The John MacArthur Sermon Archive

Grace to You, 2014

Copyright 2014 John MacArthur. All rights reserved.

1969

Truth Endures

1 How to Play Church—Matthew

Standalone

Praise the Lord Anyhow—Habakkuk 3:1–19

The Prophet’s Perplexity—Habakkuk 1:12–2:20

The Strangeness of God’s Ways—Habakkuk 1:1–11

The Foolishness of the World—1 Corinthians

The Marks of God’s Children—1 John

The Ideal Church—1 Thessalonians

Satan—Selected Scriptures

Praise the Lord Anyhow

Habakkuk 3:1–19

If you have your Bibles with you turn to the book of Habakkuk, the Old Testament. We’re coming to the end of our little time with Habakkuk and I kind of feel badly about it because I’ve sort of gotten to love him. I’ve spent an awful lot of hours with him every week and I just kind of have a kindred spirit with Habakkuk in many, many ways, and I’m sure you do to.

Tonight’s message is concerning Chapter 3 of Habakkuk and in this chapter we will find ourselves in much of the time summarizing things that we have already noted about him and perhaps pulling them together in a little different perspective. Habakkuk 3:1–19, which encompasses the entire chapter, is what we want to talk about tonight. And the title of the message is noted in the bulletin is Praise the Lord Anyhow and that title probably gives away a little of the attitude of Habakkuk by the time he arrives in Chapter 3.

If you’ll go back in your mind you’ll remember that his basic dilemma was why God was allowing Israel to go down the drain as fast as she was, and then why in the world God ever allowed the Chaldeans to be able to come in and destroy Israel. He couldn’t figure out why God would let Israel get this far away from Him and then he couldn’t figure out why God would use such an ungodly unholy crew as the Chaldeans to come in to bring judgment upon Israel, and he was puzzled and perplexed by what he did not understand. And then we found last week that he really found out a good way to end his dilemma.

Instead of standing staring in the face of his problem he backed off from the problem and he stood on solid ground. He gave up on what he didn’t know and started remembering what he did know and instead of worrying about why things were going the way they were going, and why in the world God was allowing this and allowing that, he just stood back and said, “Now wait a minute, my God is an eternal God, He’s a righteous God, He can’t stand sin, He’s got to punish sin, He never does wrong, He always does right,” and He began to tie down in his own mind that which he knew about God.

Once he had established what he did know about God then it was much easier to cope with what he didn’t know about the events around him. Now when we come to Chapter 3, God has already given him the answer. God told him that He was going to bring the Chaldeans to destroy Israel and Habakkuk said, “But God, what about the Chaldeans, they’re worse than the Jews are?” And God had told him in Chapter 2 that God was also going to deal with the Chaldeans, ...