The Wonder of Habakkuk 3:16 Rotting Bones Is Helpful Sometimes

This is the Truth Network. Bible wonders of Habakkuk. Oh, we get to behold wondrous things out of the letters I in today, as we are in the 16th verse of the third chapter of Habakkuk, which is the I in verse. And oh my goodness, what an understanding God gave me this morning of all this, because I really needed it.

Honestly, yesterday was a tough day for me, and so I could relate to what was going on here. So the 16th verse reads in English, When I heard, my belly trembled, my lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble, when he cometh up unto his people, he will invade them with his troops. So the letter I in, in the Hebrew alphabet, is the 16th letter. And interestingly, it also is the number 70, as far as Hebrew is concerned, which you may know that any number times 10 is a significant issue. So the fact that you got seven, which is a very, you know, cardinal number, so to speak, and then you multiply it by 10, you get 70. And there's also another really cool thing about the letter I in that I really noted more this morning than I ever have before, and that in Hebrew, you can almost always replace an aleph with an I in.

In other words, if you have a letter, a word like Abba, Father, that starts with an aleph, you can replace that with an I in for a similar understanding of that idea, and that is because you may know that the I in refers sort of to the vision of God or even the providence of God, okay? And so I don't know what your life's been like, but you know, mine at times has had some serious struggles and some serious challenges and tests, and I know that Abraham did, and most godly men, if you look there, their lives are filled with tests and challenges, and so it's interesting that the biggest test of all are God's tests, and the idea is that the fear of the Lord would be what scares us way above the fear of man or the fear of, you know, loss or any other thing, and here, you know, Habakkuk is giving us this idea of God's always got his eye on you, right? It's like the eyes are always on Israel, you know, God's eyes are always on Israel, and God's eyes are always on you, because he loves you, but, you know, you go through stuff, and so what I honed in on a couple things as I studied this verse, the first thing that the Holy Spirit took me to was the rottenness entered my bones, okay? And I don't know if you've ever had that sensation of like, man, it's just this like, oh, your bones are literally coming apart, like things are deteriorating, and interestingly, the word rotten has as its root the idea of spit or spittle, because they're decomposing, right? That's what spittle does to some extent, and interestingly, you know, the book of Job is where you find this idea, and throughout the Psalms and several places, they talk about the rottenness of bones, you know, and it's an interesting term that came from Job. Actually, I believe it is in the 13th chapter of Job, you know, where it says, you know, though he, you know, slay me, I still trust in him, that particular verse.

Well, that is the same section where he talks about the rottenness of his bones. However, he realizes that God has us all under control, but his judgment's tough to take, but it's good, because in some ways, we do have to die to ourselves. We have to be decomposing, and I never really thought about it like I did this morning, and here's why, okay, that I was going through this rottenness of my bones, and you know, the whole verse reminded me of that time that Jesus showed up when I was praying and scared me so bad, and I understand the idea of the rottenness of my bones, because when you really, really have the fear of the Lord, when you really, really sense his presence, like Isaiah, like I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live, you know, that idea is the rottenness of bones, okay, because you are so aware of how you are not what you ought to be, and you're decomposing, and all that kind of thing, because again, you're going to die so that he can lift you up, right, and that's something we should be doing moment by moment, and so I honed in on the rottenness of bones. I'll go into that more in a minute, and then the ion itself comes when it talks about that I might rest when he cometh unto his people, so when he cometh up, that word begins with the ion, because again, it is the idea of rising of, in fact, Yeshua ends in an ion, I don't know if you were that familiar, but the idea of Jesus ends at that same letter, because it's both the idea of vision, but it's all the idea being yoked, that you share a vision with Jesus, or you share the vision with the Father, so to speak, because we know that the letters are interchangeable, so as we get that idea, when you begin to share that vision, the fear of the Lord becomes very obvious in your life, okay, and it needs to be, because you need that fear to overcome all your other fears, and so then the idea goes into this whole idea of Gad, and you might remember that the tribe in Israel that was named Gad has to do with a troop, or a lot of his people, and so this Gad is going to come, and it's going to invade, and again, Jesus has come to rule and reign, and there you go, we got it, but the reason why it all makes so much sense to me more today than ever, I suppose, is yesterday, you may know that I've had my struggles over the years, ever since the dealership went bankrupt, and part of what happened is we had some SBA loans that we defaulted on, and when the SBA comes after you, then that is the Justice Department, and I would just as soon deal with the IRS 10 times a day versus the Justice Department one time, because I've dealt with them both a lot, and I can tell you the Justice Department takes no prisoners, and they're just difficult, I'll just put it that way. However, yesterday I got a letter from the Justice Department bringing up my old debt, and that I needed to fall in line with some regulation I wasn't aware of, and essentially that I had to send in a whole financial statement again, and when they talk about a whole financial statement, they want to know where every penny you spent over the last year, they want to know where every dime is, every asset that you got, if you've got a chair in your living room, they want to know every single thing that's going on, and so when they get done with that, usually it's been my experience that they'll come back with a larger assessment of what you got to pay per month, because I've been paying them for months, every month, for years and years and years, even during COVID when they said you don't have to pay, I still paid to try to avert this onslaught again, and when I got this letter yesterday, I have to admit that I got this rottenness in my bones, like, oh man, here we go again, and it just really ruined my day, it ruined my night, and I got up this morning like, God, how can I deal with this, and when is this going to be over, and how many are the days of my sperm, like what, I was just in such a deep place of rottenness, of bones, I don't know how else to put it, I just really got my attention, and so I prayed and realized I needed to die, that oh my, goodness, God is giving me this opportunity for this new test, and clearly there must be part of me that we need to deteriorate, that we need to continue to get rid of, and as I began to praise him, he asked me to just go back into Habakkuk and begin to study this first, and the more I studied this first, the more I realized, oh my goodness, how cool is it that God is giving me this opportunity once again, to see that essentially the rottenness that comes in our bones from the idea of deteriorating is a great thing, because we get new bones, okay, we get his bones, the troop is coming, Jesus is coming, and all that is going to be real, what we're giving up in this life is just pain and suffering and all these different things, and again, the idea of this iron verse is to see that all this stuff is happening in God's providence, right, that he is raising us up, he is sanctifying us, he's making us into the who he wants us to be, and sometimes he takes some pretty stern stuff, apparently in my case it really does, and so, well, good news, I get a chance to undergo this new test, and again, it comes with trying to make sure that I do everything right in all these forms that I do, and again, at the end, just being able to keep my peace, and in our great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them, that's what I'm trying to get to, is to have peace in the midst of another storm, as you know, there's all kinds of storms, and I realize, you know, there's a lot of family storms that are a lot worse than that kind of than financial storms, but hey, you know, it's interesting how God keeps whittling it away at Robbie so that I can become less and he can become greater, and I thank you for a chance to share this with you all today, and pray that you too can just find great faith in this I in God's providence, that his eye is on us, he loves us, and he is not going to let us go without making us better every day. Thanks for listening.