Be Joyful, The Saviour Is Coming – Rev. John Zuidema

 

Text – Habakkuk 3:17-19

Scripture reading – Deuteronomy 27:9-26

Suggested Music BOW 23 vv 1-3; 418 vv 1,2, 5,6;154; 188; 23 vv 4,5

 

Beloved people of the Lord;

I don’t know whether any of us can identify with what is happening in the land of Israel as described in our passage. Perhaps some of you who went through the great depression and the war years can identify with what Habakkuk is describing in the last verses of his book, but anyone born in the Western nations after the 2WW would have difficulty in identifying with what is happening.

 

We cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like for the shelves at Woollies or Coles to be bare. We could not imagine no crops and no meat and no grapes. But that is basically what Habakkuk is saying in our text. The pantry cupboard is bare. The fig tree doesn’t bud. No grapes on the vines. The olive crops have failed. There is no wheat to harvest and even the sheep and cattle are gone. There is no food.

So what has brought about this tragic turn of events? Well it wasn’t El Nino or global warming, but it was what God had said would happen if His own people failed to obey him. Habakkuk had complained to God about the disobedience of his own people and more or less accused God of doing nothing. But the Lord had replied, “Doing nothing? I am the one sending in the mighty Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem and take captive my people.”

God is revealed as one who punishes his people, and punish them he does by sending them into exile at the hand of the ruthless Babylonians. Ezekiel 5 records a vision of what happened. A third were killed, a third were burnt and a third were scattered. The Babylonians raiders have come and invaded the land and there has been little or no resistance against that powerful enemy.

Their scorched earth policy meant that there was nothing left at all. Israel has been stripped of its beauty, productivity and joy. The nation is starving to death, the economy is broken and the landscape barren.

From a land flowing with milk and honey as promised to Abraham and his seed 1400 years earlier, now we find that this once great land flowing with milk and honey had dried up. There was nothing but desolation. What has happened? Had God failed to keep his word? Certainly not! They had only themselves to blame.

God had promised unimaginable blessing to the seed of Abraham if they obeyed, but also unspeakable judgment if they turned from God. The choice was starkly set before them. Obedience brought blessing; defiance brought barrenness and exile.

In Deuteronomy 27 we have this great scene as the people crossed the Jordan and went into the Promised Land. They entered a valley, and on one side of it was Mount Gerizim where six of the tribes were directed to stand, and then on the other side of the valley was Mount Ebal where the other six tribes were told to stand. One mountainside stood for the place of God’s blessing and the other mountainside the place of God’s curse.

Their future as the people of God would either be one of blessing or cursing. One or the other, where would each stand? No sitting on the fence. They needed to make a choice! Were they going to be blessed or find themselves under a curse? They needed to make a choice.

Then we are told, the Levites recited to all the people of Israel with a loud voice a list of unacceptable activities which would result in God’s judgment falling upon them, including “Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol; Cursed is the man who leads the blind astray; cursed is the man who accepts a bribe to kill his neighbour;” And many more curses were outlined and then all the people shall say, ‘Amen! ” 

Then the blessings for obedience were pronounced, “If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth…. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock – the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. (Deut. 28:1-6).

So God’s people had a choice. Be obedient and experience God’s wonderful blessing or be disobedient and experience God’s punishment. And for years they had enjoyed God’s richest blessing. God brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey. He fought their battles and gave them kings. They had every reason to love Him in obedience. But now the people had chosen defiance and the result was poverty, famine and starvation and worst of all, captivity and exile. That is what Habakkuk sees.

Yet despite this pain and suffering, Habakkuk makes this extraordinary statement. “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Saviour ” (v.18). Here is the note of determination, and almost of defiance. Habakkuk is joyful. And his joy is not based on a perfect harvest, or herds of sheep filling the fields, or the end of hostilities and peace with Babylon.

It is not dependent on any change of circumstances at all. There is still a famine all around; there are still armed marauders stealing their possessions; the cupboard is still bare; the possibility of slavery in Babylonian exile still hangs over this family, and yet Habakkuk is not despondent. He is rejoicing. How can this be?

Congregation the explanation lies in the fact of having a deep knowledge of God and who he is and what he has promised and how he fulfils those promises. God had saved his people before and as far as Habakkuk is concerned, even though judgment was certainly coming, He will do so again, for God had promised a Saviour.

God had said in the Garden of Eden that He would send a Messiah. He promised Abraham that His seed would be a wonderful blessing to the nations. Habakkuk would have been reminded of the OT sacrifices. The lambs and goats and bulls that had been slain down through the centuries were all pointers to the ultimate Lamb of God who one day would come and deal, not only with Israel’s sin, but with the sins of all people.

Habakkuk would have known about the promises made to King David by the prophet Nathan that his Son would be on the throne forever. Even the Psalms and other wisdom literature had references to the coming Saviour!

God had said through the prophet Isaiah that his anointed servant would appear and that a virgin would conceive and bear a child. He would be called Immanuel, God with us, and his name would mean wonderful counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace.

The words of the prophet Isaiah would have been brought that to mind, “we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). In fact many years later an Ethiopian eunuch would read this chapter in Isaiah and be told by the deacon Philip that those words were about Jesus who fulfilled this prophecy in an extraordinary way.

All these references to the coming Saviour would have been a great encouragement to Habakkuk. The Saviour was certainly going to come and Habakkuk could rejoice in that assurance whatever the state of his crops and herds. Even when he knew that God was going to punish and his world was falling down around him, the over-riding comfort was that the Saviour would come and save them.

He would take away their sins as far as the east is from the west. That is what God had promised and he was faithful and it would surely come to pass. That’s why Habakkuk had so much reason for joy. The Saviour would come and remove the guilt of Habakkuk and the nation of Israel. He would take it away an immeasurable distance.

Perhaps Habakkuk didn’t fully understand how God was going to do it, for we read in 1 Peter 1:10ff that the prophets of old “searched intently and with the greatest of care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow”

Congregation we know that’s what happened at Calvary some six hundred years after Habakkuk. Therefore we too have every reason not to despair but to be filled with joy. Whether the pantry cupboard is full or empty, whether we live in a land of plenty or are invaded by foreign forces, those who trust in Jesus may know that their sins are removed and they are eternally safe. Let me say it again. You and I who trust in Christ are utterly forgiven, not because of our great love for Jesus but simply because of his great grace and the work he did by himself on the cross. Every trace of our sins is gone.

Even Satan himself cannot bring them back. Our sins have been cleansed and forgiven; they have been taken away. That’s what we celebrate everyday and that is what we are also reminded of through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The Saviour has come and has paid with his life and he has risen from the dead and lives and reigns forever more. That’s reason for great rejoicing and reason for living.

Now of course people say: That’s OK to say that when the cupboards are full, but what would you say if our cupboards were bare and Woollies and Coles were closed? What if there was no grain to bake bread and meat to put on the BBQ? I would say the same thing. I am not saying that it isn’t difficult to be rejoicing when the cupboards are bare or there is little or no food. I am not saying that for a moment.

However, it seems to me, and history has shown, that the opposite is far more dangerous. Our greatest blessings can also sometimes be the reason for our greatest apathy. It happened to the nation of Israel – God had blessed them with abundance and they forgot the Lord. During the world wars when food was scare and life was often in danger, the churches were full. They knew that they had no where else to turn, and people rejoiced in God their Saviour.

But today, people blessed with abundance don’t think they needed the Lord anymore. How often haven’t we seen people who we thought were committed Christian people, turn away from walking in the Lord’s ways? Far too often!

King David could say, “The Lord is my shepherd, and so I shall not be in want.” Habakkuk could say he would rejoice because he knew the Saviour would come. Congregation, we can not only say Amen to that but we even know more! We know that the Saviour has come but we also know he is coming again! And that is reason for great rejoicing. He has promised that we shall be where he is, in glory with the Father in heaven. No more pain or suffering or mourning or death! Wow!

Our future is guaranteed because Jesus is our Great Shepherd, our Redeemer and hence we will never be in want. Not only so, he has given us of His Spirit, testifying to our Spirits that we are God’s children. That doesn’t mean that the pantry cupboard will always be full. God didn’t promise that. But he did promise that he would never let us go.

Whatever is good for the children of God we shall have it. If crosses are good we shall have them. If disgrace is good we shall have that. If embarrassment is good we shall have that. If failure is good we shall fail. If heartache and rejection is good we shall have that, because the main good for every Christian is to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus. There are those memorable words of John Newton said, “Everything is needful that he sends. Nothing is needful that he withholds.”

Habakkuk looks ahead and he says, “The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights ” (v.19). What a wonderful picture. The deer darts through the forest; it doesn’t crash into a tree trunk; its feet don’t slip as it jumps from rock to rock going up the side of a steep mountain. It is a model of sure-footedness and vitality. That is what the Christian has who know he is safe in Christ.

Allow me to conclude. Habakkuk begins his prophecy by asking, “How long will I cry for help?” He pours out his complaint to the Lord. Then God answers him and changes the prophet in such a way that Habakkuk ends by saying, “yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.” Congregation, I don’t know what will happen in the months or years ahead. But this I do know. The Sovereign Lord who is our Father in Christ loves us, and he’ll never set our feet where our faith will fail. He rules this vast universe and this planet for the sake of the elect.

My primary prayer is not that our pantry cupboard will always be full, but may it be so. My primary prayer is not that you will be saved from every suffering and pain, but may it be so. But my primary prayer is that you and I will so know this God and love him and trust him who has loved us in Christ, that you and I can say with Habakkuk, “yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.”

Amen.