HABAKKUK 2 AND 3 (SUBSTANCE OF A READING)
HABAKKUK 2 AND 3 (SUBSTANCE OF A READING)
Habakkuk 2:1-4; Habakkuk 2:14; Habakkuk 2:20; Habakkuk 3: 1 - 6
CAC We have seen how the prophet instructed by God was shown the end of God’s ways, that had to be waited for, and was also shown what would be the power of life in the saints in the meantime; that is, there was going to be a kind of waiting time — the deliverance was sure to come — during which the just should live by his faith; and that time is still running on.
Redemption has been accomplished in Christ, but there is no outward deliverance, things are going on as before. Deliverance has not yet come in publicly. “The just shall live by his faith”, (three times repeated in Scripture) is very important. Here it connects with Galatians 3: 11 very distinctly. Under the law people lived by doing things; it is not the way of life now, indeed it never was. The divine system is only realisable by faith, there is nothing outwardly to show that Christ has effected anything.
Ques Why is it faith and not the Spirit here?
CAC This very scripture in Galatians tells us it is through faith we receive the Spirit (verse 14). That is the great gain of faith now, and it is by faith and the Spirit that we live. So if we move outside faith and the Spirit, all is death for us; hence it is very important to keep in the sphere of faith; that is, in the region of the things that cannot be seen.
Rem The Lord said to Thomas, “Blessed they who have not seen and have believed”.
CAC And Christ is only known by faith, that is quite certain. He is hidden from the eyes of men, and the saints are all waiting for the moment when He comes, and have nothing until then but what they have in faith and by the Spirit.
Rem “Whom, having not seen, ye love” (1 Peter 1: 8), and the rejoicing is in that line too.
CAC It is a wonderful thing that people can be supremely happy in connection with an unseen Person, and He is more to them than all the circumstances here, whether pleasing or distressing. Peter addresses the saints, not only as believing, but as having their portion. There is nothing you can show; you cannot show your faith but by your works. The faith system will go on as long as the assembly is here, and will go on for the remnant while they are waiting for Christ.
Ques Until verse 14 is fulfilled?
CAC It is remarkable how the Spirit of God drops that verse down into the middle of the description of the surrounding confusion and violence. It is faith’s objective; faith always held that the earth belongs to God, and He must have it. Therefore there is nothing so foolish as the nations quarrelling about the possession of the earth. Faith rejoices in the thought of Christ taking up His rights.
Rem “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it ... until he come whose right it is; and I will give it to him” (Ezekiel 21: 27).
CAC It is the subject of the prophetic word and the great objective, that He is going to take up His rights to have the earth. It is not difficult to see; God has spoken in more than three hundred passages of the coming of His Son. “Jehovah is in his holy temple”; that is, Jehovah retires from the earth, and that is where faith sees Him; and in chapter 3 faith follows Him into His holy temple and we are told what faith sees there. So Habakkuk comes into all that can be seen in the holy temple. ‘In the holy shrine enquiring’, as we sing. He knows no other place of light except the temple, and [p. 469] those who want it can go there. Jehovah retires, He does not contend with men for the earth at the moment, because He is working out much greater designs. He has got heaven in view as well as the earth and at the same time calls on all the earth to be silent before Him, to hear what He has to say-because to “be silent” means you are going to listen to Him. I hear such a lot of talk about prayer in this war, and nothing like calling on people to listen to what God has to say. God is saying wonderful things at the present time.
Ques What place has Habakkuk’s prayer in relation to the vision?
CAC Every place, because the vision was to show that all that is of God is coming in, but you have to wait for it. This is the waiting time.
Ques We should not say, ‘If He tarry’?
CAC The Lord likes us to take Him at His word, and He says, “Quickly”.
Rem It is very cheering.
CAC It is the Person that is to be looked for; it is a Person who is coming in a very little while. But Habakkuk, it seems to me, follows Jehovah into His holy temple, and his prayer brings out what can be known by those who go into it.
He says, “Jehovah, I heard the report of thee, and I feared. Jehovah, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known: in wrath remember mercy!” That is, he begins with the sense that God was acting in wrath in connection with the wickedness of His people, so he begins in a spirit of fear (verse 2). But in the presence of that He appeals for a revival of God’s work, and that in the midst of wrath He would remember mercy. It is beautiful to see him counting on God’s mercy in presence of the people’s failure and wrong-doing. And this prayer is a wonderful unfolding of what God does for His people, taking no account of the failure of the people. After speaking of it in recognition of the need for repentance, it makes no reference to it.
[p. 470] We cannot get away from the fact that there is a distressing state among the people of God. What is to be done? Well, God must revive His work; it is what we all want. I am sure I want Him to revive His work in my soul. It is blessed to see how revival comes about. Habakkuk’s prayer shows largely how it does, that is by paying attention to God’s original ways of blessing to His people — by going back to the beginning of God’s ways. We are in a very extraordinary time. God has moved in our day in the most wonderful way that it was possible to move in relation to the truth that was from the beginning. He will never do again such things as He has done. It is for all saints now to be in the light of what God has done; and that is the only way back to revival. It is not what He will do, but what He has done. See verses 3 and 4, “His glory covereth the heavens, And the earth is full of his praise. And his brightness was as the light; Rays came forth from his hand; And there was the hiding of his power”. The Holy Spirit of God in penning these lines was thinking of the incarnation of the blessed Son of God, and all that would be accomplished by that marvellous act of divine love. And revival is to get back to that. We are entitled in the temple to forget everything but what God has done. There is a reference here to Deuteronomy 33: 1, 2. There is the same thought of revival there, because it brings out what cannot be undone, that which no power of evil can undo.
That was only a typical deliverance for Israel, but we are come to the reality. We have moved out, as in verse 13 it says, “Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people”. That is what God had in view in sending His Son into the world; He had heaven and earth in view. It looked as if He were operating only in a tiny sphere, a small part of the earth, but tremendous things were being done, and heaven and earth are going to be filled with the operations of God through the incarnation of His Son. The whole earth is going to be in reconciliation, and to faith it is all done, it has taken place. Scripture is full of instances of where you get the full [p. 471] result for faith, and yet you cannot see anything of it. Take for instance the angels’ praise in Luke 2. There was only a little Babe to be seen, and yet the angels could say, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men”. And so in Exodus 15, every enemy was seen defeated, faith celebrated it all as a present reality. That is what we get in the temple; he sees heaven and earth full of glory; and he did not see a thousandth part of what we see.
And this chapter is full of what God had done for His people, it is a description of how He had delivered them. It is a practical picture in sublime language, yet all typical, but we are to come to the reality. It is all put down for our comfort and joy, that we might come into the temple and view it. It is what has shone out in the only-begotten Son; the glory and praise of God have shone out in that blessed One. It is not possible through all eternity to make any addition to what came out in Him as a blessed Man on earth. And God is going to fill heaven and earth with it, with what God had revealed in His Son as Man on earth. “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea”. What a wonderful earth it will be, too, when everyone you meet will have something to say about Christ!
Ques Why is “knowledge” added here and not in Isaiah 11:9?
CAC The one is objective (the glory of Jehovah) and the other is subjective (the knowledge of Jehovah), it is in the hearts of men.
Ques ‘There only to adore’ (J.N.D.), would that express it?
CAC Yes. Well, how we should dwell on the gospels. I feel we do not dwell on the gospels adoringly in private. There is a misfortune in our very familiarity with Scripture; it takes away from the blessedness of what is presented. The gospels are the most difficult part of all Scripture to fathom, they are of unfathomable depth, yet it is there for us to go in [p. 472] for. Certain things are most surely believed among us. And Theophilus was written to that he should know “the certainty of those things in which thou hast been instructed”.
Rem We know something of the first veil, but not much of passing through the second veil.
CAC Yes, there were five pillars to the first entrance and four to the second. It is like the epistles and gospels.
In verse 4, “his brightness was as the light; Rays came forth from his hand”. What a shining out of divine power in the way of grace (see note, ‘horns’) in the hand of Jesus, divine power acting in grace to men, and then the full light of God there. It can never be added to through all eternity.
Luke repeatedly speaks of His hands, speaks of the seven actions of His hands, and yet it is one of those mysteries of Scripture brought out in Habakkuk.
“And there was the hiding of his power”. You would not have expected that; yet the rays were all hidden, it says so.
Was it not all hidden from the scribes and Pharisees; Herod and Pilate? It was power acting in a hidden way. What is the cross but the hiding of power? There is nothing weaker than a man on a cross. The Lord said, ‘My Father could send me more than twelve legions of angels’. That is the mystery of things, there is hidden power, and only the saints know how to value it. It is for the saints to be hidden now; that is the place for them just as much as for the Lord.
There is a solemn side to all this suggested in verses 5 and 6; that is, the perfect shining out of God in His blessed Son was the condemnation of those that did not believe; that is what is suggested here. As the Lord says distinctly Himself, “This is the judgment, that light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light; for their works were evil”. And again, “He that believes not has been already judged” (John 3: 19, 18); there is no need to wait till the judgment day, he is judged already. That he does not believe on God revealed in love in Jesus, that very fact is his condemnation.
And so the “hills” and “mountains” that are overturned (verse 6) represent all that is most mighty on the earth. They are all overturned, not publicly but for faith; that is man’s religion, after the rejection and crucifixion of Christ; and so too as to learning and philosophy and power. The world power signed the death warrant of Jesus. The saints have no regard morally for what is great in the world, and the world powers are represented as beasts, unintelligent powers.
“The eternal mountains were scattered, The everlasting hills gave way: His ways are everlasting”. We come to the point that the eternal mountains and the everlasting hills are all overturned for those who believe that Jesus is the Christ. But then His ways are everlasting, are from eternity to eternity; and whether war or peace, one thing stands and that is, God’s ways. Everything is overturned for faith. Judaism is overturned for faith; christendom today is only judaism with christian terms imported into it; it is nothing else.