“What can miserable Christians sing?” That was the question
that Carl Trueman posed a half-dozen years ago in an article that was later
included in his book, The Wages of Spin.
Trueman lamented the “diet of unremittingly jolly choruses and hymns” that are
so prevalent in worship services today, because it “inevitably creates an
unrealistic horizon of expectation which sees the normative Christian life as
one long triumphalist street party — a theologically incorrect and a pastorally
disastrous scenario in a world of broken individuals.” He says, “By excluding
the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the
church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are
themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the
church … as if the idea of a broken-hearted, lonely, or despairing Christian
was so absurd as to be comical.”[1]
If that is what we think, then we haven’t read our Bibles very
well. The Psalms, for example, give voice to the entire range of human emotion
set to the musical strains of worshipful song. Elsewhere we find God’s faithful
people pouring out hurting hearts and suffering souls to Him in song. Habakkuk
is an example of just such a believer, and the third chapter of his book is an
example of just such a song.
How did we get here? Let us remember that in Chapter 1, we
found the prophet worrying and wondering. He was bewildered by the besetting
sin of his own nation, and troubled even more by God’s seeming indifference and
inactivity. He became even more troubled when God began to reveal what He was
doing – raising up the godless Babylonians to bring judgment on Judah . This
was, in Habakkuk’s mind, inconsistent with God’s own character.
Coming to Chapter 2, we find Habakkuk watching and waiting. As
God unfolded the answer to Habakkuk’s many questions and concerns, the prophet
silenced himself before the Lord. Five woes were pronounced upon the
Babylonians, even as God’s people were reminded of three promises: the just
will live by faith (v4); the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the
earth as waters cover the sea (v14); and the Lord reigns from His sovereign
throne in His holy temple (v20).
Now we come to Chapter 3, and we find Habakkuk no longer
worrying and wondering, no longer watching and waiting. Rather, he is now
worshiping and witnessing. As Wiersbe puts it so well, “Habakkuk started in the
valley, but he ended up on the mountaintop! He started with sighing and ended
with singing. He started with perplexity, and he ended with praise.”[2]
How do we know that the prophet now sings? The notations
within the third chapter make it plain. Like so many of the Psalms, the hymns
of the Hebrew people, we have technical notations at the very beginning and the
very end of the third chapter, along with a threefold repetition of the word,
“Selah,” in verses 3, 9, and 13. This precise meaning of this term is unknown,
but it seems to be a word that introduces a meditative pause, perhaps where
instrumental music would play between the verses of a song. The statement in
the final verse, “For the choir director, on my stringed instruments,” makes it
clear that the poem is to be set to music and sung publicly. The mysterious
phrase, “on Shigionoth” in verse 1 is also very difficult to explain with
certainty. That is why the English versions tend to just transliterate the
Hebrew word instead of translating it. Psalm 7 is said to be a “Shiggaion of
David, which he sang to the Lord,” and the word shigionoth here in Habakkuk is likely a plural form of the same
word. So it is obviously some sort of musical directive, referring perhaps to
the instruments that would accompany the song, or the style in which it was to
be played. It may also refer to the specific tune to which the song is set,
similar to what we find in our own hymnals where the hymn title is found at the
top of the page, and the name of the hymn tune is found at the bottom.
So, we know it is a song, and I have called it a “prayerful
song,” because verse 1 says that it is a prayer
of Habakkuk the prophet. Only in verse 2 do we find words of petition in
which the prophet is asking the Lord
to do something, so we will limit our study today to the threefold request that
is found in that portion of the song. But before we do that, we must give a
moment of consideration to what prompts this prayerful song. Habakkuk says,
“Lord, I have heard the report about You and I fear.” In verse 5 of Chapter 1,
God began to give the report to Habakkuk of what He was doing in the world
through the events of the prophet’s day. He explained that He was bringing the
Chaldeans – the Babylonians – in to invade and conquer Judah as a
means of judgment and discipline for the sins of the Jewish people: their
idolatry, their immorality, and their injustice. But then in Chapter 2, He
explained to Habakkuk that the righteous would be saved on the basis of their
faith in God, and the Babylonians themselves would fall under the judgment of
God for their excessive violence, arrogance, and destruction. Habakkuk says, “I
have heard all of this.” For Habakkuk, it wasn’t a message about Judah , or a message about Babylon . It was a message about God! “I have
heard the report about You,” he says.
And we know he believed it because he says, “and I fear.”
The Hebrew word means “to stand in awe,” or “to tremble.” In
Isaiah 66:2, the Lord said, “To this one I will look, to him who is humble and
contrite of spirit, and who trembles at
My word.” Habakkuk was doing just that. In verse 16 he says that his inward
parts trembled, his lips quivered, his bones were like they were decaying, and
his legs were trembling in the place where he stood. So from head to toe, and
everywhere in between, Habakkuk was trembling in the awestruck fear of the Lord
as he considered His word. And now that he had heard, and believed, the report
of the Lord, he could speak once more. This time it was not to question, argue,
or inquire of the Lord. This time it was to pray and to praise, and to lead
God’s people in a prayerful song of worship and witness.
And so we have this prayerful song of a trembling believer.
Verse two contains three specific requests made to the Lord which are as
relevant to us today as they were to those of Habakkuk’s generation. Like
Habakkuk, we are perplexed by the things we see happening within our own
nation, and the events going on in the world around us. Like Habakkuk, we have
asked the Lord the questions of “Why?” and “How long?” We have been puzzled
over God’s purpose and plan in the midst of the degradation and chaos of our
times. Unlike Habakkuk, we do not have a specific answer from the Lord about
what exactly He is doing in our midst. Nevertheless, we can share Habakkuk’s
confidence that God is at work, and that God is good. So whatever it is that He
is doing will prove in the end to be for the good of His people and the glory
of His own name. And therefore we can sing to Him this song of prayerful
worship as well. With quivering lips and trembling spirits, standing before Him
in awestruck fear, we bring to God the same requests that the prophet did so
long ago. So what are these requests?
I. We pray for God’s will to be done.
When Jesus instructed His followers how to pray, He said,
“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on
earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:9-10). We often use that phrase when we pray,
do we not? We say, “God, let Your will be done in this situation.” But often, when
we say those words, they amount to something of a spiritual copout. It is a way
of saying, “I don’t really know what to ask for,” or “I’m afraid to say what I
really want here,” and so we resign ourselves to muttering almost reluctantly,
“Thy will be done.” And yet, the Bible says that when we pray, we have the
liberty to actually tell God what it is that we want. Philippians 4:6 says,
“let your requests be made known to God.” Now, that doesn’t mean that God will
always give us what we want, but He welcomes us to say it. But when we say,
“Thy will be done,” what we are saying is not that we give up, or that we have
no specific request to make. Rather, we are saying that we believe and accept
that God is going to use whatever happens in our situation to further His will
on earth. And that is how Habakkuk is praying here in verse 2.
He says, or sings rather,
“O Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years.” The word “revive” has to
do with keeping something going. “Don’t let it end. Don’t let it die.” That is
what the prophet is asking the Lord to do. And what he wants the Lord to keep
going is His “work.” What is that work? The Lord revealed it in Chapter 1. When
Habakkuk complained that the Lord was doing nothing to deal with the iniquity
of his own people and nation, the Lord said to him, “Look among the nations!
Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days—
you would not believe if you were told. For behold,
I am raising up the Chaldeans …” (1:5-6a). Following that announcement,
Habakkuk began to protest that God was not dealing rightly with His people. But
now that God has announced the rest of the details, including what His faithful
ones can expect and how the Babylonians will themselves be judged, Habakkuk is
able to say, “Lord, do not stop what You are doing!” He has accepted the will
of the Lord.
You may remember those old jelly
commercials that said, “With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good.” Well, I
don’t know how true that is for jelly, but we know for certain than when a work
is being done by God, it has to be good! Habakkuk
has come to accept this, and to welcome it. “God, keep doing what You are
doing, because if You are the one doing it, then I am all for it!” That is what
he was saying, and that is what we must say too. Friends, I am as perplexed and
concerned for our nation in these days as anyone is. I do not have any special
insights into what the ultimate divine plan is for America
II. We pray for God’s word to be known.
In his private dialog with God, Habakkuk has been made privy
to information that his fellow countrymen do not have. Now, sometimes we like
having secret information – it can be somewhat empowering to be able to say, “I
know something you don’t know!” But what Habakkuk has been told by the Lord
does not need to remain a secret!
Throughout the nation, there are others like Habakkuk who
remain faithful to the Lord. They are perplexed and burdened about the
condition of their nation. They are fearful about the rumors they hear that the
Babylonians are coming. The news that Habakkuk has received from the Lord has transformed
his perspective, and he knows that it will do the same for others who trust in
the Lord as well.
But there are also many in Judah who have rebelled against
the Lord. Their rebellion has been the catalyst for this impending judgment.
While the wheels that have been set in motion by God’s providence will not be
halted, for individuals who hear and heed the message that God has delivered to
the prophet, there is still hope. As long as there is life, there is the hope
for repentance and a returning to the Lord. So, this message will be a much
needed warning to those in Judah who have turned away from the Lord. If only they
knew what Habakkuk knows, then perhaps they would turn from their sins and be
saved!
So Habakkuk prays, even in song, “In the midst of the years,
make it known.” In other words, “God, do not let this message come to me alone
– let everyone know it and understand it! Let the righteous be encouraged by it
and let the wicked be warned by it.” The eyes of the people must be opened to
the realities of what God is doing. And so the prophet prays, because that is
something only God can do.
It reminds me of that scene in 2 Kings 6 when Elisha was
under siege by the forces of the king of Aram . When Elisha’s servant saw all
the horses and chariots that surrounded them, he was terrified. But Elisha
said, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with
them.” The servant must have been puzzled. He had seen the horses and the
chariot of the enemy. And he knew how to count. “Hmm. Two of us, a whole bunch
of them. I beg to differ,” he probably thought. But Elisha began to pray, “O
Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” And the Lord opened the servants
eyes, and he was able to see a host of spiritual forces encamped around them.
We are so often like that servant – blind and oblivious to what God is doing
around us. The only resolution is for the Lord to open our eyes! And that is
what Habakkuk was praying for the Lord to do to his countrymen. “Make the
message known to them, Lord, so that they will see what it is that You are
doing in the midst of all this mess!”
This is how we must pray in our day as well. There are
Christians who are perplexed and in despair about the political climate of our
nation, who speak and act as though God were at risk of being dethroned in the
upcoming election! O God, make Your word known to them! Encourage them by the
promises of Your word! And then there are those who believe that they can sin
with abandon and never have to give account to God for their actions. Sixty
million unborn children have been murdered in the womb in America since Roe v. Wade, and
people fight for the right to make this a legitimate option of birth control.
Our nation has embraced every form of sexual deviance to the extent that we
actually have serious political discussions going on about who is male and who
is female, and which bathrooms people should use! Every young African-American
male and every police officer steps out of their front door every morning unsure
if they will return home that evening as violence rages in our cities. Drug and
alcohol abuse are destroying lives and families. And people have done exactly
what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:18 – they have suppressed the plain
truth of God in their unrighteousness. It is more convenient for them to deny
God’s existence than it is to consider that they will one day stand before Him
in judgment. It is time for the people of God to pray! And how do we pray? Do
we pray for God to consume them with fire from heaven? No, for if we prayed
thusly, we ourselves would not be exempt from the judgment! Rather we pray as
Habakkuk did, and as Elisha did – “Lord, open their eyes! Make Your truth known
to them! Make them understand in the way that only You can!”
But how will God do that? Will He write a message in the
clouds? Will He preempt prime time television for a special satellite feed from
heaven? No! He has a better plan than that. He has entrusted the saving message
of Jesus Christ to His church and commissioned us to go and tell this good news
to everyone on earth. God’s “Plan A” for making the message known is for you
and me to go and tell them. And He has no “Plan B.” So, as we pray for God to
make the truth known to them, we are also committing ourselves to the mission.
Here is the reality: you and I have more opportunity to impact the United States of America
today than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton have. And we have that opportunity,
not on the second Tuesday of November, but every day. What is this opportunity?
It is the opportunity to share the good news of Jesus with others. God has
promised that His Spirit will move through the proclamation of that message to
save souls, to transform lives, and to strengthen His people. God never
promised to save America ,
or any other geopolitical entity on earth. He did promise to save individuals –
Americans and those of every other ethnicity and nationality on earth – as they
hear and respond to the good news of Jesus. So if you want to see our nation
changed, it will happen as individual lives are changed. And individual lives
are changed one by one as the gospel goes forth through the people of God. “In
the midst of the years, O Lord, make it known!” This is our prayer – our
prayerful song, if you will – that we ask for and accept God’s will to be done,
and that we ask Him to make His word known, using us as His ambassadors to
proclaim the message.
Now we come to the final petition in this prayerful song of
the trembling believer …
III. We pray for God’s mercy to be shown.
The most foundational of all of God’s attributes is also
likely His least understood attribute. It is His holiness. All of God’s
attributes are grounded in His holiness. And because God is holy, He has to
deal with sin in a holy and righteous judgment. If He didn’t, He would not be
righteous and He would not be holy. Habakkuk knew this well enough – the
Scriptures made it clear, and it was reinforced through his own experience with
the Lord. David Prior says, “with God there is holy, righteous anger.”[3] We
usually think of anger as a bad thing, and it certainly can be. But anger is
not always sinful. The Bible actually tells us to “be angry, and yet do not
sin” (Eph 4:26). There is a righteous indignation, a holy anger, that is the
only appropriate response that a holy God can have toward sin. So Prior writes,
“However long he bides his time, however quiet and distant he appears to have
become, however much violence and greed he seems to bypass or overlook, there
is woe and wrath for the unrighteous.”[4]
But Habakkuk also knows that, even though God is a God of
righteous wrath, He is also a God who is rich in mercy. So even though the
wrath that is coming for Judah
is well-deserved because of the sin of the nation, Habakkuk prays that God will
let that wrath be well-seasoned with His mercy. Justice involves getting what
one deserves, and that is the wrath that is coming for Judah . Mercy,
on the other hand, involves the withholding or lessening of what one deserves. That
is what Habakkuk prays for, and he knows that God is able and willing to show
that mercy. Over and over again in Scripture, God is described as the One who
is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness
and truth, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin, but who will neither
let the guilty go unpunished (Ex 34:7; cf. 2 Chron 30:9; Psa 103:8; 111:4;
116:5; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). So, even though the sins of the people are real
and severe, so is the compassionate mercy and grace of God who is able and
willing to forgive, to withhold or temper judgment, when there is a turning
toward Him in repentance and faith.
Habakkuk’s prayer is that, as divine wrath comes upon the
nation of Judah ,
God’s faithful remnant of believing people will be spared the worst of it, and
that some of those who have rebelled against the Lord might return to Him and
find saving mercy for themselves. Friends, this is our prayer as well. We do
not know when or how judgment may fall upon our own nation, not to mention
other nations where evil is rampant. But we know, based on God’s past dealings
with the nations of the world, including the elect nation of Israel , that we
cannot hope to escape it. History is replete with the rise and fall of
nations orchestrated by God’s providence.
In fact, the description of wrath that is revealed in Romans 1 would indicate
that it has already begun. There we find that God’s wrath is being revealed in
the giving over of people to all manner of immorality and depravity. So it may
well be that we should not speak of the judgment that is coming, but rather of
the one that is ongoing in our day and time. It is certainly deserved. So, how
should we pray? We should pray like Habakkuk did. “In wrath, remember mercy.”
Lord, preserve Your church in the midst of these societal upheavals; and Lord,
rescue the perishing by your saving mercy! For no matter what degree of
judgment we have, or will experience, here and now, it pales in comparison to
the ultimate and eternal judgment that is to come.
The Lord promised to Habakkuk in verse 4 of Chapter 2, “the
righteous will live by faith.” Those who have been saved by faith in God’s
promises will persevere and be preserved in that faith as well. Because of the
saving work of Jesus Christ, we who trust in Him have been spared from the
worst of what is to come. In wrath, God has remembered mercy. He put the wrath
on Jesus as our substitute in judgment, and He puts the mercy upon us – taking
away from us the judgment we deserve because Christ has taken it on our behalf;
and granting to us a salvation we do not deserve by His grace.
In Noah’s day, the conditions of the world were described in
this way: “Now the earth was corrupt in the
sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and
behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth”
(Gen 6:11-12). And we know what God did. In Abraham’s day, the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
were characterized by unchecked sexual deviance and violence. And we know what
God did. In Isaiah’s day, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had turned away from
the Lord and embraced idolatry and immorality; and the Lord brought in the
Assyrians to execute His judgment upon them. And in Habakkuk’s day, because of
the immorality, injustice, and idolatry of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the
Babylonians were chosen by God to bring judgment upon them. Friends, if God was
willing to deal in this way with a nation that He had specially chosen and
called to be His own people in the earth, can we really expect that America,
Western Europe, or any other civilization to be treated any differently by Him
when we repeatedly commit and give approval to the same sins?
As Walt Chantry writes, “Here is a prayer to keep in the
pocket of your memory for those dark hours of judgment. Acquaint yourself with
mercy in Christ, and be certain that you enter the upheavals of war, conquest,
and oppression as a person of steadfast faith. Men and women of faith shine as
jewels of mercy amidst the deepest gloom of sin and unbelief.”[5]
So, let us be found in these days with a prayer on our lips and a song in our
hearts, for we have heard the Lord’s report, and we tremble in awestruck
belief. We pray for His will to be done; for His word to be known; and for His
mercy to be shown.
[1] Carl R.
Trueman, “What Can Miserable Christians Sing?” in The Wages of
Spin: Critical Writings on Historical and Contemporary Evangelicalism
(Christian Focus: 2004) 158-160.
[2] Warren
W. Wiersbe, From Worry to Worship (Lincoln , Neb.
[3] David
Prior, The Message of Joel, Micah
& Habakkuk (The Bible Speaks Today; Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity, 1998), 264.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Walter
Chantry, Habakkuk: A Wrestler With
God (Carlisle , Penn.
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