Nahum 3:8-9 Are You Better Than...

We're on chapter 3, we're going to read verses 1 through 10. Again, tough words, but these are the scriptures.

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?

Are you better than Noaman, which was situated by the waters of the Nile, with water surrounding her, whose rampart was the sea, whose wall consisted of the sea?

Ethiopia was her might, and Egypt, too, without limits. Put and Labim were among her helpers.

Yet she became an exile. She went into captivity. Also, her small children were dashed to pieces at the head of every street.

They cast lots for her honorable men. And all her great men were bound with fetters."

So the prophet Nahum, last week, we had gone through verses 6 through 7. And in that particular section, we saw how

God tells Nineveh that He's going to throw filth at her and make her a vile spectacle. Again, not something that we generally hear preached or talked about.

But again, this is in the scriptures. This is what God says to those who are His enemies. And today, we're going to see another contrast.

We're always seeing the contrast between the elect and the reprobate, God's people and God's enemies, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

And these two people groups are always at one another. But the enemies of God's people are the enemies of God.

So He can rightly say, behold, I am against you. And again, if God is against you, what possibly could be for you?

You need a Savior. You need an advocate. God says, I will, three times.

And we know that God does what He says. God doesn't say, I will, and then not follow through. Like, I'm a parent.

I, a lot of times, say, I will punish you, and then I don't. I'm not a man of my word as God is.

God always does what He says He will. In contrast, God sprinkles water on His people to cleanse them, shows them mercy, and becomes their

God. So while His enemies are going to be thrown filth at and made vile and made a spectacle,

God's people, His water, His spirit will cleanse them. He's going to show them mercy, and He will become their

God. In throwing filth at Assyria, God is addressing the inner filth of their hearts.

Remember, we talked about the Pharisees who outwardly were like whitewashed tombs.

Inwardly, they were rotting away. Again, that's the condition of every sinner. We hold to total depravity.

We know that the heart is deceitful above all things. Who could know it? We're born into this world in sin, lying from our mother's wounds.

Our heart needs to be changed. That's the essence of the gospel. I will pull out the heart of stone, says

God, and put in a heart of flesh with my laws written upon them. We need new hearts.

God is throwing their idols back at them. Why? Because they've become like them. We read in Isaiah, they will become like what they worship.

And that's true of us as well. When we fix our eyes upon Jesus and we worship

Him, we will become like Him. We will begin to imitate Jesus to the world around us, which we need to do.

There is no hope for Assyria, no one to comfort or grieve for them. Nahum means comfort.

Believers should speak the truth to unbelievers in hopes that God will move and save sinners.

We recognize that we don't deserve the salvation that we have. How could we possibly withhold it from other people?

We're not better than other people. We're not smarter than other people. We're not more sensitive than other people. This is a complete act of mercy on God's part.

The gospel is to one, a fragrance from death to death, to other, a fragrance from life to life.

2 Corinthians 2 .16 says it comforts the believer and terrifies the unbeliever. Had a conversation with someone after last week's message and they thought that I gave the impression that this message was a message of comfort to both believers and unbelievers.

Obviously to unbelievers who are at enmity with God, enemies of God, this is a message they will reject.

But to the people of God, whose spirit moves on their hearts and opens their eyes and ears, this is going to be a message of comfort.

So the message will either do one of two things. It will soften the heart of the person or harden the heart of the person.

So if I gave anybody the impression that this message of comfort is going to be received by unbelievers as a comforting message, that's not the case.

They're gonna rail against it. We are not to gloat, boast, be arrogant or prideful in our salvation as it was the mercy of God alone that saved us.

Like Nahum the prophet, we are to comfort those with the comfort that we ourselves received from God.

So as we've been comforted in our sin and we have peace with God, we are to bring that peace. Blessed are the peacemakers.

We are to bring that peace to the people around us. So let's now get into the actual verse.

Are you better than Noah Ammon, which was situated on the waters of the Nile, with water surrounding her, whose rampart was the sea, whose wall consisted of the sea.

So this brings us back to when we first started in Nahum. And this particular verse is gonna help us to determine when the book of Nahum was written, because that tends to be disputed among scholars.

So when was Nahum written? Two events establish a certain range of dates for this particular book.

First, the Assyrian destruction of Thebes, which is the Greek word for Noah Ammon.

Noah Ammon is the Hebrew word for the city in Egypt. The Assyrian destruction of Thebes, which the prophet refers to in his argument that the coming destruction of Nineveh is certain, right?

That's what we learned in verse 2 .8. The Assyrians conquered Egypt as far south as the capital of Thebes in 663, okay?

So this happened, what Nahum was talking about happened.

Noah Ammon was captured and destroyed by the Assyrians in 663.

Second, the second thing that's gonna help us date the book is the actual destruction of Nineveh in 612, just as Nahum predicted at the hands of the armies of the

Babylonians and the Medes. So the Assyrians did come in and pillage and destroy Thebes in 663 and Nahum's warning

Nineveh and Assyria, you're gonna be destroyed too. And that would be done by the Babylonians.

The Babylonians came and destroyed Nineveh in 612. So what Nahum is saying would have to come between 663 and 612.

So the date is definitively after 663, during the period of Judah's being a vassal to Assyria and before the fall of Nineveh in 612.

Okay, so that establishes the range in which Nineveh was up, in which

Nahum was written. Furthermore, Walter Mayer is one of the most definitive, who did one of the most definitive studies on Nahum in modern times, argues that 654

BC is a more accurate and the only proper date for the prophecy. And here's why.

He argues from 663 when Thebes, the capital of Egypt and Ethiopia was sacked, to 654,

Thebes was without political leadership and in disarray. After that point,

Thebes began to rise from the ruins. And according to Mayer, the rhetorical question in Nahum, are you better than Amnon, Thebes, would have lost its force since Thebes was being rebuilt and restored.

So when Nahum says, are you better than Noam, it would be at a period in time when they were destroyed, not when they were building back.

Because if they were building back, build back better, right? As they were building back, if he was to say, are you better than Thebes?

Well, yeah, I hope so. Thebes is building itself up. When he made that reference, Thebes was desolate.

It was at its lowest point. So he's comparing Nineveh, what's gonna happen to Nineveh is no different than what happened to Thebes and Loman.

And we're gonna get into why that's significant. So we're gonna do a comparison with the conquest of Noam, Thebes, at the other city.

All right, the prophet now recalls an event that was well -known in the Near East, especially to the Assyrians at the time of his writing.

The capture and destruction of the Egyptian city of Thebes by the Assyrians in 664, 663

BC. To all who think it is impossible that Nineveh would fall, Nahum says, look at what happened to Thebes, right?

So Nineveh is full of itself, prideful. No one can destroy Nineveh.

Nahum points to Thebes, says, yeah, look at Thebes. You're no better than them. What happened to them is gonna happen to you, whether you believe it or not.

Yahweh's condemnation of Assyria continues with a comparison to other nations. Assyria thinks that they're secure, but they are no different than Thebes.

Thebes thought they were safe since they were surrounded by water defenses and allies, yet they fell.

And isn't this the case with most unbelievers? You ask them, why am I going to heaven? Oh, I'm a good person. They're secure, right?

But the scripture says, there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end, it'll end in destruction, right?

So they think they're secure, but they're not. And our job, when we bring the gospel, is to show them they're not as secure as they think, right?

This is what God is telling the wicked nation of Assyria. They too were attacked and taken into exile from the greatest to the least of them.

Assyria also will lose their security and try to hide from their enemy. As Yahweh reminds them next, their security is fleeting.

Where are you going to hide from God? Where can you go that God is not there? The question, are you better than Thebes, is another rhetorical question.

And again, the implied answer is no. Today's English version makes it explicit that the prophet is addressing

Nineveh by including the name again here. Nineveh, are you any better than Thebes, the capital of Egypt?

Capital of Egypt would be in parentheses. That's not actually in the scriptures, but the author is letting you know the capital is what he's talking about.

Same thing with Nineveh. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. And when God addresses Nineveh, it's the whole nation.

When God addresses Assyria, it includes Nineveh. It's one in the same. Well, the sentence may be rendered as a statement by saying,

Nineveh, are you no better than Thebes, the capital city of Egypt? The words, the capital of Egypt, do not appear in Hebrew text, but are included in today's

English version to make explicit the location and importance of Thebes, which would otherwise be an unfamiliar name to most readers.

In some languages, capital will be rendered as the most important city, or the city where the king lives, or the most important group of houses, or even the largest group of houses.

So when he notes the capital, obviously that's the center of the particular region he's talking about.

Thebes is, in fact, the Greek name for the city, which was situated on the River Nile, about 650 kilometers south of Cairo, the present city capital.

In Hebrew, the name is Noh Aman. This means the city under the care of the god

Anman. It was indeed a great city, perhaps the greatest of the ancient world. Its massive temple ruins can still be seen at places today called

Karnak and Luxor. In fact, if you're familiar with anything in Las Vegas, they have a hotel called the

Luxor, and it's in the shape of a pyramid. The Egyptians were excellent architects.

They built beautiful buildings, had beautiful artwork, in contrast to Nineveh, which we're gonna see in a second.

Anman, the deity, an Egyptian deity who was recognized as the king of the gods. Hmm, who is our king of the gods?

Who is the king of kings and the Lord of lords? You see how the enemy always tries to parallel what

God has in place. He was connected with the city of Thebes, an association remembered by some of the later biblical writers.

In Egyptian, his name means hidden or invisible one. It also means wind. Who's known as the wind in the

New Testament, even in the Old Testament? Ruach, right? The Holy Spirit.

God blew Ruach, breath, his breath, into them. So again, you have an imposter god, king of gods, and wind.

Again, an imposter to the real god, who is the king of kings, Lord of lords, and the breath, the spirit of God.

This god's name, Ammon, is found twice in the Old Testament, in Nahum 3 .8, where the

Egyptian city of Thebes is called No -Ammon, and in Jeremiah 46 .25, where Jeremiah declares that Yahweh will punish

Ammon of Thebes through Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. And that's exactly what happened. The Babylonians came in and destroyed

Nineveh. Now the prophet offers a second ground for the certainty of Nineveh's coming judgment.

Let the city consider what happened to their major rival, the metropolis of No -Ammon. It's not so much that Nahum is attempting to convince the inhabitants of Assyria that God's judgment is coming on them so that they may turn in repentance.

That happened when Jonah preached to them. Now they went back to their old ways.

There's not a chance for repentance anymore. Instead, this mounting case against the sinful city is intended to spur the faith of true believers concerning the certainty of the coming judgment of God, which shall deliver them from years of oppression.

Remember, Nahum means comforter. This is to comfort the Israelites, letting them know that the

Assyrians will be judged. God will pour out his justice upon them and they will get what they deserve.

In this new section, the prophet first indicates that Thebes, No -Ammon has been devastated despite her many natural advantages.

Okay, so even though Thebes, No -Ammon was a strong, fortified city with armies to defend it, they were taken out and Nineveh is gonna have no chance either.

So he's letting the Israelites know, remember No -Ammon, remember Thebes? And what happened to that city?

You didn't think that city was able to be destroyed, yet it was. The same thing is gonna happen to Assyria slash

Nineveh. Nahum's section on Thebes begins with a blunt question addressed to the

Assyrian prostitute. Are you better than Thebes? This rhetorical question humbles the harlot by showing her to be inferior to a better woman in at least six ways.

Here comes the comparison and contrast. Nineveh and Thebes can be compared on the basis of their deities, their beauty, their fortifications, their allies, their age, and their empires.

So let's go through those. So the deities. Nahum refers to Thebes as No -Ammon, meaning the city of Ammon, which we talked about.

Some translations of the Bible, such as the NASB and New King James, retain the phrase No -Ammon rather than using the more familiar name of Thebes.

By labeling Thebes in this way, Nahum draws attention to its relationship with the Egyptian god, Ammon. In this way,

Nahum contrasts the city, Nineveh, dedicated to Mesopotamia's petulant gods of love and war with the

Egyptian city devoted to their creator god. If Egypt's most powerful god could not protect his capital city,

Nineveh should have no expectation that Ishtar, or Ammon, would hold back the true god of the universe.

In other words, Yahweh, who destroyed all the gods of Egypt, okay, and then the god of Thebes, No -Ammon, he destroyed that city.

What makes Nineveh think that all of a sudden their god is gonna be able to come up against Yahweh and defend that city?

So that's one thing, the deities. Next is beauty. Nahum also makes a direct attack on the beauty of Ishtar and Nineveh.

English versions properly translate the first words of 3 -8 -R as, are you better than Thebes?

But the Hebrew includes the question, are you more beautiful than Thebes? So are you better can also be translated, are you more beautiful?

The words that the ESV translates as grateful in 3 -4 and better in 3 -8 are adjectival and verbal forms of a

Hebrew word that also pertains to beauty. In the context of 3 -4, it's clear that personified

Nineveh relies on her beauty to seduce and control others, and we talked about that in previous lessons.

Nahum likewise personifies Thebes as a woman and asks Nineveh a pointed question, who is more attractive, right?

So here we're gonna have a contrast between, we're gonna see it in Proverbs, between a woman called folly and a woman called wisdom.

It's very similar. Proverbs, say to wisdom, you are my sister, and call insight your intimate friend to keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, right?

So Assyria, Nineveh is acting like the harlot. The bride of Christ acts like a faithful bride, and this is the compare and contrast, but always between God's people and those who are against God's, those are

God's enemies, those who are against God. There's always that contrast. While Nineveh glorified in its art and architecture, the grandeur and beauty of Thebes dwarfed

Nineveh's splendor in every regard. Ninevite artists specialized in depicting atrocity, and if you can remember weeks back, we showed you the pictures, the things engraved on stones where they showed how they crucified people, they showed the captors in a lion's den, all of the artwork that Nineveh produced showed them conquering and brutalizing the nations around them.

That's not what Egypt did. In contrast, Theban artists and architects, Egyptian artists, spent roughly a millennium producing immense structures whose ruins still inspire awe in modern visitors.

Nineveh enjoyed a brief ascendancy in which colossal palaces arose, but these were decorated with stone reliefs of grotesque scenes.

Nineveh's art focused on evoking fear and horror. They were conquests, they were conquerors, they would show you how they brutalized other people, whereas the city in Egypt didn't do that.

They were about the architecture to try to bring beauty to their surroundings. Whereas Nineveh enjoyed prosperity for less than a century, pharaohs had created architectural marvels in Thebes since before the time of the

Exodus. Fabulous wealth quickly gained and extravagantly spent does not always make for artistic beauty.

That's Nineveh. Empires create art to glorify themselves and impress others.

The edifices of Nineveh and Thebes both projected power and grandeur. They sent powerful visual messages to visiting dignitaries.

Nahum warned Nineveh that if Theban beauty could not cow, pacify, or seduce potential aggressors,

Nineveh's beauty would be of no help either. Right, okay, so this isn't just about outward adornment.

This is inward peace, harmony, unity. Right, so it would be a unified nation.

They would all be in one accord, right? So it's not just outward aesthetic beauty, it's that inner harmony.

So excellent, great point. So obviously, Nineveh didn't have that. You know, their job was to not bring unity to the nations around them, but to bring fear to subjugate them so that they would rule over them, not in unity, but as a monarchy.

Well, you know, I shouldn't say monarchy, as a dictator. So they would tell the other people what to do and they would have to do it.

There's no harmony or peace in that. Fortifications, okay, so this points us to the strength of the city.

The remainder of Nahum 3 .8 describes Thebes' natural defenses. With characteristic reputation,

Nahum makes four references to water barriers in just a handful of words. As you can see up top, it says, you're situated by the waters of the

Nile with water surrounding her, whose rampart was the sea, whose wall consisted of the sea.

The description of Thebes sitting by the Nile with water around her, rampart as a sea and water as a wall, has caused numerous scholars to question

Nahum's knowledge of the city and therefore the accuracy of the Bible. Some have argued that this description of the city's water differs so drastically with the

Theban geography that Nahum's Noah mom could not be

Thebes at all. So skeptics look at this and say, the Bible got it wrong.

This is why we don't trust the Bible. Currently, most scholars acknowledge that the book does refer to Thebes, even if Nahum had faulty information.

After all, how could we expect a 7th century BC Judean to give an accurate description of a faraway

Egyptian city? So they're calling into question the accuracy of the Bible. They're calling into question the accuracy of what

Nahum said, and we're gonna see what this means in a minute. However, let's take a look. Okay, so this is the area that Nahum is talking about.

There's Thebes on the bottom. Okay, so that's lo Amman. Now let's see, what's this?

What's that called? Anybody know? The Nile River. Does the Nile River have water in it?

Yeah, just checking. All right, what's this? The Red Sea. That's what

God parted. Think about parting that sea, okay, so that the Israelites could walk through it.

So there's water in the Nile. There's water in the Red Sea. What's that? Mediterranean.

Does it have water in it? Okay, I'm just checking. I don't know, maybe it's me. Maybe, you know,

I'm so skeptical that I wouldn't see that Thebes is surrounded by water. I mean, this is the lunacy of what a skeptic says.

Oh yeah, no, this couldn't be the city that Nahum couldn't possibly have gotten that right.

Sea on the north, right through it, sea on the east. It's surrounded by the sea.

I mean, how anybody could come and say, oh, the Bible got it wrong. Look at this. The Bible didn't get it wrong.

Oh boy. What many scholars fail to recognize is that Nahum describes the water defenses on a greater scale.

Thebes was not powerfully defended by water at its front door. It was powerfully defended by water at its coast.

For example, during World War II, the United States government built chemical munitions plants in West Virginia on the border with Ohio and Kentucky.

One nearby town bears the name Nitro because of this. A system of rivers and railroads made this a strategic location for manufacturing and shipping munitions.

During World War II, neither the Germans nor the Japanese invaded Nitro. They did not even bomb it, even though it produced war material.

It was not the Kanawha River that protected Nitro. It was the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that did, where British munitions plants suffered through numerous

Luftwaffe bombing raids, West Virginia escaped unscathed. So West Virginia, okay, is inward.

Obviously, it would be difficult for the enemies to cross the Atlantic or the Pacific to come attack them.

Same thing with Thebes. You'd have to go through the Mediterranean Sea, go through the Nile, or come across the

Red Sea in order to get to them. Similarly, it was not Thebes' local water resources that made it seemingly impervious to attack.

It was the combination of two brutal deserts, two seas, and the world's longest river that protected it.

It's these waters to which Nahum refers. Okay, fortifications continued.

The city of Thebes did sit on the Nile, 500 miles upstream. Beyond this, Thebes had the protection of the

Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Red Sea to the east. On either side of the fertile river basin, treacherous deserts provided additional barriers.

The Assyrian army, with its Judean conscripts, faced an arduous journey to Thebes. All of the geography worked to aid the

Egyptians and expose the Assyrians. Despite all these advantages, Thebes still fell.

So think about the barriers that Thebes had. You had the water up north.

You had the Nile River. You had the Red Sea to the east. You had desert to the west.

They had a good amount of surrounding natural barriers to being attacked.

Yet they not only were attacked, they were destroyed. It's gonna be easier for them to conquer

Nineveh. By contrast, Nineveh had geographical weaknesses. The city lay in the

Mesopotamian plain, easily accessible from many directions and surrounded by hostile nations. Nineveh did have some natural fortifications.

It also boasted huge walls and an immense armory. But if a nation had found itself strong enough to march on Assyria, it would only have faced a fraction of the hazards that a trip to Thebes involved.

Nineveh did not need to worry about this, though. Assyrian armies had subdued all the surrounding nations.

No nation seemed capable of marching against the Assyrian homeland, let alone Nineveh. The day would come, however, when

Assyria's armies would falter. Again, as God said they would. When that day came,

Nineveh would be much more vulnerable than Thebes had ever been. Okay, so now we're gonna get to the part in the verse where it says

Ethiopia was her might and Egypt, too, without limits. Put and Labim were among her helpers.

So again, this is a comparison between Thebes and Nineveh. Let's look at her allies in the empire.

Nahum 3 .9 lists four peoples that Thebes had counted as allies. The prodigious natural defenses of the city were supplemented by supporting nations.

They had help. Yet again, Nineveh could not compare. Assyria had no friends. They deceived everybody that they went in covenant with.

There was no, no one was truly royal. Assyria conquered and governed by fear.

Peoples were starved or tortured into submission. Assyria could count on only hatred and retribution from the surrounding peoples.

As soon as Assyrian might weaken, they would all turn against the empire. Think about an evil dictator subjugating everybody based on fear.

If the opportunity came where another nation would come and try to take over the dictator, all the other nations around them would help.

They wouldn't defend the dictator. They would go in and try to help this other nation overthrow them.

That's exactly what's gonna happen with Nineveh. Four allies listed in 3 .9 make a more subtle point, too.

Nahum shaped this verse to mimic Genesis. Let's compare these two verses. Genesis 10 .6,

the sons of Ham, Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. Nahum 3 .9, Cush was her strength.

Egypt, too, and that without limit. Put and the Libyans were her helpers.

He's paralleling this with the descendants of Ham. Both verses use the names of Cush, Egypt, and Put in the same order.

In Genesis, they refer to patriarchs, and in Nahum, they refer to peoples descended from those patriarchs.

You look at Cush, Egypt, and Put, Nahum uses them as well, Cush, Egypt, and Put.

As we have seen before, Nahum understood the conflict between God and the Assyrian adversaries as an ancient one.

Therefore, the question, are you better than thieves, also contrasts the lineage of Thebes and Nineveh.

Ancient genealogies demonstrated the hierarchy of families. In this way, Nahum compared Nineveh and Thebes with regards to their empires.

The Egyptian empire had a more continuous and glorious history than Assyria did. Within the history of the

Assyrian empire, Nineveh was of little importance until its last 100 years. Thebes had been the city of pharaohs for centuries.

Thebes had a much higher aristocratic pedigree than Nineveh. Again, when you compare these two cities,

Thebes is the more beautiful city, the stronger city. It had a much better reputation than Nineveh.

By comparing Nineveh and Thebes in regards to deities, beauty, fortifications, allies, age, and empires,

Nahum demonstrated that Nineveh had no grounds for pride or security in comparison with Thebes.

If Thebes could fall, Nineveh should fear. Nineveh's brief ascendancy depended upon God's use for it.

It would crumble at his behest as well. The city had no attribute that could protect it from devastation, and the recent history of Thebes has shown this.

So let's look at Proverbs. You look at Nineveh, and if this is not a territory, a city of pride, what is?

Pride goes before destruction and a hoardy spirit before the fall. Proverbs 16 .9,

it's better to be of lowly spirit with the poor than to divide spoil with the proud.

So you see how Nineveh, these two things specifically refer to Nineveh.

The Proverbs obviously refer to lots of other things, but Nineveh as a city would fall under this as well, a prideful city.

Look what's going on in our country. We have pride month. Pride goes before destruction.

Proverbs 18, 10 and 11, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous man runs into it and is safe.

A rich man's wealth is his strong city and like a high wall in his imagination.

Before destruction, a man's heart is hoardy, but humility comes before honor. So here again is the contrast between the people of God and the seed of the serpent.

We run to the name of the Lord. They run to the name of the government. We run to God.

They run to man. They would hold and find security in their wealth, in their bank account, in their stock account.

We find our security in Jesus Christ, who is our all in all. He bought us.

You were bought with a price, the incredible price of God's own son. Psalm 20, some trust in chariots, some in horses, but we trust in the name of the

Lord, our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright. There are some people who trust in the size of their army.

That could be America. That could be many other nations around the world. We trust in the name of the

Lord, our God. Our God is sovereign. He will win in the end. He does whatever he says he will do and we can trust in him and know that he's good and righteous to his people.

So any concluding questions? Anything that stands out?

Yes, Jerry. Yeah. Unfortunately, the human heart, apart from the spirit of God, is going to go the way of the world.

And the way of the world is unified and the way of God's people is unified. We are focused on righteousness.

They're focused on comfort, pleasure, man -centeredness. So you're going to see a similarity in the people who fall away from God, like the

Israelites, and fall into the same mold as the nation. That's why Paul tells us in Romans 12, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may be able to discern

God's good, pleasing will, his good and perfect will. All right, so we're conformed to his image. Yes, Mike. I think anybody who finds their security in their riches, their armies, or whatever, is not focused on God.

And eventually, that's going to fail. The same way everybody in America today or around the world today who place their faith and trust in something other than God is eventually going to fail.

Like the systems of the world today where God has given them over to a depraved mind, to the lust of their flesh.

All those things are going to collapse because they can't succeed. They're not

God's plan. Only God's plan will succeed long -term. They might succeed short -term, but long -term, they'll be devastated.