The Sovereign God And The Saving Christ

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 

Habakkuk 3:18 

‘When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.’ Habakkuk could see evil days approaching for his nation. They were to undergo the chastening of God for their rejection of Him and their refusal to follow His precepts. The Chaldeans would overrun the land and absorb all its’ prosperity. There would be desolation and destitution. In the face of such impending hardships, how would such a man as Habakkuk react? Our text for today declares, ‘Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.’ Here is the response of faith to unfavorable circumstances. To summarize: in the face of circumstances being what we would not desire them to be, God is still God and Jesus still saves. Habakkuk says, ‘I will rejoice in Jehovah.’ He uses the Personal Name of the God he knows personally. His faith shines through the gloom not for the magnification of his faith, but for the Glory of the object of His faith. He goes beyond that to declare that he will, ‘joy in the God of my salvation.’ Habakkuk expresses a very evangelical hope. Hope ‘in the God of my salvation,’ is in essence hope in Christ. These confidences are the same for us as they were for Habakkuk. In the face of unfavorable circumstances, whatever they may be, God is still God, and Jesus still saves. We are able today to ‘rejoice in the Lord and joy in the God of my salvation,’ regardless of what our circumstances are. The glory goes, not to our faith, but to His Sovereignty and Saving Grace. Here is our hope for today and every day. 

Our Great and Loving God,  
we will give you everlasting praise, 
that we have hope in you, when all other hope is gone. 
You raise our eyes to look to Christ, when all around us is desolation. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning