Behold, The Prince of Peace | Habakkuk 3:1-7

April 13th, 2025

As we come to chapter 3 in Habakkuk today, we are beginning what is know as Holy Week, specifically the Triumphal Entry, or Palm Sunday. And as we think about what happened during this week, it has somewhat of a symphonic movement to it: it moves us from the shouts of “Hosanna!” to the cries of Christ Himself on the cross, then the silence of the tomb, and finally the praises of the resurrection. As we think about these events this week, it’s a highly emotional event for believers. 

It’s easy to romanticize this day as a festive parade with palm branches and praises. It’s not wrong to do that in some sense, but we also need to be grounded in the deeper reality of what Scripture teaches us about what is happening on this day, what Christ is actually doing and what He is accomplishing. The Triumphal Entry Is not just symbolic, but also an intentional unveiling of our King and His mission on the cross. As Jesus enters Jerusalem, He was not their just to claim a throne, but to be placed on a cross. This is a significant event in universal history. It is so significant; it was recorded in all four gospels indicating its importance to the mission of Christ and His gospel. It’s significance requires us to teach this to our children. This was a clear public proclamation that He was the Messiah, an unveiling, the culmination of what His brothers had been telling Him to do before coming up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths (John 7:1-9), the very thing that all were waiting for. His unveiling was not as an earthly king, but as a spiritual king ruling over a spiritual kingdom triumphing over the hearts of men. This was God’s plan from eternity past, and as God approached this moment, He began to unveil His plan, which included giving praises to His Son. That was the real meaning of the palm branches: The people were praising God Himself, and God was praising His Son. The people were not praising Christ, as they were lost in their sins (they were looking for something else). God, having anointed Jesus by Mary, was now praising Him for His obedience. Jesus was to usher in the spiritual peace, fulfilling what was foretold at his birth in Luke 2:13-14: “And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,14 “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.” It also says that those who heard wondered. Today, those who come to Christ still wonder, as all believers, at who Christ is. This is why the theme of our children’s ministry is “Wonder”. This wonder is the heart’s response to the beauty and works of God through Christ.  This idea of wonder is also why we so enjoy the Christmas season, when we pause, stand back, and wonder at God.

In the aftermath of what followed the Triumphal Entry was the realization of justification by faith. The Old Testament saints looked forward to it as what the law was tutoring them for, what the sacrificial system was getting all believers ready to understand: Because of justification by faith, peace can come rule in our lives. God was preparing His Son, the Prince of Peace, for this time. Every aspect of the events of that day was reflected in the Old Testament scriptures, some directly through prophecy and some indirectly by shadows and types as we examine what was written. What becomes clear in Habakkuk 3 is that Habakkuk sees something just like the Triumphal entry in a different way, centuries before this moment. He didn’t see the palm branches per se, but he did see God on the move. He didn’t hear “Hosanna!”, but he did have a praise arising from his own lips (Habakkuk 3:2).

In this third chapter, Habakkuk gives us something that is very rare: a new type of hymn. This new type of hymn will redefine for all of us what a hymn is. This hymn is a song-shaped prayer. It is a plea for peace in the midst of God’s wrath. Here’s the beauty of this hymn: the same God that is “…comes from Teman… [a]nd… Mount Paran…” ( Habakkuk 3:3) is the same Prince of Peace that is marching into Jerusalem on a colt. In these verses we are not just going to behold Him as fulfillment of prophecy, but as the Prince of Peace. What Habakkuk 3 does for us is bring the Triumphal Entry to life for us and understand the Prince of Peace in a new and unique way. 

As we consider the first part of Habakkuk’s prayer in verses one through verse 3a, his plea for peace is given by first considering its form (v. 1a), its function (v. 1b), and its posture (v. 2a) before his petition in verse 2b.  Starting in verse 3, he starts describing the approach of the Prince of Peace.

The Form and Function (v. 1)

His plea for peace takes an interesting form. It’s interesting because he says it’s “…according to Shigionoth”. The only other place in Scripture we see Shigionoth is in Psalm 7:1, and it means “to be erratic, or ecstatic in song, bringing to it intense emotion”. It’s a rambling, passionate melody that is irregular in its rhythm, marked by its intensity and wildly enthusiasm. The form matches its practical use in everyday life by conveying conflicting ideas: taking the urgency that we feel in the laments of our lives with the excitement and glory we experience in our praises, blending them together. It’s an urgent lament combined with an ecstatic praise; putting it in the form of a poem, song, or prayer. In the cases where this form was used, it was not bound by any formal, strict rhythm but also seemed to have some composition to it nonetheless. It was raw in the way it was presented, all while carrying a tone of intense emotion. This was meant to mimic the agitated soul within a person. You can think of it this way: It’s like taking the elation one gets when you first get the best news you could possibly get in life, and combine it with the intense feelings you have at the moment you first receive the worst possible news. We get this feeling when we sing the song “Crown Him”, where heavy drumbeats accompany Christ’s approaching the cross and one is watching Him be crucified, followed by erratic tones watching Him on the throne in Heaven. At the same time, it is not an ordinary poem set to music, but is actually instead a prayer.  

Habakkuk is not just emoting horizontally (outwardly) but directing his emotion vertically (upward) to God in prayer, something very unfamiliar to us. Iin other words, It’s an urgent, exciting prayer of lament. He is not just having an emotional meltdown. Instead, he is making a dramatic, spiritual appeal to his Creator. 

This brings up a point about emotions today in our current state of Christianity: We should see emotions as a gift from God, not a hindrance. Today we tend to categorize our emotions into “good” vs “bad”, pursing the “good” and trying to eliminate the “bad”. Emotions are important to how we relate to God and each other. God gave them to us for a specific reason, so we need to embrace and understand them correctly while not being afraid of them. While we are sometimes rightfully taught not to trust our feelings, Scripture teaches a more balanced view: We are to bring our emotions under the guidance of God’s truth and in step with the Spirit, so as to better understand what is happening around us. Genesis 1:26-27 says: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” God, therefore, gave us all the ability to feel, to understand our emotions. When things happen our souls also react in the form of emotions. God also acts in ways anthropomorphically according to His character, or His holy dispositions. For example, He rejoices, He grieves, He has compassion, and He understands anger and love. He is different from us in that, unlike us in sin, His emotions are not reactive to external forces. He doesn’t have “mood swings”, even though it may appear like that in Scripture sometimes, where He expresses Himself anthropomorphically in order for us to be able to understand Him. When it comes to us, some in the faith see stoicism (or lack of emotion) as indication of reverence or holiness, but this is not wise. Instead, it is silencing the heart. We need to understand our emotions as mechanisms to understand what is happening around us. God, unlike us, expresses His emotions sinlessly, as part of His perfect character. Jesus exemplified this righteous anger in Mark 3 when He responded to the Jewish leaders’ misapplication of the Sabbath requirements. Likewise, Christ’s love for the rich young ruler in Mark 10 was also a perfectly executed act of His divine character. God’s emotions are dependable because they are grounded in His immutability (does not change) and His impassability (He cannot be acted upon externally). As we found out in our study of Romans 1-7, we are affected by the fall:  our heart, mind, emotions, and actions are all affected by external forces, not intrinsic to our character in the way it is God’s. Take anger: God’s anger is grounded in His perfect character (it’s holy, measured, and eternally just), always in response to evil, while ours is the result of selfish sin, rooted in pride, jealously, frustration, and ego.  Romans 1:18 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,” 

Christ exemplified this when He cleansed the temple the second time, just after His Triumphal entry, because of His holiness, and in response to the affront to God. Christ’s anger was purposeful and controlled. We should embrace God’s anger as a backdrop for His mercy (Ephesians 2). Therefore, we can praise God for His anger because it is righteous. Given this and the fact that believers are indwelled and redeemed by the Holy Spirit, we are no longer ruled by sinful passions (that’s who we were before!), but now we have the ability to respond righteously with our affections towards God in worship. This is why believers can be angry at what God is angry at and not sin, as Ephesians 4:26 states. The difference is this: Spirit-empowered anger is slow, measured, redemptive, causes life to flourish, rooted in love, jealous for God’s glory, and other’s good. It’s not rooted in pride, control, and bitterness. It is not that angers disappears in a Christian, but that it can now be expressed in a righteous way. We should not avoid nor suppress our emotions, because they are a gift from God. They help us relate to God and others better. Whenever we stray from the design God has for us (e.g. bottle up grief or silence lament), it can lead to the stoicism mentioned earlier. Our emotional lives need to be submitted to the truth and reflect His glory, not buried beneath false piety. We see this throughout Scripture: Jesus wept, David wept, Jeremiah wept, etc.  These were godly emotions rightly expressed. Balanced against that, though, is this point: emotions should not be worshipped, as our culture does, where subjective emotions become spiritual reality, which is not biblical. Emotions should not define truth, but should reflect who we are in Christ Jesus. This goes both ways: too little leads to stoicism while too much emphasis on emotions is not biblical either. True worship isn’t measured by how we feel, but by how we respond to what God has revealed in His word. Jesus tells us to worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24), not one at the expense of the other, but both of them coming together. 

This is what we see happening in Habakkuk, as we approach the prayer in chapter 3.  We tend to think of our devotions being ordered, neatly packaged structured prayers. We need more devotions like Habakkuk’s: highly-emotional, erratic, disordered, raw and maybe even accentuated with music. 

Prayer, then, becomes the primary means by which a believer expresses his/her desires through emotions, bringing them into a deeper fellowship with God. Our emotions should lead us to God, especially through prayer.  In Luke 19:41 as Jesus approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and He cried over it. This was His deep-felt emotion of His understanding Israel’s distance and awareness of knowing what’s coming, in communion with the Father’s will. This is where we find Habakkuk expressing his emotion in prayer, beginning in verse 2.   

The Posture (v. 2a)

Habakkuk starts his prayer with a fearful reverence. He says, “I heard the report about you and I fear.”  The word translated report here is shema, a word we are familiar with. It means a directive, a declaration, a divine act. We know it from the Great Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4-9: “Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!  You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as phylacteries between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”  We need to understand the emotion and imagery that this word is bringing into Habakkuk’s prayer. He is saying, essentially, that in his distress, “I heard the shema”. He’s recalling the redemptive acts of God met them at Sinai and maintained them in the wilderness (these redemptive acts together are a theophany: a visible manifestation of God). This remembrance fuels his prayer and worship. He then launches into this vivid poetic vision of Yahweh’s arrival (vv. 3:3-7). then divine deliverance and judgment (v. 8-15).  

Given this, what emotions does this stir in Habakkuk, and by extension, into our hearts today? For Habakkuk, fear of the Lord led to majestic reverence. For all believers, It should remind us of our smallness and God’s greatness. This is likewise why “Fear is the beginning of wisdom…” (Proverbs 1:17; 9:10). We see this later in verse 3:16 when Habakkuk states, “I heard, and my inward parts trembled…” Habakkuk’s fear is not just some nervous reaction, but is the response of his soul, and his heart is gripped by the weight of God’s glory. That’s what is happening with his fear. His fear is set in the context of this song, sung in this erratic rhythm, in this minor key, producing the kind of emotion that accompanies this reverent awe. It is a fear of being in the presence of majesty, not a fear of judgment since he has faith in the Messiah that he loves. Habakkuk’s intent is intercessory: he brings this to the Lord on behalf of his people. This makes the emotion of godly fear very helpful. It brings clarity to life. We should embrace this type of fear as a means to bring clarity to our lives. Having godly fear draws out this reverent submission to God, and a desire for His will.  Habakkuk takes this fear before God and presents it in worship, seeking the Lord in prayer. That is why he states in verse 2b , “In rage remember compassion.” This is the posture we see in the Triumphal entry, and we see in Christ Himself, as expressed in Hebrews 5:7, “He, in the days of His flesh, offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence.” Note, however, what it is not: With Christ it is not fear, but reverent awe. It is also evident in Jesus’ Gethsemene moment, where He assumes this posture of reverent awe. Again, what makes this so interesting is that, rather than repetitious prayers like ours, this is Habakkuk’s emotional song-shaped cry to God, where prayer, singing, and worship all collide in an unrehearsed way. God sees this as beautiful, and puts it in His word for us.    

The Prayer (v. 2b)

His prayer begins, “…revive Your work in the midst of the years;”. The word for revive just means to bring life into it, or bring it back to what it once was. It has a redemptive idea to it (the shema as mentioned previously). It’s the same thought as in Psalm 85:6, “Will You not Yourself return to revive us, That Your people may be glad in You?”, and at the Triumphal Entry. John 12:13 states, “…took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet Him, and began to shout, “Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, even the King of Israel.” Hosanna means “Save us!”. It’s grounded in the idea that only God alone can save. It’s likewise a cry for mercy in the shadow of judgment. He’s actually bringing forth hope in the midst of wrath, not in his own might, but God’s character, just as Moses did in Exodus 34. Habakkuk’s prayer mimics a prayer that may be more familiar than you think: it’s the prayer of a parent beside the bed of a sick child, the believer watching the collapse of the culture, a spouse in a difficult marriage, or a believer mourning over personal sin. Habakkuk notes that, just when the pain of waiting seems as though it will swallow him, God comes in. This is the procession of Peace.  

The Procession of Peace: The Holy One Approaches (v. 3:3-5)

This is not a subtle approach. It is God coming in with power. Habakkuk sees a vision of God, who He truly is: “God comes from Teman, And the Holy One from Mount Paran.” He sees God on the move. It is reminiscent of a famous line from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where the hearts of the faithful cry out in trembling joy, “Aslan is on the move!”. This is also what the crowd was doing at the Triumphal Entry when they cried Hosanna! They saw that God was on the move. Just as Jesus paused when He crested the hill (as mentioned previously), Habakkuk does the same thing. He says, in essence, “God is on the move! Selah.” Pause and reflect. That concludes our study for today. 

As we enter this Passion Week, it is appropriate to pause and reflect. As you behold the Prince of Peace, make time to:

• Pause and recognize that we are to behold the One who is still on the move.

• Pause before the cross.

• Pause and linger at the Tomb.

• Pause and rejoice at the dawn of His glorious resurrection.

Reflect on:

• He is the One who came to fulfill prophecy.

• As He comes, we should pray that He will remember mercy in the midst of wrath.

• How you may better use your emotions to glorify and worship God.