicated to one of their gods. And as soon as the nation of Israel would come near that city of Babylon, they would be confronted with all of these gods. And Habakkuk says, no, it is God who takes the high place. God causes me to ascend to the high place, to that place of worship. But notice Habakkuk says, my high place. It is the place of his military triumph. It is the place of his victory in worship. Habakkuk experiences the victory of conquest Having been strengthened by the Lord, who is His strength, and now from the place of victory, He spins in joyful worship to His God. In worship is Habakkuk's victory." Isaiah chapter 58 and verse 13. Remember, that word, wait quietly, is significant of Sabbath keeping. Notice Isaiah 58 verse 13. If because of the Sabbath you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor it desisting from your own ways and from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word, then you will take the light in the Lord and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." The high places here are the heights of the earth. All the earth becomes the worshippers' conquered land. All creation becomes the platform upon which God is honored and worshiped. The renewed heaven and earth of Sabbath rest becomes the temple in which God dwells, the inheritance of God's elect, the sons of God, who embrace their identity as the children of God, as priests of God Most High, and who delight in the presence of God. On the day of His appointed assembly with His people, God says to them, I'll make you walk on the heights of the earth. I'll give you the victory that I have accomplished on your behalf. I'll give you the privilege of living before and forever with the true and the everlasting God in the land of promise. Habakkuk knows this. He believes this. I mentioned before that Habakkuk would never see Israel restored to the land in his lifetime. And yet he embraces the promise of inhabiting that land through conquest and dwelling in that land with Yahweh, his God. His Sabbatarian worship is based upon the Lord's provision of sacrifice and it is a testimony of his faith and his hope that he nonetheless will participate in the fulfillment of these promises to the sons of Israel. He believes in the essence of the covenant promise throughout Scripture. I will be your God, you will be my people, and I will dwell among you. And God dwelling among us is not an abstract concept. It is in the land. It is in the place of God's victory. When you look at Habakkuk now, you who are regenerated by the Spirit, You who are invigorated by the life of the risen Christ, what do you see as you watch this man of faith exalting and rejoicing and worshiping and bounding above the chaos of his day to the place of victory and praise? Are you able to recognize that this strength that he displays, although in the Old Covenant, is yet the strength of resurrection victory? Can you recognize the power of the strength of God that overcomes death being lived out by this Old Testament believer who was trusting in the provision of the Lord? this sacrificial provision given in worship, which is the prefigurement and type and picture of Christ that is given to this man of faith. Can you see that Habakkuk is living a life that lies beyond the few days that he has in this age? And already by faith, he's being energized by the God whose promises will be fulfilled on the other side of death. Like Abram, he believes in the God who raises the dead. and although everything around him is dead, his association with the land, his culture, his society, no doubt members of his own family, perhaps even he himself soon facing his own death in the realization that as he leaves this land, he'll never come back to it again. Not in this life. But he exalts in the God who will be faithful to the promises that he'll walk on the heights of the earth. He'll walk on the high places of Israel with the hind legs of a mountain goat, strengthened by the God who raises the dead. It's the same kind of hope to which Isaiah speaks in Isaiah chapter 40, reading from verse 27. Familiar words in Isaiah 40. Verse 27, Why do you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, and the justice due me escapes the notice of my God? Do you not know, have you not heard, the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not become weary or tired? His understanding is inscrutable. He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power. Though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord, will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary. Can you see a picture of the resurrection in that strength? A strength that overcomes the decay of age. A strength that overcomes death. The God of justice will rectify all wrong. Verse 27, He's not unaware or inattentive or ignorant of the plight of His people as He disciplines them in love to fashion them into Christlikeness. If you look at Him, who is He? He is the everlasting God. He is the Creator. He is the eternally living One who never tires. He gives that strength. that eternal living life and energy to all who trust in Him, to those who wait upon Him, who worship Him by faith. They then gain this new strength and they rise up with new strength. It's the newness of the age to come where old things have passed away and all things have become new. They mount up not only with hind feet like mountain goats, but with Wings like eagles and soar in the heights of God's victory as the sons of God, as heirs of eternal life. Unending, unbounded energy and strength that takes them through old age and death into eternal life. Habakkuk is looking at his immediate death. And yet, he's bounding like a mountain goat up the sides of his troubles. You can see Him there rising even. Soaring with wings like an eagle. Riding on the heights of the earth. Moving with divine strength. Energized with a life that is obtained from the age to come. From the God who raises the dead. You can see Him in the midst of tribulation and in the midst of distress. He's living by faith. He experiences a supernatural endowment of eschatological life and power by faith. And although he's being led away to the slaughter like a sheep to be killed, he is yet overcoming. He is soaring. He is on heights of victory and worship. Habakkuk is a man of faith who lives by faith who fills his vision with a view of his God, Yahweh, Adonai, the God who has revealed Himself to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Habakkuk, with his sight illuminated by the Word of God, for he is believing in the Word of God, sees invisible things. You come to Him and say, look Habakkuk, you're ruined. Look at you. You're defeated by the Babylonians. You've been laid low. Habakkuk says, no. God has placed me on my high places. Habakkuk, it looks like you're weak and crushed. Habakkuk says, no. My feet are like hind's feet and I soar like an eagle. Habakkuk, it looks like you're being deported and being cast out from the land. He says, no, the promises of our God cannot fail. We have been given this land. And even though in discipline we're being deported from it, we will yet walk on the heights of this land. And God will dwell with us in the land. Habakkuk, it looks like the Lord has abandoned you and left you all alone. He says, no, He loves me. That's why He disciplines me. He disciplines us for our good. And we trust Him. Although for the moment, the discipline does not seem to be joyful but sorrow. Yet, we're going to be trained by it. And afterward, it will produce a peaceable fruit of righteousness. Habakkuk, are you still insistent upon being joyful in your worship? He says, yes, I'm waiting quietly for the Lord. I'm submitting to Him. I'm secure in my place. I know the significance and the purpose of His Sabbath promises and presence. And my sacrifice is acceptable before Him. And the wrath that I rightly deserve from Him has been propitiated. I'm experiencing the presence of the God with whom I'm reconciled, even as He disciplines me, but as a father to a son. I believe Him. Therefore, I will exalt in the Lord and I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He has made my feet like hinds feet. He makes me walk on my high places. Even though I look like a lamb that is being led to the slaughter in all these things, we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. There's nothing that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. In Him, we are victorious. We win. He conquers and we triumph. And He has brought us into the victory of His resurrection. Tonight, as we come to the table, we come to feast upon the Lamb. The triumphant, conquering Lamb. And in Him, we are victorious. Amen.