Good morning, I invite you in your copy of God's Word, please turn to the prophet Habakkuk, chapter three. Now, kind of towards the end of the Old Testament, not quite in Matthew yet, so you'll find it right in the middle of all the minor prophets. Habakkuk, chapter three. I get the blessing of finishing up this series on this minor prophet. So Habakkuk, just to remind us before we read this passage, it was a prophet for the people who heard some stunning news. The Lord came to him and said, judgment is coming upon your people for their sin. But don't worry, I'll punish the people who punish you. And the first 15 verses of this chapter is Habakkuk's song of praise, remembering all of God's salvations in the past, which brings us to this final passage. Maybe it's one you know well. It's a glorious one and it shows us the true transformation that Habakkuk went through, through this dialogue with the Lord. So hear now the word of God from Habakkuk chapter three, verses 16 through 19. I hear and my body trembles. My lips quiver at the sound. Rottenness enters into my bones. My legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble. to come upon people who invade us. Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places. To the choir master with stringed instruments. This is the word of God. Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for beautiful passages like this. But Father, as we come to it this morning, we must recognize that by nature our minds are dark when it comes to your word. So please give us light. Open the eyes of our hearts. Help us to behold wonderful things from your law. Lord, please help me to speak clearly. And Father, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight. Amen. Whenever the Lord presents his judgments against us, In any area of life, our response must be humility with a penitent heart, taking joy in our God who has granted us the chief gift, salvation through Jesus Christ. Indeed, the only way for Christians to have lasting, satisfying joy in God is to first have, like Habakkuk, a seriously penitent heart. For the people of God, the way to joy is through sorrow. The way to everlasting gain is through loss. Those who seek to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for the sake of God will preserve it. There is no promise of bright hope for tomorrow for saints who are not humble today. There's no promise of bright hope for tomorrow for saints who are not humble today. This entire prayer by Habakkuk in this third chapter is a heartfelt song of worship from beginning to the end. If you remember from verse 1, it says, a prayer of Habakkuk, and then verse 13 ends with stringed instruments. This was a song of worship from the prophet. Right before this, in these first 15 verses, Habakkuk looked back and remembered how God had always been with his people, had always protected them. He reminded himself, I can't take joy in God for his salvation unless I remember that he actually worked salvation. And just like this wonderful song that we sang, Great is Thy Faithfulness, one of my favorites, Habakkuk looked back at all of the wonderful mercies of God. All I have needed, thy hand has provided. And so in this passage this morning, just like in the song, Habakkuk is looking to the future by God's strength because he is taking joy for today and bright hope for tomorrow in the Lord. This short passage, only a few verses, has two simple and profound parts, and you can see these two themes all throughout the Bible. Keep your eyes open. How did Habakkuk have bright hope for tomorrow? How did Habakkuk end this book, this tumultuous book, with such a firm joy? First of all, in verse 16, we'll see Habakkuk had a penitent heart, which leads, in the next couple verses, Habakkuk had a powerful joy, a penitent heart, which led to a powerful joy. So let's look at verse 16, Habakkuk's penitent heart. Let me read this verse for us one more time. Try to picture, try to picture what Habakkuk was maybe looking like as he was expressing these words. I hear and my body trembles. My lips quiver at the sound speaking about God's judgment. Rottenness enters into my bones, my legs tremble beneath me. And she caused us to ask the question, what does it mean to have a penitent heart? What does it mean? Perhaps the only thing that comes to your mind with the phrase a penitent heart is Indiana Jones. You remember the third movie when they're trying to get the Holy Grail, and Indiana Jones's father is dying, and Indiana Jones has to pass through the dark hallway, and what does the father whisper? He says, only the penitent man will pass. And Indiana Jones kneels at just the right time to avoid getting killed. So that movie presents penitence as kneeling before the Lord. And there's some truth to that, but this penitence is mostly, it's a disposition of the heart that shows itself in an action. Penitence is much more than just kneeling. It comes from a Latin word for regret, sorrow. contrition, a hatred of your own sinfulness. So what did Habakkuk hear that made him respond so viscerally to these words? Remember, he heard the judgments of God. The Lord appeared to him and said, I will punish your people with exile and destruction, and then I'll punish the people that punished you. And we see here Habakkuk just kind of, he can't even control it. It's this visceral reaction to God's words. Because even though Habakkuk was a pious man, even though he was a prophet, even though he thought he was one of the innocent ones, when he was pressed by God's justice, he melted and said, surely we deserve this. Let's look more closely at these words. He talks about his body trembling and his lips quivering. Perhaps if you've ever done public speaking before, you can commiserate with these visceral body reactions of being in front of people. Habakkuk heard God's word and it affected him deeply, almost violently. I think of that story in the Old Testament in the book of 1 Samuel. Remember when the priest, Eli, heard the news that his two sons had died? He didn't just take it and sit there. No, he was struck by the news. He fell over. It actually killed him. We're all capable of being struck this way by words, by truths. Habakkuk was shaking because he knew what was about to come. He shuddered at the thought of God. treating his people with what they deserve. Look at this next phrase. He says, rottenness enters into my bones. Maybe this phrase is confusing. This exact phrase can actually be found in Proverbs 12, four. Let me read that real quick. An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who shames him is like rottenness to his bones. So what does this mean? Like the aching, poisonous pain of a man being publicly shamed by his wife. Habakkuk's soul is troubled by what he heard. Imagine the feeling of your bones and your skeleton rotting from the inside out. That's like the picture that Habakkuk is painting. And then he says, my legs trembled beneath me. You could translate this as he was shaking where he stood. which shows both that his reaction was immediate and it was making him immobile. Maybe a colloquial way we could say this is Habakkuk was scared stiff. He was scared stiff by the judgment of God. And the prophet Jeremiah experienced something quite similar in Jeremiah 4.19 when he heard about this same invasion to come. Hear his words. He says, my anguish, my anguish. I writhe in pain, oh the walls of my heart, I cannot keep silent, for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. You see what Habakkuk and Jeremiah are doing. They heard something in the future that God said would happen, and yet they're feeling it as if it is today. They are hearing God's wrath to come in the future and are reliving it in a sense. And friends, it might be uncomfortable to read about this kind of reaction from a person in the Bible. But every single person who has ever lived will behave like this before the Lord at some point. Every single person. It will either happen in this life, for those who turn and are saved, or in the next life. As Paul writes, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. You see, those who belong to God feel his judgment press upon them now and beg for mercy before he even comes. It's part of what it means to be a Christian. Those who do not belong to God ignore the warnings. act like the world will just always continue the way it's always been, and then they will face God's wrath with no covering, with no atonement. The proclamation of judgment, the invasion by Babylon brings Habakkuk to his knees immediately. This is what it means to be a Christian. Your eyes, the way Habakkuk is feeling the pressing weight of future judgment of Babylon in his day is a picture of what Christians feel in their souls when they hear the preaching of the gospel. The wrath of the Lord for sins is that there is a punishment for those who do not follow God. There is a wrath that God is withholding for the time being. And those of us who believe are those who have felt it in our soul and cry out for mercy and say, Lord, Forgive me for I am a sinner. Psalm 32 verses three through four has very similar words to this. David says this, when I kept silent, speaking about his sin, my bones wasted away. Through my groaning all day long, for by day and night, your hand, O God, was heavy upon me. No doubt Habakkuk's heart was racing right here. His mind was anything but stable. but he was reacting the way he should have. I think a passage like this should speak directly to ways that our culture thinks about mental stability in a lot of ways. We live in a world that puts an incredibly high premium on mental stability. That's not a wrong emphasis. Perhaps it's one that many previous generations have overlooked. But like all trends and generational moods, if you will, this emphasis on mental wholeness has both blessings and downsides. Mental stability, rational clarity, and emotional control are good things. They are good things. But they're not the ultimate gift. Being right with a holy God is the ultimate gift. Salvation is the ultimate gift. So because the same God who is the Lord of all the universe is also the master of your mind, of our hearts, as the scriptures often speak. Here's what I mean. Even though mental clarity and a lack of internal anxiety are good things, Habakkuk here would have been a madman. to respond with a calm demeanor and a calm heart and an unreacted body. He would have been the true crazy man to stare the judgments of God in the face and say, I'm fine, and keep on going. So Habakkuk's response here has much to teach us. How we think about even our own minds, and the control that we have over them. What many modern people would have called a crazy response, or unstable in the mind, or needing counseling or therapy, was actually Habakkuk responding the way that he should have. His soul was working properly, So as Christians, when you find that even your own mind or your own heart is not under your own control, we need to ask certain questions. The Bible urges us to ask certain questions like, am I hiding anything from the Lord? Am I running from a confession of sin? Is there an area of faithfulness that I'm willfully neglecting? Because if the answer to those things is yes, what if the Lord is using the unsoundness of your mind to draw you to repentance? And God speaks of this in the scriptures in Leviticus 26, when the Lord talks about all the things he will do to his people to try to discipline them to come back. One of the things he says is what Habakkuk's experiencing. The Lord says, I will give them faintness of heart. The sound of a rustling leaf will put them to flight. They shall run away when no one pursues them. It's always worth asking the question, is God trying to wake me up to something? And I've got to make the caveat before we move on, not all mental issues of irrationality and loss of stability are a result of sin. Not all are. There is a time to go to the doctor. But the scriptures do prompt us to ask the question, what if God is using it to wake us up? So I encourage you all, if you're struggling with something like this, something that maybe Habakkuk is experiencing and you don't know, speak to someone who loves you, your spouse, a friend. Discuss these things. The body of Christ is meant to be a community where we help to diagnose one another together, if you will. which brings us to Habakkuk's chief reaction to God's message right here before the joy. He says, yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us. Notice the disparity. He was in a time of trouble, like his heart was anxious, and then it moves pretty quickly to calm. But there is an important textual question here. Perhaps you've noticed it, those of you who have different translations than the ESV. What day of trouble is Habakkuk waiting for? Is it the day of trouble for Israel, for God's people? Or is it the day of trouble for Babylon, the people who will invade Israel? Both make sense. And depending on your translation, you might see something different. So for instance, the ESV and the NIV makes the case for the reading that this day of trouble is speaking about God's enemies, Babylon. This is the phrasing that I read. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon the people who invade us. So if this is the case, Habakkuk is saying, God, I will quietly wait in patience for your righteous vengeance to come upon your enemies. So that's what he's saying. However, other translations like the NASB or the King James Version read this slightly differently. They say that Habakkuk is patiently waiting for the day of trouble to come upon himself, upon his people. The phrasing would be like this, yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble the coming of people who will invade us. You see the slight difference? And either one grammatically works. So in this second reading, Habakkuk is saying, God, your judgments are just. We have sinned, myself included, and whatever you send our way by Babylon is just. So which one is it? This is one of those situations in the scriptures where it can't really be both, because both are so different. Personally, I lean towards the latter reading. The Habakkuk is saying, I will be patient, Lord, and wait for your judgment to come upon us. Even though I love the ESV, I prefer a different reading here. And why is that? What has Habakkuk been talking about up until this point? He spent 15 verses already talking about God's justice on his enemies. And that brought him joy, I would say. That brought him joy. But at the beginning of the chapter, we saw something that brought him fear. If you look over to those verses, what does it say? It says, Lord, in your work do I fear. In the midst of years, revive it. In wrath, remember mercy. So I think Habakkuk is talking about the judgment of God for his sin, his people's sin. Sin, that's what makes him tremble and feel broken on the inside. How do you respond to sin? How do you respond to the transgression in your own heart? Is this like an old hat to you? Is repentance something that you did a long time ago when you walked down the aisle? Not something you have to do today? Just think about it. Habakkuk here was an ordained prophet. This would have been like a grown man who's been in the ministry for 40 years breaking down in front of you because of his own sin. Are you right with God this morning? There is no point moving forward about how we look to tomorrow unless you're right with God today. Please be reconciled to the Lord through Christ. Perhaps there is a certain sin that has been eating away at your conscience. Confess it, bring it to the Lord, run to Jesus. He can save every person who comes to him begging for help. And here at Christ Reformed, repenting and confessing sin for Christians should be as natural as eating and drinking. It should be second natured to us. And one of the things I love about our congregation is that is so often the case. As I've talked and met with people in our church, we have a people who feel their need of grace. That is a gift. That is a beautiful gift from on high. Which leads us to the second part of this passage. Verses 17 through 19. Right, Habakkuk didn't stay in this place of terror. He moved to a joy in the Lord. So he had a penitent heart, which produced a powerful joy versus 17 through 19. Look at verse 17 in particular right here, though the fig tree should not blossom. What an ending! Habakkuk has a huge transformation over the course of this book. So perhaps you're thinking, why does Habakkuk mention these things? Why does he mention fig trees and olives and sheeps and flocks? And we need to remember that in Habakkuk's day, they were an agrarian society. The fields and the vines and the flocks were the way that the people got their food. It's the way the people got their livelihood. So on the one hand, Habakkuk is foreseeing what is to come, and he's walking through it in his mind and saying, Lord, should I lose each of these necessary things, I will still cling to you. I will still take joy in you. Think about it this way. This would be like us saying, Lord, though the stock market should crash, Lord, should my home value on Zillow plummet tomorrow? Should the paycheck stop coming in consistently? Should the stability of our country fade away? Should the power grid go down? Should someone that I deeply love and care for die? Yet I will rejoice in you, the God of my salvation. That's kind of what Habakkuk is saying. Because at the beginning of the story, he was plagued by other people's problems and other people's sins. And through God revealing himself to Habakkuk, Habakkuk, his joys are becoming rightly ordered again. God has given you many gifts in this world. Family, jobs, vocations, purpose, homes, places, hobbies. He's given you many good things. But don't forget the chief thing God has given you, the one thing that will last when you and I close our eyes for the last time. Salvation through Christ. A hope of life to come. And so often it takes hard times like what Habakkuk is going through. for us to really remember that, for us to really think through it. I think there's another way of looking at this passage, this list that he provides, that can help us see how profound Habakkuk's joy was here. I've mentioned this in sermons before, but as you read your Old Testament, there are two chapters that are the key to understanding your Old Testament. You know, everyone's listening up because everyone struggles with the Old Testament. Leviticus 26, and Deuteronomy 28. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. Those two chapters are the Lord walking through the blessings and the curses that he will give to his people. He will bless them if they respond well. He will curse them if they respond poorly. And so as you read the Old Testament and you read all these weird things happening like famines and diseases and wars and sieges and people just acting weird, every single one of them is first mentioned in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. The Lord, like a good father, is saying, my son Israel, should you walk away from me, here is how I will punish you in order to bring you back. So interestingly, there's this passage in Deuteronomy 28 that mentions each one of these things that Habakkuk brings up. Let me read it. Deuteronomy 28, 49 through 51, this is what the Lord says he will do to Israel should they continually leave. The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away. This is Babylon. From the end of the earth, swooping down like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand. A hard-faced nation who shall not respect to the old or show mercy to the young. Listen closely to this verse. This nation shall eat the offspring of your cattle, the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed. It shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish. Do you hear those all the things that Habakkuk just mentioned? He's thinking about this passage. So he's not just saying, Lord, should everything that I treasure be taken away? He's saying, Lord, if I look around me and all I see is your judgments for my sin, I will still praise you. He is saying, like Job said, Lord, though you slay me, yet I will trust in your name. Though I look around and the whole world makes it seem like you are against me, I will stand firm because by faith the just shall live. By faith the just shall live. And this is what he says. He says, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. How can Habakkuk be so joyful right here? How? The promises of God. The promises of God. Do you wanna know what is more sure than your 401k? The promises of God. Do you wanna know what is more definite and lasting than the United States of America? The promises of God. Do you wanna know what is more sure than your lunch plans once I'm done talking? The promises of God. And Habakkuk knows this because he heard it last chapter. Those who are righteous by faith will live. Those who are righteous by faith shall live. How can a man take joy in a God who's about to destroy him? How? Friends, Habakkuk gets it. He gets the gospel. In the gospel, you learned that God is your biggest problem. You can't run away from God. I can't run away from God. God is your biggest problem. But in the gospel, you also learn God is your only solution. He has hemmed us in, wanting us to admit our need and to accept His gift. What does it mean to rejoice, to exult in God? I think it's like a happiness that you just can't help but express. It's the feeling you have when your favorite team wins, and the next day you just have to talk to everybody about it. We all know those people. I've been that person. But to the Lord, it's Habakkuk saying, I have nothing in heaven and earth but you. You are enough to me. Interestingly, this second word, take joy, and the God of our salvation. It's found in the book, the first chapter of Song of Solomon, actually. If you've never read that book, you should. It's a wonderful book about the joys of marriage. And if you notice in the book of Song of Solomon, there's like this side chorus of young women, not unlike bridesmaids at a wedding, who often shout good things, praising the young couple for their beauty. And right at the beginning, they say this, speaking about the groom. They say, we will rejoice and be glad in you, we will extol your love more than wine. So this rejoicing is seeing something wonderful and letting it fill you up with joy inexpressible and gladness. So for Habakkuk, he's saying this in the same way that my heart soars when I see a young couple walk the aisle. Lord, my heart is filled with joy because of the salvation you've given me. even though you take everything else away. Can you say that about Christ? That you take joy in Him more than anything else? You might notice here that joy is not just a feeling. Joy is a choice. It's a choice that He makes. But it's also a process, because the feeling of joy, though sometimes it follows in the Christian life, It's not always present. No doubt every single one of us here can attest to that. There are times in your Christian walk where you are elated about being a follower of God. And then there are other times where like Habakkuk in verse 16, things are a little tough. And so what we learn here from Habakkuk is even when the feeling is not there, we as Christians must choose to take joy. And he describes his joy in one last way in verse 19. He says, God the Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places. There is a wonderful BBC video that I encourage you all to look up once you get home. documenting goats in Italy that climb on a near vertical dam to lick the salt off the rocks. It's a crazy video. If you look it up, these goats, and it's usually like a mom goat and a kid going up together, they climb on like this vertical cliff, and you're thinking that goat's a goner. Because there's nothing. There's like nothing for them to put their hooves on. And yet, the way the Lord made the dexterity of this goat, It can climb up to the top, lick the salt, bring its child, and then go back nice and safely. It's crazy. Look it up. That's kind of what Habakkuk is talking right here when he's saying, Lord, you have made my feet like the deer's, like the goat's, like the hind's, says the King James Version. So what does this mean? This means that God does not remove every difficulty from your life. You want to know what he does do? He gives you the strength to endure that difficulty, which is crazy because we always want it the exact opposite, don't we? We come to the Lord and we say, Lord, please put me on level ground. Please make my life a little easier. And do you want to know what the Lord says? He says, ah, but my grace is sufficient for you. I will not remove the difficulties of life, but I will make your heart more firm. I will make you more like Christ. I will teach you to lean on me. And that is how I will make you grow. As St. Augustine said, Lord, give what you command and then command what you will. As we come to a close, do you wanna know one way that the Lord sustains his people through troubling times? This table. The Lord's Supper. One way he teaches us to rejoice in salvation above all other things is by giving us himself in a tangible, in a tactile way. This table, this sacrament, it's not a work, it's a gift. It's not an expectation, it's a blessing. Eating and drinking with Christ and feasting on Christ is not meant to weary you. It's meant to sustain you. This is a table for those who are hungry. This is a table for those who are needy, for those who, like Habakkuk, need to stand on their high places and be faithful to God. So as we finish this book, I hope you can notice the great change that has happened in Habakkuk since chapter one. Amazing character development. Habakkuk came to God asking him to change things, and he left God changed. Habakkuk came to God for answers, and the biggest answer he got was God. He came to God with problems and found out that God was his biggest problem. He came to the Lord for solutions and found the solution in the Lord. And friends, Habakkuk is an important prophet, but let me tell you, there was another man, another prophet sent from God, who trembled before the justice of the Father. There was another man who penitently accepted the judgments of God. There was another man who continued to trust in him, though the entire world turned against him. And some of that man's last words were ones of faith, where he said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Why did he do these things? To save you from your sins. to save us, his people, from their sins. That man is Jesus Christ. Where are you this morning? Instead of asking God to change, have you asked God to change you? Instead of being burdened by other people's sins, have you been burdened by your own? Have you been wanting the joy of life to return? Well, have you fought to take joy in the Lord of your salvation first? This is the perspective of the final verse of Great is Thy Faithfulness. Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. Blessings all mine with 10,000s beside. For saints who are penitent today, there is always bright hope for tomorrow. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for teaching us. We thank you for giving us righteous examples like this prophet. And Father, it is my prayer that we all here would have penitent hearts. May your spirit pierce us over our sins and lack of Christ-likeness. But Father, help us also to take joy that through faith alone, we will live. We will see your face in the life to come. Help us to take joy in you today. And I ask this all in the name of Jesus. Amen.