As this is the last day of the first full year that I have been preaching at Cornerstone, I want to end with us looking at those things that we have realized (maybe just this year) should be so crucial in our lives. And in order for us to see all of them, I want to look this morning at the entire book of Habakkuk. For I believe that God reveals quite distinctly in this book who he is, what he is about, and what needs to be our passion and desire in response to that.
The layout of the book is in three sections. The first two sections consist of a question and answer session between the prophet and God. The final section is composed of the prayer of the prophet. In the first section (1:2-11), Habakkuk is wondering how long the Lord will delay his punishment of Judah for their sin. God responds that he is going to do something that Habakkuk wouldn’t believe if he did not see it. He was going to punish Judah by using the army of the Chaldeans. This is astonishing because the Chaldeans were a pagan nation who were more wicked than Judah, and yet were seemingly going to go unpunished themselves.
Therefore, in the second section (1:12-2:20), Habakkuk asks if God will allow the Chaldeans then to go unpunished for their wickedness. God answers that eventually the wicked Chaldeans will be punished as well and those who live by faith would be rewarded.
Finally, in the final section (3:1-19), Habakkuk closes by asking God to manifest his wrath and mercy, and he chooses to rejoice in the Lord.
And as this dialogue between the prophet and God occurs, we catch a glimpse of a number of things that we need to understand. I will highlight four major ones this morning that I believe are most crucial in living lives that are pleasing to God in the upcoming year.
We have seen in this past year that our greatest need is to have a great view of God. Otherwise, we will have idolatry in our worship, we will not see the fountain of living water as we continue to drink from our broken cisterns, and we will not behold the glory that far outweighs the suffering of this life. We need a great view of God. It is not simply commanded, but we need it.
God ends his answer to Habakkuk’s questions by describing the foolishness of worshiping idols and then saying, “But the Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him” (2:20).
The prophet’s main need (even instead of looking at the sinful world around him) was to be silent and realize that God is and who he is.
Francis Schaeffer has written a book entitled, "The God Who is There". That is the first stage in realizing who God is. We must realize that he is. He lives. He exists. He sits in the heavens and does whatever he pleases (Ps. 115:3). He is self-existent, depending on no one for anything. He can say to Moses, “I AM” (Ex. 3:14). He is eternal. Before anything was, He is. He is God. In light of that, do we realize how blasphemous we so often are in our thinking of God? We probably think of him quite often as being like us, when he is far beyond us.
The Lord is; let the earth be silent before him.
Take time daily and renew your mind to this. And as you are thinking on God’s existence, begin then to think of who he is. I think that is what God’s command in Habakkuk 2:20 led the prophet to do because he states in chapter 3, “Lord, I have heard the report about you and I fear. O Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy. God comes from Teman, 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” (3:2-7).
And he goes on from there. In his silent meditation, he is given a great and deep vision of the greatness and majesty of God, and it sustains him and gives him joy.
Such needs to be a daily event in our lives (and multiple times throughout our day). I guarantee you that your life would be lived differently if you stopped, were silent, and daily thought on God until you realized a glimpse of who he is. Our greatest need is to have a great view of God, such as the prophet in this third chapter.
God tells Habakkuk in 2:14, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” This is the purpose of God—to fill all the earth with the knowledge of the glory of himself.
This is his passion. He longs to be exalted as people delight in him from over the whole earth. He wants his glory to fill the whole earth.
I am convinced that that is why his command to Adam and Eve was to be fruitful and multiply. He had made them in his image. Therefore, as they spread that image over the earth through child-bearing, God’s glory would fill the world, which was created for that very purpose.
Therefore, because God longs to be exalted, we should worship and magnify him in everything that we do. Whether we eat, or drink, or whatever we do, it is to be done to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). Your whole life is to be about the glory of God. My whole life is to be about the glory of God. God’s main aim in our lives is to be glorified.
However, because his purpose is to fill the whole earth with his glory, our passion to glorify his name must move from vertical to horizontal. We must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength AND love our neighbors as ourselves.
God’s passion is to fill the whole earth with his glory. Therefore, to align your passion with God’s passion demands that you are passionate about missions. It demands that you are passionate about every tongue, tribe, nation, and people hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. For unless this is the case, he will not be glorified among them.
And again, let me remind you that this is something that will happen because God is sovereign and has decreed that it happen. In fact, God has already ransomed men from every people group. Revelation 5:9 says, “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the book, and to break its seals; for you were slain, and purchased for God with your blood men form every tribe and tongue and people and nation’”.
God will fill the earth with his glory. Men will be saved from every tongue, tribe, and nation, for Christ has already purchased them. The question is simply, is our passion really like God’s. For if it is, then our passion will be to spread his glory to every tongue, tribe, nation, and people. And there are still groups who have not heard.
Now, once you realize who God is and strive to live in the manner that you were created to live, spreading his glory to every nation, it will require that you find your delight in God alone.
And all of these three things we have looked at this morning work together. If you never take time to meditate on who God really is, then you will not delight in him. And if you do not delight in him, you will never have a heart that is passionate about fulfilling the great commission, because completing the great commission will require suffering.
Your delight must be so great in God (and not his gifts) that you can say, “If I lose everything, and still have God, then I have the greatest treasure, desire, and love of my heart.” That is the heart of Habakkuk. He says in 3:17-18 something that we should all be able to say. “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.”
That is what our hearts must be willing to say if we are involved in God’s work of universally exalting his name. Our delight must be found in him. Otherwise, how are we going to be willing to sacrifice our money, time, and lives for this purpose? We simply will not unless we can repeat the words of Habakkuk from our hearts.
Are we willing to do without all our toys to join God in his great work of spreading his glory to every nation? Or will we sit by, lavish gifts upon ourselves, and miss the purpose and joy for which we were created?
If you want to answer that question correctly and sincerely, then focus on cultivating a vibrant and intimate love for God above all else.
God describes the righteous to Habakkuk as those who live by faith (2:4).
I said a few months back that all obedience stems from faith and all disobedience stems from a lack of faith. I still believe that with all my heart and soul. The only reason we will continue to live for this world and not the world to come will be because we lack the faith to believe that there is more satisfaction to be found in God than there is to be found in anything and everything outside of him.
I sit at my desk and pray that God would make us this kind of people. I pray that as I preach, I would make the joy that can be found in God so enticing that you would think to yourselves, “What am I doing not pouring every ounce of my life into fulfilling his purpose?”
My prayer for Cornerstone in 2001 is that we would develop (by God’s grace) such a passionate love for God that we would become obsessed with fulfilling the great commission. I pray that we would move from being able to quote, “We exist for the glory of God” to living for the glory for God by pouring our lives into the great commission so that we might usher in his coming and, consequently, our greatest joy and longing.
I pray that we would have many families who are sacrificially supporting missionaries in their prayers and finance. Let us hurt with those who are giving their lives to fulfill this task. Let us join them in their quest to preach the gospel to every nation that the end might come.
This year, allow God to give you a deep and clear vision of who he is. Pray that he would make clear in your heart his passion to fill the whole earth with his glory. Fight and pray to know and delight in him more than you delight in anything. And then by faith pour your lives into the cause that will usher in his return—completing the great commission.
If God will never allow this church to be passionate about this cause, then I pray that God would no longer let us be.
O God, give us passion for your great name while we are here, or do not let us remain. We are utterly dependent on his grace. Amen.