Nations Come and Nations Go.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Feelings, Death, and Living in Light of the Lord’s Return

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. Michael Lee Abendroth here. Abendroth is fine, if you want to call me that. I prefer that you call me Abendroth, but it doesn�t really matter now, does it? Mike, Pastor Mike, Bishop Mike would not work.

I�d like to be a bishop, wouldn�t that be fun? Anyway, we here in West Boylston, I think, what�s the temperature today? I don�t know. It is, let�s just find out for fun, because it�s fairly cold here, not much snow this winter, but we still have plenty of time.

It is 26 degrees out and it says it feels 15, so we got the feels of 15. It�s all about feelings. How does it feel to you? I hope, by the way, you regularly say, �I think and I feel. I mean, you don�t have to say it like that, but when you think of things, say, �Well, this is what I think about it.

And then when they say, �Well, how do you feel about it Then you tell them how you feel about it, but don�t interchange thinking and feeling, because we want to make sure we do more thinking to start and then we feel later.

Feelings as they say are the caboose, not the engine. I only memorized part of the little lyric from Luther, Martin Luther, �Feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the word of God.

Nothing else is worth believing. That�s good. I don�t memorize much, but death be not proud, and other funeral sonnets. Can you imagine, unless the world is melted and goes up with a roar, as 2 Peter 3 talks about when the Lord Jesus returns, unless that happens first, they�re going to have a funeral for every one of us.

It�s kind of weird to think about. I mean, I�ve officiated lots of funerals, and I don�t know where they hire those people in funeral homes, but they all kind of have that same look, right? They�ve got these dark suits on.

You�ve never seen them before in your life, but they�re like in your little hometown. I�m trying to move my microphone over here, because my back is still not the best. Anyway, you know, they�re all smokers, and they�re going to be coming for you one day, right?

They�re going to do this for you, and boy, that�s just an interesting thought. It makes you want to say, �Well, how do I live now? What do I do? How do I go about life? What�s important I think the older I get, I�m almost 61, that I would be thinking, �Oh, the body�s breaking down.

I don�t want to die anytime soon, but it would be great to have the Lord come back and deal with all these things. My problem is this. I want the Lord to come back to alleviate me of stress and anxiety and pain and trouble and hardship and all those things, versus for His glory, and therefore I just need to think rightly.

Nahum’s Comfort and the Judgment of Nations

Well, we�re looking in No Compromise Radio Land into the book of Nahum, and as you know, the book of Nahum, the title describes the book, right? Comfort. God�s people need comfort as they�re oppressed by Assyria, the capital city of Nineveh, and then we see God�s hand in the foretelling of the destruction of Nineveh.

Now, it did happen, but for the original readers of Nineveh that would hear this oracle that was written down. This destruction was future, but that still gave them, those people of God, comfort. And so I�m looking at this book now in chapter 3 and saying to myself, �Well, what about other nations?

What about our nation? When does God judge a nation? Is God judging America? I mean, you think about all the abortions. Could there be anything worse than that? And at least Tide are right up there, and I don�t want to weigh them out like somehow, you know, I could even.

But the oppression of God�s people causes a reaction from God. It may be delayed, but when you compare yourself to other nations that persecuted God, how�s it going to fare for you, America, for you, England, for you, Germany, wherever you are when you listen?

Chapter 3 in Nahum verses 8 and 9 talk about this comparison. Are you better? Are you better? Are you better? Hey, Assyria, are you better than Thebes? No amon, this city of this God that could not protect itself even though it was more fortified than Nineveh, even though it was stronger than Nineveh, even though it had, verse 9, more allies than Nineveh, even though it had more rivers surrounding it to protect itself than Nineveh.

What happened with Thebes, it didn�t matter if you have a bunch of confederates and allies. It didn�t matter that you had this great Egyptian city of the pharaohs for many years, and it was so great and so mighty.

Actually, Thebes was destroyed just a generation before this book was written, and it was destroyed by, of all people, the Assyrians. And the writer Nahum says, �The Assyrians are done. Right? You think Assyrians are the new kid on the world denomination block?

I said denomination. A new kid on the world denomination block. And I think that denomination would need a bishop. Are you better? Thebes, exiled, Assyria punished her. Right? And what did Assyria do?

Take the kids, infants, dash them into pieces, verse 10, the head of every street, for her honored men were lots cast, and all her great men were bound in chains. You did that, Assyria, to them. You think you�re better?

You really think you�re better? I mean, you�re not even going to take into captivity the children and raise them up as Assyrians? No, here the prophet Nahum makes the condemnation from God clear. Verse 11, �You also will be drunken.

You will go into hiding. You will seek a refuge from the enemy. Nineveh, you�re next. This is what�s going to happen to you. And when you see a drunk person, they can�t fight, and that�s just what�s going to happen with you.

There was lots of drinking, of course, in Nineveh, in Assyria, and the Bibliotheca Historia talks about how the Assyrians were feasting and were very drunk the night that they were attacked, even. And if you drink too much alcohol, you totter and you reel and you�re dizzy and you can�t fight.

And therefore, this isn�t karma. This isn�t what comes around, goes around. This is justice. This is justice from God Almighty. And you are going to be taken care of and basically wiped off the face of the map.

You resist God�s people and persecute them. You�re resisting and persecuting God, and there is going to be judgment. Nations who persecute God�s people are going to fall. I would ask those nations, �Are you better?

Are you better than other nations that have come and gone and they have had all kinds of sins that God has judged them for But at the top of the list, could it be? The persecution and the oppression of God�s people.

Psalm 2 is for those nations, and they ought to kiss the sun lest they perish. And they need to take refuge in this sun. Is America any better than any other country? And of course, our founding fathers, while they might not all have been born-again believers, they understood the Bible, they understood biblical justice and a worldview, and there hasn�t been much persecution of God�s people until lately.

And I think it�s only going to increase. And therefore, I ask the nation, America, when she chastens, oppresses, persecutes God�s people, are you better? Are you better than these other countries? You can�t do that and get away with it.

God knows, God sees. And we, as Christians in America, ought to think, well, we don�t have to worry, God knows and he will bear us up and he will be with us. And this is something that is going to be a blessing, we�re counted worthy, as it were, based on Christ�s work to be persecuted and stand up for the name of Jesus no matter what.

The New State Church, Political Power, and Abortion

Even if there�s a bunch of crazy people out there, the New State Church, like Gospel Coalition folks, Southern Baptist, Russell Moore, all these kind of people, not everyone in those organizations, but a lot of them, I think they kind of function as the New State Church, and that New State Church, although not technically a state church, will operate like one.

And of course, they will be very pro-President Biden, they�ll be very pro-democratic platform, and yet they�ll probably still try to say, well, we do think abortion is sin, but they�ll minimize that.

America, are you better than other nations who are judged by God for the sin of oppressing his people? And then there�s another question I could ask to finish up the book, of Nahum, are you strong enough, nation, to fight God?

Do you think you can fight God? Is it going to be a fair fight? In this section, 12 -19, there�s lots of words for �eat. Eat and consume and devour and eater and all that, and this is a taunt. This is a taunt song.

This is a song, an oracle, a proclamation that Nineveh�s defeat is going to be simple. It�s going to be simple. No matter what their armory was, no matter what their fortresses were, this fight isn�t even fair.

Conquest is going to be so easy. What�s the text say? All your fortresses that you�re trying to protect are like fig trees. What do you mean like fig trees? With first ripe figs, if shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater.

So you shake the tree, and you know what ripe figs do? They just fall off. You can probably open your mouth, see if you can catch them. That�d be a fun game. And so the fortresses are like that. You touch a branch of a fig tree, and this thing falls off.

You touch the fortresses, and they just crumble. That�s the idea. Ripe figs fall off on their own account with just a little bit of push. And here it�s the same thing. The inhabitants, the fortresses, they�re going to drop like fig trees into the mouths of their captors.

I thought of those fruit shakers. You ever seen like a tree shaker for orchards? They�re called mechanical tree shakers. And you hook up this cylinder to shake a tree. And different fruit trees, pecans.

And 1945 in Pomona, California, there was a man named Henry Daly, and he tried to figure out how to get some nuts off his orchard in Pomona where he was growing walnuts. And so he hooks up something, and Jerry rigs it up again, Jimmy rigs, Jerry rigs it up, and got the tractor and hooked it, and shook everything, and it was interesting how he did that.

You can study that on your own. You don�t need a tree shaker for the Ninevites. When the Medes and the Babylonians and the Scythians come in, it�s just going to be destruction. Behold, your troops are women in your midst.

The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies. Fire has devoured your bars. I mean, your soldiers are supposed to be bold and courageous and masculine and manly, and they�re like women, right? They�re not going to be able to help their effeminate soldiers because they�re scared, right?

They can�t do the job. They had curses back in those days. And sometimes you would curse the other army by saying, �We hope your warriors turn into women, and we hope your wives turn into prostitutes.

Those are interesting curses, and here the curse comes from God. I mean, the destruction of Nineveh is going to be so easy, so quick, so� I mean, it�s going to be like they�re defenseless. It�s going to be like they have their gates wide open, and you�re going to have ladies that are afraid, but they�re really the men, and obviously, you know, they can�t stand up to God, right?

It doesn�t matter how great you are. And there�s this taunt, right? I pulled up a few taunts elsewhere in literature. Winston Churchill, he has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

A modest little person with much to be modest about. Irvin S. Cobb said, �I�ve just learned about his illness. Let�s hope it�s nothing trivial. Clarence Darrow, �I�ve never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

Mark Twain, �I didn�t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. And then Mae West, �His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork. These taunts, these jabs, now we have God saying these things.

Verse 14, �Draw water for the siege. You�re going to need a lot of water to drink, and you�re going to need a lot of water to put out fires. So, by the way, get it ready. Strengthen your forts. Come on, go around.

Make sure everything, the ramparts are all set. The wood�s there, the brick, clay, everything�s taken care of. Go into the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold. They�re going to attack your walls, so get some extra stuff there.

Get it out. Be prepared. Come on, the siege. Here comes the siege. Buckle up. This is so ironic, is it not? Hey, when they punch a hole in the wall, here, make sure you�ve got some stuff ready. Get your water.

Come on. It�s going to be a long battle. There verse 15, �The fire will devour you. The sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourself like the locust. I mean, get ready.

Multiply like the grasshopper. Come on. With sarcasm. Come on. You need to get more strength. You need to really buckle up. There�s going to be fire. There�s going to be devastation, and you need to be locust-like in the number of people that you have.

Come on. Don�t fly away like locust elsewhere, right, where they�re sitting, you know, it�s going to cool, and they need more sun, so they fly away. Multiply your numbers. Come on. Get ready. This is almost like with basketball.

I remember we would say things like, �I�m going to take a 20-foot jump shot in that corner on the left, and there�s nothing you can do to stop me. And then it happens, right? I�m going to tell you what�s going to happen, and then I still am going to exterminate you.

�You�ve increased your merchants verse 16, �more than the stars of heavens. The locust spreads its wing and flies away. I mean, you�re rich, you�re beautiful, you�ve got treasure, you�ve got money, you�ve got wealth, you�ve got everything you need, all the traders and all the people, traders, like, you know, trading goods.

�Your princesses are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts, sitting on the fences in the day of cold. When the sun rises, they fly away and no one knows where they are. I mean, where are these people?

Where are the leaders? Where are the princes? Where are the scribes? Where is it? Where are they? I mean, they were a bunch of people and now they�re gone. They�re not going to be any help to you. And so you�ll see in verses 16, 17, and 18, all kinds of different people described from princes and scribes and shepherds and merchants, and I don�t care if you�re low end of the totem pole or you�re at the top, it�s going to be over.

�And when the battle comes, I�ll fly away like a locust. Doom is pronounced by the prophet in Judea. God is the one who�s pronouncing doom. Nations come and go. Empires come and go by the direction of God himself.

That�s what you should be seeing here. Why do nations come and go? Well, they overreach, they don�t have enough food, there�s famine, they can�t control people with such great distances between Rome and the outer skirts of the Roman Empire.

But it�s really God, by the direction of God himself. Belshazzar has a great feast, remember? �And when he had tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, and that the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, might drink from them.

Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, and drank from them. And they praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze, wood, and stone.

Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of a wall of the king�s palace opposite the lampstand, and the king saw the hand as it wrote. Then the king�s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him.

His limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. The king called loudly to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers. Remember that? Hmm. Who�s in charge now? �O king Daniel said, �most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father kingship and greatness and glory and majesty, and he became great above all.

And basically what happens? It says, verse 22,. �And you, his son Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. What�s the writing say?

The writing says, �God has numbered your kingdom and brought it to an end, weighed in the balances and found wanting. Your kingdom is given to the Medes and the Persians. That very night, Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, was killed.

With leaders, nations, empires, when they oppress God�s people, there�s nothing but doom. Will America survive? Answer is, not if she persecutes God�s people. Will the foreperson of the jury please stand?

Have you reached a verdict? Yes, your honor. Will the defendant please stand? You may read the verdict. Guilty. So say you all? Yes, your honor. Gavel bangs down. Here's the verdict for Nahum, or through Nahum to Nineveh, rather.

Death as Shepherd and the End of the Wicked

Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria. Your nobles slumber. Your peoples are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them. There is no easing your hurt. Your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you.

For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil? And that's how the book ends. How many books in the Bible end with a question? Two. Jonah and Nahum. No hope. No hope of restoration. No hope of repentance.

It's over. One author said it has taken until the final two verses to discover the identity of the mysterious male in the book of Nahum. In two verses of taunts, Nahum speaks to the king of Assyria. He is one whose yoke is broken, chapter one.

He is the one whose line dies out, chapter one. He is the one futilely directing Nineveh's defense, chapter two. He is the one who has to watch Nineveh's destruction, chapter two. It's a death blow. It's not a skin wound.

It's not a surface cut. It's over. It's as good as done. A fatal injury. Their shepherds, their leaders, their guides, they're just gone. Matter of fact, it is Psalm 49 with one of the most scary Psalm verses in all of the Psalms.

Death shall be their shepherd. If you're not trusting in the Lord Jesus as the great shepherd, as the chief shepherd, and as the good shepherd, the one who's been raised from the dead, he's the chief shepherd, or great shepherd, rather.

He's the good shepherd because he lays down his life for the sheep. He's called the good shepherd, great shepherd, and chief shepherd. I don't know why he's called the chief shepherd. Out of all the shepherds, he's the chief, obviously, but I'm just trying to remember my theology there for a second.

But if you're not trusting in this prophet, priest, and king Jesus, your shepherd is death. We start off the show by talking about death and funerals, and maybe that was last show. Who knows? But can you imagine having a funeral and all the things that are happening behind the scenes while people are grieving?

The unbeliever, of course, their body's just there, but where's their soul? And you just go, oh, how awful. I mean, there's grieving above ground with the people that are alive, but how about the soul that has death only as a shepherd?

Wow, that's scary. And just like with Nahum and temporally for Nineveh, there's no easing your hurt. It's the same thing. It's the same thing for eternal hell. How awful that must be. How this book ends with this rhetorical question, and you're like, oh, wow, this verdict.

How could it ever be overturned? It won't be, because nations that oppress God's people get judged. And therefore, that's what we should be praying, Lord, protect your people. It's fine to love your nation.

It's fine to be patriotic. And you say, Lord, grant those leaders righteous decisions, wise decisions, decisions that would reflect right things called righteousness. My name's Mike Abendroth. I am No Compromise Radio.

This is No Compromise Radio. Stay tuned. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.