How many sermons have you heard from the book of Habakkuk? It’s not one that is incredibly popular to preach. As a preacher myself, I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s because none of us know how to pronounce his name, and so we’re embarrassed to risk saying it wrongly so many times. That’s a joke, but the number of different pronunciations of it are indeed comical. Even doing a search for videos on how to pronounce it will give you different results. My advice is to pick one and do it confidently.
Bakky, as I prefer to call him, might be difficult to pronounce, but it’s not terribly difficult to see the gospel here. In fact, it shines forth so brightly that when Paul wants to tell us about new covenant faith, he reaches back to Habakkuk to demonstrate. Let’s look a little closer at how we can find the gospel in this short book.
I suppose before understanding how to find the gospel in the OT, it’d be helpful for us to define the gospel. The simplest definition is one given by JI Packer: God saves sinners. If you’d like to put a bit more meat on your gospel presentation, I use two different frameworks with four points each. The first is God—Man—Christ—Response. The second is more of a story: Creation—Fall—Redemption—Glory.
The first presentation centers upon God’s character and how humanity fails to meet God’s holy standard, as such the judgment of God is upon us. But the good news is that Jesus Christ fixes this by fulfilling what is required through his life, death and resurrection. Our only fitting response, then, is to respond to Him in repentance and faith. When this happens, we are united to Christ and his record becomes our record.
The second presentation centers upon the overarching story of the Bible. God lovingly created us to love Him and enjoy Him forever. We were made for rest, rule, and relationship. But we made shipwreck of this, and so rather than having the blessings of obedience we are under the curse of disobedience. Rather than having peace (rest), purpose (ruling), and healthy relationship we often experience the opposite. Ultimately, we are alienated from God. But thankfully God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to bear our curse and to fulfill what God intended for humanity. As such we now experience the blessings of Jesus’ obedience in our place. He restores the rest, rule, and relationship we were created to enjoy. Someday everything will be ultimately restored and we will live in a new heaven and a new earth.
We could write entire books focusing on these various themes of the gospel. But every gospel story follows this basic skeleton. No matter where you find yourself in the Old Testament (or the New Testament) you can find one of these various threads. Every place in Scripture is either telling you something about God, something about our rebellion, something about His rescue, or something about our future restoration. If you can spot this, then you can fill out the rest of the story.
Your local high school team has a bit of an issue with a couple of the players. They like to play overly aggressive. Not aggressive in a way that you’d cheer for their athleticism. But aggressive in a way that you might put a juvenile officer on a speed dial. They throw elbows, trash-talk, foul other players when the ref isn’t looking. It’s tarnishing the reputation of your school.
The coach decides to teach these boys a lesson. He calls up Dennis Rodman. If you remember Rodman, he was the crazy basketball player from the ‘90s who liked to throw elbows, etc. He would make those boys in high school look like a dainty princess in comparison. The coach hires Rodman to bring justice and put these kids in their place.
You’d have a problem with that wouldn’t you? Not only is it wrong to have a grown man harming teenagers, it’s also weird to teach a lesson by doing the very same thing you’re telling them not to do. This, in a nutshell, is the problem that Habakkuk has with God. Habakkuk is upset that God isn’t judging His people. God informs Habakkuk that He is in fact going to bring judgment upon them, but to do it by the hands of the wicked Babylonians. How can a just God do this?
God answers Habakkuk by telling him that He will eventually bring to justice every shred of wickedness. Not only will the Israelites be judged, but so also will the Babylonians. Everyone who engages in oppressive injustice, just like Babylon will eventually be judged. And that’s really where Habakkuk extends to a message for the entire world. All human authorities eventually become “Babylon.” We’re all throwing elbows and deserving of judgment.
“But the righteous shall live by faith.” That’s the part that Paul picks up when he talks about faith. Rather than trusting in earthly rulers, or even trusting in your own version of Dennis Rodman to bring justice, we trust in the sovereign God. We entrust ourselves to Him — our history to His story.
The story of Habakkuk is really the story of the Bible, at least post Genesis 3. Human wickedness runs rampant and is in need of judgment. God’s love and patience make it look as if justice will not happen. But eventually all wicked empires will fall. Egypt. Assyria. Babylon. Persia. Rome. The only kingdom that will stand is that of the Christ.
In this third chapter of Habakkuk we see a new story emerge — or rather the rehashing of an old story. It is a new Exodus which God brings about to rescue His anointed one. Ultimately, we know that this new Exodus comes through the work of Christ. The anointed one is the Davidic king, who is Christ. He will eventually make all things right.
We, like Habakkuk, wait for God to answer. And in seasons when fig trees don’t blossom and there isn’t fruit in the vine, we trust in God’s work of redemption. We know that He is telling a story that will top all other stories. We know that every Babylon will fall and all will be made right. This certainly calls us to make sure that we are in Christ, that we are part of the throng following the Anointed One out of the new Exodus. Rescue, we know, comes only through Christ. And though at times it seems like Babylon is winning, we know the end of the story.
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He is a cross pendant.
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He will mail it out from Jerusalem.
He will be sent to your Side.
Emmanuel
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