IX
HABAKKUK-ON HIS WATCH-TOWER
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. i.
"I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower."--
Hab. ii. i.
HABAKKUK'S tower was not built of stone and lime.
Hiram's Tyrian workmen, with all their skill in
hewn stone, and in timber, and in iron, and in brass,
had no hand in building Habakkuk's tower. "The
Name of the Lord" was Habakkuk's high tower.
The truth and the faithfulness and the power of
God--these things were the deep and broad foundations
of Habakkuk's high tower, into which he continually
escaped, and from the high top of which
he was wont to look out upon the land, and up to his
God. God's grace and mercy and long-suffering
were the doors and stairs, were the walls and battlements,
of Habakkuk's high tower; and God's sure
salvation was the golden and the far-shining roof of
it. "Art Thou not from everlasting,"--prayed
this prophet as often as he again stood upon
his watch and set himself upon his tower,--"O
Lord, my God, mine Holy One? We shall not die."
The Chaldeans had, by this time, overrun the
whole land. Judah and Jerusalem had for long
been full of all but unpardonable sin. God's chosen
and covenant people had despised and forsaken God.
The law of God was "slacked," till the land was full
of all unrighteousness. And thus it was that this
judgment of God had already gone forth against
Judah and Jerusalem: "Lo, I raise up the Chaldeans,
that bitter and hasty nation, which shall
march through the breadth of the land, to possess
the dwelling-places that are not theirs. They are
terrible and dreadful. . . . Their horses also are
swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than
the evening wolves: . . . they shall fly as the eagle
that hasteth to eat. They shall come all for violence:
. . . and they shall gather the captivity as the
sand." And it was so. It was very much as if the
Turks of our day had been let loose on England,
and Scotland, and Edinburgh. It was amid the
indescribable cruelties and horrors of the invasion
and possession of Judah and Jerusalem by the
Chaldeans that Habakkuk took up his burden.
And Habakkuk the prophet was alone: he was
alone, and had no fellow in the midst of all those
desolate years. Alone!--and with his faith very
hard pressed between God, in His righteous anger
on the one hand, and guilty Judah, under her great
agony and oppression, on the other hand. And we
have this great and noble-hearted prophet in all the
heat and burden of his work,--in his faith, and in his
prayer, and in his songs,--all set before us with
extraordinary beauty and impressiveness in this
wonderful little book: a book little in size, indeed,
but a book rich and great in divine substance, and
in intellectual and spiritual power of every kind. "O
Lord, how long shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear!
even cry out unto Thee of violence, and Thou wilt
not save! Why dost Thou shew me iniquity, and
cause me to behold grievance? For spoiling and
violence are before me: . . . and the wicked doth
compass about the righteous . . . but I will stand
upon my watch, and I will set me upon the tower,
and I will watch to see what He will say to me. . . .
And the Lord answered me and said, Write the
vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may
run that readeth it." And, at that, the prophet
immediately came down from his tower; and had
great tablets made by the workman; and he wrote
this text upon the tables,--this text, "The just shall
live by his faith." And he had the tables hung up
on the temple walls, and on the gates and on the
market-places of the city; till he who ran from the
oppression of the enemy, as well as he who ran to
take up arms against the oppressor, might read the
legend,--this legend,--that "The just shall live by
his faith." The Chaldeans understood not the
tables, but the oppressed people of God understood
them; till it abides a proverb, and an encouragement,
and a doctrine, and a sure hope to this day,--
that "The just shall live by faith."
1. In a profound and far-reaching passage,--in
two profound and far-reaching passages indeed,--
Pascal impresses on us, out of such Scripture as this,
that our own passions are our only enemies. Our
real enemies, with all their cruelty and all their
opression, come up upon us,--not out of Chaldea,
but out of our own heart. Chaldea, with all her
cruel and agrandising ambition, would never have
been allowed to cross the Jordan and let loose in
Judah, but for Judah's sin. And it was Judah's
continuing transgression and persisting impenitence
that kept the Chaldeans in possession of
Judah and Jerusalem. All which is written in the
prophet, with Pascal's profound and spiritual interpretation
of the prophet, for our learning, and
for our very closest and most practical application
to ourselves. Let this, then, be laid to heart by
all God's people, that their sinful hearts, and sinful
lives, while they are in this present life, are always,
more or less, like the land of Judah under the cruel
occupation of the Chaldeans. Our sins, my
brethren, have brought the bitterest of all our
chastisements upon us, that is, upon our souls. Not
every child of God among us has yet spirituality of
mind enough, or personal experience enough, to see
and to admit that. Judah did not easily and willingly
see and admit that. But Habakkuk in his
day, and Pascal in our day, saw it: they both saw
it; and wrote powerfully and convincingly and
with splendid comfort concerning it. And many
of God's people among yourselves, by much experience,
by much prayer, by a sinful heart and a
holy life taken together, are themselves prophets,--
prophets and philosophers: wise men, that is, in
the deepest things, both of God, and of the soul of
man. And one of those deepest things is just this
--that
God chastises sin by means of sin. He
employs the remaining sinfulness of the sanctified
heart as His last and His best instrument for
reaching down into the depths of the heart in order
to its complete discovery, complete correction, and
complete purification. There is no tyranny so
terrible, there is no invasion and captivity of the
soul one-thousandth part so horrible, and so hated
of all God's saints, as is their captivity to their own
sins. Those whose true torments and tortures come,
never from without, but always from within: those
whose abidingly bad hearts are being made God's
cruellest scourge,--both for their past sins, and
for their present sinfulness,--
they will consent and
subscribe to all that this great prophet says in the
terrible account that he gives of the Chaldeans.
"That bitter and hasty nation: which march
through the breadth of the land, to possess dwelling-places
that are not theirs. They are terrible and
dreadful." "They are proud: they enlarge their
desire like hell: they are as death itself: they
cannot be satisfied. . . . Shall they not rise up
suddenly that shall bite thee? And awake that
shall vex thee? And thou shalt be for a booty to
them, O Jerusalem!" All of which is but a cruel
parable to some of us concerning our own sins. So
truly does our God also, in His grace and truth,
still make His own so sovereign, and so spiritual,
use of our remaining and deep-rooted sinfulness. In
His wisdom, and in His love, at one stroke, He does
these two divinest of things:--securing the greatest
depth, the greatest inwardness and the greatest
spirituality for our sanctification; and, at the same
time, securing, more and more every day, our fear
and hatred and horror at our own hearts, as at
nothing else on earth or in hell. Is that your mind,
my brethren? Is that your experience? "The
spiritual understood Chaldea of their passions," says
Pascal. "The unspiritual, and the still carnal-minded,
understood it of Chaldea only. The term
'enemy,'" he adds, "and Chaldea is obscure and
ambiguous only to the unspiritual in mind and in
heart." Let all students of Holy Scripture, and of
the heart of man, study Pascal.
2. Look, now, at that man of God, who is like
Habakkuk in our own days. Look at that prophet
upon his tower in our own city. He has climbed
up far above us, his fellows, into a calm and clear
air: and he has so climbed by means of much
prayer, and by means of much meditation, and by
means of much secret self-denial of many kinds.
He has a time and a place of retreat, and of purification,
and of exaltation of mind, that we know
nothing of. He may be a minister; most likely he
is: or he may be a busy business man, as sometimes
he is. He may be well known to us to be a man like
Habakkuk: or, he may be hidden even from himself.
Sometimes he is old: and, not seldom, he
is young. In any case, he is our Habakkuk.
Habakkuk, with his own burden, and sometimes
with ours. "O Lord," he cries on his watch, "how
long shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear!" "But
I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the
tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto
me." There are men among us who do not neglect
prayer, who yet sadly neglect to watch and wait for
God's promised answer to their prayers. Prayer,
when we think of it, and perform it aright,--
prayer is a magnificent thing--and a venturesome,
--for any man to do. For prayer builds, and fits
out, and mans, and launches a frail vessel of faith
on the deep and wide sea of God's sovereignty:
and sets her sails for a harbour nothing short of
heaven. And, then, the wise merchantman gives
God, and his ship, time to be on her way back
again: and then, like Habakkuk, he sets himself on
his high tower. All his interests are now up there.
As Paul has it--all his conversation is in heaven:
all his treasures and all his affections are launched
on that sea-adventure he is now so intensely watching
up there. I am convinced, my brethren, that
we lose many answers to our prayers,--not so
much because we do not pray, as because we do not
go up to our tower to watch for and to welcome
God's answers to our prayers. "Why should I
answer?"--our God may well say to His waiting
and ministering angels. "Why should I answer
him? He pays no attention to my answer to his
prayer. He is never on his watch, when I send My
answer. And, even when I do send My answers to
his house and to his heart, he takes them and holds
them as common and everyday things. He never
wonders at My grace to him. He never performs
his vow for My goodness to him. He holds a
thousand,--he and his--of My benefits: but he
does not seem to know it." My brethren, I am
as sure as I am standing here, that we would all
get far more, and far more wonderful answers to
prayer, if only we were far more on the outlook for
them. Habakkuk never made a holier or a more
fruitful resolve than when he said, "I will stand
upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and
will watch to see what He will say unto me."
3. There were many shapes and sites of towers in
the land of Judah, and they were put, of the people
of Judah and Jerusalem, to many and various
uses. Their city walls would rise up, all round their
cities, into strong towers, both for defence and for
beauty. Immense towers were built also by the
military engineers of those days on frontiers, and
on passes, and on peaks, and on exposed situations.
To protect a great well also, a strong stone tower
would be built, so as to secure safety to the flocks
of cattle and sheep that came to the well and to its
waters to drink. No vineyard worth anything to
its owner was ever left without its tower,--both to
lodge the keeper of the vineyard, and to be the home
of the grape-gatherers at the grape-gathering
season. Till, all over the land, and all round the
city, all kinds of towers stood up to give life, and
strength, and beauty to the whole landscape.
And so it is in the Church of Christ. Till He who
sees His own holy land as no eye but His sees it:
He who sees every soldier and watchman, and
vinedresser, and keeper of sheep, in it: He who
has His sleepless eye on every praying and expecting
soul,--He sees His Holy Land, and His Holy
City, encompassed, and ramparted, and ornamented
with ten thousand such towers: and He
never long leaves any such tower without its proper
and appointed vision. For, as often as any watching
soul says, "I will stand upon my watch, and
will set me upon my tower," the Lord who spake
to Habakkuk says to us the same thing: "Though
it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it
will not tarry." And, there is nothing that our
Lord says so often as just
this,--He says it every
morning, indeed, and every night to all who wait for
Him,--"
The just," He says without ceasing, "
shall
live by his faith." Till one tower answers that
vision, that password and watchword, to another;
till all the land rings with it, and echoes with
it. The Lord speaks it first to Habakkuk, and
Habakkuk to Paul, and Paul to Rome and Galatia,
and Rome and Galatia to us; and still the same
counsel and comfort keeps on counselling all the
dwellers in their lonely towers, "The just shall live
by faith." What Habakkuk wrote six hundred
years before Christ on the gates, and walls, and
pillars of Jerusalem--that very same word of God
the Holy Spirit of God is writing on the tables that
are in the believing hearts of all God's people still:
"Being justified by faith we have peace with God":
"By grace ye are saved through faith": "The just
shall live by his faith." He shall live,--not so
much by the fulfilment of all God's promises; nor
by God's full answers to his prayers and expectations;
nor by the full deliverance of his soul from
his bitter enemies; nor by the full and final expulsion
of the Chaldeans: but he shall live, amid
all these troubles, and till they come to an end for
ever,--he shall live by his firm faith in God, and
in the future which is all in God's hand. And thus
it is that, whatever our oppression and persecution
may be, whatever our prayer and wherever and
whatever our waiting tower, still this old and ever
new vision and answer comes: Faith: Faith: and
Faith only. Rest and trust in God. Commit thy
way to God. Be thine enemy from beyond the
Euphrates, or be he out of the evil of thine own
heart,--keep on in prayer. Keep on watching.
Keep thyself on thy Tower. Keep saying, keep
singing:
For thou art God that dost
To me salvation send,
And I upon Thee all the day
Expecting do attend.
Go up every new day into Habakkuk's high
tower. And take up his prayer and his hope. Art
Thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, mine
Holy One? I shall not die. Say you also, "I shall
not die." That is faith. That is the very faith by
which the just have been enabled to live in all ages
of the Church of God. No man ever died under
the hand of his enemy who so believed in God, and
in the power and grace of God. You may sometimes
be afraid that you are to be left to die in your
sin and sorrow. So was Habakkuk sometimes.
"O Lord, I heard Thy speech, and was afraid."
Habakkuk was afraid to face the whole long, unbroken,
unrelieved life of faith, and of faith only.
Habakkuk would be up on his tower again to see
if there were no signs of the Chaldeans leaving the
land. At another time he would stand upon his
tower, and look if none of Judah's old alliances
were coming to her help. But still the full vision
of his salvation tarried, till he came to seek his
salvation, not in any outward thing whatsoever;
not even in complete deliverance from the Chaldeans,
but in GOD,--whether the Chaldeans were
in possession of Judah, and Jerusalem, or driven
out of it. Till, taught of God, as he dwelt more and
more with God in his high tower, Habakkuk was
able to rise and attain to this,--to this which is
one of the highest attainments of faith, and hope,
and love in all the Old Testament,--"Yet I will
rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my
salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He will
make my feet like hinds' feet, and He will make
me to walk upon mine high places."
4. The Chaldeans with all their overwhelming
invasions, and with all their cruel oppressions, have,
then, been made Habakkuk's salvation. "They
took possession of dwelling-places that were not
theirs": till Habakkuk was compelled to seek a
dwelling-place that even they, with all their horses
like leopards, and all their horsemen like evening
wolves, could not invade. They had hunted
Habakkuk all his life, up into his high tower, till he
is now far more of his time in his high tower than
he is on the street, or even in the temple of Jerusalem.
And till, at last, Habakkuk has come to
this, that he asks for no more in this world but to be
let walk on his "high place" into which he has been
wont so often to climb. In Paul's seraphic words,
Habakkuk's whole conversation is now in heaven.
He has gone up upon his high tower so often, and
has set himself for such long seasons on his watch,
that he is now far more in heaven than on earth.
Habakkuk will not only, all his remaining days,
"watch" and "wait" on his high tower, but
Habakkuk will
walk there. He will
dwell there.
His true home and his sure dwelling-place will be up
there. Till, when the "beatific vision" comes,--
which will soon come to Habakkuk, and will not
tarry,--it will find him walking, and waiting for
it on his high places. "If ye then be risen with
Christ, seek those things which are above, where
Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your
affection on things above, not on things on the
earth ... When Christ, who is our Life; shall
appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory."
