PODCAST · religion
Habakkuk
by Rev. Charles G. Dennison
Twenty-nine sermons by Rev. Charles G. Dennison, former pastor of Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Sewickley, PA, expounding the book of Habakkuk in full: the prophet's complaint, God's reply centered on 'the just shall live by faith,' and his closing prayer of trust amid desolation. Preached January-November 1995 and drawn from the Dennison Sermon Library archive.
Episodes
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Closing With Joy in the Lord
The series closes where Habakkuk himself closes, rejoicing in the Lord regardless of circumstance, the difference between preaching that merely informs and preaching that actually transforms. Every one of the elect participates in God's saving acts the same way Habakkuk does here, Old Testament...
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Preaching an Arcane Text
Bad preaching treats a text like Habakkuk 3 as too obscure to bother with; good preaching, the kind Paul models even with the Old Testament's most arcane passages, finds Christ in it anyway. Verse 13 in particular repays that kind of close attention. God's own work in Habakkuk moves him from...
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Rejoicing Amid Desolation
Habakkuk rejoices in the book's closing verses despite total agricultural and economic collapse, a change only God could work in him. The same God works that change from the Old Testament to the New. 'He makes my feet like hind's feet' in verse 19 is Christ's gift, sure footing on desolate ground.
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Trembling, Then Surrendering
Habakkuk's prayer reviews God's mighty acts across the Exodus and Judges, the same history rehearsed to steady his own trembling heart. He trembles genuinely at God's coming, no false composure here, and then surrenders to it completely. Christ's own surrender, on our behalf, is what makes that...
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Praying God's Own Acts
Habakkuk builds his prayer almost entirely from Scripture's own language, and our prayers should draw on the same material. Cornelius Van Til reportedly prayed the same way, saturated in biblical language. Real prayer takes part in God's saving acts, reaches beyond ourselves to others, and keeps...
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Questions Finally Satisfied
Chapter 3 has its own clear outline, and set against chapter 1 it marks real movement: the same questions that once went unanswered now find satisfaction. Christ's own quiet response to the Father's will, without complaint, supplies the pattern Habakkuk is finally learning. Satisfaction, it turns...
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The Chaldeans, God's Coming
The Chaldeans' advance is, in a real sense, God's own coming, judgment arriving in the form of an invading army. Habakkuk's prayer here carries the same shape as the Lord's own prayer, God's name and kingdom set above personal concerns. Real prayer, on this model, rehearses God's mighty acts…
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Diminished, Focused on God
The history of salvation, God's own unfolding acts, takes real priority here over Habakkuk's personal spiritual renewal, though both are happening at once. Habakkuk diminishes himself throughout this prayer, turning attention away from his own experience toward God's action. That same...
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God Changes Habakkuk
In chapter 3 God transforms Habakkuk, and the change runs deeper than a shift in tone. Until now Habakkuk has represented a Judaism trapped in false righteousness, and here God shows him what saving faith looks like. His prayer widens to include all tribes, beyond his own people's concerns.
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The Proud Man Judged
Habakkuk 2 breaks into a clear outline, each woe aimed at a different form of the same underlying pride. God's judgment on 'the proud man' in verse 4 is not aimed only at Babylon; Habakkuk himself shares in that same wickedness. Only the perfection of Christ can silence the self-righteousness…
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Grace Versus Works, Again
The church's struggle between grace and works righteousness is not a new problem liberalism invented; it runs straight back through Hebrews to Habakkuk himself. God brings Habakkuk to the end of his own resources before he can receive grace rightly. Passages that seem to teach works righteousness...
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Grace, Not Faithfulness
The church has fought its own civil war over this text for centuries, and the dispute between Pelagius and Augustine over faith and works is still alive. Grace is a gift and never a reward for our faithfulness, and readers misread 2:4 whenever they soften 'faith' into 'faithfulness.' By that gift...
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Habakkuk's Three Movements
The book of Habakkuk moves in three clear stages: his dispute in chapters 1 through 2:1, God's reply in 2:2-20, and his prayer in chapter 3. What Habakkuk glimpses by the end genuinely surpasses Moses' own vision under the law. The Babylonian invasion functions as a kind of end of the world, the...
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Abraham's Faith in the Dark
Abraham's own background matters here, a night vision in which God counts his faith as righteousness before any law existed to demand it. That faith is already real and not yet complete, the same tension running through the whole covenant. Faith leads to affliction before it leads to inheritance,...
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The Only Man Without Pride
The New Testament quotes Habakkuk 2:4 three separate times, and that frequency signals its theological weight. The Hebrew text exposes pride as a spiritual disease rooted deep in human nature. Christ alone among all men is entirely without that pride.
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God's Covenantal Prosecutor
Prophets function as God's own covenantal prosecutors, bringing formal charges against a covenant-breaking people, and Habakkuk is no exception. His office runs parallel to Moses' in real, traceable ways, even as real differences remain. Old and new covenant share more structure in common than is...
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Luther and the Just Live
Luther found his own justification by faith in this very verse, and it is God speaking in 2:4, not Habakkuk voicing his own conviction. Judgment falls on Babylon, but also on Judah, and even on Habakkuk himself, no one exempted from the reckoning. What 2:2-3 promises is nothing less than God's...
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Prophecy That Brings It About
Written prophecy does more than describe what is coming; it actually witnesses to and helps bring about its own fulfillment. The urgency running through Habakkuk 2 signals something larger than a local crisis: a new age overtaking the old. Scripture's own authority rests on exactly this kind of...
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A Word More Sure
Habakkuk's sense of sin and faith is still shaped by Old Testament categories, not yet the fuller New Testament picture. Writing his prophecy down, rather than only speaking it, gives it a permanence speech alone cannot claim, the same conviction behind sola Scriptura. Peter's own testimony…
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Believing Through Death
Micah's own prophecy is notoriously difficult, read one way by liberal scholarship and quite another by orthodox interpreters committed to its messianic force. Rightly read, Micah prophesies Christ as clearly as Habakkuk does. Habakkuk himself needs the justifying faith Christ provides simply to...
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Watching on the Tower
Habakkuk stations himself on the watchtower to wait for God's answer, a posture that already reveals a heart genuinely oriented toward God despite the complaint. His situation echoes Eli's own crisis of faith, but where Eli fails, Habakkuk holds on. Like Job, and like Peter refusing to leave…
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Wrestling Until the Dawn
Jacob wrestles at Peniel with a man who proves to be God himself, and he receives a new name only after the struggle nearly breaks him. God perfects faith in the night, for Jacob as for Habakkuk. Christ is both the perfect object of that faith and the one who perfects it in us.
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Faith Has Come
Habakkuk begins with a faith marked by pride and vanity, still measuring God by what God owes him. By chapter 3 he has moved from something like a Jew under the law to something like a Christian under grace. Paul's declaration in Galatians, 'faith has come,' names exactly that transition.
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From Pagan Faith to Christian
Habakkuk's doubts about God's sovereignty, justice, and righteousness are not disguised; he says plainly that something looks wrong. His faith at this point still looks like the world's own form of faith, trapped inside the law's terms. What God does across the rest of the book is remake that...
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God Kills to Cure
The law proves useless on its own to answer Habakkuk's complaint, unable to do anything but describe the problem. God's own remedy looks at first like judgment: the Chaldeans marching on Jerusalem, a cure that looks like death. What Habakkuk is being taught to desire is God himself, not merely…
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A Complaint the Cross Forbids
Habakkuk's lament sounds like other prophetic complaints on the surface, but his is really a theodicy, an argument that God himself has failed to act justly. That kind of complaint is real, and Habakkuk is not rebuked for voicing it. Christ's own cross, though, finally forbids that same complaint...
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God, the First Prophet
Liberal scholarship tends to flatten the prophetic office into one undifferentiated category, missing the real progress running from Samuel through to Christ. God himself is, in a sense, the first prophet, speaking creation itself into being. Habakkuk's own prophecy rests on faith in a heavenly...
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What Is a True Prophet?
Biblical prophets and pagan prophets share a vocabulary but nothing else, the ecstatic utterances of the nations bearing no real resemblance to God's own word through Habakkuk and Jeremiah. Only the biblical prophets speak truly, not because of their technique but because of who sends them.…
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Habakkuk's Complaint
Habakkuk shares real historical ground with Jeremiah, both watching Judah collapse from within before Babylon ever appears on the horizon. His complaint against God's apparent silence is real, not merely rhetorical. Habakkuk 2:4, 'the just shall live by faith,' already summarizes the gospel this...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Twenty-nine sermons by Rev. Charles G. Dennison, former pastor of Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Sewickley, PA, expounding the book of Habakkuk in full: the prophet's complaint, God's reply centered on 'the just shall live by faith,' and his closing prayer of trust amid desolation. Preached January-November 1995 and drawn from the Dennison Sermon Library archive.
HOSTED BY
Rev. Charles G. Dennison
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Habakkuk currently has 29 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Twenty-nine sermons by Rev. Charles G. Dennison, former pastor of Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Sewickley, PA, expounding the book of Habakkuk in full: the prophet's complaint, God's reply centered on 'the just shall live by faith,' and his closing prayer of trust amid desolation. Preached...
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Habakkuk is created and hosted by Rev. Charles G. Dennison.
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