Holy Week Habakkuk Bible Wonder - Can You Stop The Sun?

This is the Truth Network. Bible Wonders of Habakkuk. Very fun. Today we get to start off with a joke, and those people know me well. No, I... Thursday's kind of my joke day anyway, because for years and years and years I've done a devotion at Somerset Nursing Home, where I'm known as the man with the papers, because I always tell all my jokes, but I thought this joke today, it fits so well with what we're going to learn in Habakkuk, which has everything to do with Holy Week. The joke kind of illustrates the point that God was making to me over the last few days as I was trying to put together where he was taking me, and what a joy it always is when I see what he had in mind. That's how Holy Week fit into Habakkuk Chapter 3.

So it kind of comes together today, and as this will be my last podcast before Easter, well actually Saturday they'll put out an episode, but I'm going to the beach with my wife for sunrise services at Fort Caswell this Easter, so I'm excited about that. But this joke, okay, so my favorite joke in all the world, I will tell you, is this joke. And the story goes that Jesus, the father, and Moses were all playing golf. And so, you know, of course Moses steps up to shoot, and he swings, and you know, he kind of slices it, and next thing you know, boom, right in the water, right? And of course Moses, being Moses, walks up to the water, parts the, you know, sea, so to speak, and stands up there, hits the ball, but plop right onto the green.

Beautiful. Well, of course this was Jesus's, you know, shot, so he got up, same thing, goes to the tee, and plop right in the water. But Jesus, being Jesus, of course he didn't need to part the sea, he just walked right up, you know, hit the ball, and up, you know, plop onto the green, it went. But then the father himself got up to shoot, and what a wonderful thing that always is, and so as he, you know, swings, and up, surprisingly, plop, it's headed for the water, but before it hits the water, a fish jumps out of the water, grabs the ball, and as the fish goes to land back in the water, the eagle swoops down, the eagle catches the fish in his talons, and then swooping, swives, you know, over to the green, and drops the fish, when the fish hits the green, the ball comes out of its mouth, and plunk, it goes right down into the hole, at what point in time Jesus turns to his father, and says, see, this is why I never play golf with you.

The reason why I tell that joke, and I had a very good reason for it, is because if those of us who hang out with God, and know his sense of humor, is that's how he does things, he doesn't just shoot the ball in the hole, even though that would be easy enough to do, you know, he likes to do things in great detail, with all sorts of different angles and stuff, so you can just marvel, and go, okay, that was clearly God's shot, I mean, clearly, that's the way he does things, and so that was how he did this for me, as I was, you know, asking every day, where are we going, where are we going, and yesterday I got stuck, and I wanted to do a podcast, and I studied this, and I studied that, but I could tell I could never get on track, and so I just didn't release one, because I didn't really have anything that I thought was worth, you know, delivering, and so this morning, right, interestingly, I've got my devotions, and all this stuff that I was doing, and so I just was like, God, you know, just take me where you want me to go today, where do you want me to go, where do you want me to go, and he sent me back to Habakkuk chapter 3, which surprised me, because I thought we were still doing Holy Week, well, we'll get to that in a minute, but anyway, and so he says, no, go back to Habakkuk chapter 3, and so if we go back to that, that would be verse 11, is the verse that we left off on, you know, a couple weeks ago, when we were doing Habakkuk before the boot camp, and so that would be the kuff verse, and the way the kuff verse reads is the sun and the moon stood still in their habitation, at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear, right, and so, as you might imagine, you know, I immediately went to Rashi, and when I read Rashi on this, my mind got just totally blown, and I am still blown away by what all the ramifications of what this verse is, and what this verse tells us, not only of what God has done, but God, what will God do, and how much Habakkuk actually knew, obviously, as he wrote this, because, you know, it's everything to do, actually, with sonship. What we talked about last episode of, you know, Holy Week, was we were talking about how tying our sonship to the vine, well, this verse has got everything to do with probably one of the greatest examples of this in the Bible, as I think about it, because if you look in Genesis 48, now we talked about Genesis 49 last episode, so in Genesis 48 you have this, what I would consider to be a fairly strange story of Jacob is now going to, you know, in 49 he was blessing all his sons, but in 48 he is blessing the two sons of Joseph, right? Ephraim and Manasseh. And so, you know, the whole idea of he's putting his hand on the wrong head and all that stuff, and I'm, if you're like me, haven't you always wondered how is it that Ephraim was really great at the Manasseh?

How is it that he was so great? I never really got the picture of that in the Scripture, but I surely got it this morning, as Rashi went right back to this story to say that this was, what happened in Joshua chapter 10 has everything to do with the sun and the earth, the sun is standing still, which we're going to get to that in a minute, but what was happening here is like God was prophesying about that, clear back here in Genesis 48. So in Genesis 48, when he is blessing these two sons, he says, and God make thee like Ephraim and Manasseh, right? And he said, but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he and his seed, right? And he's talking about Ephraim, his seed shall become a filling of the nations. Now it says a multitude of the nations as far as the King James version, but the Jewish way that's translated is a filling of the nations. And what Habakkuk knew and what clearly Rashi knew as well, because they have been writing on this for centuries, is that Joshua, son of Nun, which is fascinating when you put all this together, Joshua is a son of Nun, who was a son of guess what? Ephraim, right? And so here it is, this prophecy is going to come true right here, and he is going to fill the nations.

And what's he going to fill with them? Well, he, if you go back and look at Joshua chapter 10, which we're going to do right now, because again, we're on another feast here that we were enjoying this morning, that God has given us all these different verses to ponder. So in Joshua 10, it says here that all these kings are going to attack at Gibeon, right? And then you might recall that Joshua had made friends with Gibeon, and now that all the kings of Jerusalem, et cetera, et cetera, all these, I think there were seven or eight kings that all came after Joshua, as the case may be.

Oh, there were five kings of the Amorites, by the way, and we're going to go back to the big deal that they were Amorites, okay? Because this was clearly prophesied too in Genesis 48. And it says, of course, that Joshua went to God and inquired, you know, should we go up against him? And he told him, of course. And then here comes the really amazing thing that happened.

And it probably, you know, as the more I've thought about this, since I've read this, the more I've thought, man, this is unbelievable. That in verse 12 of Joshua 10, then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel. And he said, in the sight of Israel, right, and all in front of everybody, he said, son, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and now moon in the valley of Ajan.

Now what? And I mean, we've all heard about the day that the sun stood still, but I don't know if you've ever thought about the fact that Joshua here has tied his sonship. In other words, because he is the son of Nun, who is the son of Ephraim, and it says that he's going to be filling the whole nations with the greatness of God is what he's going to do. And so all the world, because everybody on the entire planet knows that the sun stood still. In fact, there are legends from one side of the world to the other of the day of the longest day.

And on the other side, there's legends of the longest night, which again, the whole world knew what in the heck is going on here, man, this is big. And it was that Joshua, son of Nun, son of Ephraim was going to stop the sun. And how could he do that?

Because his cold had been tied, his sonship had been tied that the choice is vine, right? That he realized as his son, he had the right to ask for this. And that the Lord had made of it that the sun would stand still and the moon not give its light. Now, of course, God was painting a picture, a great picture of what's going to happen in Revelation again, as we talk about this. But just go back for a minute and marvel with me at Genesis 48. And look at the last verse in Genesis 48.

It is spectacular when you see this, especially when you know Habakkuk. Because Habakkuk, two verses prior, talked about his bow. Well, here it says, Moreover, I have given thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow.

Right? In other words, here, Jacob is telling Ephraim that obviously his sons would be like the sword and the bow that would take this land from the Amorites, right? The five kings.

And here it is right here. Moreover, it's verse 22 of Genesis 48 that would happen long before Joshua. It says, Moreover, I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow. Isn't that cool that Jacob knew what was going to happen that would be prophesied like that? And that Habakkuk understood all that when he talked about these verses that we're going to talk about?

And then, you know, just as a general, you know, wow factor for me, this is the hoof verse, right? This is the idea of the crown. Well, what a crown all of, you know, the tribe of Ephraim got as they were the ones that made the sun stand still, right? And it was God's glory that they were reflecting. There's no doubt about that because a nun is a reflection. Like the moon is a reflection of the sun. Well, the sun of noon is, he's a reflection of what God could do because he had the authority and he had the sonship to ask God to do what's unthinkable. I mean, when you think about it, it's huge that Moses is part of the Red Sea. It's huge, all the plagues that came, but I got to say that stopping the sun and the moon, I mean, that's huge.

I mean, it's like, whoa, like that's, that's, that's like amazing, more than amazing. And so as you think about that and ponder at this Easter, that there was a picture that God was painting of sonship that was way bigger because Jesus, right, was painting a picture that he would conquer something bigger than the sun and the moon. He would conquer death, right? That we would live eternally and all have a chance at this sonship where we could tie our cult to the, we could tie our donkey to the vine and our choices cult, our sonship to the choices vine now that we have come in here with the son of the king. And we wear the crown, that desire of the letter hoof.

And again, you know, you might review the letters. I mean, the verses in the hoof versus version of the verses of the 119 Psalm, like there's such a smorgasbord here. And I hope this Easter that, that we all will tie our burdens right to the vine and, and, and allow God to save us. That's, that's most important, but obviously then we need to try our sonship, our sonship to the choices vine and realize the amazing authority, the amazing stuff that we can do as a result of this inheritance of being sons of the king. Do you see how God put that all together for me? The eagle grabbed the fish, the ball came out of its mouth and you hear it fall into the cup. Thanks for listening.