Habakkuk 3:1-2 A Song of Wrath and Mercy 8-21-11
This week one of our church members reminded me the story of Stuart Hamblen, the songwriter who had lived a life of drinking and partying, but who was saved through the ministry of Billy Graham, and subsequently wrote a song about his story of coming to the Lord, entitled: “It Is No Secret What God Can Do.” Many of the songs we hear are songs that come from people’s personal experiences. Many of the Psalms of David in the Bible are that way; they are expressions of what he was going through. We find that same thing as we come to the last chapter of Habakkuk. Habakkuk has been through a lot as he wrestled with God about what he saw going on in the world; and under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, he writes a song about what he has learned. That song is found in the 3rd and last chapter of this book.
I said last week that Chapter 2’s 5 woes were like a song composed of 5 verses, each punctuated with a “woe” of judgment upon a different type of sin. Well, if Chapter 2 was “like” a song, Chapter 3 IS actually a song! It begins by saying that it is “A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet” and then says “according to Shiggionoth” – “Shiggionoth” is the tune to which this “song” was to be played. You see again in the last verse of chapter 3 that it is a song, for it says, “for the choir director, on my stringed instruments.” So Habakkuk 3 is a song, written by Habakkuk, about what he and his nation were going through, and what he had learned from the Lord. As we as a nation, and as individuals, go through some very similar times, we can benefit by studying what God inspired Habakkuk to write: “A Song of Wrath and Mercy”.
I. The God of Glory
:2 says “Lord, I have heard the report about You and I fear.” Habakkuk says he has heard the report, or the word about what God is going to do, and he says, “I fear.” Now, it is important for us to understand here that Habakkuk was not just afraid about the coming invasion of the Babylonians on his country. He was saying, I have seen a vision of the holy God who is bringing judgment, and I stand in awe of HIM!
:3-15 then describe the vision of the Lord that filled Habakkuk with such awe. We need let our spiritual imagination be captured by the picture of God that this passage portrays, because so many people today have a totally misguided view of God. They don’t respect Him. People casually refer to God as “the Good Lord”, or “the Old Man Upstairs” – and the picture that many people have of Him is of some kind of “heavenly Grandfather” who is up there creaking on His rocking chair. I don’t know where people got that picture, but they didn’t get it from the Bible. Look at how the Bible describes God in Habakkuk 3:3-15 …
What a glorious picture of the God of the Bible!
— it begins by attributing to Him two different names in :3.
First, when it says, “God comes from Teman”, this is NOT the “typical” Hebrew word for “God”, “Elohim.” This is the word “Eloah” – and it refers to the creator and judge of the whole earth. It is a powerful description of God.
Secondly, it calls Him “The Holy One”. The God of the Bible is a holy God. The Book of Revelation tells us that day and night in heaven, the angels do not cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” They never cease proclaiming His holiness. We saw in the first chapter of this book that the Bible says that His “eyes are too pure to look with approval on sin.” He is the mighty God of the whole earth; and He is the holy God who can’t approve sin.
— more than this, these verses tell us that He is glorious: :3 goes on to say, “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”! Our God is so glorious, He told Moses, when he asked Him to see His glory, that “no man can see My glory and live” – it would be like standing in the presence of the sun. “His radiance is like the sunlight”, it says here. If you were somehow transported so that you stood right before the sun, you would be instantly vaporized in its radiance and heat. And in the same way, you cannot stand in the presence of the holy, glorious God for one moment and live; you would be instantly consumed. As Hebrews says, “Our God is consuming fire.” He is glorious!
— and He is a God of wrath. :5 says, “Before Him goes pestilence, and plague comes after Him.” He sends these things as instruments of His judgment. Because He is a holy God, He does not leave sin unpunished. He must punish it – and He does. :13 says that the enemies of God are “laid open from thigh to neck” – that is a picture of the devastating blow of judgment which He will bring upon those who do not repent before Him. He is a God of wrath!
— And this God is awesome. :6 says the nations are “startled” when He looks at them. :7 says the tents of the enemies tremble and shake before Him. It says “the mountains are shattered” in His sight. :10 says the mountains saw Him and “quaked”!
Listen, this is not a picture of an “old man upstairs” – I don’t know of any old men upstairs who look like this, do you?! God is powerful; He is majestic; He is awesome; He is glorious; He is holy; He is the God of the whole earth; He is also the God of wrath who is coming to deliver a massive and decisive blow to judge sin and unrighteousness. This God of glory and wrath is coming, Habakkuk says; He is coming! He could have written the old hymn:
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword. His truth is marching on. He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave … This world shall be His footstool and the soul of wrong His slave; our God is marching on! Glory, glory, Hallelujah!”
He is the God of glory!
II. The Prayer for Mercy
With the vision of the glory of God and His awesome judgment, Habakkuk not only responds in awe, as we saw a moment ago, He also asks God to do some things. We find his prayer in :2, “O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.” Habakkuk had just seen what God said that He intended to do in the judgment of the wicked, and so he asks God to do this — “revive” is literally “make this come to life”, or “make this come to pass” — in OUR day, so we can see it. (We’ll talk some more about that later …) Then he closes his prayer with a request that in all the wrath for sin that He is bringing, that God remember also His mercy – for Habakkuk himself and for God’s people.
Faced with the awesome God that Habakkuk had just seen, what else could he do but ask for mercy? Here is an important truth: whenever anyone truly meets the Glorious and Holy God of the Bible, the only good response they can have to Him is a cry for mercy. That is all one can do. God is a holy God; we are sinful people. If you begin to see Him for who He really is, NOT the “socially acceptable grandfather god” that the world believes in, but the real God of the Bible – then you will fall down before Him in humility and conviction of sin and ask for mercy.
This is what Isaiah did, when he saw the vision of God in the temple in Isaiah 6. He saw God “lofty and exalted, the train of His robe filling the temple, the foundations … trembled at the voice of Him who called out. And one (angel) called out to another, saying, ‘holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is filled with His glory.’” And the Bible says that Isaiah immediately cried out, “Woe is me, for I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” When Isaiah truly saw God, all he could do was fall before Him in humility and cry for mercy.
Luke tells us that the publican in the temple, who was convicted of his own sin, was unwilling even to look up to heaven, but beat his chest, and said, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” Over and over in the New Testament, people who knew they were in trouble, and who came to Jesus, and knew that He was their only help, had that same prayer: “Lord, have mercy on me!” “Lord, have mercy on me!” “Lord, have mercy on me”! THAT is the prayer of the person who has really had an encounter with God: “Have mercy on me!”
The same thing is true for us. We are just like the servant in the parable in Matthew 18, who owed his lord 10,000 talents of gold. He had no means to repay him; all he could do was fall down before Him and ask for mercy. That servant is a picture of you and I. The Bible says that all of us have sinned against this holy, powerful God. We have all sinned in word, in deed, in thoughts, in attitudes, and in countless things left undone. We are all totally guilty before Him. The sins we have talked about over the past several weeks from the Book of Habakkuk are only the tip of the iceberg. We are each guilty of thousands of sins against God. Every one of us deserves His wrath for our sins. We read this picture of the avenging God in Habakkuk 3 – do you realize that is a picture of what he should do to us?! WE should be the ones who are judged; WE should be the ones who quake before Him; WE should be those ones who will be split open by the righteous sword of His judgment! We have all sinned against God; we are sinners by nature and by choice. And we are never going to be good enough to save ourselves. What can we do? The only hope that any of us have is to fall before God and ask for His mercy.
In fact, that is one of the tests of whether you have ever really had an encounter with God. If you have really met Him, all you can do is fall down and cry out for mercy. If you do anything less, you have not really encountered Him at all.
Years ago I read about a guy who supposedly had a “vision of God”. He said it came while he was watching a re-run of the old sitcom Laverne & Shirley. And God supposedly appears to him, and gives him this revelation. Someone asked him, what did you after it was over? He said, Oh, I went back to watching “Laverne & Shirley.” Folks, I can guarantee you, that guy did not encounter God. If you have a vision of the Living, Holy, Glorious God the Bible talks about, you are not going to go back to watching “Laverne & Shirley”! You are never going to be the same. You are going to be stunned, you are going to be convicted of sin, you are going to fall as dead at His feet like John did in Revelation, and the only response you are going to have is to call out for “Mercy!”
Have you ever come to a time in your life when you just fell before God and cried out for His mercy? If you haven’t, you don’t know Him. If you have come in contact with God, then you have been convicted of your sin, and you know that you deserve His judgment and wrath, and you know that you can’t save yourself, and so the only thing you could do is ask for His mercy; ask Him to save you. Thankfully, today, we have the New Testament, and we know that God sent His Son, Jesus, to take our sins in His body on the cross, and God poured out the cup of His wrath on Jesus on the cross, so that whoever realized that they were lost, and would call out to Him in Jesus’ name and ask Him to save them, would find mercy in Him. Have you ever done that? That is what it means to be saved. It is not going down to the front; it is not filling out a card; it is not getting baptized. It is realizing that you are a hopeless sinner, and that the only hope for you to be saved is by calling out for God’s mercy in Jesus. And if you’ve done it, you’re not “proud” of anything you did to be saved; because you know you didn’t get it by anything good that you did – but only by the mercy of God. And you don’t look down on people who aren’t saved – because you know that you aren’t any better than they are – you are only saved by the mercy of God!
The only good response to this God of glory and wrath is to call out for His mercy. That is what Habakkuk did – and that is what you must do, if you are going to be saved.
“In wrath, remember mercy”. Habakkuk says, God, I know that You are coming in wrath. We have broken Your word; we deserve Your judgment. But God, in the midst of Your wrath, would You remember Your mercy? That is a good prayer, because although God absolutely is a holy God, and a God who will pour out His wrath on sin – He is also a God of mercy. He WILL have mercy on those who call upon Him for it. In that song of God’s glory here in Habakkuk 3, in :13 we find that TWO times the scripture says that He not only went forth for judgment – but also for the salvation of His people; the salvation of His anointed. God is glorious, but He is also a God who will save those who call upon Him.
He will have mercy on YOU – if you will ask for it. But you can’t come with any excuses; you can’t come with any justification. You have sinned against God. You deserve His wrath. You cannot do anything to save yourself. The only hope for you is the mercy of God. Thank God, He DOES have mercy for whoever will call upon Him. So call upon Him – and do it NOW! This is where next phrase is so important: “in the midst of years …”
This phrase “in the midst of years” is an important one in this chapter. It is emphasized here in two different ways:
1) he uses this phrase twice, as you see there in :2. In Hebrew this is one of the ways they emphasize something, through repetition. When they say it twice, it means it is very important.
2) it begins the sentence. Again, in Hebrew grammar, the word that begins a sentence has a great emphasis; it is their way of saying: THIS is the important word here; I am going to put it first.
So in both of these ways, the phrase “in the midst of years” is emphasized. Now, WHAT IS IT that is so important about that phrase, “in the midst of years”? Habakkuk is saying, God, You have told me that you are going to do something about the sin in this world; and the sin of these evil Babylonians; and You have told me that You are going to do something in and through Your people. And he says: don’t just do something way off in the future, some time, do something NOW! Do it “in the midst of years”; do it in the time when I will see it! Let Your justice come NOW; let Your mercy come NOW; let Your glory be seen NOW! He is saying, God, do something NOW – “in the midst of years”!
If you are serious about finding God’s mercy today, then your prayer needs to be like that: God, do this in my life NOW! Forgive me NOW; change my life NOW; be my Savior NOW! Do it “in the midst of years” – do it NOW! This is a word for all those here today who need to ask Jesus to be their Savior – you need to ask Him to do it NOW!
But I think there is a word for those of us who have already found God’s mercy in Jesus as well. Habakkuk’s prayer here ought to be the prayer of every one of us: God, would You do Your work “in the midst of OUR years today?” In other words, “God, would You do something in our day? Would You do something in our years?” Don’t you want to pray a prayer like that — that God would do something special right here – in our lives, in our church, in our time? Aren’t you tired of just reading about the things that God has done in the past, or that He has done in other places? Let’s pray: God do something here; do something now; do something in MY life – do something in OUR church. Do something in our state, do something in our nation. Do something “in the midst of years.” If God is giving you the desire to do it, would you make that your prayer: “God, do something in the midst of (our) years.” Not just some day, not just way off in the future, but something that we may see “in the midst of (our) years”!
Even as we begin to pray, remember, we don’t deserve it. We deserve His wrath, along with everyone else. But as He’s challenged us today in His word, would you make your prayer to Him like the prayer of Habakkuk: “O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years; in the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy.”
shawnethomas 