Michael Wilkinson, Professor of Theology and Director of Professional Doctoral Studies at Southwestern Seminary, preached from Habakkuk in SWBTS Chapel on October 28, 2025.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Dr Dockery, thank you for the invitation to preach Chapel today, and thank you for very your very kind words of of introduction. I will. I am very sorry that I have disappointed you and that I did not watch all 18 innings of the game. My only excuse that I can offer is I was in deep conversation with Habakkuk and spent all of my evening working through, working through this in Oh, here they are. If you see me taking them on and putting them, taking them off and putting them on funny, they’re broken. And so it’s possible that the lens could fall out, and if it does, we’ll just see what happens in the years 609 to 605 BC, the nation of Judah finds itself in a crisis, and it is a crisis born out of some internal problems as well as some serious external issues related to international politics and International shifts in power. And most notably, there is a real change, and they find themselves really after the death of probably their greatest king, Josiah, going back to a problem that was there before.
The problem was that during the long reign of Manasseh, josiah’s Grandfather, Judah, had become basically a vassal of Assyria, of the kingdom of Assyria. And by the time we get to josiah’s reign, assyria’s power begins to wane a bit, and some other shifts are occurring in 626, Babylon, the Chaldeans living in Babylon are able to gain independence as a city state under the leadership of nabopolassar. And nabopolassars vision and his aim is the total destruction of Assyria. And so eventually, he will make plans for that. And by 612 he will sack Nineveh and really put a shift in power in in the ancient Near East. And in the year 609 Pharaoh Necho wants to somehow stop, or at least thwart the Chaldeans progress. Because what Neco wants as Assyria has waned. He has found himself with greater power in Egypt and even in somewhat some other regions. So in 609, he is going to to make his way and face the Babylonians and try to stop them. Because what he what he wants to maintain, is it’s not that he is in support of Assyria so much. He wants them to stay in place as a buffer between them and the Babylonians.
The last thing that Josiah wants is Assyria to have any further power over them, and so he goes out to face Necho, and in a battle that ensues in Megiddo, Josiah is killed. This has devastating consequences for Judah 605. Neco will himself go and face the Chaldeans at Carchemish and be defeated. And now the reality of the Chaldeans is upon Judah. I it Habakkuk begins his prophecy, the oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw. This is everything we know about Habakkuk. We know his name. We know that he was a prophet, most likely from from what I could glean, he was a a temple prophet. Most people came to that conclusion based on the psalm that he wrote in chapter as chapter three. But this is about all we know. And what’s interesting about this, this book, is that it’s it’s somewhat unusual. It’s unusual in the fact that most of the prophets really hear a message from God, and they go and deliver that to the people. But in this case, there’s not an Oracle from God to deliver to the people in the usual way that you think of it. This book is basically a dialog between Habakkuk and God. Habakkuk is going to ask two questions, two questions to gain understanding because of what he sees happening or what he actually what he sees not happening, and he wonders, God, what help me understand he is really in a quandary because of what he believes about God. So in verse two, how long Lord must I call for help, and you do not listen or cry out to you about violence, and you do not save Why do you forsake me to look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing, oppression and violence are right in front of me. Strife is ongoing and conflict escalates. This is why the law is ineffective and justice never emerges for the wicked, restrict the righteous, therefore justice comes out perverted. His question is essentially, God, help me understand there is and look at the descriptions he uses here. There is violence, there is injustice, wrongdoing, conflict, perverted justice.
When will you respond? Why are you not doing anything? Why are you this is not a question that Habakkuk alone asks. It’s a question that has frequently been asked, and sometimes, I would guess, many times in our own lives, we have asked this question, God, why? Why have you not acted yet? Why have you not responded yet? And he looks at this and he sees a problem and but what is the problem that he sees? And who are the people who were guilty of this? Well, the people who are guilty of this are going to be, at this point now, the Judean kings and the leadership. Now let’s go back just a little bit and look at what life was like under the King Manasseh in in Second Kings chapter 21 listen to the description of what Judah was like during the reign of Manasseh. Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem.
He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. Now keep in mind, this is the son of Hezekiah, a great, great king who loved the Lord. He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, imitating the detestable practices of the nations that the Lord had disposed or dispossessed before the Israelites. He built the high places that his father, Hezekiah had destroyed, and re established the altars for Baal. He made an Asherah as King Ahab of Israel had done. He also bowed in worship to all the stars in the sky and served them. He built altars in the Lord’s temple. For the Lord had said, Jerusalem is where I will put my name. He built altars to the stars in the sky in both courtyards of the Lord’s temple. He sacrificed his son in the fire, practiced witchcraft and divination and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did a huge amount of evil in the Lord’s sight, angering him. Then, in verse 16, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem with it from one end to another.
This was in addition to his sin that he caused Judah to commit, so that they did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. This is how bad Judah had become. It was horrifically awful. And when he dies, his son Ammon, becomes king. He reigns for two years and continues to do the same things. Josiah comes along. Josiah is eight years old. He becomes king. And Josiah will as he is, having people clean out the temple. They come across a copy of the law, most likely the book of Deuteronomy. And as it is read to him, he tears his clothes, and he is incensed at what has happened to the nation of Judah, to the people of God. And so he institutes, really a national revival. He cleans house. He gets rid of every Assyrian, every object of paganism, gets it out of the temple, out of Jerusalem. He leads a national revival. He will reinstitute Passover, and He is credited with being probably Judah’s greatest king. There was none like like him, before him or after him, a great, great king. So you can understand the tragedy that occurs when he goes out and is killed in battle. And now his old his second son, the Israelites choose his second son, Jehoahaz, and Necho, after three months, removes him and. Brings in his oldest son, Jehoiakim, and Jehoiakim returns to everything, back to the way it was under Manasseh. Hear what Jeremiah has to say about the rain.
And Jeremiah and Habakkuk are our contemporaries, but here is the word concerning Jehoiakim, woe for the one who builds his palace through unrighteousness, his upstairs rooms through injustice, who makes his neighbor serve without pay and will not give his wages, who says, I will build myself a massive palace with spacious upstairs rooms. He will cut windows in it, and he will be paneled. It will be paneled with cedar. He goes through all of this, and he says, Therefore, this is what the Lord says concerning Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah. They will not mourn for Him, saying, Woe my brother, woe my sister. They will not mourn for him. Saying, Woe Lord, woe His Majesty. He will be buried like a donkey dragged off and thrown outside Jerusalem’s gates, Habakkuk is writing in the midst of this and sees the overwhelming evil that’s being practiced by the leadership of Judah towards Its people, a wickedness, a violence, a perversion of justice. And ask the question, Lord, when are you going to act well? God answers. God answers, and the answer is shocking.
Look at the nations and observe be utterly astounded, for I am doing something in your days that you will not believe when you hear about it. Look, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter, impetuous nation that marches across the Earth’s open spaces to seize territories not its own. He goes on and describes further what the what the Chaldeans are like. And they are, without a doubt, in the ancient world, one of the most vicious, cruel, destructive peoples you can you can imagine. He describes their coming into battle. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than wolves in the night it they’re like an eagle swooping down to devour they are unavoidable. They are overwhelming in their presence, and they are absolutely vicious. Furthermore, they are a law to themselves.
They are so arrogant, they are a law to themselves. And as as Habakkuk hears this, you can begin to formulate what’s going through his mind. Lord, the cure is worse than the disease the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans, these people who look at Habakkuk. Habakkuk response and habakkuk’s struggle here is not because he has a faulty understanding of God, because he has a right understanding of God. Look at what he says about God. Are you not from eternity, Lord, my God. He understands God is eternal. There is God has no beginning, no ending. You are eternal, my holy one, you will not die. He understands that God is absolutely pure and holy, that there is nothing impure, nothing evil, wicked, about him. And furthermore, God is not going to die, Lord, You appointed them to execute judgment. My rock, his understanding of God is rock is God is dependable, God is secure, God is faithful. You destine them to punish us. Your eyes are too pure to look at on evil. You can’t tolerate wrongdoing. He understands that God is such, that God cannot, God cannot accept and tolerate the evil that’s being practiced. This is why he is so shocked that God would use the Chaldeans to punish the Judeans. As a matter of fact, he will say so, why do you tolerate those who are treacherous? Why are you silent while the one who is wicked swallows up the one more righteous than himself, in comparison to to the to the Chaldeans, the Judeans are far more righteous. But if you go back and look at something that Jeremiah says, In Jeremiah 15, I won’t have you turn there and look at it, but he essentially says, in regard to the evil that Manasseh has done, that though Moses or Samuel were to stand before me, I wouldn’t listen. I have had it. I am done with it, and I am going to punish it. I will. Tolerate this evil any longer, and so this is what is coming so, and Habakkuk understands that what these people are like, you have made mankind like the fish of the sea. So what are the Chaldeans like? They are like people with a drag net who just haul the fish out of the sea and utterly destroy them. And then they worship their drag nets, because they’re not satisfied. They want more, so they’re going to go conquer and destroy more and more and more. And so Habakkuk then responds in his surprise, and says, in chapter two, I will stand at my guard post and station myself on the lookout tower. I will watch to see what he will say to me and what I should reply about my complaint. He basically does not know what to say, so he says, I’m going to stand guard. I’m going to watch and I’m going to wait to see what God says, because he does not know how to respond to that. God provides him another answer. So God says, The Lord answered him. Yahweh answers him, write down this vision, truly inscribe it on tablets, so one may easily read it for the vision is not yet for the appointed time. It testifies about the end and will not lie, though it delays, wait for it, since it will certainly come and not be late. And then let me give you a bit more of a literal translation about in verse four.
Look, he is puffed up. His soul is not upright within him, but the righteous one will live by His steadfast faith. God tells him, Look, I want you to write this down. As a matter of fact, I want you to write this down. I want you to write it down in such a way that everyone sees it, that no one can miss it. He says, write it down on tablets. But the idea here, in some of your translations, may also say so that those who, those who, whose May, those who see it, may run. The idea is, you’re going to think today of a billboard. You’re driving down Interstate 35 and you see about every two miles hungry yet you need nuggets, you need jerky, you’re thirsty. What do you know is coming? You know buckies is coming somewhere between, between my house and my son’s house. There are two buckies that we pass, and it seems like half of Central Texas is at each one of them, every time we stop there.
Yeah, the idea is you’re gonna you are going faster than someone running. You are driving down a highway, and I know you’re law abiding citizens, so you’re driving somewhere between 70 and 75 miles an hour, not the 80 to 85 to 90 miles an hour of all the people who pass me. So you’re driving down, as you know, at 7075, miles an hour, and you’re seeing and you don’t miss this sign. You don’t miss it. And this is essentially what God is telling Habakkuk to do. I want you to write this down. I want you to write it down so prominently that as people are running by it, they get the message. They see it, they can’t miss it. And the message is in the vision is, is this? The vision is yet for the appointed time. The vision is coming in the future. It hasn’t occurred yet, but it is coming. And because God is who He is, it testifies about the end. It will not lie. This is certain. It is. It is in the future. It’s going to delay, but wait for it, it will certainly come and not be late. So regarding the Chaldeans, God is going to deal with them. Now, this is somewhere I’m estimating between 609605 maybe slightly later than this. This is in the very see where we’re in BC, so in the very latter part of the seventh century BC, in the last decade. And he is saying this, it actually comes true just about 70 years later, in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy about the land needing to rest. And so the Chaldeans are going to be dealt with. And so God wants this known. Everybody is clear on this. And so. Brings out this, this contrast and this. So we come to verse chapter two, verse four, which is really the theme of the book, the theme of the prophecy. Look, look, pay attention. We usually kind of pass by that first word, but he wants us to grab our attention. Look. He referring to Babylon, referring to the Chaldeans. He is puffed up. Someone who is puffed up is arrogant. Someone like this is proud. Someone like this is full of themselves. Someone like this is without substance. They are full of hot air. And you know what happens when you poke a balloon with with a pin, the bigness of the balloon, it pops so they are puffed up. God’s going to pop them, and it’s going to reveal that there is nothing left there. As a matter of fact, when God gets done with them, the Chaldeans will never rise to prominence again, never to this day. They are now a part of history. They are not part of the present day. He says they are. They are. He is not upright within him. He deviate. The idea of not upright is that deviating from all moral norms. And look what he says in verse five. Wine betrays an arrogant man. Is never at rest. He enlarges his appetite, like Sheol and death is never satisfied. And like death, he’s never satisfied. He gathers all the nations to himself he can. He collects all the peoples for themselves. You don’t do this because you are kind and generous and thoughtful. You do this because there is something terribly wrong with you that you’ve got to go and you’ve got to not only conquer, but you’ve got to destroy people in a savage way that you treat them as though you were a butcher.
And this is what they do. So they are not upright, but then he brings the contrast, but the righteous one will live by His steadfast faith. So with this, I’m going to pass by. There are, I looked at seven different English trans Well, six different English translations in the Septuagint, and they all translate this a little bit differently. But let’s take a minute and then look at the contrast here with the righteous. We see what the what the arrogant are, but the righteous, who are the righteous? The righteous are the one. The righteous is the one who has the verdict of God. The righteous is the one who has been who has received from God the verdict of you are in the right with me. You stand in right with me. This is, and how does one become the righteous? This is God’s declaration. The pronouncement of being righteous is God’s declaration. It doesn’t come and even even Habakkuk knew this. It doesn’t come by something that you do, that you achieve and accomplish on your own. It is always the gift of God. His precedent for this is to go back to Abraham, and Abraham believed God, and it was credited him as righteousness. The word the verb believed in Genesis, 15, six is the verb form what we have in Habakkuk. Two, four is the adjective form of the same word. So it is. We are. We are righteous by God’s declaration.
This always comes from outside of us, by God himself and so and we will live the righteous one will live by his faith. In all of our English translations will say faith, but they have a footnote that will say faithfulness. So what’s the idea here? Well, clearly the idea is they’re trying to match this up with what we’re fixing to go in Romans chapter chapter one. But many people struggle with this because they think, oh, there’s, there’s this distinction here. We’ve got to make sure that it says faith and not faithfulness, because we don’t want to confuse that somehow we could be saved by our faithful, our deeds of faithfulness, we’re not saved by our deeds of faithfulness. And steadfast faith is not a reflection of what we’re doing. Is a reflection of who we’re trusting steadfastly so you cannot be faithful to someone in whom you cannot trust to be faithful requires you to trust someone to believe in someone. We do this on a person to person basis, and we certainly do this with God. So there’s not a distinction here between. Mean, as though there’s you’re either just justified by faith or you’re justified by your your faithful behavior. This is not about faithful behavior. This is not about doing works. This is about continuing an ongoing trust in God, which is what the leaders have not been doing at all. So we will live by faith that is taken up in Romans chapter one. Actually, this, this, this quotation of this verse appears three, three places, but I told Dr Williams yesterday that I’m only having to have time for one. So this is the one I’m not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
For the Jew first, also for the Greek, for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written, The righteous will live by faith, as Paul is dealing with the fact that that we are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, He quotes Habakkuk and say, and here it is, in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith in the Gospel, two aspects of God’s righteousness are revealed. Number one, the fact that we are made righteous, that we are made right with God through faith, that’s number one, that we have the objective standing, a legal standing, of being in the right with God. A second aspect of this is the righteousness of God, of God’s very righteousness himself, because, and if you go to Romans, chapter three, the last part of it, you see this very clearly. It it demonstrates that God Himself is righteous. How so?
It demonstrates that God is justified in justifying the unjust, because he has justly dealt with our injustice. You got all that. Okay, God has dealt with things in such a way that God he has done it according to his own character, his own justice, his own love, his own mercy, his own righteousness. And so he is able to declare us righteous because he has righteously dealt with our sinfulness, and so the righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel we are. Then he says it is revealed from faith to faith. Faith as the starting point. The starting point of our salvation is when we experience being regenerated through faith in Christ, when we believe in Him. That is the beginning point of our experience of salvation, and it but faith also continues as the framework of the life that we are to live in righteousness, and so we are saved, and we also then live by faith. Now, where does this take us? Where do we go from here? You got my picture. The picture is not me. It’s a good picture. Well, we don’t have it.
It is supposed to be a picture. What you were supposed to see is a picture of the castle door in the castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, that I took this summer while I was there. I was going to follow that up with another picture, which was a plate full of schnitzel, and use that as a shameless plug so that in the summer of 2027 next summer, not this coming summer, but the following summer, you would you would want to go with me. And I could say, you know, this is what we’re going to see, and after we see this, we’re going to go and eat this. But I thought the better of it. I should have gone ahead and done it, because it looks like we’re going to have cake after the service today as well. So. But it takes us to to Wittenberg, Germany, the early 1500s where Martin Luther rediscovers the gospel after centuries of sacramental theology of do this so that you can receive the grace of God through the church and and really it for most people, they are thinking of a a salvation by works, a salvation by the deeds that they do within the church in centuries of scholastic theology.
And this especially would have affected Luther because of the via moderna and its idea of of do what is do what lies within you. And if you do what lies within you, God is obligated then to honor that as righteousness, and He will supply what is lacking. And so Luther then studies this, but you are aware of luther’s struggles, that Luther, despites all of this teaching, cannot bring. Himself to see himself as righteous, because no matter what he does, he has the uncanny understanding that he is not right with God, that he is a sinner, and he lives with a picture of Christ, of Christ, sitting on a rainbow, holding a lightning bolt, waiting to judge the sinner. And so at one point, he asked the question, Do you Do you love God. And He answered, No, I don’t. I honestly hated God because he required something from me that I could not in any possible way, do, and then held me responsible for it when it was impossible for me to do. And he knew it. And so he would read the book of Romans multiple times, and the idea of the righteousness of God terrified him, because, for Luther, the righteousness of God is the righteousness by which God was going to judge and condemn the sinner. But he continues to meditate on Romans, 117 he can’t get past it, and this is what he says about it. At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the content of my words, of the words, namely in it, the righteousness of God is revealed as it is written. He, through faith, is righteous. He who through faith is righteous shall live.
Therefore, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, He who through faith is righteous, shall live here. I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire scriptures showed itself to me. He began to go through everything he had learned in Scripture and began to see the work of God as the gift of God in Him, the work of God in Him, the power of God working in him, and he has a totally different understanding. And justification by faith becomes one of the five Solas of the Reformation.
And justification by faith is probably the most dominating element of soteriology that we still deal with 500 years later, you don’t deal with soteriology without dealing with the significance and importance of justification by faith, a word That Habakkuk uttered sometime in the six, 6o BC, some 2600 years ago has now come for us, one of the foundation blocks of our faith, one of the most significant things. So let’s go back to Habakkuk and pick up where we left off. God is going to say five more things about the Babylonians. He is going to say Issue five woes in verses six through eight, woe against those who pillage. Verses nine through 11, woe against those who plot evil. Verses 12 through 14, woe against the Bloodthirsty. Verses 15 through 17, woe to those who exploit and finally, in verse 18 to 20, woe against the idolater.
God pronounces these woes in detail. Habakkuk response in chapter three. In chapter three, a prayer of the prophet Habakkuk, Lord, I have heard the report about you. Lord, I stand in awe of your deeds. Revive your work in these years. Make it known in these years, in your wrath. Remember mercy, God. I’m in awe of you what you’ve done in the past. Please do again. And he goes through verses three through 15, and he talks about God’s coming and what God has done through the Exodus and the events there to bring them into their promised land. And then in verses eight through 15, he speaks of God as the one who comes like a mighty warrior to defend Israel or to defend Judah, to defend God’s people, to renew that covenant and restore them. And so Habakkuk concludes with this, I heard and I trembled within my lips. Quivered at the sound. Rottenness entered my bones. I trembled where I stood now I must quietly wait for the day of distress to come against the people invading us. See now Habakkuk understands, though, this is what’s going to happen. We’re going to have to go through the awfulness. We’re going to have to go through the tragedy. Though the fig tree does not bud and there is no fruit on the vines. Though the olive. Crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the flocks disappear from the pen and there are no herds in the stalls.
Yet, I will celebrate in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like those of a deer enables me to walk on mountain heights that is a man who is righteous, who is living by a steadfast faith in God. The horror is coming. I will continue to trust God. I wish I could tell you that for everyone in here, life would be a smooth sail, and that we would all die at a ripe old age, in our sleep, at about 100 something, between now and then. I hope, I hope that does happen between now and then, there are going to be a number of things. It may it’s not going to be something like this, necessarily. It may be something as challenging. You and I are going to continue to go through extreme difficulties and hardships that we don’t have an easy answer for and that the pat answers aren’t going to work. How are we going to respond? We have been declared righteous through faith in Christ. Let us then continue to steadfastly trust him when we don’t understand. Because God is faithful, He cannot do anything other than what he has promised.
He cannot violate his own character in nature. He cannot. He will not. He is faithful. So let us continue steadfastly to trust him, Father, thank You for the text that you have given us today. So many of us in here, there are a number who are facing great difficulties, great challenges. We are all going to face more and more as we live in this world. Allow us to stay close to know you well, so that we continue to steadfastly trust you and you use our witness and use our testimony for the glory of Christ, for the power of the gospel that is able to save we pray in Jesus, name Amen.
