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, September 24, 1995.

This morning we are beginning our reading in Deuteronomy chapter 33. We are reading verses 1-5 before we turn over to Habakkuk’s last chapter. I am reading this morning from the New American Standard Version. Give your attention to the reading of God’s holy words.

Now this is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the sons of Israel before his death. And he said, The Lord came from Sinai and dawned on them from Seir. He shone forth from Mount Paran. And he came from the midst of ten thousand holy ones At his right hand there was flashing lightning for them. Indeed, he loves the people. All thy holy ones are in thy hand, and they followed in thy steps. Everyone receives of thy words.

Mark Moses charged us with a law, a possession for the assembly of Jacob, and he was king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people were gathered, the tribes of Israel together.” Then Habakkuk chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionys. Lord, I have heard the report about thee, and I fear. O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of years, in the midst of the years make it known, in draught remember mercy.”

God comes from Tamim, 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 the 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.

Our God, we know that you have given to your people the means of grace. We thank you for the means that we have in prayer, and the means that we have in your word. We rejoice, Lord, when we are able to see these means brought together. as we pray with respect to the Word, and as we approach the Word, that we might profit from the Word, but also as the Word itself sets prayers before us. Lord, may we be instructed along these paths that we might prove to be a better people in our prayers. And also, Lord, a better people because we have heard what you have said, even to the point that you have instructed us for our prayers in your words. We pray this through Christ, in his name. Amen.

Habakkuk says, in verse 3 of this third chapter, in his great prayer, that God is coming. But I thought the Chaldeans were coming. Isn’t that what God himself had told Habakkuk in his first response to the Prophet’s complaint back in chapter 1, verse 6? Yes, God had said that the Chaldeans were coming, and Habakkuk gives every indication full recognition that that, in fact, is going to take place.

He gives recognition of it even as his prayer begins in verse one of that third chapter. The report concerning the coming invasion is enough to make this prophet tremble to shake in his boots. He knows what the invasion of the Chaldeans, now promised by God, will mean to Judah. He realizes that it will be devastating beyond belief. If there had already been carnage in Judah, because unscrupulous Jews were viciously attacking their fellow countrymen, even as Habakkuk had pointed out to the Lord, you may recall, in verses two through four of that first chapter. If there had already been that carnage, now the bloodletting at the hands of the Chaldeans will far exceed it. such horror, such suffering, the mind can scarcely take it in. And this is imminent because the Chaldeans are coming. You will excuse the Prophet if this preoccupies him.

His mind is fervent. Put yourself in his position. All that you know and want is coming under threat. Your home is about to be overrun. Some of you read war literature. It’s not very pleasant. It is especially unpleasant when you read about what happens to civilians. How they seem so defenseless. So unprepared. and yet so thoroughly preoccupied with what is coming. Think of the Second World War and its devastation. Yes, the carnage visited upon the soldiers of the different armies, but also the carnage that overtook the civilian population.

The Germans are coming. What are the Poles thinking? The Japanese are coming. The Russians, the Allies, even from the other side, what that means to those to envision it. Wouldn’t your minds be completely filled with thoughts of the coming invasion, the coming onslaught?

And Habakkuk, yes, we say, naturally, has his brain filled with thoughts about this coming invasion. The Chaldeans are going to overrun the Judeans. But now, as you witness his prayer, his praise-filled prayer, with which his prophecy concludes, the most remarkable thing happens. Habakkuk sees past the Chaldeans, he sees beyond them, to the coming of God.

And which is more frightening? Which is more terrifying? We are liable to say that the Chaldeans or the Nazis or the Japanese, this is more terrifying. Our minds may be preoccupied with the devastations that may overtake us, but now, Habakkuk, in this most remarkable way, sees past the Chaldeans.

This is what the Lord has been pressing him to do all along, so that he might be prepared, past the invasion of the Chaldeans, for the invasion of God and his Holy Host. Here then is his preoccupation. This now has become his great concern. If there were the other concerns punctuating his comments to God along the road previously in the prophecy, now we come to his greatest concern, his greatest interest, that which overshadows everything else.

Earlier in his prophecy, it was that Chaldean invasion that seemed the greater threat. Now comes God’s invasion, and it is greater. Earlier it was the coming of the kingdom of the Chaldeans, now it is the coming of the kingdom of God. Jews in Jesus’ day may be worried about Romans. Jesus tells them about the coming of the kingdom of God.

They’re worried about themselves, their livelihood, their property, their families. They’re worried about provision, what are we going to eat? How are we going to live? We’re being taxed to death. Jesus announces the coming of the Kingdom of God. Habakkuk prays, but then you note Jesus also teaches his disciples to pray, and what is foremost in that prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples? Is it not, Thou Lord, be thy name? When? When you come, God, in all your glory. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus here then giving expression to the same perspective, even tapping off that perspective that informs Habakkuk in his prayer in Habakkuk 3. The prayer of Habakkuk and of Jesus Christ, the one that he teaches his disciples, is of the same spirit, and the center of it is the coming of the kingdom of God. And if you were to investigate the prayers that you find throughout the New Testament offered up by various saints, for instance, the Apostle Paul, I dare say that you would find the very same spirit animating his prayers. And what might we say of that final prayer with which the New Testament ends in Revelation chapter 22?

Come, Lord Jesus, even so, quickly come. Don’t be surprised by that ending. After you have gone through the entirety of the book of Revelation, and you have seen all of the horror spelled out for you on the pages of that apocalyptic book, you come to the end, and the most important thing is set before you, the supremacy of the coming of God.

Everything else is a minor tremor by comparison. But Habakkuk now sees God, verse 3, coming from Taman, and from Mount Teron. What is this all about? I didn’t even know there were such places. Besides, I thought God came from heaven. We are told that God is coming from Teman and from Mount Pera.

We are greatly helped in understanding these references by the passage that we also read this morning, Deuteronomy 33. and particularly the second verse of that 33rd chapter of Deuteronomy, where we read these words, “…the Lord came from Sinai and dawned on them from seer. He shone forth from Mount Paran It’s obvious that this passage in Deuteronomy speaks about the appearances of God in the territory south of the promised land, south of Canaan, when God in fact came to Israel to bless Israel with his law and with his guidance while they sojourned in the Sinai peninsula. Seir, another name for Edom, Canaan also. a word that refers to the southern territories proximate to Eden, Teran, southern boundaries of the land of Canaan.

All of these names arise out of that territory and out of Israel’s past, the time of their sojourn in the wilderness. But now Habakkuk prays, forming his prayer out of the background of the history of salvation, That’s what informs his prayer, his recollection of and reflection upon God’s mighty work, which he has already performed. But now he envisions God moving again, but not upon journeying tribes in the wilderness to bless them, but upon the settled tribes as they have established themselves in the land. He comes this time not to bless, but to judge. The reference in this prayer by Habakkuk to this territory and to these events is appropriate, for that territory to the south speaks to the Israelite about the wilderness experience and about the giving of the law. But that’s how Habakkuk’s prophecy began, you recall.

Chapter 1, verses 2 through 4. Habakkuk’s complaint is that the law is presently being ignored. No one pays any attention to it. that God is rising so according to Habakkuk’s prayer and expectation, as it were from Sinai afresh, to adjudicate his law perfectly now, and to bring about perfect justice.

But I ask you now, just how perfect will that adjudication of his law and that enactment of his justice be. What is Habakkuk himself prepared to admit? Previously, he thought that perfect adjudication of God’s law meant that all of the Chaldeans were going to be judged instead of the Jews, because Jews are inherently more righteous than Chaldeans. we can go even further. The prophet Habakkuk imagines, originally, that the perfect adjudication of the law would mean, yes, that there would be wicked Jews judged, but Habakkuk himself, being innocent, would escape, he being more righteous than they. But now God’s perfect adjudication of his law is coming. And that, with the compliance spirit of the prophet, obvious and friendly in view, he knowing that when God comes adjudicating his law perfectly, he will do so indiscriminately, and that adjudication will have Habakkuk himself in view.

No one is excluded. The Chaldeans come and you might be spared. They might not even touch you. The Nazis might come and you might escape. Many did. escapes God. This very powerful truth is communicated by Habakkuk, although very subtly. It comes through as we look at the language of verse 3 and compare it with the language of chapter 1, verse 12. Our clue, as we move from one verse to the other, is the repetition of this name for God, Holy One, The Holy One, My Holy One. You see it in both of those texts.

While the term is the same, Habakkuk 3.3 and Habakkuk 1.12, the prophet’s disposition in each verse is utterly different. In chapter 1, verse 12, Habakkuk gives expression to an arrogant self-assurance in which he presumes upon God, we will not die, that is our confidence. And I am so bold to claim the Holy One as my own, He is my Holy One. Therefore, you see, according to chapter 1, verse 12, and the spirit of the prophet speaking at that time, God is quite settled.

He is quite settled and immovable in his commitment to the covenant. He is immovable in his devotion to Israel. Therefore, although Israel may be chastened by the Lord, which he freely admits, corrected for sin, yes, he admits that, she will not be ultimately under any permanent threat.

Israel is not and cannot be in jeopardy. And even more than that, God cannot move. Do you get the connection? God cannot move. He is permanently bound to me. He is permanently bound to my people. He is permanently bound to Israel. He cannot move. It is impossible for him to move. Therefore, he cannot come. because it cannot move.

God cannot come to Israel because God is already there, and he is there in such a way, imagine sabbatic, that he can be perfectly sure of his prominence. and security, his absolute security. Therefore, Habakkuk’s acknowledgment that God is his Holy One is as that term reflects upon supposed Jewish invincibility and even Habakkuk’s own invincibility. He cannot be touched, not even God can touch him.

But in Habakkuk 3.3, all that changes. For the prophet now, chastened himself, transformed, sees God on the moon. Shaking every presumption every Jewish and personal presumption.

For the just man, the man who lives by faith, always stands and prays in expectation of the coming of God. the man of faith, the just man, has as his presupposition the coming of God. This man then goes on in his prayer, he sees himself in the light of the coming radiance, like the rising of the sun. That being then compared with the approach of God. The coming of God means the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

A statement that rises out of The prophecy itself, chapter 2, verse 14, and here in chapter 3, it means a new visitation like that at Sinai, when God’s splendor covers the heavens like his bestment, and his praise fills the earth as from 10,000, no, 20,000 of his angelic hosts who accompany him at his coming.

Verse 3. It is all so dramatic, it is all so poetic. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t real, it isn’t true, it isn’t historical. In fact, the historical is at the very foundation of it. But what sublime poetry! The greatest drama is being played out in front of your eyes as tabaccic praise. And this kind of drama and poetry should inform your prayers. Don’t allow them to become sterile. or commonplace. Allow yourself to be drawn into God’s mighty deeds, and allow those deeds to inform what you say before Him, giving testimony that you yourself have accepted those deeds on your behalf, and you have participated in them by faith. What grandeur! What glory! God’s dazzling brilliance is overwhelming. As Habakkuk contemplates it in his prayer, reflecting upon the sign I experienced, projecting it, yes, for his present time, but also for the future.

God’s coming is like an explosion of light, lightning bolts shooting from one of his hands, his other hand closed, rather concealing the remainder of his power that is hid from our sight. And like his coming in Egypt, he pushes chaos before him, and devastation is left in his wake. But then the God who has been on the move takes his stand, he stops, he comes to rest. And then he stops and scrutinizes the earth. It is not for the comfortable flatteries of the self-satisfied, nor is it for the vindication of Jewish claims, or the vindication of the self-righteous, anywhere, anyplace, in all the world. Now when God comes to rest, when God stops, when He scrutinizes the earth, He terrifies the nations.

They are shaken, these people who think themselves so established, themselves so immovable, so unstoppable, they are displaced. In fact, whatever of this world is considered permanent is shattered before God, who himself is eternal. The mountains and the hills, thought to be eternal and perpetual, dissolve. Verse 6. For God and his ways are everlasting.

And what about those whom God has used to chasten his people? What about the power they displayed? What about the power that the Chaldeans are to display in bringing Israel to ruin? Even they turn to quivering masses and their invasions look like a picnic in the woods when compared to the coming of God.

And this is the significance of that 7th verse. And the mention made there in that 7th verse of Cushan and Midian. The immediate problem for Habakkuk had been the Chaldeans. But here in the 7th verse Habakkuk poetically reflects upon the threat which had preceded even that of the Chaldeans in the early chapters of Judges. There are certain references made to Cushan and to Midian as those whom the Lord unleashed and sent upon his people to punish them for their sins. But they, now, as surely as the Chaldeans, are as nothing before the coming visitation of God. The tents collapse. Even their tent curtains tremble because they are so frightened.

Who then can endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? And who presently can pray with such straightforwardness and expectation as Habakkuk prays? Only that one who has been transformed by the gracious workings of God, who has turned in faith from all self-righteousness to the provision of God himself, that one who, before his final appearing, comes in mercy, just as he did to Habakkuk.

If the invasion of the Chaldeans is like the end of the world, the revelation to Habakkuk before that invasion functions as gospel to the man, and communicates grace for his transformation. It is the coming of redemption. The end of the world awaits the coming of God. But before it arrives, God graciously visits the world in his Son for you. That you might be able to live by faith and pray like a bat. Oh God, your visitation to us in Jesus Christ has meant mercy instead of wrath.

But Lord, we know the day is coming when you shall appear. And we ask, Father, that as we find ourselves in this world, we would take to heart truly the lessons we learn from Habakkuk. May we, Lord, by your grace, be among the just, those who live by faith, that is, faith in your provision for us. And Lord, may we be able to pray. Pray in the right way, where you are the very center of the prayer. and all your activities for your people are central to our praise and petitions. We ask 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.