He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father,
my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’
And I will make him the firstborn,
the highest of the kings of the earth.
My steadfast love I will keep for him forever,
and my covenant will stand firm for him.
I will establish his offspring forever
and his throne as the days of the heavens.
If his children forsake my law
and do not walk according to my rules,
if they violate my statutes
and do not keep my commandments,
then I will punish their transgression with the rod
and their iniquity with stripes,
but I will not remove from him my steadfast love
or be false to my faithfulness.
I will not violate my covenant
or alter the word that went forth from my lips.
Once for all I have sworn by my holiness;
I will not lie to David.
His offspring shall endure forever,
his throne as long as the sun before me.
Like the moon it shall be established forever,
a faithful witness in the skies.”

Selah

– Psalm 89:26-37 (ESV)

In the middle of Psalm 89 the psalmist launches into this beautiful and powerful retelling of the promises of God to His servant David. I am no Biblical scholar, but I see in this as well God’s promise extended to His Son – “I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth” – and to those of us, redeemed by Christ, who have become children of God.

When God speaks of His promises, certain words and phrases begin to establish themselves in the prose like ancient and steadfast obelisks of truth: “my covenant will stand firm”, “I will establish . . . forever”, “I will not remove”, “steadfast love”, “endure forever”.

“Once for all I have sworn by my holiness”

God means what He says. He swears to it by His holiness (what greater thing could He swear by?). I praise Him for that iron determination of His, established in beautiful, beautiful truth, and for the sovereignty and Lordship that God exerts over His creation. There have been times in my life when the thought that God really is in control seemed an unfair thing. I can’t fathom now what I was thinking – what a comfort it is to know that He simply will not lose, He will not let His promise return void.

God does what it takes. He lovingly disciplines us, He brings us back home. He will not let us go, will not lie to us, and will never be faithless – least of all to Himself.

“Once for all I have sworn by my holiness;
I will not lie to David.
His offspring shall endure forever,
his throne as long as the sun before me.
Like the moon it shall be established forever,
a faithful witness in the skies.”

These are words we can count on. He has sworn to them by His holiness.

Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord?
Was your anger against the rivers,
or your indignation against the sea,
when you rode on your horses,
on your chariot of salvation?
You stripped the sheath from your bow,
calling for many arrows.

Selah

– Habakkuk 3:8-9a (ESV)

Habakkuk 3 is a breathtaking chapter. It’s a poem, really; a cry for deliverance and a promise of patience.

Habakkuk lived and prophesied at a time of crisis. We often use the word “crisis” to describe the temporal hardships and heartaches in our own lives, but what the people of Israel faced in Habakkuk’s time was nothing short of national extinction. The Babylonians were coming.

“For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own.” – Habakkuk 1:6

The state of Habakkuk’s troubled mind, I would imagine, was something akin to the way a young soldier in World War I would have felt as he crouched in terror and watched, powerless, as his enemy overran his trench, killing his friends and eventually killing him. Habakkuk was waiting, in great fear, for the arrival of the juggernaut.

Yet Habakkuk, the questioning prophet, the one who pled his case before God, knew who his Deliverer was. His God was the one who had delivered His people before, the God who uncovers his bow and calls for many arrows, who mounts His chariot of salvation and rides to the rescue. Habakkuk’s prayer was that God would deliver again, and he boasts of the power of his God:

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.
You marched through the earth in fury;
you threshed the nations in anger.
You went out for the salvation of your people,
for the salvation of your anointed.

– Habakkuk 3:11-13a (ESV)

So far so good; I am staying with the prophet up to this point. Yes, Lord, come save!

But then Habakkuk does something unexpected; something that leaves me in his dust. Habakkuk silently, at the end of a thought, weighs the justice and goodness of God against the wickedness of his nation, and the calls for quick deliverance die on his lips. There is no quick fix for the predicament that his nation has brought upon itself.

Yet in this dreadful knowledge Habakkuk rejoices! It is the realistic rejoicing of a man who knows that disaster is about to strike but who has chosen to wait patiently for His Lord anyway, knowing that the calamities wrought by God are far better than the pleasures of the world apart from Him.

I hear, and my body trembles;
my lips quiver at the sound;
rottenness enters into my bones;
my legs tremble beneath me.
Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble
to come upon people who invade us.
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me tread on my high places.

– Habakkuk 3:16-19 (ESV)

Thus the prophet who began his oracle asking God “How long until You deliver us?”, “Why won’t you help?”, comes to the end of all his complaints and questions, and rests in the patience and strength of his Lord. And in that strength he ascends to a high place of relationship with God that few of us ever attain.

And there he waits for the Lord to come riding on His chariot of salvation! The timing may not be to Habakkuk’s liking, but it is the timing and wisdom of God that he now desires.

And that is joy!