I like to peruse my Facebook memories each day to see what was happening on “this day” for the past several years. Since March, I’ve been reminded that four years ago the Covid pandemic and subsequent quarantines were the main thing on my and everybody else’s mind. The most significant memory to surface is the prayer request I shared concerning our daughter Erin and her husband Dusty. They were on a sailboat in the Pacific Ocean and had no idea what was happening in the rest of the world until just before reaching the Marquesas Islands they learned that they wouldn’t be able to land at the port for which they’d been aiming for a month but must add another 750 miles to their voyage in the hope that they’d get to Tahiti in time for the last flight out.
My husband called the American Consulate in Tahiti, Dusty’s dad bought plane tickets for them, and we prayed. I shared the need on Facebook and with the list of people who had been following their voyage via email, and we prayed. The sailboat didn’t have enough fuel to make Tahiti, their food and fresh water were running low, and the wind had been slack. If they didn’t make it in time, they’d have to join another boat and sail to American Samoa or Hawaii. They needed a miracle. We prayed.
God granted their miracle.
The shortest way to tell the story is to say that they made port the day before the final flight out of Tahiti, and they were on that flight. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Rereading those memories each year fortifies my faith. The Lord was mighty to save then, and he who is the same yesterday, today, and forever will be mighty to save again. I may not know how or when he will answer our cries for help, but I know and trust that he is faithful, and he will work all things for the good of those who love him and are called to be his. And if my daughter and son-in-law had not made that flight and had been stranded in Tahiti, that would have been the best good for them according to our sovereign Lord.
In Habakkuk 3:8–15, the prophet is looking back to the events of the Exodus in order to fortify his faith in the power of the Lord to save. Specifically he’s looking at God’s deliverance of Israel from bondage in Egypt through the parting of the Red Sea and later the parting of the Jordan, and the battle in Joshua 10 when God caused the sun and the moon to stand still in the heavens as the Jewish army defeated the Amorites. Habakkuk begins with God’s power demonstrated on a cosmic scale (5–11) before describing his mighty victories at the flesh and blood level of the battles he won for Israel (12–15). In the Scriptural record of the battle against the Amorites, Joshua 10:14 concludes that, “surely the Lord was fighting for Israel.” The circumstances Habakkuk faces are hard, and they’re about to get a lot harder. But God demonstrated his steadfast love and covenant faithfulness to deliver Israel in the past, and Habakkuk believes and trusts that he can and will deliver his people again.
The Lord has told Habakkuk that in response to the wickedness of his people he is raising up the Chaldeans to sweep in and destroy Judah and “gather captives like sand” (1:9). As terrifying as this will be, God is being faithful to his covenant with Israel to punish their unfaithfulness with the curses of the covenant promised in Deuteronomy 28. This news is perplexing and distressing, but the LORD then assured Habakkuk that the evildoers won’t escape his judgement. God will use them to execute his temporary judgment upon Judah, but they won’t escape justice themselves.
So, Habakkuk looks back to times in Israel’s past when God has powerfully acted on behalf of his people. By grouping these historical deliverances together, the prophet is expressing his faith in the Lord’s ability and will to powerfully deliver his people once again. “The prophet’s expectation is that history will repeat itself as the Lord unleashes his judgment on the Babylonians” [The Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by G. K. Beale, D. A. Carson, Benjamin L. Gladd, and Andrew David Naselli (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023)]. In his recollections of events from the exodus years, Habakkuk includes language echoing the imagery of Deuteronomy 33, 2 Samuel 22, Psalm 18, Judges 5, and Psalm 77.
The mountains saw you and writhed;
the raging waters swept on;
the deep gave forth its voice;
it lifted its hands on high.
The sun and moon stood still in their place
at the light of your arrows as they sped,
at the flash of your glittering spear. (Habakkuk 3:10–11)
In these passages the Lord reveals himself as the Mighty Warrior who gathers his people, leads them into the promised land, and defeats their enemies. His arrival is magnificent in the brightness of his glory as he shoots his arrows to rout his enemies. His sovereign control of the cosmos is displayed in the arrest of the sun and the moon. For the salvation of his people he marched through the earth, threshed the nations, crushed the head of the wicked (certainly a nod to God’s promise in Genesis 3:15), he pierced enemy warriors with his own arrows, and trampled the sea with his own horses (12–15).
The Lord has powerfully intervened on behalf of his people in the past, and Habakkuk fully expects to see him intervene once again. Habakkuk looks back to God’s mighty acts in the past with an expectation of future deliverance in kind. His recollections fuel his forward-looking faith. By looking to the past, Habakkuk gains confidence for the future, praying for God’s favor and mercy even in the midst of divine wrath (3:2). And as he looks back, Habakkuk prayed.
How do we apply this remembrance and expectation to our lives today as Christians? Unlike Habakkuk, when we look back, we don’t only see the types and shadows of the Old Testament, but we also see the glorious brilliance of God’s steadfast love and covenant faithfulness on display at the cross, where our victorious Warrior-King, the Lord Jesus Christ, died to defeat our final and most powerful enemy—death—and release us from the bondage of our sin. Together with Habakkuk, we can share the sure expectation that history will repeat itself on the final Day, when the Lord will unleash his judgment on the wicked and rescue all his beloved Bride from the sin and corruption of this fallen world. And together with Habakkuk, we pray.
Grateful 