The Wonder of Habakkuk 3:3 The Fellowship of The Trinity

This is the Truth Network. Bible Wonders of Habakkuk. The provision of the Gimel verse. The third verse of the third chapter of Habakkuk.

How fun is that? And this is certainly a big provision chapter. And the ideal of the Gimel is that foot in Hebrew that is chasing after the poor person to give him back what was stolen. And clearly this verse speaks to that when I think about what has been stolen from most of us is the context of the story. In other words, we're living in a smaller story. It's hard for us to figure out our life when we are self-centered and we're looking at things from our perspective. But here, Habakkuk is going to take us back in the story. Actually, in my opinion, he takes a clear back to John 1.1 as he is going to give us the provision of getting the context of our story.

And like, you know, most folks when they're at a, you know, if you meet somebody on the street, they're going to say, you know, what's going on in your life? Because we live life in a story and we need context in order to figure it all out sometimes. And so here we have that in the third chapter of Habakkuk.

I'll read it in English. So God came from Teman and the Holy One from Mount Paran, Selah. His glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of his praise. So, of course, it begs the question, where is Teman and what is Mount Paran?

Well, it's fascinating. The first place I looked to go see what this might be was the great Jewish commentator Rashi, who very much pointed out, and it's true, that the idea of Teman is that idea of Esau because Teman was Esau's firstborn's firstborn, I guess would be the way to put it. And, you know, again, it's found in the place of Edom and that whole idea is of Esau. And then the second one, Mount Paran, is speaking of Ishmael, because Ishmael's people settled in that area of Paran. And so the way that the verse ends, his glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of his praise, Rashi took that to say that God went to Esau and found no friend there, and he went to Ishmael and didn't find a friend there. So he essentially went to Isaac and then to Jacob, and this is where he would eventually show his glory in Mount Sinai and that the Jews are his chosen people. Again, going back to the story to give this context is clearly what Matthew Henry said and, excuse me, is what Rashi said. But going to Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry used the same exact, he said, isn't it interesting how prophets tend to take you back into filling in the story? And he, of course, makes reference to, you know, where, you know, Temin meaning from the south and that, you know, God came from Mount, that the Jews found him in Mount Sinai and here's where God showed his glory to the Jews. And a similar idea, but just, you know, a little different context because he didn't go into the idea of Esau and Ishmael like Rashi did.

And so we're left with these big, you know, huge questions of what is Temin and what is, you know, Mount Paran? And so, you know, me, I like to dig into the Hebrew that's in these words to see, you know, because I think it means all of the above. It means exactly what Matthew Henry's talking about and it means what Rashi's talking about, that God's given you context.

But really, when you look in that word Temin, you can hear it or Teman that it actually is like the letter Tav, which is God's stamp of truth on the idea of Benjamin, okay? In other words, the son of his right hand, right? And so this is what I was saying at the beginning, that to me it takes us back to John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. So he's taking us back to the beginning of the story when there was this great fellowship with the son. The father and the son's fellowship is so huge, you know, that on that, you know, original Father's Day, in my opinion, where God was there when Jesus was baptized and he said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.

You know, it's a big part of the story that it originally, before we ever came onto the scene in Act 1 of, you know, what God was doing when he created the heavens and the earth, is there was a fellowship between him and his son and then the Holy Spirit. And so then you have the Holy One, right, is what it says in the second part. After it says Teman, then it says the Holy One from Mount Paran. Well, Paran, when you look at that, is a Pei, which has to do with the presence of the, and then an Aleph, which is like the presence of the father. So here we, from my standpoint between the Holy One, Teman, and Paran, we have the fellowship of the Trinity and his glory.

In other words, his beauty. This is a little different word for glory than he used, you know, back in the second chapter. But this particular glory has a lot more to do perhaps with beauty and faith. And so obviously these three had tremendous faith and tremendous fellowship, one another, and they covered the heavens and the earth was full of his praise, which again is almost like loving and learning. And so when I look at this, I think that what Habakkuk is sharing is that in this story, before we ever showed up, there was this epic fellowship that God called us up into. And Habakkuk is sharing what he knows about God's heart, is he's three in one.

And that three in one is an idea of that whole Aleph, that oneness. And he wants us through this Gimel verse to understand the context of our stories, right? And so, you know, I don't know if you had that experience where, you know, you had a father who spoke over you that said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. But my guess is if he didn't speak that over to you, chances are over you, chances are his father never spoke that over him because his father didn't know the story, right?

He didn't have the context. And so Habakkuk wants to show God that he understands the context, that always we were sons of the beloved and the whole part of, you know, the righteous will live by faith, is we have faith in God because he had faith in the Son, he had faith in the Holy Spirit, and he has faith in us. In other words, this is a shared experience of the context of the story is that we all are in this context together. So as Jesus came up out of the waters of baptism, you know, here his father is going to speak these amazing words of faith and that my son has what it takes. Well, this is a beautiful opportunity, you know, for us to think, you know, gee, if I said this over my son, if I've said this over my grandsons, actually I'm leaving this afternoon to go on an epic, in my opinion, trip with both my future son-in-laws.

We're way up. I have every intention of speaking boot camp talks into the part of the adventure as we go steelhead fishing up here in Ohio, but I want them to feel like they are sons of God, but they also, I want them to feel like they're beloved sons of mine in whom I'm well pleased, in whom I've got great faith. I've got great faith in my future generations that are happening through these sons. And I, you know, of course, had the same opportunity.

My father, you know, was at a boot camp with me, you know, a few years ago before he passed on to where we got to speak that over one another. And God got, ultimately, when God speaks that over you is when you really get it. And so it is my prayer, and I'm hoping that you, my listeners of my podcast, because I'm not going to be producing Thursday or Friday, of course, we'll have a show on Saturday, but for the next two days when you would normally listen to my podcast, would you pray for our family and your family, right? That God would speak over us and say, these are our beloved sons in whom we are well pleased, because as we get this context of the story, we get the gimel, we get the provision of God, and the greatest provision He ever gave us was the faith of His Son that He would die for us, that we too could have this spoken over us, that we too could be sons of God. And, you know, I was on my way home last night from recording Masculine Journey, which we do, which I hope you subscribe to that podcast.

It's my band of brothers, and I dearly love them, the Masculine Journey team. And we'd been talking a lot about fathers, but, you know, I was reviewing, actually, the New Name talk, where God gives you a new name, and I was listening to Craig McConnell give that from Wild at Heart, another great podcast, and all of a sudden as he paused in his talk, I heard God say, you know, Robbie, you really never have had that true sense in your heart that your Father, your Heavenly Father, loves you the way your earthly father did. I was very blessed to have an earthly father that dearly loved me, and I always, always knew that. And I almost felt him passing that over, like that wonderful warm feeling you always had, you could always run to your father, and that, you know, for me, that was my experience. And God wanted that torch passed over to my Heavenly Father, and He sensed that I had never really completely passed that torch over to Him. And it's fascinating to me that I'm studying this verse this morning as I'm having this opportunity to pass that torch over to my Heavenly Father, as I truly think through what He was teaching me at the end of the second chapter on how my idolatry has led to an orphan spirit, is that the more I can lean on my Heavenly Father, that He really is my Father. He had planned me from the beginning, and He wants to speak over me, and He wants to speak over all of us this weekend. And I thank you so much for your partnership with me in this masculine journey in so many different ways. Thanks for listening.