This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Habakkuk” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, April 30, 1995.

in 2 Peter 1, and we are beginning at verse 12. 2 Peter 1, verse 12. Give your attention to God’s Wherefore, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them and be established in the present truth. Yea, I think it meet as long as I am in this tabernacle to stir you up in putting you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me. Moreover, I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance. For we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For he received from God the Father honor and glory, When there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the Holy Mount. We have also a more sure word of prophecy. unto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

Then turning over to Habakkuk chapter 2, verses 2 and 3, And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie. Though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come. It will not tarry.”

Let’s pray together. Father, you prompt us in our prayers to move beyond ourselves, so we pray, Lord, for your church throughout the world. And Father, we even pray for those communions and churches with which we have been ordinarily in conflict. We ask, Lord, for a better day and a triumph of your truth for your people, a bowing before your sovereignty and an acknowledgment of the supremacy of your word. and the glory of the gospel. Help us, our Father, in our prayers. Encourage us with regard to the knowledge that we have. We ask, Father, that we may pray intelligently.

So, Lord, may we store up information concerning the nations of this world and also information concerning your church in her various circumstances. And do hear us, O God, that faithful servants of your word may be given to your people. Yes, here and throughout this country, but throughout the world as well. And may it please you to use us and even the denomination of which we are a part, in great service to your saints throughout the world. Father, may we always be available for your purposes. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Habakkuk is one unhappy fellow. He is a very disgruntled soul. He has looked out over his homeland. He has looked out over the city, the great city that dominates his homeland, the city of Jerusalem, and he has complained bitterly to the Lord about the violence, the sin, and the injustice that he sees at every turn. You find this complaint in the opening verses of Habakkuk chapter one.

But God has answered. He has chosen to answer Habakkuk. But that answer has come as a thunderbolt, for God is raising up the Chaldeans, the Babylonians. who will march across the earth, destroying everything in sight, including Habakkuk’s homeland and the city that he cherishes. You find this response from God in verses 5 through the first part of verse 11 in that first chapter. Now Habakkuk comes back for a second round.

This response is twofold. First of all, he seems to be quite confident in the doctrine that he has embraced, quite self-assured by his theology. These butchers, the Babylonians, will be held accountable. They cannot go unpunished. After all, God’s eternal character will maintain the people of Israel. They will not? No, they cannot die. Besides, God’s eyes are too pure to approve evil, and presumably As Habakkuk speaks thus in the thirteenth verse of that first chapter, he has in mind the evil of the Babylonians, and their evil only.

But secondly, Habakkuk, in this response, appears to collapse. For his comments take a decided turn in their thirteenth verse of the first chapter. You will note what comes to expression in the man. He has a quantitative approach to sin, and he’s banking on that. It may seem that his theology and his doctrine are quite orthodox, but it seems as if the man is also, at this point, taking a wrong turn, for what he expresses through the conclusion of that first chapter is built upon a quantitative approach to sin and guilt. and his fellow Judeans, at least some of them in his estimation, are clearly more righteous than the invading Babylonians. And he doesn’t even hesitate to say it. The inference is, we are more righteous than they. How can God then look with favor upon these treacherous people?

Now, as Habakkuk finishes this second approach to heaven, he is a divided man. To be sure, on the one hand, there is that within him that is expressive of the finest strand of Old Testament piety. So as you come to the opening of chapter two and find Habakkuk mounting his watchtower, here, in a certain sense, is an admirable specimen of biblical faith. He is alert, he is watchful, he is waiting for the Lord’s response, and he is doing this at the same time that he realizes that when the Lord responds, the Lord is going to rebuke him. That’s verse 1. Chapter 2. But at the same time, as Habakkuk mounts that watchtower, he is carrying within him a burden of resentment. Now, it’s not as if that burden is something that is uncommon. You may have your own testimonials with regard to that resentment. But as he mounts this watchtower now, he is also carrying within him the burden of resentment, deep dissatisfaction, and I might add, even defiance.

A challenging of God and that in what he may imagine in the deep recesses of his soul to be a heroic stance against what he contends is tyrannical, unjust, improper, terribly unfair. It is this divided, yes, in some ways confused, Yes, even sinful man, to whom God now comes a second time. Oh, the grace of God.

What about your own sense of deep injustice? Your own feeling that it is all so unfair, and that when everything is said and done, there’s only really one person to blame for that, and that’s God himself. After all, I’m more righteous than those other people. I’m hardly deserving of the raw deal that I’m getting.

But God multiplies his grace in that he comes to such as Habakkuk, and to such as us. And he speaks to us yet again. Now the Lord’s answer to Habakkuk at this point begins with some instructions. These instructions are concerned with what Habakkuk is to do with the vision that is being given to him, is to write it down. Now, you might not think too long about this particular instruction given to Habakkuk by the Lord, because, after all, we tend to associate the prophets of God with writing, do we not?

We have the books in the Bible that bear the names of the prophets. We even have some books that were written by prophets anonymously. We don’t know which prophets were responsible, and in the widest application of this consideration, we can say that all the books of the Bible are products of the prophets. They are written by the prophets.

Prophecy for Israel was primarily a spoken enterprise in its majority expression. It was primarily a speaking enterprise, not a writing enterprise, not a scribal enterprise. The prophets were preachers. The prophets declared they proclaimed the message from God, and that under the direct inspiration of the Lord by His Spirit.

You may even recall some of the many prophets of Israel from whom we have nothing in writing. Nothing is preserved from their hand for us. Abraham is called a prophet of God, we have nothing in writing from his hand. Nathan, the prophet in David’s court, is called, yes, a prophet of God, but yet we have nothing in writing from his hand. We think of the great ninth century prophet Elijah and Elisha, nothing, nothing from their hand in writing. You may even think of Jesus Christ himself. We call him a prophet, do we not? Yet we do not have anything in hand that he actually wrote himself.

This means then that the writing enterprise, the writing down of messages from God, the writing down of prophecy from the Lord was a distinct and extraordinary activity. As much as the prophet would call attention to his message by proclaiming it and speaking it, he called even more attention to it by writing it down at the instruction of the Lord. Writing down a prophecy, then, was a distinct and extraordinary event. It was occasional. in the life of the history of Israel, in the life of the people of God, and in the life of the prophets themselves.

But even though that is the case, the writing down of the messages from God, the writing down of the message from the prophet, stands at the heart of biblical religion, right at its center. You see, biblical religion moves toward the inscribing of God’s message. That is its direction. Biblical religion moves toward inscripturation. I cannot emphasize that enough for you, and by the time this message is done, I hope you see and understand the importance of what I am contending for here this morning. You can intuit it at this point, I believe. Someone who is claiming biblical religion, who has no room in their heart for the written word of God, is out of bounds.

The inscribing then of the message from God in written form, Prophecy and otherwise is an extraordinarily large matter for the people of God and in the history of Revelation. Now, not all of God’s inspired messengers wrote Scripture, we know that. Not all that those chosen messengers of God wrote during their lives become scripture, we know that. But what these inspired messengers did write for God and by inspiration is utterly unique and noteworthy. The event of inscripturation is an event of tremendous importance for the people of God.

Now, in its occasional fashion, God giving his word at particular points in the history of salvation, it is obvious that God is picking his spots. But in taking those spots and in moving the biblical message from the spoken word to the written word, God is also doing something of extraordinary importance, for he is lending to his word, in written form then, that sense of permanence, stability, and constancy, which then stamps the word. This means that it is specifically God’s written word that is viewed as true and is standing firm, unmovable.

When that word was only spoken—now, understanding this—when that word was only spoken It may seem that it had merely a fleeting character. It may have seemed as if it merely hung in the air. It was here, and then it was gone. You heard it, and then you didn’t. But with the writing of the Word, writing that Word down, there is gained for the Word a constancy and a permanence. and that constancy and permanence smacks of eternity.

It doesn’t change. The written word has a place, therefore, for this very reason, that the spoken word does not have in biblical religion. As the Word of God moves from its spoken form to its written form, it is as if the Word were itself partaking, in a way that had not been true previously, of the eternal heavenly order of things. The inscripturating of the Word, the inscribing of the Word, lends to the Word a permanence. And that permanence speaks about eternity. Now, for the extent of this century, the Church has been stymied and troubled by those who have said that the written word of God is actually an inferior form of communication.

True religion is experience. The worst thing you can do to religious experience is to write it down, write about it, codify it, put it on a piece of paper. When you objectify it, you destroy it. Its genius and spontaneity is gone. So we must, above all, have religious experience.

The Word of God written down is actually an inferior form of communication from God. The primary form of communication from God is the direct communication that God has with me. The electricity that I feel when I’m praying, for instance, or I’m in a special meeting, or I’m with my friends talking about religious things. That’s the most important thing.

There are also those who have contended that the written word is inferior to the oral traditions that stand behind the written text. Therefore, only with the tools of modern textual scientific criticism are we able to penetrate the written word in order to discover the superior oral traditions that stand behind the written record. Not only has this approach proved to be futile, it is essentially and absolutely wrongheaded and fails to take into consideration the fact that in the scheme of biblical religion, it is the written word that has the supremacy. And this specifically because the written word carries in its very form the stamp of the eternal, the permanent, and the heavenly.

Now at this point, I ask you to indulge me a bit, if you haven’t been already. What I’m about to say is not because I wish ill to any group or denomination of those who claim Christ’s name, nor do I wish to speak contemptuously of others. I say what I do because of my great concern for all of those who bear the name Christian, and because of my great love for God and for His Word. There cannot be, there is not, anything that equals or surpasses for the Christian the written word of God, as the source of revelation and authority. We can go further.

Scripture alone is the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice. Now, some are not hearing that message. Scripture alone is the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice. If the spoken words of the prophets—I will go further—if the spoken words of the Son of God, of Jesus himself, suffer in comparison to the written word, then what might we say of human traditions? What might we say of decisions of church councils, as helpful as they may be, of personal inspirations, of so-called prophetic utterances, of private flights of religious fancy, of apparitions, visions, and bleeding statutes, and if you are watching television on Friday night, bleeding hands of little children? by those who claim that the stigmata are in themselves a source of revelation to us.

I will tell you this without embarrassment. The Protestant impulse, Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone is absolutely correct, absolutely. I know about the assaults coming from Eastern Orthodoxy now. I know of assaults coming from Rome on this very question, and I realize that there are a number of people making their way out of Protestant churches, on their way to other traditions, because of this very issue. They have given up on the question of sola scriptura. They have abandoned it. For them, it is no longer true. They no longer accept it.

But let me tell you that this principle, sola scriptura, is totally in keeping with the spirit of biblical religion itself, for it honors the final exclusive, eternal, permanent, and heavenly character of the written Word of God. Now, let me give you two illustrations from Scripture that highlight this very point.

The supremacy, the absolute supremacy of the written Word of God. First, from Jesus himself, and I have in mind John 14, verse 26. where Jesus promises his disciples that the Holy Spirit would come, and the Holy Spirit’s specific task would be to bring them into remembrance of all that he had said, all that he had taught. Now, everyone recognizes this to be a text about the eventual documentation of Jesus’ acts in words in the gospel records, but you see, this text also suggests the excellence and the supremacy of the written Word of God. Not what Jesus spoke alone, but what was recorded, what was written down. This has the authority for us. Now, not so as to drive a wedge between what Jesus actually spoke and what was written down, but you must understand that it is the written Word of God that has the supremacy.

And there’s a reason for this. Jesus is going away. He’s telling his disciples that in this very context. He’s leaving. Jesus, therefore, in his physical body, is not permanent to this world. What is permanent? The written Word of God. That’s what’s permanent.

There is that sense, then, in which having the written word of God, we have that which is better for us presently than if we had the physical presence of Jesus. Now, I put a few qualifiers in there in that sentence, and I hope you were alert to what I was saying. But given our present situation, there is that sense in which having the written word is better than having the physical presence of Jesus himself. So exalted is the written word in the concepts of biblical religion. And if Jesus Christ himself so exalts the written word, we must not diminish it. And shame on the many in Christ’s Church who are doing that very thing.

The second illustration comes from Peter, the text that we read this morning, 2 Peter chapter 1. Now, I know that there is much debate over the proper interpretation of that 19th verse. But I believe that the King James Version gets it right, or at least is closer to the sense of it than either the NID or the New American Standard.

Peter, you will note, in this context, has been telling his readers about the glorious experience—underscore that, will you?—the glorious experience of having been on the Mount of Transfiguration, verses 16 through 18. Now, here, in a religious experience, it’s really something.

He tells his readers that he, yes, Peter, heard the voice from heaven on that occasion, verse 18, but then he goes on to say that we have the more sure word of prophecy. The word of prophecy was more sure than the experience that he had on the mount when he heard the voice of God. In other words, the written word of God has an excellence and a supremacy that exceeds even the most thrilling experiments that Peter has had. in his religious journey. Habakkuk, the divided and confused man of his first chapter, has been told by God to write down the vision that he is given.

And he is going to do that. But as he does, The very word that he inscribes will minister to him and bring to him, from its excellence, a magnificent spiritual health. That word, written down, inspired the word of the living and true God. now ministers to you in your divisiveness and in your confusion, bringing before you and to you its excellence and its wonderful ministry, by which there is given to you magnificent spiritual health. You must not neglect it. You must give your full attention to the written word of God.

Let’s pray. Our Father, we might prove negligent. We might even demonstrate an ignorance, Lord. But we pray, O Father, that you, in your persevering with us, withdraw us on so that your written word would be the treasure to us that it is intended to be. May we be drawn to its reading in the congregation of the saints, its proclamation in the same, to our private meditation upon it, our meditation upon it in the company of those in our families. But Lord, in every instance and on every occasion, may we never diminish its importance, but recognize its supremacy for our lives. And by honoring your word, the written word, the Bible, may we honor you. We pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.