Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
– Habakkuk 3:17–18
What a passage. What a statement of faith here at the end of the book of Habakkuk. Just get the imagery. I mean, just phrase after phrase after phrase saying: “Things are barren. Things feel hopeless, things are dry. The fig tree is not blossoming. There’s no fruit on the vines. The olive produce is totally failing. The fields are yielding no food. The flock is totally cut off from the fold, and there’s no herd in the stalls. Everything is empty”.
Habakkuk 3:17–18 points to a joy that surpasses hardship.
You ever feel like this? Nothing is working out like it’s supposed to. You ever feel dry, barren, despairing, depressed? I don’t mean to make us depressed, but that’s the picture that Hebrews 3:17 is painting. And then verse 18 says, “Yet… in light of all of this, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation”.
Hear the good news of Habakkuk 3:18. And this is not glossing over the realities of verse 17 and the hard that’s in those realities. But this verse is saying, there’s a source of joy that supersedes barrenness, dryness, despair, and depression in this world. There’s a source of joy in the salvation of God. No matter how empty things feel in this world, you can still have joy. You can still have hope.
You keep going on in verse 19, you have strength. God, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer’s. The Lord makes me tread on my high places. He gives strength to us in the middle of the weakness that comes from hard days.
So I just want to encourage us today. Particularly any who are walking through hard days. There’s a source of joy in the middle of the hard that’s found in God himself. And just looking to God, being with God, and trusting in him and his salvation.
Habakkuk 3:17–18 reminds us God is our source of joy and strength.
And for those who are walking through great days right now, hold on to Habakkuk 3:17–18 and come back to it when the days are hard. Remember, there’s a source of joy and strength that you can have in God, the God of your salvation, no matter what happens in this world.
Oh God, we praise you for Habakkuk 3:17–18. We praise you for this reality in Habakkuk’s life as he rejoiced in you in this moment. And God, we pray for that reality in our lives, in moments where everything around us feels like the big tree’s not blossoming, vines producing no fruit, no herd in the stalls.
When everything feels empty, God, we pray that we would see a fresh way that we have fullness in you, that our source of joy is not ultimately in how full the stalls are or how the fig tree is blossoming, or how this or that is working out in our lives or our families or our work or in the world around us, but that our joy is found in you. Period. And that joy will last forever.
That the joy we have in you, the God of our salvation, will never ever, ever fail us. That there will never be a time where we don’t have you as the source of our joy. No matter what happens in this world, even when this world is over, even when we’re no longer here in this world, we will take joy in You, the God of our salvation. We rejoice in you forever.
This verse reminds us to comfort other with these truths.
God, we praise you for this reality. We praise you, Jesus for making this reality possible for us, our Savior, our joy. And God, we pray you’d help us to live in this joy and spread this joy.
God help us to lead others in this fallen world who are struggling through all kinds of things in their own lives. God help us to lead them, to point them to the fullness that’s found in you, the joy that’s possible in you, the salvation that’s found in you.
Help us to encourage brothers and sisters in Christ today with this word, especially if things are going great in our lives, or even if things are really hard in our lives. Regardless, God, we pray that your joy in us, your comfort to us would overflow into joy and comfort in others’ lives today in deep ways.
Prayer for the Beni Amer Beja People
And God, we pray that you would help us to spread the everlasting joy of Jesus to people who don’t know you in this fallen world, around us, and people around the world. God, when we pray today for the almost 3 million Beni Amer Beja people of East Africa, God, we pray that the Beni Amer Beja people would be reached with the joy of Jesus, with the salvation of Jesus that they might find eternal joy, everlasting joy in you. God, please may it be so. We pray for them all of this in the name of Jesus, our Savior, and our source of eternal joy, including joy today. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
