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, November 5, 1995.

We are reading first of all this morning from Habakkuk chapter 1, and then turning over to Habakkuk chapter 3. Habakkuk 1, verse 1, gives you attention to God’s holy word. the oracle which Habakkuk the prophet saw. How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and thou wilt not hear?

I cry out to thee, Violence, yet thou dost not say. Why dost thou make me see iniquity, and cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me, strife exists, and contention arises. Therefore, the law is ignored, and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous, therefore justice comes out perverted.

Turning over to chapter 3, verse 15, While it’s tread on the sea with thy horses, On the surge of many waters, I heard, and my inward parts trembled. At the sound, my lips quivered, decay entered my bones, and in my place I trembled, 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 flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls.

Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he has made my feet like hind feet, and makes me walk on my high places, for the choir director on my stringed instrument. Our Lord, your word is refreshment to us, and Father, you supply us strength from your word. What opportunities are ours? To hear your word week by week, and also, Lord, to delve into that word personally. Father, may we be trained in the word and by it. And Lord, as we take in your word, may we take in the full and complete message of that word. And yes, that which is central to it, your glory and our salvation. This we pray through Christ, Amen. Habakkuk’s great prayer, here in chapter three, concludes with him speaking in the most interesting way about what the Lord has done for him.

He says, the Lord has made his feet like hind feet and has made him to walk upon his high This prophet, you will recall, had begun his prophecy with a complaint that the Lord was doing nothing. When God told Habakkuk that he was about to do something, that he was about to act by sending the Chaldeans to overrun Judah and Jerusalem, Habakkuk could find no comfort in such news, nor any reason for praise. But now, At this prophecy’s conclusion, Habakkuk seems literally possessed of an uncommon spirit of praise and rejoicing that seems to be inexplicable in light of those things that had concerned him previously. The violence and wickedness in Judah and in Jerusalem, which he had been compelled to see every day and at every turn, that’s still there. The threat now of the impending invasion by the Chaldeans, that has added its own weight to the consciousness of this man. And throughout the prophecy, this threat becomes all the more real and all the more immediate, its consequences more and more clearly perceived. Habakkuk now, at the conclusion, even in his great prayer of faith, describes what’s coming as the day of distress, verse 16 of that third chapter.

And as verse 17 goes on to tell us, this impending invasion by the Chaldeans holds out the devastating prospect of barren trees, fruitless vines, fields seemingly incapable of a crop, and flocks and herds Yet this Habakkuk, who formerly ranted and raved at God for doing nothing, and then ranted and raved at God when God said he was about to do something, this man now praises God because God has acted in him and for him to make his feet like hind feet, causing him to tread upon his high places. Once more, verse 19, chapter 3. Habakkuk is a changed man. He is a changed man.

And you must note that this man is changed specifically, indirectly, because of the work of God. That is what he is confessing here. For he says that it is God himself who is the one who has worked for the transformation of him. God makes his feet like kind feet. God makes him to walk upon his high places. And so it is with all genuine, all true religious change, transformation. God does it. God is the one at work, because we are incapable of changing ourselves. God comes.

God comes upon Jacob, a professional deceiver, and the man is transformed. God comes upon Moses, and the man is transformed. He comes upon a king, Manasseh, the wicked king, Manasseh, more wicked than any known in the history of Judah, and the man is changed. He even comes upon Job, and the man is changed. The Job of chapter 42 in Job is different than the Job of chapter 1. And in Jesus Christ, God comes upon many, does he not? He comes upon an adulterous woman, and she’s transformed. He comes upon a thieving tax collector, and the man becomes a paragon of virtue. He comes upon a proud Pharisee, and this Pharisee becomes the epitome of humility.

And what might we say about ourselves? Are we not those upon whom God comes in His holy and precious word? We then, being those who have been wonderfully and marvelously changed, if that is the case, then enabled to enter in full-faced, enter into the praises of Habakkuk, with which he concludes his prayer. But it is true, is it not?

We confess it. God has come upon us. He is the one at work to transform us. And what is the nature of the transformation? I do not mean this in any simplistic, moralistic sense, but He came upon us and transformed us in many real and practical senses. For some of us, you see, Some of us were changed. We having learned about sensuality, we having learned even about the details of sexuality in the backseat of a car. Some of us having been changed. Is it not true? Will you not confess it?

Some of us having been changed, our mouths frittery, foul, abusive, even blasphemous. Some of us expressing deception and deceit from the earliest age, learning even to steal from our own parents. Some of us used to drink ourselves blind-eyed drunk. in order to cover over our disappointment with life, in order to fuel our rage, in order to deaden our pain, or just be one of the guys. Some of us have been cruel gossips, selfish brats, crybabies obsessed with self-pity.

But God, by his word, has changed us. Now, in Habakkuk’s case, you might have thought, here, at least, is a man who is not in need of change. After all, he’s a prophet. He is also a priest, which seems to be the indication of the setting of this psalm, with which his prophecy ends. Here’s a man who doesn’t need to be changed. Here’s a man who understands the law, who’s been raised in the faith. But what might some of us say concerning our own situations? I was born in the church. I was born to the faith. I was raised in the assembly.

I don’t need change. that you do, if it is but to participate in the change that you observe in the prophet Habakkuk, the transformation that comes in Jephthah, and that in order that you might be brought to the same extraordinary praise that he expresses at the end of his prayer.

Here, the prophet glories because God has made his feet like time’s feet. Now, at first glance, you may not be impressed by the fact that God has changed Habakkuk into a mountain sheep, into a mountain goat. But that is the figure that the Prophet uses. What he means by that figure is that God has made him now sure-footed. And it is precisely with this image, with this figure of the sure-footed mountain goat, that Habakkuk now presents to us the change that has come upon him by the action of God. You see, Habakkuk, at the beginning of his prophecy, had imagined himself nothing if he wasn’t sure-footed.

Here is a man of perfect confidence, a perfect confidence in his righteousness, assured of his own moral and religious outrage about the violence and the wickedness that he witnessed every day in Judah and in Jerusalem. Habakkuk’s cause at the beginning of the prophecy and his perception seemed to be just. solid in his piety, righteous in his indignation, that’s the Habakkuk of chapter one.

But observing, but observing the prophet in that setting and with that attitude, your response may well be, well, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with being incensed like a baggage at moral decay and perversion, at social and judicial injustice? What’s wrong with that? Doesn’t God want us to be sensitive to the violations of his law? Doesn’t he want us to be sensitive to the effects of such violations upon our society, upon our culture and our civilization?

But oddly enough, God cannot leave Habakkuk, nor can he leave us with such attitudes. You see, the real question for Habakkuk, even at the beginning of his prophecy, is this. despite the rightness of his cause, that his motives are just and righteous. How does he know, despite the rightness of his cause and the insistence that he has with regard to the law, that his own motives are not skewed and tainted? How does he know that? How does he know whether his true motivation isn’t one in which he means simply to ensure for himself the best possible vantage point in his own selfish pursuits? The wicked, the violent, are taking my property. That’s mine. I’m the one that’s coming out on the short end of the stick in the court of law. I’m losing, and it is supremely embarrassing for me.

For all his certainty that his cause is just, and that he is sure-footed in his confidence before God, in actual fact, As God knows, Habakkuk is very unstable indeed, and now it is out of his mercy and in his love that God acts, for he cannot leave Habakkuk where he is, and he will not leave you in a similar condition. for whether Habakkuk or you acknowledge it, the position taken up by the prophet and you with him is quite precarious.

Just how precarious it is begins to dawn on us when we realize that Habakkuk can actually wrap himself up in the law, and a righteousness which is of the law. and never know just how unstable he is. For the law of his circumstance at the beginning of the prophecy comforts him, it reassures him, it tells him that his cause is just. With the law on his side, he reacts against the wicked, and even calls upon God to come to his aid in the interests of his law. But what if Habakkuk gets his wish, What if God responds to Habakkuk in keeping with the way in which Habakkuk has expressed himself at the beginning of the prophecy? What if God comes to Habakkuk’s aid in ways that Habakkuk expects, and acts in the interest of his law in ways that Habakkuk expects? Is there any guarantee in that that Habakkuk will not harbor a spirit that would rejoice simply because his own self-interests have been secured and salvaged, thus securing him in an essential worldliness that builds upon his own precious possessions and privileges. Coming to this position, Habakkuk now is insular.

He has an unassailable position. He is untouchable. Not even the law touches him. The law seemingly is on his side. For how can you prosecute the case against such an interior attitude? How can you carry a man like that into a law court and give a judgment against him? How then does the law possibly deal with Habakkuk’s heart when it seems that the law so clearly supports his just cause? If the truth be told then, Habakkuk, with law in hand, is able to take his stand. He is even able to hide himself in the law. The law can become a cloak for him. hiding a deep-seated self-righteousness.

Maybe you need an illustration. Maybe it will wake some of you up. Suppose I live in a community, Pittsburgh or Chicago, Suppose I live in a community where I am of one race and the police are of another. I see I have your attention. Suppose someone of my race is stopped by the police one night, and in the course of the arrest, or as a consequence of that arrest, mysteriously dies. But suppose that I, with others, am outraged.

And in our appeal to the law, yes, plead the law’s case, invoke the law, and hope for justice. And suppose at the end of this ordeal a judgment is rendered that satisfies my sense of what the law should say and do, my sense of justice, even. It now appears that my cause is righteous. The law has been upheld. The law is on my side. I now walk away from the case vindicated and with a deep sense, not only of the righteousness of my cause, but that I myself am righteous. I am on the right side of the law. But what if the truth of the matter is this, that regardless of my high regard for the law, regardless of the justice of the verdict, I am a horrible racist? What if that’s the truth?

How does the law touch me? It can’t. The law actually becomes a place to hide from me. The law has been served. And I’m innocent. So what if the truth that I’m a horrible racist and that I am not so much motivated by a high regard for the law or an outraged sense of justice as I am by deep-seated personal hatred. For blacks, for whites, But is my hatred on trial? No. The law has spoken. And I’m untouched. Even my heart is untouched. And I walk away from the case unchanged.

It is the mercy of God that he not leave me in that condition. It is the mercy of God that he robbed me of all of my supposed sure-footedness, my imagined righteousness. It is a mercy of God that he robbed me of the righteousness of the law, a righteousness which the law itself supports, that he might then give me the true and genuine righteousness of God. This righteousness is a gift. It is a gift mediated to us through faith.

In it we are changed, and in that change, we are made then those who are truly sure-footed enabled to rise above the limitations of judgments of men and of this world to the regions of the judgments of God that pierce into the soul and mind of men and women and deal with the issues of conscience. You, friends, are exposed.

But what a marvelous grace is ours in this faith by which this gift is mediated to us, making us then those who are sure-footed, with a sure-footedness that comes from God, not from ourselves, enabling us so that we might bound from peak to peak in the heights of glory, in the kingdom of the freedom of the sons of God, this which has been granted to us. even through our Lord Jesus Christ. And that Habakkuk now knows he being in glory. And so do we, do we not, that such sure-footedness, such righteousness, such glory, such freedom, such an inheritance, as is spoken of here at the conclusion of this praise, is found nowhere else but in Jesus Christ our Lord. who died for our sins and was raised for our justification.

Our God It is a very difficult thing, even for us at times, to face ourselves, particularly when we are so confident about ourselves. Lord, may we be confident of you, may we be confident of your actions with respect to us personally. And may we have a confidence that is born of genuine change and transformation, whereby we are removed from under a righteousness by the law to that righteousness which is by faith and Jesus Christ. to this end, that our purified consciences would continue to be purified by the grace of our Savior. And we, Lord, in the change which you have effected, then sure-footedly leaping from peak to peak in the exalted regions of the kingdom of our God. We pray this, our Father, for your sake, in the name of Jesus Christ, with the help of the Spirit. 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.