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Some people hate the book of Nahum.
They despise the contents of this little book we have.
They call it a violent, nationalistic book, quote, one morally repugnant to modern
persons.
They go on to say its moral inferiority, however, does not mask its literary
artistry.
Nahum is a bad book written well.
Please turn your Bibles to the book of Nahum in the Old Testament.
If you can't find it, feel free to use your table of contents.
It is right after Jonah, Micah, Nahum.
And we are going to look at this book that is really well written.
And of course, for us as Christians, we love this book.
Has nothing to do with nationalism or anything else.
It has to do with the exaltation of God and his name.
I found it fascinating.
As I studied this week, people that don't like Nahum still think it's written well.
They think it's full of wonderful bits of poetry, the phraseology, how picturesque it
is.
It's realistic.
Feel like you're there.
The imagery is bold and fascinating.
And it draws you in.
And so at least they give the book of Nahum that.
As you know, for just a little background and some review, Nahum is written against Assyria.
Nineveh is the capital of Assyria.
While other prophets have prophesied against Edom like Obadiah did or Habakkuk
against Babylon, this burden, chapter one, verse one, this oracle is given in a book
form and it really reflects the name of Nahum.
And Nahum's name means to console or to comfort.
Yahweh is comforting.
Yahweh is consoling.
And everything about this book drives the listener to say, God is my true comfort.
No matter what's going on in the world, I can trust in him and he is good and his promises are true.
In this particular case in Nahum, they need that comforting message because they're getting oppressed
by the Ninevites, by Assyria, and the taxation is heavy.
The tributes are high and the way that Assyria deals with people is
exactly the opposite of the Lord Jesus.
Think about the exact opposite things when I read this passage and then you'll know who Assyria is.
Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and
you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
As you know, that's not talking about the Assyrians.
That's talking about the Lord Jesus, of course, for those who rest in him by faith alone and receive him.
The exact opposite of that is the Assyrians and they are a wicked people and besides that, they're
powerful.
If you go to the British Museum, I've been there several times, you see the reliefs
there of different assaults by the Assyrian generals, maybe Sennacherib or Ashbanapol
and there's the ladders that they have, the battering rams that they have, the archers,
they are one powerful people and here you have Judah, right?
The 12 tribes of Israel and the bottom two are Judah and they're tiny and they're small and here sits
Jerusalem and what are they going to do?
They need a message of triumph.
Oh yes, back in the day, 100, 150 years ago, Nineveh repented, they were doing the right thing,
Jonah went to preach to them, they received the message but now it's later and they're back to their old
ways.
Let me read verses one through eight today for review and our passage that I'll be preaching from is verses
nine through 15.
So hopefully we'll finish chapter one today.
So in review, I'll read verses one through eight and this morning we'll look at some divine comfort when we
think of adversaries in verses nine through 15.
When you see the word Lord, all capitals, think of Yahweh, that covenant -keeping God who is self
-existent yet is concerned for his people.
An oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkash.
The Lord is a jealous and avenging God.
The Lord is avenging and wrathful.
The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.
The Lord is slow to anger and great in power and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
His way is in the whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
He rebukes a sea, makes it dry.
He dries up all the rivers.
Bashan and Carmel wither, the bloom of Lebanon withers.
The mountains quake before him, hills melt, the earth heaves before him, the
world and all who dwell in it.
Who can stand before his indignation?
Who can endure the heat of his anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.
The Lord is good and a stronghold in the day of trouble.
He knows those who take refuge in him.
But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of the adversaries
and will pursue his enemies into darkness.
Now, I haven't mentioned the last two messages in the book of Nahum, that this first section is what we call
a partial acrostic.
So if you look at Psalm 119, for instance, the acrostic, in English, it would be A, B, C, D,
E, F, G.
So we could kind of remember what's in that Psalm.
Of course, it would be with the Hebrew alphabet with 22 letters.
This acrostic isn't finished.
It's almost like if an acrostic creates wholeness and something easy to remember, this partial
acrostic makes you think, what's gonna happen in the future?
What's the rest?
Fill in the blank.
It's kind of traced, but what's the color look like when it's completely full?
And so what happens in this book early on, God says, before we think about the adversaries, let's
make sure you think about me.
Make sure you understand who I am and what I do and my promises before we get to any kind of battle.
Now, chapters two and three are what's to come.
This sets us up partially for the fulfillment that everyone should say, well, what will happen with these
adversaries?
You know what's really neat about this?
There are certain kinds of Psalms and there's a particular Psalm called a
warrior Psalm, a divine warrior Psalm.
And you would sing warrior songs about God, when do you think?
Well, three different times.
Before you go to battle, you'd sing a Psalm and you'd sing a Psalm of God help us, protect
us.
You'd sing a song another time during battle.
And that would be Lord continue to help us as we fight the enemy.
And then there's another Psalm that's a warrior Psalm and it's a Psalm of after you won the battle, you sing
praises to God.
This is like that last Psalm.
While the war has not started yet with God and the adversaries, it's as good as done.
It's over.
He, the writer is making sure that these people under persecution and under the heavy
bondage of the Ninevites realize that God knows, God cares and God will judge.
I mean, we don't know in history that Jesus has come back yet.
That's the wrong way to phrase it.
We know that Jesus has not come back yet, but will he come back?
There are songs written about him, words written about him that extol his second coming.
And for us, that would be encouraging to know that no matter what goes on, Jesus comes back.
This first section verses one through eight is a divine warrior.
He judges evil, he knows his people.
And then we come to now verses nine through 15.
One guy called this a, it's hard to pronounce, a dizzying passage.
D -I -Z -Z -Y -I -N -G, dizzying, dizzying.
It makes you dizzy, you can't even hardly say it because there's so much going on and it's just this kind of cacophony
of action and what's gonna happen to these Ninevites, strong and powerful and rule people and
foot on the neck of those in Jerusalem.
If you want an outline this morning, it's super simple.
Let me give you two reasons to take comfort in difficult days.
You say, well, that's kind of an extension of the earlier section of chapter one.
That's exactly right.
The first section was about take comfort because you realize who God is.
Now we're gonna think about the adversaries more.
We're gonna look at taking comfort because God's adversaries will eventually be obliterated.
Every enemy of God, every enemy of God's people will one day be extinguished.
And secondly, I want you to take comfort because in the midst of God's adversaries, there's good news.
Super simple.
Take comfort because the adversaries will be obliterated and take comfort that there's good news in the midst of all
this.
Thinking about God's adversaries the right way.
Well, let's look at verses nine through 14 first.
It's almost like bad news for the adversaries and then we'll get to the good news for God's people.
Verses nine through 14, taking comfort that God's adversaries will be obliterated.
Verse nine.
You're gonna have to be very careful as you study, by the way, as we get into this text.
There's lots of personal pronouns, but we don't know exactly who these people are unless you think rightly.
And so here's an example of that.
What do you, it's masculine plural, by the way, what do you, maybe all the leaders of Assyria,
all the Assyrians, the Ninevites, what do you plot against the Lord?
He will make a complete end.
Trouble will not rise up a second time.
You can just kind of sense what's going on here.
You're going to mess with the apple of God's eye, the people of Israel, generally speaking,
specifically those down in Judah, in Jerusalem.
You're gonna mess with God's people and you think you're going to get off scot -free?
No possible way.
There's gonna be a complete end, not partial.
There's going to be trouble not coming up a second time.
While Assyria went after Israel proper, those 10 tribes, and just
demanded every kind of thing from them, there's still not tons of persecution
yet here for those in Jerusalem.
Yes, there's some, but it's not a destruction.
It's not taking away wives and children.
It's just heavy, exorbitant taxation, paying tribute.
Sometimes they'd come and do some damage, but the Judah dwellers were
saying, you know what, we better brace ourselves.
Something bad's coming.
But the Lord says, no, no, it's going to happen to the Ninevites.
They're going to be the ones who are going to make a complete end of them.
We're in Jerusalem.
Will they finally crush us?
No, no, it's going to be the other way around.
If you look at the Hebrew in Nahum 1 .9, what do you think concerning the Lord?
What are you thinking?
I have said to my children before, when they were little and they've done something wrongly, when they're tiny, tiny, I didn't say,
why'd you do it?
I just said, what did you do?
Kind of like God with Adam in the garden.
What did you do?
I don't need to know why.
But then when they got older, I wanted to try to process with them what they're thinking.
So remember, I said to my particular child, you might guess who it might
be.
Why did you do that?
He was about ready.
Oh, sorry.
And he looked at me and said, dad, I wasn't thinking.
It's a good answer.
I just did it.
What must these people be thinking when they say, God, I don't care about you and I don't care about your people and I
will persecute your people.
How's that gonna go off on judgment day, by the way?
And I hope you're thinking just kind of more generally too, as we see specifics in Nahum.
But when the people of God, the church of God on earth is being persecuted by whomever it might
be, do you think they're going to get off on judgment day?
You think they're gonna be let off in terms of judgment?
No, complete end.
This is not just good for those who are getting persecuted in Jerusalem, but for all of us today.
You say, well, the church is really getting persecuted in America.
Really?
This is persecution.
It might get a lot worse.
It has been worse for other people.
And so how does God comfort his people?
Verses one to eight, here's who I am.
Verses nine to 14, don't worry, vengeance is mine, I will repay.
God addresses the Ninevites.
Everything you do, all your strategies, they'll be vain, they'll be futile, they'll be empty.
Whether it's the Ninevites or the Muslims or the Roman Catholics persecuting the church in the
Reformation, it doesn't matter.
The end isn't good.
These people who are against God's people, they didn't just fall into it.
They didn't say, well, I was kind of walking along and then oh, he just started persecuting.
They're plotting.
They're actively doing it.
They're putting together plans.
And so for our enemies, by the way, dear Christian, whether it's, you think the government,
you think it's other religions, you think it's Satan, whatever the persecution is,
you can trust the Lord.
He knows.
He'll take care of them.
Instead of being full of anxiety and fear and what will happen, these words are meant to comfort.
When you persecute the people of God, God knows.
He cares, he'll do something.
Remember what happened?
Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for
letters to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found any belonging to the men or women, he might
bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Now as he went on his way, right, all the plotting he's got, he went on his way.
He approached Damascus.
Suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying, you know the
passage, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting the church?
Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting the people of God?
Is that what it says?
Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
He's taking it out on the church, but the church is the bride of Christ.
Remember in eternity past, with the father agreeing to go rescue the
people of God, to go rescue those elect people.
And that was what Jesus was sent to go do, to go do that very thing.
And then you're gonna go and mess with them and persecute them and kill them.
Who are you, Lord, Saul said, and Jesus said, I am Jesus whom you are
persecuting.
I don't know how bad persecution is gonna get in America, but if it gets bad, we can trust the Lord.
He'll know, and there'll be judgment day one day.
And for the Ninevites, and of course, ultimately our enemies, what does the text say?
Not gonna repeat the blow as it were with this idiom in Hebrew.
There's not gonna be like a second wave.
There's not gonna be rearmament.
No, no, no second rebellion.
It's going to be done.
And guess what?
The Ninevites love to do that to people.
They love to completely destroy people and wipe them off the face of the earth.
One account, a historical account, reads this, the
sanctuaries of Elam destroyed totally.
Its gods and goddesses, ice scattered.
It's Ashurbanipal saying this, an Assyrian leader.
There are secret groves in which no stranger ever penetrates whose borders he never oversteps.
Into these, my soldiers entered, saw their mysteries, set them on fire.
Everything they do is to try to just burn the other places to the ground.
No memory.
Just think kind of the strutting pride of a warrior king like that.
Proverbs says there's things that are stately in their thread, in their tread rather.
Three things, four are stately in their stride.
The lion, which is the mightiest among the beast, he does not turn back before any.
The strutting rooster, the he -goat, and the king whose army is with him.
Walking around, beating the chest, we're going to do this, and the tables have been turned.
This is a direct illustration of he who sits in the heavens laughs,
and the Lord holds them in derision.
Look at verse 10.
For they are, three similes here, three likes.
They're like entangled thorns, like drunkards as they drink.
They are consumed like stubble when fully dried.
Why is God going to judge?
They're plotting against His people.
How is God going to execute?
Right here, in this kind of poetic form.
Sometimes you take entangled thorns and put them around like barbed wire, your encampment, so that you
could be impervious to the enemy at night.
The drunkard stuff here is probably, we have victory, and we have demolished the enemy, and what do
you do?
You have a feast, you have a festival, you have a drinking party, and
they're consumed like stubble fully dried.
Ever take stubble and just throw it in the fire?
That kind of crackling that happens and you just can hear it?
He uses these similes here, and basically says, they're done, they're incapacitated.
By the way, if you notice, when it says they're drunkards as they drink,
I think it's to help us to realize, you know what?
Drunkards don't really put up much of a fight.
I always thought to myself, how much money would it take for me to get in the ring with Mike Tyson 20 years ago?
I don't know, probably a lot, but I'd be more apt to do it if he couldn't hardly stand up because he was so drunk.
He might still get me, but I would probably get in the ring with him.
These people can't defend themselves because they can't even stand up, they're totally drunk, swallowed
up.
They become mastered by their own sinful choices.
They're so haughty, they're so swollen, but it's stubble, it's dry, and it just goes up in the fire
immediately and it's just poof, gone.
Quick extermination of God's enemies.
Ever light a Christmas tree on fire?
I don't suggest you do it in the house, but this is the idea.
Psalm 1, the wicked are like chaff.
That's the same idea.
Jesus said, I'm the vine, you are the branches, whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.
For apart from me, you can do nothing.
If anyone does not abide in me, he's thrown away like a branch and withers.
The branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.
And what we can't see in that verse is there are six S words in Hebrew that just make it
kind of roll off your tongue with alliteration, S, S, S, S, S.
God's gonna do this, he's gonna do it in the future.
Verse 11, from you came one who plotted evil against the Lord, a
worthless counselor.
From you, it's feminine, it's probably Nineveh itself, you can call a city her if you'd
like.
But out of this city comes one who plots evil against the Lord, a worthless counselor.
You can do your study and figure out, is it the man Ashurbanipal, is it Sennacherib?
It doesn't really matter because they all have been wiped out.
When somebody stands against the Lord, there will be judgment day one day, temporally, maybe,
eternally, certainly.
And this city produces what?
Bad fruit, worthless counselors.
That word worthless means vile or empty.
Belial, we think of sometimes from that, kind of satanic.
That's who they produce.
They don't produce a king like Bethlehem might produce a king, King David.
No, they don't.
They don't produce anything except worthless things.
Enemies that are wicked, ultimately against the Lord.
Nothing good comes out of this.
Sometimes people think this plural here is kind of the goddess Ishtar that they had who controlled
everything.
And she's the female evil that commands a
worthless counselor, a demonic counselor, a satanic counselor even.
John Calvin writes, it is indeed gratifying and pleasing when we see our enemies destroyed.
But this would be a cold and barren comfort, except we were persuaded that it is done by God's
judgment because He loves us, because He would defend us having embraced us with paternal
love.
The issue is not, I want all the enemies gone.
The issue is the enemies are gone.
Yes, I want that.
But the enemies are gone because God will protect His people.
All the way back to Genesis chapter 12 and the covenant with Abraham, and He will go out of His way in spite of their sins.
Israel, Judah, they were sinful, but God says, I don't care.
I'm going to take care of you anyway because I am the Lord.
Nobody's gonna stop it.
Verse 12, thus says the Lord.
Now we switch from thinking about how bad these people are and addressing them and describing them
to now directly talking to God's people.
Thus says the Lord.
Here's how you should think of God's enemies.
The Ninevites, that's how we should think of them if we were in those days and any enemies that the church has today.
This is how we should think about them.
Though they are at full strength and many, that's certainly Assyria, they will be cut down and pass away.
Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more.
I used to use them as an instrument of chastisement for you, Judah, but I'm not gonna do that anymore.
They're powerful, but they're going to be cut down.
It's supposed to give comfort to God's people.
We don't have to worry and run around and be a nationalistic kind of church and everything is,
we're gonna get this done our way with lots of power and might and numbers.
These Assyrians, powerful, but they are going to be gone.
Politically, gone.
Militarily, gone.
It's over and I'm not gonna afflict you anymore, Jerusalem.
There's an end to your persecution.
And then it's kind of interesting here.
He says something else.
He says, still speaking to Judah, verse 13, and now I will break his yoke.
By the way, the Ninevites loved to put heavy yokes on people, they loved the word.
They talked about it all the time.
Put a yoke on the people that we've conquered.
I'll break his yoke off you and burst your bonds apart.
No more taxation, no more military overflow.
You'll be released, you'll be redeemed.
No more bondage deliverance for God's people.
God might use the Assyrians to chasten his people, but he's not going to forget his covenant.
They love to put yokes on others.
Now they have a yoke on themselves.
This matters to God, his people matter to God.
Verse 14, this is almost kind of like a yikes thing.
I would hate to ever have God say this about me.
It doesn't maybe get any worse.
The Lord has given a commandment about you.
Now he's back addressing to the people of Nineveh, Assyria.
I wonder what he's going to say.
How will it go for the people who persecute the apple of God's eye?
No more shall your name be perpetuated.
And didn't they want that?
They want dynasties.
Again, you go to the British Museum and you see these huge lions and these huge displays
of the people and marble statues of their leaders.
Everything you do is to carry on your seed, carry on your name, carry on the dynasty.
Where's the Assyrian dynasty now?
He says, no more your name shall be perpetuated.
And by the way, I'm going to smash your religion too.
I hate your religion.
I hate your idolatry.
Anything that you would worship to think you'd get more power from these idols to go persecute my people, all these
religions, they're done.
From the house of your gods, I will cut off the carved image, the metal image.
I mean, it is all gone.
And maybe the worst thing ever could be said to
someone or a country or a nation by God himself, I will make your
grave for your vile.
I'm going to bury you.
And later he did.
God had the Babylonians and the Medes and the Scythians and they dug their grave
in 612 BC.
Here's what Ezekiel 32 says.
Assyria is there with her whole army.
She is surrounded by the graves of all her slain, all who have fallen by the sword.
Their graves are in the depths of the pit and her army lies around her grave.
All who spread terror in the land of the living are slain, fallen by the
sword.
Verse 13, you'll be all right, Judah.
Verse 14, doom, your grave,
you're going to be buried.
Sometime read Psalm 9.
It sounds similar to this.
Enemies coming to eternal, everlasting ruin.
The decree of God, for the perpetuation of your name, cut off,
no more name sown around this area.
One writer said, the prophet alludes here to Sennacherib who was slain in the temple of his idol by his
own sons shortly after his return from Judah when the siege of the holy city was
miraculously raised.
Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but that's the kind of thing that the Lord would do.
Temporally, it's bad.
Eternally, it's worse.
The termination of Nineveh, no descendants, no memorial service, no funeral.
So for us, dear Christian, when we think about God's adversaries, just a quick reminder, this is a good
pattern for us.
And that is, we don't have to worry.
We don't have to be fearful.
And we know one day there'll be an accounting and we can rest in him.
Just shall live by faith.
It's okay.
But you say, I'd like a little bit more good news than that.
Okay.
Verse 15, we come to taking comfort for good news.
Yeah, it's fine that we take comfort that adversaries will be obliterated.
But now in verse 15, is there any other good news?
Behold, upon the mountains, the feet of him who brings
good news, who publishes peace.
Keep your feast, O Judah, fulfill your vows, for never again shall the worthless pass
through you.
He's utterly cut off.
Okay, so you're getting oppressed, heavy tribute.
One day what's gonna happen to Israel is gonna happen to us.
It's gonna get worse.
Obviously, Israel has around it, Jerusalem, many hills.
And I wonder if you just walk out one day and look at the hill saying, I just wish someday somebody would come running
up over that hill and say, you know what?
Nineveh is done.
They'd have runners like that all the time.
I mean, how does news spread now?
News spreads quickly through phones and internet and everything else.
In the old days, you had to run.
Go run and tell somebody some good news or bad news.
Can you imagine just looking over that hill, just wondering one day, when will this yoke be off of our necks?
What will the future bring?
We're gonna be like Israel, we're next.
And all of a sudden, you see somebody running.
You first kind of see them up on the mountain.
It's kind of sudden, the text, like behold, upon the mountains, the feet of him.
And you're watching that person's running.
Are they one of ours?
Are they an enemy?
Maybe it's an enemy coming to say, you know what?
You better give us more or we're gonna obliterate you.
Are they a good guy?
Are they a bad guy?
I kind of see, I'm looking.
They're becoming more focused.
Hey, that's one of our people.
And he's running and he doesn't look scared.
It looks like he's got some good news.
And what's the good news?
Israel, by the way, they're persecuting you.
You can't worship.
You can't do things in the temple with sacrifices and feasts and holy days that all
ultimately point to the Messiah.
You have no hope to see the Messiah come one day in terms of the remembrance that you have and things that you would do in order to
remember the Messiah who would come like feast.
No, no, now the good news comes.
Fulfill your feast, oh Judah.
It's okay, you can do it.
Why?
Because this worthless one is done.
That's good news.
One writer said, it is certain that the messianic import of Nahum 115 was utilized by the
early church and has brought comfort to the saints throughout the succeeding ages who while keeping
their spiritual exercises look forward with confidence and an expectation to the
one who will reign in righteousness and execute perfect peace.
And for them, the Ninevites, they're cut off.
For those in Judah, they were hoping for that Messiah.
And in fact, he did come the first time.
And while we look back with great joy that he came the first time, for us, we're in persecuting times and it's gonna
get worse.
We look forward to the Lord Jesus's second coming.
Everything about the feast pointed to, you know what, Messiah will come, the future, there's hope, we can have confidence.
There's good news.
Doesn't this sound like other verses in the Bible to you?
Can you think of other verses that talk about good news and feet?
And behold, I've got some good news for you.
How about Isaiah 52?
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who bring good news, who publishes peace, who brings
good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns.
You're in slavery, you're struggling.
You've watched and heard about horrible things that have happened to your people and you look at the mountain and you see
someone running.
They've got good news.
Keep your feasts, Judah.
That's a good news.
By the way, when you study history, Nineveh's destruction was so awful
that when Alexander the Great was fighting a battle, he didn't even know he was near the ruins of Nineveh
because it's been obliterated, it's gone.
From mountaintop to mountaintop, shouting forth deliverance.
It's sudden, but it's needed.
And of course, as we as Christians read this and we think about the deliverance that we have from
sin and the bondage to Satan and the evil system, we've been blinded by Satan.
And someone comes along and announces good news.
I can't remember the first person who ever announced good news to me, but I remember several who did throughout
the years before I got saved.
It's like good news.
This is all temporal punishment, by the way, that would lead to eternal punishment.
But we're on our way to hell as unbelievers, damned and doomed.
And then God in his providence, he sends people, frail people, with a message that says, you know what?
You don't have to die in your sin.
How would you like to be forgiven?
How would you like to have someone else do everything that you were required to do and you don't have
to do it along with him.
You just trust him because he's such a great God.
He's such a great King.
He can represent you.
He can be a substitute for you.
He'll be a law keeper for you.
He'll bear your law breaking.
And it's all by grace alone.
And deep down, you know, with me as an unbeliever and our consciences, and because of the law of God, we are
doomed.
We are damned.
We might be better than other people, but we're gonna need some good news because the good news isn't do more good
than bad.
That's not good news.
I mean, we have sins.
We have Adam's sin imputed.
We have personal sin.
We have an inherited sin.
What do we do?
Is there a sin bearer?
I love when it says in the gospel accounts and throughout Scripture, the modifiers
for the word gospel, because they just proclaim
how great Jesus is with his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection.
Listen to some of the modifiers of the word gospel in the New Testament.
The gospel of God, the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ,
the gospel or good news about his son, the gospel of the grace of God, the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel
of peace, the gospel of the everlasting gospel.
I have good news for everybody here.
If you're a Christian, this is what God has done in your life.
Don't forget it.
While you might get persecuted on the earth, you have the hope of heaven, a fellowship with God.
Now, if you're not a believer, what if I were to tell you, God will help you if you help yourself.
Is that good news?
Back in the medieval days, they would say, God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within their power.
If you're an unbeliever here, do what lies within your power and you'll be all right.
Yeah, except God demands perfect obedience.
Good news isn't, be like Jesus.
You could never do it.
The good news is not, you need a purpose in your life.
You need to have a better relationship with your spouse.
The good news isn't, get baptized with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues, say the sinner's prayer.
And you know, if you just believe in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, you're okay.
If you just make Jesus your Lord, you're okay.
Have a personal relationship with Jesus.
Let go and let God decide for Jesus.
What would Jesus do?
Love God, love your neighbor, repent, believe, trust, follow.
The good news doesn't have anything to do with us.
The good news has to do with what Jesus did.
And how would we know good news?
From our own person?
We have to have somebody come over that mountain and tell us, by the way, the gospel's free because the gospel is about the Lord
Jesus who lives, who dies and is raised again.
And there is a response to the gospel, yes, of trust, of repentance, of believing.
That is true.
But the gospel itself, strictly speaking, is what Jesus did.
Machen, what I need first of all is not an exhortation, but a gospel.
Not directions for saving myself, but knowledge of how God has saved me.
Have you any good news?
That is the question I ask of you.
I know your exhortations will not help me, but if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?
In Nineveh's day, the guy's coming over the hill.
Behold, he's got good news.
And here's the good news.
We need double fortifications.
They're coming.
Would that be good news?
Of course not.
The good news needs to be, God has done a work in spite of us.
God has done a work.
In the gospel, the good news, God doesn't demand, but He offers.
The law demands perfection, but the gospel, the Lord Jesus offers.
Think about the heart of the Lord Jesus when you think about what He does and how He operates with
lepers and with centurions and with Peter's mother -in -law and all these people.
It is not, you do this and I will be your friend.
Jesus is a friend of sinners if you do this.
No, it's not that at all.
He offers.
He gives.
He provides.
He pardons.
He reconciles.
He makes redemption.
He propitiates.
That's the gospel.
What the law, for what the law was impossible in that it was weak through flesh, God did by sending His
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and condemned sin in the flesh through sin that the righteousness
required by the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but
according to the Spirit.
You say, Mike, you know, you're talking a lot from the New Testament about the gospel from Nahum
1 .15.
Are you sure there's a connection there?
Are you just kind of homiletically making this up?
That's a good question.
I'm glad you asked.
Who asked that?
Romans 10.
And how then will they call on Him whom they have not believed?
And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard?
And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
And how are they to preach unless they're sent?
As it is written, as it is written,
how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.
Isn't that good news?
It's good news to even see the feet of those who preach good news.
But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what He has heard from us?
So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ.
Yes, there is a connection.
So to wrap things up, let's just think big picture.
Nahum is written to comfort God's people.
They're getting oppressed.
What do you do when you're oppressed?
Verses 1 to 8, have a good, healthy view of who God is.
Then you remember, okay, verses 9 through 14, God will take care of the adversaries no matter how
powerful, how many, God will take care of all of our adversaries, all of our persecutors.
It holds true for us as well.
And then in verse 15, don't forget about the good news.
And what the writer would say in Nahum contextually would be, you get to worship again.
They restrict your worship.
You get to worship again.
They hold back.
They decrease and say, no, you can't worship the Lord.
One day they will.
Okay?
How apropos is that today?
If they tell us we can't worship corporately and they throw us all in jail because we can't worship
corporately, I still have good news for you.
One day, that day, whether we're released from jail or when the presence of the Lord Jesus in
Revelation chapter five, looking at the lamb standing as if slain, we will worship.
Will I ever get to worship God freely again?
The answer is yes.
Because if Jesus is going to come and die for our sins, if Jesus is going to come and not commit any
sin, if Jesus is going to come and raise Himself from the dead and be an intercessor for us
in heaven, He will make sure all those people that the Father gave Him in eternity past will be
redeemed, will be justified, will be forgiven, will be pardoned, and then
released from any temporal persecution to one day swarm the throne in worship
of the God who's worthy to be slain.
Is there any good news?
There's lots of good news.
Do you think this book is a bad book
written well?
I think it's a great book with great news written well.
I know you do too.
Let's pray.
Thank you, Father, for your word, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
And we are just so thankful that we can rest in you and trust in you.
And we know some trust in horses and others chariots, but we'll trust in you.
So would you increase that trust for us?
We know the Lord Jesus is going to come back and that will end everything.
And He's not gonna come back just to persecute or to judge the persecutors, but because He
loves us and He will see us through to the very end.
And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen.