Mercy & Justice in Nineveh

The Burden of Nahum and the Comfort of God’s Justice

Amen. Good singing this morning. So apparently, the other night, there was a debate on television. And I didn't watch the debate, actually, I just watched clips. But I gathered enough from that event that you should really be praying for our country, right?

And I'm not a prophet, I'm not the son of a prophet, but I do know some prophets in the scripture. And we're going to turn to one of those today and begin our new series, The Book of Nahum. That's page 1 ,279 in my Bible.

So I don't know if that helps you at all, but that's where I'm at, The Book of Nahum. Now what Nahum teaches us, and we read through that this morning, and you think, boy, that's not necessarily a book that you think should encourage a person.

But actually, what we'll see as we go through this, the fact that God is sovereign, even over his enemies, the fact that God is going to bring judgment on those who rebel against him, this is extremely comforting to the believer.

Listen, I want to remind you this morning that evil does not have the final say. And as we think about this Sunday before the 4th of July, and we think about celebrating our country, and we have much to celebrate, much to be thankful for, but as we read the Book of Nahum, we should also be concerned as we remember that God does not forget a nation that turns its back on him.

We know in Psalm 33, it says, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Well, amen. If the Lord is the Lord of a nation, that nation is blessed. But we should say also, woe to a nation that turns its back on the goodness and wonderful truth that God has revealed to us in his word.

And so we should consider all these things as we begin today, The Book of Nahum. We're just going to read verse 1. We've already read the book. We're just going to read verse 1 in chapter 1. And the sermon today is simply this, it'll make sense in just a minute, I think.

Mercy and justice in Nineveh. Would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word, Nahum chapter 1 and verse 1. An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh. Father, would you bless our time as we begin a new book of the Bible?

Help us, Lord, to listen, to not be those who just hear the word, but those who hear it and take heed, apply it to our lives. We know we're desperate for the Holy Spirit to do this. We know that we come in this morning not deserving your kindness, but we appeal to you.

We appeal to your word that says you are good and compassionate and you remember your steadfast love to a thousand generations. We come appealing these things in the name of Christ, our King. We pray that you would receive this prayer in His name.

We pray that you would bless us as we seek to study your word and know more about you. Let us remember that we don't want to just take what we think is good in the Bible and throw away the scary. We want to take everything in the scriptures and we want to know you for who you are and how you have revealed yourself.

Help us, God. Help me to have a bigger picture of who you are. Expand our hearts and our minds this morning to encompass as much as humanly possible the great God of the Bible and help us to not have errant views and help us to understand your sovereignty, your justice, your goodness, your compassion, your mercy.

We pray your blessing today. We pray it all in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. We went through this last night with the children and the kids kind of joked with me like, you know, how long we're going to be in this.

I don't know, but I did tell them I'll probably spend a couple of weeks in verse one just as an introduction and they gave me a hard time about that. So anyway, but we want to look there in verse one.

It says an oracle concerning Nineveh. Now I believe it's in the King James. This word can be translated as burden and the idea here is the prophet Nahum has a burden. He has a weighty message of judgment that must be delivered to the people of Nineveh.

This is oracle for the text says concerning Nineveh. This is the well known city of the Assyrians. Now I say well known, but is Nineveh really well known? Well, it's only well known, I think, because we have the book of Jonah, essentially a spoiler alert here.

Nineveh was wiped off in 612 BC. Nineveh was wiped off the face of the earth, as it were. But we remember Nineveh because of the book of Jonah. In fact, the early church fathers around 300 or 400 wrote this.

David, the Ninevites, Hezekiah and the son of Manasseh are eminent examples of repentance. In other words, Nineveh is seen in the scriptures and we acknowledge this as an eminent example of repentance.

So when we think about Nineveh, we're usually thinking about the book of Jonah. And in fact, I find it fascinating that there are two whole books of the Bible, albeit they're small books, but two whole books of the Bible are focused on this pagan, non-Jewish city.

That's interesting. Jonah and Nahum. Now, Jonah is part one, if you will. Now, this is very important. Historically, Jonah is part one. Jonah is around 750 BC. And then Nahum is part two. And we'll just say for round numbers, it's around 650 BC.

It's a reminder, having both these books dedicated to Nineveh, it's a reminder that God is sovereign and he is God of all the nations. But what we're going to do in this sermon is we're going to talk about mercy and justice in Nineveh.

And while you don't have to know the book of Jonah in order to understand Nahum, I do think we are going to look at Jonah this morning. It's just two books to the left. So you go left, you go Micah and then another book, Jonah.

I think it's helpful for our purposes to consider a bit of a review of Jonah. And then we'll jump back into our text in Nahum 1 -1. What you need to know is that both Nahum and Jonah, like the whole Bible, are God centered, unapologetically God centered books.

But I want to give a bit of an overview for Jonah and then that will take us into this morning to the book of Nahum. So turn back two books in your Bibles to the book of Jonah. And let me just offer a few overview, if you will, an overview of the book of Jonah, a few points of an overview.

God Remembers Runaways

Number one, what does Jonah tell us about? And this is going to get us kind of running into the book of Nahum. The first thing is the book of Jonah teaches us that God remembers runaway. So we're going to start we're just going to do an overview of Jonah for a minute.

This will take most of the sermon, but it's important to run into Nahum after appreciating the book of Jonah. So Jonah chapter one, verse one says, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh.

So it's the same city, that great city and call out against it for their evil has come up before me. So Nineveh's evil is not a new thing. Their evil has come up before God. He's going to send to them a preacher.

Verse three. But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

So Jonah now physically removes himself from God's place of blessing Israel. He flees Israel. He heads to Tarshish. Then in the midst of a, you know, the story in the midst of a terrible storm, Jonah falls fast asleep.

He'd done all he could to run away from God, to forget about God. But I'm giving you a point here. God had not forgotten about Jonah. So verse four says,. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea.

There was a mighty tempest on the sea, so the ship threatened to break up. Then down in verse 17, you know this one quite famously, probably. And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Now, I know you know this story, but we're just reviewing here for a minute. The word appointed, the idea that God appointed this fish, the idea that Scripture is communicating to us here. And you need to get this point is that God is meticulously sovereign over his creation.

It's not just that God sits in the heavens and is in final control like he has the final say. Rather, he's meticulously sovereign. He is involved in his creation. He is sovereign in this story and in all truth over the winds and the waves and over the fish and over every circumstance in Jonah's life, but also ours.

God's sovereign over the presidential debate. God's sovereign over the state of our country. God's sovereign over every minute detail. And so Jonah thinks that running away from God means that God is going to let him go.

But for the believer, this is never true. God does not let us go. God does not forget about us. God remembers runaways and he appoints a great fish physically this morning. You are in the right place.

You're where you're supposed to be. You're in church. But I wonder if some of you in here would say maybe you're kind of like Jonah spiritually. Disobedience to God is running away, even if you haven't physically yet boarded a ship to Tarshish.

I want you to think about for just a moment this morning, is your life characterized by pursuing obedience to Christ, submitting your life to the Lord Jesus and his word, reading and listening and meditating upon his word?

Are you walking with Jesus in fullness of joy? If you say to me, well, no, I'm not. But God doesn't really care about those kind of things. I'm just one person. Surely there are bigger issues in the world today.

I say to you, friend, God remembered Jonah and God remembers you and he cares about his people and he cares about our holiness. So when we stop our running, we often think that it's a long way back to God.

But we need to remember that's not true, because when we finally turn around and see that, though we've ran from him, God is not far from us. He's pursued us the whole time, just like he did Jonah. If you're in that category this morning, will you stop your escape, your attempted escape from the Lord?

It is to no avail. Quit running and rest in Christ. God remembers runaway. Secondly, that we learn from the book of Jonah and this is all going to run us into the book of Nahum in just a minute. But the other thing is God rescues resistors.

So back in verse 17, the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Now, it's funny, isn't it? Or I should maybe funny is not the right word.

Sometimes God rescues us in ways that we weren't looking for. Right. And I think the book of Jonah, particularly this part of Jonah, has been misrepresented at times. We see this fish is this great act of judgment on Jonah.

Rather, I tend to see it as a great tool of mercy for Jonah. God could have just let Jonah run away from him. But instead he says, no, I'm not going to allow that to happen. Now, some think Jonah actually died in the belly of the fish.

I'm not here to debate that this morning. It could be true. Jonah might have actually died. And what happened is actually God resurrected him. That's possible. But here's the point. Jonah had resisted God's call to go to Nineveh.

And he resigned his prophetic office. He leaves town. Now he's beyond the hope of rescue. Right. He told God, no. But here's a point you need to remember about this sermon and in the future sermons that we'll have in Nahum.

God always wins. God's plans and purposes, by the way, are actually never thwarted. They were not thwarted by us. They're not thwarted by Jonah. Jonah had not fallen here into God's ocean of condemnation, but rather his ocean of mercy.

And instead of letting Jonah sink to the bottom of the sea like a forgotten rock, like he deserved, God sovereignly appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah so that he would be rescued. Listen, let me put it to you this way.

The grace of God actually cannot be stopped. Two things I think we can see from this. One, God is a God of means. So verse 17, the Lord appointed a great fish. You understand that God could have just rescued Jonah.

He could have just pulled him up from the ocean. He could have. He could have rescued Jonah in any number of ways. But God is a God of means. He can work by himself. He spoke and the universe came into existence.

But often God chooses to work through means means like you like family worship in your home. You say, well, if God is sovereign, he's going to save. Or not save my child, regardless of what I do. Well, hold on just a second.

We don't look at God's sovereignty that way. We understand the sovereignty of God in conjunction with the responsibility of man. And so we understand that God works through means. And so we we gather our children around the word of God and we sing and we teach the word and we catechize.

We do these things. Why? Because we believe that God is a God of means. We stand out on the corner and we preach the gospel of God's sovereignty. Isn't he going to say, well, amen, God is going to say, but he's going to say through means.

So we preach the gospel, we share, we pass out tracks, we knock on doors. We do these things because God is a God of means. In scripture, God uses kings and peasants. He uses animals and forces of nature.

By the way, let's take this out of our category. Let's take this category out of our vernacular, out of our language. There's no such thing as mother nature. Right. That's true. There's not mother nature.

God uses nature. God uses plants and plagues to bring about his sovereign purposes. And God isn't just foreseen what will happen in the world today and then responding to it. Rather, he has decreed and declared and appointed and ordained in such a way that he will bring about his purposes through various means.

God is a God of means. Brings me to my second observation about that. God rescues in unexpected ways. The way that God rescued Jonah is not the way that Jonah probably would have signed up for. I mean, would you sign up for that?

Would you want the way for God to bring you back into a healthy walk with him to be out in Lake Sylvia and be swallowed by the Lock Sylvia monster or whatever? I just made that made that up as I went.

Is that how you want to be brought back to that was funnier to some of you than it should have been. But listen, is that how you want to be brought back? Like we wouldn't sign up for that. But sometimes God brings difficult situations into your life that you didn't sign up for.

But the purpose is for restoration. The purpose is for reconciliation. God rescues in unexpected ways. I want to tell you this morning that nothing in this life is meaningless and that God is using all circumstances in our life to conform us into the image of Christ.

We quote that verse Romans 828, knowing that God works all things together for good, for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose. So we can look at the big picture of our lives and we can say everything that God allows and everything that God directly brings into our life is serving a higher purpose, even if it's painful at time.

And that higher purpose for the believer is to conform us ever more into the image of Christ. Now, in Jonah's case, he had deliberately disobeyed God and he had fled and he ran the other direction. And now God got his attention.

God is a rescuing God. Some of you this morning, perhaps you're thinking, well, you know, I've gone too far this time. God is just ready to give up on me. The reality is, if you're a Christian, that's not true.

God is ready to rescue you when God brings conviction or circumstances into your life to get your attention, to expose your sin. It's not because he hates you because he loves you. One of the chief means that God uses in our lives and exposing sin is the preaching of the word of God.

And so we need the word of God preached because God uses it in our lives to show us areas that we need to change. So if you're sitting under the preaching of the word of God and you feel conviction for sin or you feel there's an area you need to change, you need to think that's not the preacher being mean.

That's not God being mean. This is God being gracious. The word of God is the tool that he often uses to change us, to shape us, to conform us to Christ. And he does this out of his love. Now, this doesn't mean that God is OK with your sin.

Don't think that doesn't mean that God won't do things in your life to prune you and shape you into the person he would have you to be. In fact, the greatest link that God went to was to send his own son in our likeness.

And this leads me to my third point. Thirdly, so God rescue runaways, God is rescues resistors, redeems. Thirdly, sorry, I'm stumbling here. Thirdly, God redeems repentant rebels. So thirdly, I want you to see that even in the belly of the fish, Jonah knew Jonah chapter two, verse nine.

But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Sometimes if you want to know my soteriology, if you want to know what is your position?

Well, sometimes labels can be helpful, but sometimes I could just say I'm a Jonah to nine Christian. I believe that salvation from start to finish is of the Lord, just like Jonah confessed. Now, what's beautiful about Jonah's luxurious three day and three night stay here in the fish hotel is that Jesus says it's actually a type of him.

Now, listen to Matthew 12. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. But he answered them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

Listen what Jesus is saying. Jonah left Israel, fleeing from God. He eventually finds himself in the belly of the fish. But the son of God left the glories of heaven in the perfect will of God. He takes on human flesh.

He enters into our turf. He is born of the Virgin Mary. He lives obediently before God the Father. And then he's crucified on the cross for sinners, bearing God's punishment for those who repent and believe.

And then he's laid in the tomb. And the analogy here is Jonah emerged from the belly of the fish after three days and three nights. And some say that he died and was resurrected or that he just lived and he was just in there three days, three nights.

That's not important so much as to know that he was in the belly of the fish and then he emerges from the fish. He preaches repentance or he preaches judgment and the men of Nineveh repent. But then someone greater than Jonah, our Lord Jesus, God himself has come to us, took on flesh, conquered the sting of death.

He entered the tomb. He does not stay there. He rises again on the third day, victorious over sin and death and hell. And mankind's greatest need of redemption from the wrath of God has been satisfied in Christ.

And we proclaim his name. We're not like the Ninevites. Most people reject that now because God is holy. We must give an account for our sin. We'll see that in Nineveh in Nahum. But for all those who look to Christ in faith, God has accomplished our redemption in what Jesus has done.

Jesus has borne the wrath of God so that we can find atonement in him. God redeems rebels. We're undeserving, but God has made provision for our sin by sending his own son to take it upon himself so that by faith in Christ, we are clothed in his righteousness and have perfect standing before God.

We're just given a little bit of a overview of the book of Jonah. And this last point is going to help, I think, as we run into Nahum. So the third fourth point, God remembers runaways, rescues resistors, redeems rebels.

And fourthly, God receives repenters. Now, the foundation for our reconciliation with God is the person and work of Christ and the means by which the person and work of Christ is applied to our souls is the gift of faith.

And repentance is always a part of faith. Wherever you see true repentance, there is faith. Wherever there is true faith, you will always see repentance. Now, this is important as we get into Nahum in just a moment.

One of the greatest, if you want to call it revival, that ever happened is little talked about today. But one of the greatest revivals, if you will, that ever happened was sometime around 750 B .C. It wasn't in Israel.

It wasn't in America. Right. It was in this wicked city of Nineveh. Thousands of souls repented. You say, did they really? Jesus says in Matthew 12, they repented. And Jonah chapter three says it this way.

Let's just read. Let's just read all of chapter three. It's only 10 verses. So you know the story. God says, go to Nineveh. Jonah says no. Jonah runs away. God gets a hold of Jonah. Jonah is spit up from the fish and now he's going to go.

So chapter three. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh.

He learned his lesson, right? According to the word of the Lord. Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city. Three days journey in breath. Jonah began to go into the city, go in a day's journey. And he called out, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

And the people of Nineveh, the greatest miracle in Jonah is not the fish and Jonah. Here it is right here. And the people of Nineveh believed God. These wicked Assyrian people, you know, that they would cut, they would skin people alive and it's kind of gross to think about, but that's what they do.

They would they would fillet people. They would skin them alive. Much wickedness in this city. And they believed God. And they called for a fast and they put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.

The word reached the king of Nineveh and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock taste anything.

Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way. That's repentance. And from the violence that is in his hand, who knows?

God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them.

And he did not do it. It's very important this morning. Think of the compassion that God had upon this city. You know how compassionate it is of God that he sent them a preacher? And you might say, well, Jonah didn't have the best motivation and Jonah might not have had the best sermon.

But let me tell you this morning, he was a preacher of God's word nonetheless. And what compassion God had upon this city to send them a preacher to work his grace, to bestow his mercy. And the people of Nineveh, by the grace of God in their hearts, repented.

Repentance, by the way, we see in this text, it's not just saying you're sorry. It's an attitude of the heart. You see that here. It's owning your sin. It's even accepting the consequences of your sin.

You understand they weren't repenting just because they're like, well, if we repent, God will show mercy. Actually, they were repenting and they were saying, we don't know if God's going to show mercy or not, but we're going to humble ourselves before him.

I think we confuse feeling sorry for sin with repentance. Feeling guilty for sin is part being part of made in the image of God, like a person who sins against the Lord. They should feel guilty. They it's not popular to say this.

They should feel shame. Shame is a shame is a great tool from from God. It's a great mercy of God. When a people feel shame for sin, that's good. They should feel shame for sin. You should be very concerned.

And you can say this when you look at our society, when people don't feel shame for sin, when they take their fist and they raise it up at God and they shout their abortion or they have pride and all sorts of wicked things that should alarm you.

But when you feel shame for sin, that's good. But listen, shame for sin in and of itself is not the totality of repentance. True repentance is understanding our sin as an offense against the holy God, as rightly deserving his judgment, seeing God's way is right, your way is wrong.

And then it's not just feeling bad for it, but turning from it, turning from sin and seeking now to walk in newness of life. And repentance, by the way. Should be preached to unbelievers, if you're an unbeliever, what you need to do is repent.

Jesus came preaching this in Mark one fifteen, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent, therefore, and believe the gospel. Unbeliever, if you're here, you need to repent of your sin, not just feel bad for it and feel ashamed of it, but to turn from it and to turn to Christ.

But repentance is also for believers. It was Martin Luther that said the believer lives a life of repentance, a life of walking in newness of life. Christians are habitual repenters. Now, there's so much more we could say about the book of Jonah, but this is not a sermon series through the book of Jonah.

So with all that background in your mind, let's go back now to your right to the book of Nahum. All that in the back of your mind, 750 BC, God sends a preacher to Nineveh. He preaches judgment. Forty days you'll be overthrown, right?

They repent. God has compassion and mercy. Now, fast forward to some hundred years later. We'll talk about this more next week about dating this book. So we're around 650 BC and God says this verse one, an oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.

Now, when you think about the book that describes Nineveh, you probably think about the book of Jonah. You can be honest with yourself. You should be honest. But if you came in here this morning and I said, what book of the Bible do you think of when I say Nineveh?

Probably most of us would say Jonah. There's nothing wrong with that. That's good. God worked a great revival, great work in Nineveh in Jonah's time. And we praise God for his mercy and his compassion upon the city of Nineveh.

But here's the reality. If you were watching, let's say, a two part movie on Nineveh, you've seen part one. Here's how part one closes. Part one closes with Jonah in a little temper tantrum, right? He's mad that God was compassionate on the wicked Assyrians.

But nevertheless, Nineveh repented. You've seen part one. Hey, you guys want to see the sequel? OK, they used to have these things when I was younger, a little flat disk we called DVD. So we put in the DVD, you put in and we're going to watch part two, Nineveh part two.

What's going to happen now? I can't wait to see part two because now Nineveh is going to be a city of righteousness. Assyria is going to be a Christian nation. God worked this this grand reality in 750 BC.

Now we're going to watch part two. The streets are going to be without crime. There's going to be righteousness everywhere. This is going to be wonderful. And you put in part two. Hey, wait a second. What happened?

Did I get the wrong movie? And so here's Nahum. It's not what you think. We'll deal with that more next sermon. But for this one, let me tell you that Jonah is a story of God's mercy and Nahum is a story of God's justice.

We see grace in Jonah. We see wrath in Nahum. Nahum essentially says this. OK, I'm going to go and tell you this kind of a point for next week. But in Jonah, God sends a preacher to Nineveh. He doesn't send a preacher to Nineveh and Nahum.

An oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkash. Did you notice that? The book, the book. God says to Jonah, arise and go to Nineveh and preach against it. When God sends a preacher, even if it's in judgment, when God sends a preacher to a nation, it's a good thing.

But God's not going to send a preacher to Nineveh this time. Instead, he's just going to send a book. And this book essentially says this. The judgment of God is coming upon you and there's nothing that you can do about it.

A sobering reflection. This is unique in that it's not a sermon that Nahum is preaching, but it's a book that he's written, a writing, a prophetic vision. You see there, it's a vision that God had given the prophet of the things that are going to take place in Nineveh.

By the way, this reminds us of the trustworthiness of God's word, the vision that God gave Nahum. It does come to pass. Nineveh is completely wiped off the face of the earth in 612 B .C. What God promised to do in the book of Nahum, he brought it to pass.

Now, let's talk about Nahum for a second. We don't know much about this prophet. He is an Elkishite. Does that help you? Right. And an oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.

Well, that doesn't help us because we're not sure where Elkosh is. Some have speculated that it's near Nineveh, because obviously, as you read this book, we read it this morning. Nahum is quite familiar with Nineveh.

He's able to say things. It could be that he had actually seen it himself, or it could be maybe God just helped him to see it in the vision. Some have said, this is interesting, that Elkosh is a village in Galilee.

Well, you know Galilee, it's in northern Israel. In the New Testament, you have the village of Capernaum, but just slow that down just a little bit. Capernaum, right. So some have speculated that Capernaum is actually a translation of the village of Nahum.

So perhaps Elkosh is there in Capernaum and Nahum was a Galilean. Regardless, we know that he was a man of God. We know that he has a burden with boldness. Essentially, can you imagine the boldness? He's going to write this letter and he's going to send it to the leading city, maybe in the whole world at this time, in the midst of its power.

Nineveh is not yet on the decline. He's going to send this letter in the midst of its power and he's going to tell them in graphic imagery that God, the God of Israel, the true God of the Bible, has final say over you.