I promise I won't have any charts, no charts from the book of Matthew 24 tonight. Matthew chapter 24 verse 1, infallible word of a perfect God. Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when his disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to him. He said to them, Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down. As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, The disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Jesus answered and said to them, See to it that no one misleads you, for many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ and will mislead many. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place. But that is not yet the end. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pains. Then they will deliver you to tribulation and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. And at that time, many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. Therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, let the reader understand. And those who are in Judea will flee to the mountains. Whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get the things that are out of his house. Whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days. Pray that your flight will not be in the winter or on the Sabbath, for then there will be a great tribulation such as had not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short. Then if anyone says to you, behold, here is the Christ, or there he is, do not believe him. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I've told you in advance. So if they say, behold, he's out in the wilderness, do not go out or behold, he is in the inner room, do not believe them. Just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the son of man be. Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. What we find here is a theme that we looked at last week. The notion that there will be the worldling, will be coming against the church of the Lord God, will seek to destroy the church of Jesus Christ. Indeed, if the unbeliever could, he would destroy Christ. And we have here a sense of the Lord Jesus Christ returning to call to himself his bride and to put down his enemy. Very similar theme to last week and we'll continue that in our sermon passage tonight of Habakkuk chapter 3. Habakkuk chapter 3 verse 1. Prayer of Habakkuk the prophet according to Shigonoth Lord, I've heard the report about you, and I fear. Oh, Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. God comes from Timon, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor covers the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. His radiance is like the sunlight. He has rays flashing from His hand, and there is hiding of His power. Before Him goes pestilence, and plague comes after Him. He stood and surveyed the earth. He looked and startled the nations. Yes, the perpetual mountains were shattered. The ancient hills collapsed. His ways are everlasting. I saw the tents of Kushan under distress. The tent curtains of the land of Midian were trembling. Did the Lord rage against the rivers? Or was your anger against the rivers? Or was your wrath against the sea that you rode on your horses or your chariots of salvation? Your bow was made bare. The rods of chastisement were sworn. You cleaved the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and quaked. The downpour of waters swept by. The deep uttered forth its voice. It lifted high its hands. Sun and moon stood in their places. They went away at the light of your arrows. At the radiance of your gleaming spear and indignation, you marched throughout the earth. In anger, you trampled the nations. You went forth for the salvation of your people, for the salvation of your anointed. You struck the head of the house of the evil to lay him open from thigh to neck. You pierced him with his own spears, the head of his throngs. They stormed in to scatter us. Their exaltation was like those who devour the oppressed in secret. You trampled on the sea with your horses on the surge of many waters. I heard in my inward parts trembled, at the sound my lips quivered. Decay entered 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. 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 flocks should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls, 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 Heinz feet. He makes me walk on high places. What a word of confidence. Let's pray to the God of our confidence. You, Lord, are our rock and in you hid safely in the cleft of the rock, we can see the glory of God, which is in the face of Christ Jesus. I pray accordingly, Lord, that you would have mercy upon me, that you would give me clarity of thought and clarity of speech. May I, Lord Jesus Christ, present your gospel and your glorious victory to your people clearly so that I might be faithful to the charge you've laid upon me And so that, Lord, your people will be fed your manna. May this truly be your food. Shape your people, Jesus Christ, into your own blessed image, to the glory of the only Redeemer of our body and our souls, even Christ Jesus. Amen. This is our final sermon here in this book, Habakkuk, this evening. And the prophet, up to this point, has prayed twice, and the Lord God has answered his prayer twice, and now he prays for the third time, and God will answer him a third time. It's a very systematic and orderly book. God's man has told us and told the Lord that he's afraid. Lord, I have heard the report about you, and I fear. And he's trembling before the Lord. And then he pleads mercy from the Lord God. He says, in the midst of years, make it known in wrath, remember mercy. And as he tells the Lord that he's afraid and he pleads for mercy, he talks about reviving the works of God. He says, essentially, God send revival. I want you to see something here in the prophet. We see a mixture of both fear, and we see a mixture of faith over and over again throughout the book. He has fear at the circumstances, fear within, fear without, and then he has faith, then he has confidence in the Lord God. Weakness in the believer, and this is a comforting thing, weakness in the believer, fear, does not mean an absence of faith. Isn't that a comforting thing? Just because we are carnal or fearful in some measure of our life, that doesn't mean that we're unbelievers. that we lack faith. So the Bible presents to us, honestly, the lives of the saints. And it presents both their faults and the faith of God's people. There is a doctrine that runs along the lines of saying that it is possible to be morally perfected in this life. It's called perfectionism. the difficulty with that view is it's not biblical, nor can you find an example except the Lord Jesus Christ of any man or woman that exhibited just faith. There's always that mixture. And we are comforted to see even in this wonderful prophet, that he has weakness even as we have weakness. But the book is not about weakness and Habakkuk doesn't end on on a minor key. Habakkuk is a book about faith and confidence. And we see that the prophet's confidence is not in himself, it's not in Judah, it's not in the Chaldeans, but the prophet's confidence is in the God of heaven and earth. His eyes are fixed squarely upwards. And so now God will respond to the prophet. Habakkuk has said, in wrath, remember mercy, he pleads mercy. And we mentioned last week that when you cry mercy to God, he hears and he answers Christ to mercy. And now he responds in the form of a theophany. And a theophany is something of a vision of, of of a pre-incarnate Christ, the image of the Lord, a vision of the Lord. And here the vision of the Lord shows the Lord God as a warrior, as a mighty hero, one who is crushing enemies and saving his people. In the entire section that we're looking at this evening in verses 3-19, it really reflects the themes in the flux and flow of Psalm 77, but more specifically Habakkuk chapter 3 is rooted in the song of Moses. Remember the song of Moses. You see it in the book of Exodus. You see it in the book of Deuteronomy. Moses and the children of Israel come out, 600,000 men plus the women and children. They come out from 400 years of slavery and they sing. Moses composes a great song of exaltation to the Lord God. And he sings to the Lord in a very similar fashion. He talks about God as a warrior, throwing down Pharaoh, destroying the Egyptians, and then miraculously saving the children of Israel, God's people. So this is a victory song. This is a victory of redemption. But when God sets forth for us in the scripture, the victory of redemption, the victory of of Christ's redemption on our behalf is somewhat a bloody matter, is it not? It's a violent matter. We know ultimately that Christ's work of redemption is the cross, whereby he saves us. So it is a bloody matter. It is an exceedingly violent matter. But when you see in the Bible, whether it's the Old or the New, God coming to save his people, it's always saving them from their enemies. And we mentioned this in Sunday School this morning. When Jesus Christ returns with glory and with wrath, the Bible says the wrath of the Lamb. It depicts the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is our Savior. It depicts Jesus Christ very much in similar phrases as tonight's passage, trampling on his enemies. And the church is comforted by that because we are saved by the mighty arm of God against the powerful enemy of the devil and the devil's children. So no, when we look at the victory of redemption, it's not for the squeamish. It is not for the squeamish. But nevertheless, we have to be faithful to the text. We'll consider two points this evening. Firstly, the objective history of God's judgment in salvation as we find in our passage, and then connected to that, the prophet Habakkuk closes out with his subjective experience to God's work of redemption. And know that this godly man stands somewhat as a mediator of all of the godly, all of the faithful. Their response to God's salvation in Christ on behalf of his people. Now, look with me please at verse 3. In verse 3, we noted last week that from verse 1 and 2 that we were told that this is a prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet, and as a prophetic prayer, this particular prayer looks forward. God comes from Timon. God comes from Timon. So this prophetic prayer is looking forward. God comes in the sense is God will come. That's the sense. The sense is that God in the future will come. Habakkuk under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is predicting a future coming of the Lord God for the very purpose of dashing his enemies to pieces and for saving and sustaining his church. That's what's going on. He's looking forward in a prophetic manner. And in the immediate context, God will come eventually, actually here in context, he'll come in 70 years and do this, but he will put down the Babylonians and he will reestablish the Jews, the old church. And it's interesting how God did this. It's interesting how God came. If you know the history of the Old Testament, God put down the Babylonians by raising up the Persians and by raising up the Medes. And in fact, the king of Persia, Cyrus, was called the Lord's Messiah. Isn't that interesting? Here's a pagan king who's called the Lord's Messiah, his anointed. And God put it into that pagan king Cyrus's heart to let my people go. You ever heard that before? Let my people go. Cyrus one day got up in the morning and said, I'll let the people of God go. And not only will I let the people of God go, Persia will finance the rebuilding of true religion. We will rebuild the second temple. We will reinstitute the worship of Jehovah. Here is God miraculously putting down the enemy and miraculously sustaining the church of the Lord God. Our God, sometimes we don't believe it, but our God is able to make even our enemies be at peace with us. And that's what we find here. And so immediately in context is the putting down of the Babylonians, but ultimately the prophet Habakkuk ultimately looks forward into the future We have to go to the Isle of Patmos with John to ultimately see what the prophet is speaking about, about God dashing his enemies to pieces and saving his bride, the church, when we look forward to that final deliverance and the final destruction of the enemies of Christ's church. What does the Bible say there in the book of Revelation? You see a picture of the Lamb of God waging war against the enemies of his church and the bride being sustained. So that's kind of what we're looking at. The prophet looks immediately at Babylon, and then he looks forward to the last day, the day of judgment, the consummate day when Christ returns. So he's looking forward. But notice, please, in the text, the kind of language that the prophet's using. He comes from Timon, the Holy One will come from Mount Paran. His splendor covers the heavens and the earth is full of His praise. Look down here in verse 5, before Him goes pestilence and plague. He's talking about here the deliverance from Egypt. You remember that God sends the pestilence and the plague to Egypt. So we find that as Habakkuk is looking forward to a future deliverance, he does so couched in the language of past deliverance. You see that? He does it couched in the language of past deliverance, which reveals something to us. Habakkuk at the very end of the book says, I have confidence that my Lord will save me. I have confidence that the Lord will save his people. I am confident Why is he so confident? Because he points back at Egypt. Because he points back at Sinai. He looks at the past deliverance of the Lord as fodder for the future hope of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are the suffering church. We are the sojourning church right now. I don't mean to get into any kind of eschatological discussion, but we are a sojourning and pilgrim church and we do the very same thing. We do the very same thing. We look at our past salvation, deliverance, as fuel to give us confidence now and a hope for the future. Isn't that right? Why do you have confidence that on the day of your death, the moment that you die, you'll be with the Lord, that you'll be ushered in? Why? The same thing. God has saved me. Jesus Christ has saved me from my sins. Therefore, I am confident that he will receive me and restore me one great day. It's the very same thing that's going on here. He's looking forward to future deliverance, but he does so looking back at the future deliverance of the Lord. And we learn something. We learn something both by the language that's very similar to Psalm 77, similar to Deuteronomy chapter 32, God's man is familiar with redemptive history. He's able to say, our God saved us then. Our God has saved us from Egypt. Therefore, our God will save us from Babylon. What a pitiful thing for a Christian child to grow up in a Christian home. And then you'd acquit the Christian Christian boy or girl and say, What's your confidence in life and death? That little child is supposed to be trained by his mother and father and grandmother and grandfather if they're around. This is what our God has done. He has saved us and to perpetuate that confidence in God's redeeming work. And now As he describes the redemption, he goes on to say, God comes from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor covers the heavens. He uses this word Teman and Mount Paran here. Teman was a district in Edom. It was in the desert in the south. This mountain Paran was halfway between Edom and Mount Sinai. These two places are being used, what's the word? Paraphrastically. to define both Sinai and to define the Promised Land. And the rest of the passage goes on to prove it when you see the glory of God coming down on this particular mountain. When did the glory of God come down on a particular mountain? You see, he's describing it in a metaphorical kind of way. When God descends upon Mount Sinai to meet his people. Indeed, verse four, we'll begin to look at this objective description of what redemption looks like. And redemption still looks like this today. Verse four, his radiance, the earth is full of his praise. He comes down upon the mountain. His radiance is like the sunlight, his rays flashing from his hand, thunderbolts. And there is the hiding of his power. You have a picture here of God in his glory coming down on Mount Sinai. And when God comes down with his glory, you see the power of God. You see both the transcendence and the imminence of God, that God is other. God is personal and he meets with his people. And when God comes down upon the mountain and there's lightning and there's lights flashing and there's thunder, God tells Moses, tell the people they should stay away from the mountain. Don't touch the mountain. Why should they touch the mountain? Because God is holy. And so here is God's man looking at, remembering back, our holy God came down and covenanted with his people, covenanted with his people, made them a nation. That was the time, if you remember, when God gave to his people, he codified his law, he showed his people, you are my people, and this is how I would have you live. So this here is a snippet of how God is reaching out of all of the peoples of the earth and saying, you're my nation. He's remembering this in redemption and then he goes on to further describe redemption in verse 5 as we've mentioned before. Before him goes pestilence and plague comes after him. The idea of Sinai and now he's looking back to Egypt with the plagues and the pestilences upon Pharaoh and his household. What's that all about? God sending plague after plague after plague. What was that about? You remember, I know you remember this. Moses came before Pharaoh and said, Jehovah, Yahweh God says, let my people go. And Pharaoh says, I don't know who this Jehovah is. I don't know him, nor will I let his people go. Now get back to work. And God says through the mouth of his man, oh, you will know me. and you will know that I am Yahweh and they are my people and you will let my son go or else I will take your son. And so God sends testimony after testimony after testimony saying, I will put down my enemies. I will make a distinction between those people and my son. I will deliver my son from slavery. And Habakkuk remembers that. And so God here miraculously is saving his children. And we learn when he thinks back to Egypt. Think of that. If you were a slave in Egypt, think of that. God showed in a mighty way in the very midst of slavery. He vindicated that they are his children, and he is their God in the midst of their sojourn. It's the very same thing today. It's the very same thing today. Our God testifies to us through the cross. He will own us as his children, even in suffering. even in bondage, he owns his people in such a time. Now in verse 8 and 9, we continue to describe what redemption looks like. And he does it with a set of rhetorical questions. Did the Lord rage against the rivers? Here's God's man speaking to the Lord. Or was your anger against the rivers? Or was your wrath against the sea that you rode on your horses and the chariots of your salvation? Talks about the Lord having a bow and a rod cleaving the rivers and the earth and the waters. What's he thinking about here? Did God come in any moment of redemption? Did He come to punish the land? Is that what it's all about? When God comes back, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and He destroys nature, everything will be destroyed with fervent heat. Will it be to punish the earth? No. It's to punish rebels. It's to punish sinful men, but it's to save his children. And so with a set of rhetorical questions, we find Habakkuk depicting the Lord God as a mighty warrior. But he answers his own question that God is coming to put down sinners and to save his children. And then he talks about splitting the waters and splitting the rivers. What does that refer to in redemptive history? When did God ever split any waters to save his people? I think if I remember rightly, when they just got freed and Pharaoh had them trapped at the Red Sea and they looked back and they said, why did you bring us out here to die? You're not going to die. And the river parted. Miraculous. Do we believe in miracles? We believe in miracles. God supernaturally took all of the obstacles for deliverance away from his people and he saved his people and miraculously again destroyed the enemies of his church. Now we're not taking glee in this, but this is fact, this is what's happened. And what about when he split the Jordan River? He saved them from slavery and now he brought them into the promised land. We can't get into the promised land, the Jordan's too deep. Was the Jordan deeper than the Red Sea? No. You see how God's man is reminding himself, our God did it then, our God did it then, our God did it then. There's no obstacle too great for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing, nothing will stand between you and the heavenly promised land. Nothing. God will redeem his church. And we learn as much in verse 11. Another point of description of God's work of redemption. Sun and moon stood in their places. They went away at the light of your arrows. Not only did God deliver his people out of slavery to free them to make them free children of the Lord. Where do we hear that? You're free men in Christ Jesus, free women in Christ Jesus. Not only that, the church, the Puritans were keen to say, is the church militant. It doesn't mean that we wage war with carnal weaponry or that we seek to put down the enemy with the sword. as does the false religion of Islam. Our weapons are spiritual. We fight with the gospel and with the word of God. We fight not with our fists, but we fight on our knees. Nonetheless, the church is the church militant. The kingdom of the devil is being put down. The kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ by the preaching of the Lord God is on the march and the kingdom of grace is established. And then one great day, the kingdom of glory will be ushered in. And when we see here in verse 11, sun and moon stood in their places. That was back to give the church militant the victory. Joshua was fighting the Canaanites and he was winning, but something was happening. was getting to be nighttime. He couldn't fight the enemy of God at nighttime. So what did God do? God said, My people will have victory. I'm going to stop the sun and the moon. I'm going to stop them so that my church will have victory. See, that's just the foreshadow. That's just the taste. We don't see it now, I know, but we will see it one great and glorious day when Jesus Christ comes back. I do believe the Bible teaches us that. And so we find that God's power and God's concern is for the church and that God will establish, and this is again what the business of Joshua is all about. The Old Testament shows us to a great degree what we learn in the New Testament. Joshua was a shadow of Jesus Christ. He was leading the children of God into the promised land. What Moses couldn't do, Joshua did. What Moses couldn't do, Jesus Christ does. Jesus Christ will lead his people into the promised land. You see, so the prophet in 5, 6, 7, 8 sentences has given us just a snippet of God's redemptive history and his work of salvation for the church and judgment on the unbeliever. He's given to us really in something like 15 verses But look with me, please at verse 12 There is a there's a purpose here the greater purpose of God's redemption and it's found in one in indignation you marched throughout the earth in Anger you trampled the nations you went forth for the salvation of your people and look at your Bibles there in verse 13 for the salvation of your anointed. That's Messiah. Why were the Jews never crushed? Why couldn't they be kept in bondage? Why was wicked Haman not allowed to butcher every Jewish man, woman, and child? Why not? Because Jesus Christ had to be born. Because the Messiah had to be born. Because the promise heaved from Genesis 13 onward had to be born, had to purchase the church, So here God is sustaining the people of God to usher in the Lord Jesus Christ so that Christ will come. And so Christ will save his people. And so if God worked all of history to usher in Christ, why would we think any different that God won't work all of history to usher in Christ the second time? He will. That's the whole point. That's why we end with confidence with God's men. And we do mean to end with confidence in verses 16 through 19. All of these truths Habakkuk has rehearsed them over and over and over again. It's not just good enough for us to say, I believe the Bible. It's not good enough to say, I believe the Bible is true. Is it true for you? It is true whether or not you subjectively hold to it. But nevertheless, if someone says, I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but they don't trust in Him. It's just a historical fact. I believe in historical fact, but there's no trust. There's no subjective belief and objective throwing oneself upon the Lord. That doesn't save. What we find here is there is a real response to God's saving history on the part of God's man. He says he trembles, his inward parts are trembling, he's quivering, his bones are rotting away. He's a trembling day and night because he must wait quietly for the day of distress. Well, let's be fair to the prophet. He's about to be invaded. The church is about to be overrun. The church is about to go off into captivity for 70 years in Babylon and to be abused. But again, as I've said, the Bible doesn't end here. God's man doesn't end with a note of a whimpering. He says here in verse 17, though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive tree should fail and fields produce no food, though the flock should not be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls. What? Yet I will exalt in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He's made my feet like Heinz feet. He makes me walk on high places. It's easy to trust in Jesus Christ when things are going well. Is that true? It's easy to trust in Christ and to follow the Lord. It's easy to think that the church will have victory over the enemy when you still are sitting with your loved one and things are going well. But it's harder, is it not, to have confidence in the Lord when your outward life is not going so well. when you don't have many outward things to thank the Lord for. Here the prophet says, there'll be no food, I'm going into captivity, all of my outward things will be taken away from me. Yet, yet, everything can be taken away from you and me right now, tonight. Health, wealth, family, everything. Yet you can say in Jesus Christ, my confidence is in the Lord. I will exalt in the Lord. Why? Because the worst thing that can happen to you is they kill the body. But they can do nothing to your soul in Christ Jesus. You see the confidence. You see the confidence of the prophet. And so we can say, being found in the Lord Jesus Christ, come what may, We don't have to live in fear of our enemies. We don't have to live in fear of the future. The world does hate Christ's church. But Jesus Christ loves his church. And Jesus Christ does not bear the sword for nothing. We have enemies, but the battle is not ours. The battle is the Lord's. And guess what? The Lord wins. and you win in Christ. May God be pleased with the preaching of His word. We'll close this evening.