Nahum 3:4: The Many Harlotries of the Harlot

All right, we're in Nahum. We're going to read chapter 2, verse 13, through chapter 3, verse 7.

Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. I will burn up her chariots in smoke. A sword will devour your young lions.

I will cut off your prey from the land, and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard. Woe to the bloody city, completely full of lies and pillage.

Her prey never departs. The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of the wheel, galloping horses and bounding chariots, horsemen charging, swords flashing, spears gleaming, many slain, a mass of corpses and countless dead bodies.

They stumble over the dead bodies. All because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the charming one, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations by her harlotries and families by her sorceries.

Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. And I will lift up your skirts over your face and show to the nations your nakedness, and to the kingdoms your disgrace.

I will throw filth on you and make you vile and set you up as a spectacle. And it will come about that all who see you will shrink from you and say,

Nineveh is devastated. Who will grieve for her? Where will I seek comforters for you?

Again, these are very difficult words coming from Nahum the prophet to the

Israelites about Nineveh. So just a real quick recap, verses 2 and 3 from last week.

Nahum engages the reader's sense of sight and sound. He engages their senses to describe what will happen to Assyria.

Crack, clatter, gallop, jolt is designed to create a sound in our mind, a sense of what's coming for Assyria.

Familiar with the sounds of war, Assyria would now be the one attacked and destroyed. Remember, they were always the ones pursuing the other nations and attacking them.

Now, it's their turn to be attacked and destroyed. And they are now going to hear those sounds that they've caused to other nations.

God's justice will be accomplished and demonstrated for all to see. Now, Pastor always talks about this book by Jay Adams called

The Grand Demonstration. If you haven't read it, I would suggest you get it. It's a very, very good book. It explains how everything that happens from Genesis to Revelation, everything that happens on the earth here is a grand demonstration of all the attributes of God for his namesake, for his glory, and how he works all things together for good for those whom he's chosen.

This is all about God's story and how he demonstrates his love, his mercy, his grace, and his justice on the earth.

The Grand Demonstration by Jay Adams. Nations that live by the sword will die by the sword.

This is going to happen to Assyria and any other nation who decides, oh, we're going to kill people for our benefit.

They're going to be killed for God's benefit. You live by the sword. You will die by the sword.

There will be many slain, a mass of corpses and countless dead bodies. They stumble over the dead bodies.

Nineveh will be marked by death, theirs. This will be a prefiguring of Sheol, the place of the dead, and ultimately a prefiguring of hell.

All right? Hell is full of dead souls. When I say dead, in the

Hebrew understanding of dead, it means separated from God. Now, how can souls in hell be separated from God if God is omnipresent?

They're going to be separated from the blessing of God, not the justice of God. They are going to long to get away from God's presence, but they never will be able to.

God's justice will continually be poured out on them, giving them what they deserve. Not something that they don't deserve.

Assyria and Nineveh is a picture of what the realm of the dead will be filled with. Verse three, four, this is the verse we're going to talk about today.

All because of the many holotrees of the harlot, the charming one, the mistress of sorceries who sells nations by her holotrees and families by her sorceries.

The reason for judgment, the many holotrees. The verse uses figurative language to present reasons for the destruction of Nineveh.

So holotrees, what's a holotree? As the capital of Idalus Assyria, Nineveh continually engaged in many violations of God's will.

Holotree is like whoring. It's an unprincipled and immoral woman who's deceitful and disloyal.

So Assyria, Nineveh is the capital of Assyria, so when I say Nineveh, it means Assyrian, and when

I say Assyria, it means Nineveh, it's the same thing. Assyria is acting like a harlot, acting like a prostitute.

Charming, deadly charms and sorceries, the ESV says. Nineveh, with its power and wealth, exerted a corrupting influence throughout the

Near East. They were constantly getting people to comply with their wishes and getting them to become part of Assyria and pay tribute to the king, and then they would use them to do other things in the kingdom.

Sells, betrays, the monarchy based in Nineveh did not hesitate to use treachery and deceit, seen in A .M.

3 .1, to achieve its aims. So these are the three things that were mentioned in this verse.

Harlotries, deadly charms, or the charming one, the mistress of sorcery who sells, that word sells means betrays.

Nineveh betrays the nations that it enters into covenant with. Nineveh used her wealth, her power, her witchcraft, to seduce the nations around her to worship and serve her gods,

Asher, Ishtar, and others, the gods to whom she gave credit for her military successes.

So anybody remember what Asher was the god of? Asher is the god of war, okay?

They worship the god of war, okay? So this obviously is why Assyria and Nineveh act the way they do.

Ishtar, anybody know what Ishtar is the god of? Fertility, okay?

Wanted to perpetuate more people. They wanted to expand Assyria. So Ishtar was the goddess of fertility.

Many other nations did the exact same thing. We look in the scriptures, we see Isaiah 23.

At the end of 70 years, the Lord will visit Tyre. This is just one nation out of a bunch. And she,

Tyre, will return to her wages and will prostitute herself with all the kingdoms of the world on the face of the earth.

Her merchandise and her wages will be holy to the Lord. It will not be stored or hoarded, but her merchandise will supply abundant food and fine clothing for those who dwell before the

Lord. So here you have Tyre acting as a harlot. And guess what? Even Israel, right?

We learn in Ezekiel, at the head of every street, you, meaning Jerusalem, built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring.

You also played the whore with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, multiplying your whoring to provoke me to anger.

Behold, therefore, I stretched out my hand against you and diminished your allotted portion and delivered you to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the

Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior. So here you have Israel, the chosen nation of God, to bring forth the

Messiah, is now using its position as a prostitute with the other nations, okay?

Becoming greedy in and of themselves, feeding themselves. He goes on, you played the whore also with the

Assyrians because you were not satisfied. Yes, you played the whore with them and you still were not satisfied.

You multiplied your whoring also with the trading land of Chaldea. And even with this, you were not satisfied.

So all of the things that Israel does, Assyria does, who try to get worldly goods or pleasure, all those things will never satisfy because we were built, created to worship

God. He's the only one who's gonna fulfill our deepest longings, our deepest needs perfectly.

We were created to worship. And in the absence of God, we will worship anything else. We will seek to find pleasure in money, women, relationships, work.

It doesn't matter what it is, that all those things can become an idol, but they will never satisfy you the way you need to be satisfied until you're in relationship with God.

Through Jesus, you will not know that. You will not have peace with God. Remember, we're told friendship with the world is at enmity with God.

You don't wanna be friends. When I say friends, it doesn't mean to love the image bearers of God.

I'm talking about embrace the ideology of the world that says he who dies with the most toys wins, right?

Look at Facebook, look at Instagram. Everybody's putting up all the wonderful things they did, right?

That's probably about six seconds of their life just to let you know, right? The rest of their life is miserable.

They don't wanna show you that because who wants to expose their weakness? That's why people who watch

Facebook all the time and Instagram and all these other things, they're depressed. You're seeing all these other people living all these wonderful lives and what do

I do? Oh my goodness, I want that. No, you don't. You don't want that.

It's gonna lead to the bad place. How sick is your heart, declares the Lord, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute.

A serious punishment also prefigures the punishment for the idolatrous seduction of Babylon the prostitute.

And we're gonna look at Revelation 17 and Revelation 18 in a little while, not right now. So let's look at the difference between Satan and his followers and Jesus and his followers.

Very big difference. Satan's followers are like a harlot with many harlotries.

They prostitute themselves and try to gain the pleasures of the world, okay? And try to fulfill their deepest desires with worldly pleasures.

Jesus has one bride and they have one Lord. They find their satisfaction, they find their contentment in Christ, not in the things of the world.

And we're a bride. We have one Lord. We remain loyal to our husbandmen.

We remain loyal to Jesus. Satan's followers are charming. In other words, akin to deceptive favor.

Proverbs 31 tells us, "'Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, "'but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.'"

Right, did you ever meet that charming person? They're like a slippery little snake. They're trying to get in, make you feel all good and then boom, they're gonna set the hook and you're done.

Jesus' followers are faithful. In other words, worthy of confidence. We are confident in Christ.

Revelation 2 .10 says, "'They were tested, not fearing, faithful unto death "'and given the crown of life.'"

We have to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him. It's gonna be painful sometimes. Sometimes it won't be, but sometimes it will.

And if it is, we have to follow that path to death. Jesus did. Sorceries, occult practices, tarot cards, horoscopes, mediums, charms, idols, most anything you, any good thing that you take and make it an ultimate thing is now an idol, okay?

So God gives us good things. The problem is our sinful hearts try to make those good things ultimate things.

And when you make it an ultimate thing, you displace the God who sits on the throne, okay? So sorceries, watch out for that.

We're monotheistic. Jesus as follows, "'Have no other gods before him. "'You shall not make for yourself a carved image "'or serve them.

"'Do not make anything in the image of God "'and bow down to it. "'We serve God and God alone.'"

Cells, Satan's followers, cells. Offer, we're sold to the highest bidder. In other words, whatever works to benefit me.

I will do whatever it takes to get my pleasure, to get my contentment, to get my happiness.

So whatever works, that's what I'll do. Whether it be drugs, alcohol, money, whatever it is. Not the followers of Jesus, why?

Because we're purchased. You are not your own. You were bought with a price.

So glorify God in your body. In other words, whatever works for the benefit of others.

We are to love God and love neighbor as ourself. Love gives, right?

Lust says, what can you do for me? Love says, what can I do for you? That's the difference between the followers of Satan and the followers of Jesus.

Ultimately, Satan and his followers will be separated and removed. For all the adulteries of that faithless one

Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. That's a heavy statement. God divorced

Israel. That's the basis of the old covenant. That's why we have a new covenant.

We'll get into that. Ultimately, Jesus and his followers will be united and loved.

Nothing else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In other words,

Romans 8 starts off with there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus, and it ends with there's no separation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

No condemnation, no separation. You need to place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, for your deliverance.

Both the believer and the unbeliever resemble and are loyal to the one they trust. In other words, you will become like what you worship.

You will become like what you worship, and everyone worships something. You have to ask yourself, what is ultimate in my life?

What am I pursuing at all costs? What do I wake up in the morning thinking about?

What do I daydream about during the middle of the day, and what do I think about before I go to bed? What is it?

What are you fixated on? That's not God. You gotta get rid of it. We need to put Jesus first in all things.

Gregory Cook, this is my favorite scholar when it comes to, and commentator when it comes to the book of Nahum.

He said, biblical scholars have struggled with the characterization of Assyria in Nahum 3 .4 as a prostitute who sold nations.

As one scholar puts it, the metaphor of Nineveh as a prostitute is surprisingly inappropriate.

The Assyrians had conquered nations they hardly needed to sell themselves, nor, as conquerors, did they spend much time alluring or enchanting those they conquered.

Now Gregory Cook's gonna disagree with this, and we're gonna go through why. However, I, Gregory Cook, have argued throughout this commentary that Nahum, as a brilliant poet, knew exactly what he was doing.

What scholars attribute to ignorance, carelessness, or corruption should actually be credited to intention.

In other words, Nahum intentionally wrote it like this. Gregory Cook says, I will demonstrate that the

Assyrian Empire fitted Nahum's description precisely. This is what we're gonna go through right now.

There's two issues. First, how did Nineveh qualify as a prostitute? If he's gonna make this argument and sustain it, we're gonna have to find out how did they qualify as a prostitute?

And next, how did they sell nations? Because if they acted as a prostitute and sold nations, well then,

Nahum was intentional in what he did. So before we do that, I have a quick question.

Can you name two famous harlots in the Old Testament? Rahab. Rahab? Look at you, look at you.

Who? Old Testament. Mary's not old enough.

Who else? Jezebel, thank you. All right, Rahab and Jezebel. And he's gonna use

Rahab and Jezebel to make his point. And it's really, really interesting. As we go through this, you'll see what

I'm saying. So Jezebel, she first appears in 1 Kings 16, which says, and as if it had been a light thing for Ahab to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, he took for his wife

Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served

Baal and worshiped him. The Bible has only scorn for Jezebel. Why?

She led Israel into Baal worship, right? You remember when Elijah came in and he brought in the priests of Baal and he set up the altar and called down fire and they couldn't get done what

Baal was supposed to do, although Elijah called on the name of God and flames came and engulfed the whole thing, right?

So she led Israel into Baal worship. She killed God's prophets. If you remember, she killed 100 of God's prophets.

She murdered Naboth to steal his vineyard. So this isn't such a nice woman, huh?

Right, you getting that impression? All right, good, me too. No, definitely not.

And she wouldn't wanna marry anyone in here. She's a prostitute, but anyway. In the final biblical reference to her,

Jesus invokes her name to condemn a woman in the church of Thyatira who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing his servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat the food sacrificed to idols.

Jesus continues by saying, I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works and I will strike her children.

The Bible makes it plain that Jezebel was evil and that any who follow in her path will receive

God's judgment, okay? Nahum's characterization of the

Assyrian prostitute conspicuously matches the description of Jezebel in 2 Kings 9.

He uses the same words. This chapter, 2 Kings 9, explains how

Jehu carried out God's command to strike down the house of Ahab so that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants, the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the

Lord. Jehu sets off at breakneck speed to fulfill this task, causing alarm in the king's ranks.

When he meets King Joram, we find the following interchange. And when Joram saw

Jehu, he says, is it at peace, Jehu? He answered, what peace can there be so long as the whorings and the sorceries of your mother

Jezebel are so many? Nahum employed the exact same

Hebrew words for whorings and sorceries in verse four, chapter three.

Although the ESV translates the latter as charms in Nahum, and for all the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, sorceries, who betrays nations with her whorings and peoples with her charms, sorceries.

So the very words that describe Jezebel in 2 Kings are the very words

Nahum is using in chapter three, verse four. That's not a coincidence, okay?

He's making this point and likening Assyria to Jezebel. We may deduce, therefore, that Nahum considered

Nineveh to be a harlot in the tradition of Jezebel. The Bible gives no indication, however, of actual sexual immorality in the life of Jezebel.

The Bible never says that Jezebel sold her own body for money. That's interesting, I didn't know that.

She's called a harlot, but she's not, she's never sold her body like that.

Yes, Maria? Right, exactly.

She's a harlot, not a prostitute. No, no, it's okay, it's okay. It bears talking about because I, too, thought

Jezebel was a prostitute, but she wasn't. Harlot, yes, prostitute, no. So it charges her with a greater crime, leading

Israel into adultery with foreign gods, okay, like a madam, right, who brings men in to sleep with the women.

This, Jezebel, is bringing nations in to worship her gods.

The Bible constantly links idolatry and adultery, as in the book of Hosea, whereas Rahab's prostitution included running a physical brothel,

Jezebel's prostitution stemmed from her running a spiritual one. Likewise, Nahum charges

Nineveh with running a spiritual brothel, one that prostitutes others rather than itself.

So you see the connection? See where he's going? It was this type of situation that led

King Ahaz of Judah to send messengers to Tiglac -Pileser, king of Assyria, saying,

I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel who are attacking me.

2 Kings 16 .7. Judah invited Assyria in. They saw

Assyrian slavery as a more viable alternative than trusting God to rescue them from Syria and Israel.

So in other words, they were so afraid of physical harm, okay, and getting taken over by other nations that they, instead of going to God and trusting in him and doing what

God commanded, they went to a larger nation, a more powerful nation, right? You see what's going on like in the world right now, how nations are starting to align with one another.

The church has got to be very, very careful that we don't fall into blind nationalism and cling on to one particular government.

The government we cling to without wavering is the kingdom of God, not the nations of man.

It'll turn into a Psalm 2 situation. Why do the nations rage? Why do the kings plot in vain against the

Lord and his anointed? What does God do? He laughs at them, holds them in derision. You have to remember, we're living here, but we're citizens of the kingdom.

Our citizenship is in heaven, not here. Now we're called to bring heaven here and transform the world, but our citizenship is in heaven.

Our king is on the throne. You need to be confident. Jesus is ruling and reigning until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet.

I'm gonna say it in a little while. Jesus is Lord and Long Island is Christ Island. I can't say that enough.

I need to remind myself, because I'm a human being, right, who looks out at the world and say, is this really possible?

And so are you. But we need to be knit together and recognize, rally around that one single fact that Jesus is

Lord and let our heartfelt actions and love flow from that, knowing that he's a good king and he's sovereign over all things.

Other prophets condemned Judah for such spiritual adultery. God expected his people to trust in him in all circumstances.

In returning and rest, you shall be saved. In quietness and trust shall be your strength, but you were unwilling.

Where have you heard you were unwilling before? We're gonna get to that too. Instead, Judah turned to other nations with other gods.

That message speaks loudly from the pages of the Old Testament. Nahum contains a different but complimentary message.

God will severely judge those who took advantage of Judah's dire circumstances in order to prostitute his people.

Nahum does not speak a general message about God's judgment of wicked nations. It speaks specifically of the fierceness of God's covenant love and his intention to avenge himself on rivals for his bride.

In other words, even though Judah acted the whore, God has a covenant with Judah and he's not going to be faithless to Judah.

He's gonna remain faithful even if they remain faithless. He's going to punish them, but he's also gonna punish the other nations that are trying to hurt them.

You have to remember that if you're in covenant with God through Jesus Christ, your enemies are gonna be judged very harshly if they don't repent and trust in Jesus either, right?

Like I told you guys, I was in a situation recently and I'm guarding my heart daily to pray for this person's salvation.

God help that person who cheats, steals, robs, blasphemes, slanders his people, his bride.

That person needs to be pitied. They need to be prayed for, right? And I have to suck it up.

Do not be surprised that this fiery trial shall come upon you, rejoicing your trials. Guess what?

If everything was taken away from me, you know what's not taken away from me?

My salvation, my faith in Christ. I'm purchased, I'm owned, I'm his.

Whatever happens here happens for his glory. If I suffer, I suffer with joy, knowing that I'm magnifying and glorifying our

God, right? If I prosper, I magnify and glorify

God. So whether living in plenty or living in want, I learned the secret of being content in all circumstances, right?

It's tough to go through, but you have to. We all do, and we all will at some point.

Assyria also used deceit and brutal kidnapping to trap its victims. Remember when Rabshaker told the besieged

Jerusalemites, make your peace with me and come out to me. Remember, they were on the wall and he's speaking to them in Hebrew, and they're saying, don't talk to us in Hebrew.

Everybody's gonna understand what you're saying, right? They didn't want that spoken to the people that's gonna cause them to fear.

He says to them, make peace with me and come out to me. Sounds very much like what God would say to his people, make peace with me, come to me.

Then each one of you will eat of your own vine and each one of your own fig tree. Sounds like something else

God would promise his people. And each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern.

I will come and take you away to a land like your own land. Jesus says, I will come and bring you to where I am, a land of grain and wine, right?

Milk and honey, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey that you may live and not die.

That's a lie. No nation on earth is going to give you those things.

They'll promise you those things, but they will not give you those things because they can't. That must have sounded better than perishing, perishing brutally because the

Assyrians were a brutal people, but the Judeans could not have believed the pretended compassion. They knew who

God was. Now earlier in Isaiah chapter 30, he says, but you were unwilling.

Where else have we heard that? Matthew 27. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stone those who were sent to her.

How often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you were unwilling.

Ultimately, Israel would turn its back on Jesus, putting him on the cross. The same way the idolatrous and adulterous nations that rebelled against Israel in the

Old Testament, were unwilling, now Israel would become unwilling.

Behold, your house is left to you desolate. Again, this is why we have a new covenant because when

God issues a decree of divorce to Israel, what does that do to that covenant with them? Nullifies it, it's dissolved.

That covenant no longer exists because God issued a decree of divorce to Israel. And now behold,

I present to you a new covenant, which we'll go through in a second. This is Revelation 17 and 18, which

I told you about before that we were gonna revisit. Revelation 17, then one of the seven angels who had seven bulls came to me and said, come,

I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who was seated on many waters with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.

Who's the great prostitute? Israel, right? And he carried me away in the spirit into wilderness and I saw a woman, who's the woman?

Israel, the great prostitute, sitting on a scarlet beast. Who's the beast? Rome, right?

This is Israel using Rome for political advantage to put forth their message that was full of blasphemous names and it had seven heads and 10 horns, that's

Rome. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold, jewels, and pearls. That's what a priest would wear, that's priestly garments.

Holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality and on her forehead was written a name of mystery,

Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations.

And I saw the woman, Israel, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus and when

I saw her, I marveled greatly. What did Israel do? It aligned itself with Rome. Rome, along with Israel, were the ones who persecuted the

Christians, okay? God's bride. So we also read about Babylon in this verse.

Who is Babylon? Babylon is also Israel. And why is she called

Babylon? Because the same way Assyria, okay, whose capital was

Nineveh, was started by what king? Nimrod in Genesis chapter 10, the

Tower of Babel, right? And in the Tower of Babel, all the nations came together to what, make a name for themselves, which is what

Israel was doing. It was trying to get away from the name of God or use the name of God in order to promote itself, not its

God, okay? So it aligns itself and is called Babylon. Revelation 18, and he called out with a mighty voice, fallen, fallen is

Babylon, Israel the great. She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.

For all the nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.

She used Rome, she played the harlot with all the nations around her.

Jeremy, yes, all right, yes.

Good point, yeah, Israel was called by God to be a light to the Gentiles. The word Gentiles is goyim, it means nations.

Israel is called to be a light to the nations, basically a pastor to all the other nations around them.

And instead of differentiating themselves from the other nations, they wanted to become like the other nations.

They saw what the other nations had and instead of pursuing God, they pursued those things. What'd they do? They loved the gift rather than the giver, right?

And in Jeremiah 3, seven through 10, this is what I talked to you about before. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one,

Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce, okay? This is why we need a new covenant, one built on better promises.

The old covenant depended on man's faithfulness and our obedience to God. But in the new covenant, the new covenant is dependent on God's faithfulness to us and his son's obedience in our place.

We can never be obedient enough. We trust in the one who was obedient but who was also put on the cross and crucified for the sins that we committed, right?

This is the great exchange. We give God our sin, we give Jesus our sin and he gives us his righteousness so that when

I stand before God, God looks at me the way he would look at Jesus, innocent, not because of what

I did but because of what he did for me. My sin doesn't just get a pass, oh,

I'll just overlook your sin. No, the punishment for my sin was poured out on Jesus on the cross.

So when people say, well, that's real convenient. You trust in Jesus and then your sin doesn't get paid for.

Oh, it does get paid for by Christ. He takes my place and takes God's wrath upon him.

Don't ever forget that. He took our wrath, right? So that when you're baptized, you go under that water, you go under the judgment of God, but you don't stay there.

You come up out of that water because of Jesus, clean in his sight.

Knowing that we're gonna be sinful to the day we die, we have that promise that if we confess our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of our unrighteousness.

Jeremiah 31, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when

I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke as I was their, though I was their husband, declares the

Lord. Israel broke the covenant, okay? Our covenant is kept because of Jesus, not because of us.

He kept God's law perfectly in our place, right? And now we are his bride, so we are attached to him covenantally as his bride.

And because we're his bride, we get everything that he gets, right? We share that through the covenant, okay?

Jeremiah, for this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts,

I will be their God, they shall be my people, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and his brother saying, know the

Lord, for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more, praise

God. Ezekiel, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

So what the new covenant demands, obedience, the new covenant supplies.

You have a new heart in order to be obedient, a new heart that desires to follow Jesus and to obey him.

Because we're so weak. God in his mercy gives us a new heart, we can't even change our own hearts.

We'll still pursue the things of the world. And even as a Christian, we're still lured away by our flesh towards those things.

But for God giving us a new heart and causing us to follow him, we never would.

And he says, you shall dwell in the land I gave to your fathers. That's the entire world now, just to let you know.

Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. The earth is ours. You shall be my people and I will be your

God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.

So how did Nineveh prostitute her captives or sell the nations? By considering how the

Old Testament viewed the oaths and service to foreign gods, it is not difficult to answer. The forced loyalty oaths of the

Assyrian deities constituted spiritual rape in Nahum's worldview. Assyria also prostituted

Israel, Judah, and other nations in other ways. The crowns listed in Nahum's indictment include economic and sexual elements because the

Assyrians used the money, materials, and slave labor of Israel, Judah, and other nations to build palaces and temples dedicated to Assyrian and Babylonian gods.

They got the Israelites to abandon their God and start worshiping and building things for their gods.

In addition to the tribute money, the Assyrians made the nations they conquered adopt their gods into the society as a requirement for their protection and support.

If you did not comply, you would be eliminated in some very cruel ways. This is canceled culture today.

If you do not bow down to the abortion industry, if you do not bow down to the

LGBTQ community, if you don't believe that men are women and women can become men, you will be canceled.

That's the way they're trying to get us to worship their gods. Don't do it. Don't do it.

To sum it up, verse four explains the sins that will bring about Nineveh's final downfall.

Three times in this verse, harlotry is emphasized, harlot, prostitution, and wanton lust, also from the same root meaning to commit fornication, play the harlot.

The harlot is an apt image of Nineveh's wickedness for several reasons. First, Assyria had an insatiable lust for power and wealth that caused it to murder for hire and launch campaigns against innocent nations.

Second, like a prostitute inciting a client, Nineveh had lured nations into unholy alliances, promising aid and then attempting to enslave them again.

Third, Nineveh's commercial and military success attracted nations to adopt its idols and occult practices.

Assyria committed spiritual adultery by worshiping gods like Asher and the goddess like Ishtar in the place of the

Lord. Yet they seem to go beyond that using sorceries and witchcraft, same

Hebrew word used in both instances, symbolic of seductive and corrupting influences, and Nineveh's likely involvement in the occult.

Last week we talked about the king of Nineveh having a relationship with the god of the dead.

Questions? If you don't have a question, I have a question for you. Where have you played the harlot in your relationship with God?

Where have you been unfaithful? Where have we been unfaithful? We need to remember the

God of this world is pulling against us, but the God of heaven and earth who created all, who's sovereign over all things has purchased us, has put his son on the cross in our place.

You have to remember where you've been disloyal to God, ask for forgiveness.

Our God is merciful and gracious to receive us back into his hands, and remember who we belong to.