Woe And Wow - [Nahum 3:1-7]

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

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

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

Michael E. Abendroth here at the helm, and Gage. Some of you have listened to almost every show. Kofi, I�m talking to you, and other people. I think we should give probably prizes out to people that have listened to every show.

If you�ve listened to every show, would you email me and let�s see what I could do for you. Maybe there�s something nice I could do. Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. I have to take you at your word. I have the message Bible here in front of me.

I don�t know if I could give you any special words of wisdom. Let�s see, I�m after Psalm 9 because it looks similar, sounds similar, has the same feel as it were as Nahum, chapter 2 and 3 in terms of judging nations.

Let�s see what Psalm 9 says in the message translation. I�m thanking you God from a full heart. I�m writing the book on your wonders. I�m whistling, laughing, and jumping for joy. I�m singing your song.

Hi God, H-I-G-H-I, God. I�m whistling. Ever whistle for the Lord? I guess you could. I didn�t know that the Hebrew implied that. Here it says, �You blow the whistle on godless nations. You throw dirty players out of the game.

Wipe their names right off the roster. That�s what you do, God. You take those people that cheat in the game of risk and stratego, and I can tell you how old I am. I never really knew how to play those games well.

I didn�t really know the strategy, right? There�s supposed to be some strategy. I always had the bomb guy find the wrong bombs. Anyway, you can always write me. Let�s talk a little bit about Nahum today since I am preaching tomorrow in the book of Nahum, and I like to do a little fine-tuning, as you know, on Saturdays when I come here into the study.

I record a couple shows at home, but it doesn�t seem to work as well, so whatever. Nahum chapter 3. If you didn�t listen to the last show on Nahum, you should listen to it because that was all a lead-up to these seven verses in Nahum that I will entitle �The Woe and the Wow.

W-O-E, woe, opposite of blessed, right? Like the weal and the woe, and then the wow, because of the level of intensity that the Lord shows forth in the judgment of Nineveh slash Assyria, wow. Therefore, we have alliteration, woe and wow.

We have no woke. What else do we have? The woe, the wow. Woe with three letters, wow with three letters. This is my best outline I�ve ever produced. That�s just so wrong to say. Let�s look at the woe, and we�re not going to look at even Nahum for that long because there�s other woes I want to talk about, but the woe, Nahum chapter 3.

Now, don�t forget that Judah is being oppressed by the Ninevites, and these Ninevites, of course, were wicked, awful people, and God particularly cares because He is just, but He also loves His people, so He�s going to judge the oppressors, and therefore, He sends Nahum to tell the people in Judah, �Don�t worry.

These people that are oppressing you now will pay later. Not very much longer, after a little while, you could talk. In a short timeframe, it happened, and Nineveh was judged, and they were really, really obliterated so much so that it�s hard for people to even find the ruins of Nineveh except for a few little shards and a few little writings.

Well, the woe here is future for the recipients of Nahum, but it�s past for us. Okay? Simple? We can do that? No problemo. And so, we�re going to look at the woe. Woe, chapter 3, verse 1, to the listen to why it�s given woe bloody city.

They were murderers, assassinators is that a word? All full of lies, so they lied, and plunder, no end to the prey, P-R-E-Y, and so they were greedy people, they were lying people, they were murderous people, and therefore, God says, for your bloody atrocities and crimes against humanity, specifically, sins against me and my people, there�s going to be woe.

This is an oracle woe, it�s a certain kind of writing in the prophetic books of the Bible, and basically, it�s you ought to be so afraid of the coming doom that you snap out of it, that you show some remorse, some type of grief, some type of contrition, some type of repentance.

It�s going to be too late in this particular case, yes, but woe, I mean, you�re the kind of people, you Assyrians, where you cut off hands and ears and noses, and you gouge out eyes, and you peel skin off the living victims, and you don�t think the Lord doesn�t know that?

I mean, you can read 2 Kings chapter 18, it says, �Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, �Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat from his own vine, and each one from his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own, a land of grain and wine, and a land of bread and vineyards, and a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die.

Do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, �The Lord will deliver us. Lies. The king of Assyria lying right there. We have it in the Bible, because 2 Chronicles says the king of Assyria came against him and afflicted him instead of strengthening him.

That was a big lie. These people, they don't care if you were young or old, a male or female, infant, toddler, kindergartner, if they would have kindergarten back in those days, they just would, for a show of force and to make a point, they were bloody, they lied, and therefore this chapter begins with a woe.

You can see it 40 -50 times in the Old Testament. These prophets, it's like a curse, you're cursed, you're damned, woe is the interjection. When you persecute the people of God and you do it in such a fashion, of course, where there's murder and stealing and lying and it's just to the nth degree, do you think the Lord knows?

Do you think the Lord cares? Do you think there's going to be a judgment day? Well, the answer is yes, yes, and yes, woe. You say, well, you know what? Here's the good news. Woe is kind of like for Old Testament prophets, they said woe, but that's not true.

They're not the only ones who said that. There's a New Testament prophet that talked about woe and it is very relevant for us today. He is the greatest prophet. He's the ultimate prophet. He's the ultimate Nahum, the ultimate comforter, and his name is Jesus, who's not just a priest, not just a king, but also is a prophet.

When I hear the word woe, while the persecution of God's people is certainly true, there's applicable examples in the New Testament as well. Woe. We're not talking about some Old Testament God who says woe, and the New Testament God says all kinds of blessings.

Well, there are blessings in woe, weal and woe in the Old Testament, and new, of course, because it's the same God. I want to just look at two woes, two examples of woe in the New Testament so you get the gravity of this woe back in Nahum.

Woe in Nineveh is bad, but is there something even close to that kind of woe? The first passage I want to take to you, both are in Matthew, Matthew chapter 11 and then Matthew 23, because I want to look at some woes.

I want you just to get the gravity of the chapter 3 verse 1 Nahum woe. There's some other woes from the ultimate prophet, the Lord Jesus. Matthew 11, 20, then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent.

That's the idea. They weren't thinking rightly about their sin, and of course, that means they weren't thinking rightly about their Messiah as well. Woe to you, Chorazin, woe. This is the Lord Jesus, love incarnate.

Woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it'll be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.

Oh, you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You'll be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you, it would be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.

Woe and woe. Jesus does all these miracles, right? Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum. And what happens? They watch Jesus heal centurion servants and his mother-in-law and casting out demons and raising dead girls and giving sight to blind men.

And they're like, you know what? We're not going to repent. You understand the person and work of Jesus. You grow up in the church. You understand that he's the God-man, the risen Savior, and you're like, I'm not going to repent.

What's the response then? It's going to be, whoa. You can't be indifferent to Jesus. This is judging Jesus as not to be true. And what he does has no effect on me. I don't care. And it can be right there up close and personal, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, West Boylston.

We've seen, you, if you're here, you have seen the handiwork of God in the lives of people. And you're like, you know what? I don't care. So you pick the worst cities, you pick Vegas, right? You pick sin cities.

You pick places where the people go overseas, you know, and special places where it's like, you know what? It says Amsterdam. And you're like, you know what? They're going to be better off. They're going to be better off than a West Boylston, as it were.

Whoa, how terrible, one translation translates it, how terrible will it be for people who see the works of God, the power of God, Jesus himself, and they don't repent. I mean, you should be thinking, whoa, if I don't repent, that's right.

But how is it that anyone isn't like the citizens of Sodom? And the answer is, because God reveals himself, and God is very gracious. And it says in verse 25, which is a fascinating verse, where we hear a prayer between the father and the son praying to the father, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden all these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my father, and no one knows the son except the father, and no one knows the father except the son, and to anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

There's going to be a revelation from God that's talked about here to a person so they could understand the truth. Why? Because they were good? Because they were better? No, because it says, because of God's good pleasure.

Here, you think about those people, Boyce said, what is more, the revelation has to do with Jesus and his teaching, and it is made not to those who consider themselves wise and learned, which the citizens of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum must have thought they were.

Instead of being given to such wise persons, it is given to those Jesus calls little children. And here, the son praises the father for revealing salvation to some and concealing it to others. He's the Lord.

That's what the text says. Isn't that interesting? I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven. God can do whatever he wants. God can reveal. God can conceal. No one is due anything. God is the revealer. He's the concealer.

He owes nothing to anyone except he has a very gracious will. And of course, the son, how does the son respond? He's happy with that. He doesn't say, you pick and choose, and you're sovereign. He acknowledges, he praises, this is pleasing to the father, it is good pleasure for all of us.

And then he says, all things have been handed over to me by my father, and no one knows the son except the father, and no one knows the father except the son, and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

That is amazing to me. That is wonderful to me. This is all that we could imagine a sovereign God would do and be. And then, of course, we come to the passage that you're familiar with. We know Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, they didn't repent at Jesus' teaching.

Why? I think the answer is they didn't really know how sinful they were. They didn't see the gravity of it. They didn't see how burdensome it was. They didn't see how heavy sin was. And Jesus then says, verse 28, 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. Hey, Capernaum, Bethsaida, Chorazin, you're not burdened by sin, but there's some people that are, that the father has revealed to them the truth.

They understand who the son is. They realize that they're weary and they're burdened and they need a savior. And instead of woe, based on only the pleasure of God, there's salvation and rest. Can you imagine?

Isn't that good? I will give you rest. Not just, I'm not going to be anxious anymore about my salvation, but a real peace, a rest for your souls, as Jeremiah six talks about. And just, just come. You don't have to do anything.

You don't have to, you don't have to prepare yourself ahead of time. Just come, just, just, just rest. Therefore the woe in all this is when you see such a savior was such an offer, was such a great offer.

And you say, no, I'm not going to do that. Well, if the woe in Nahum three is bad, how much greater is the woe where all these things are done and you have all the Bible, you're actually held more accountable than, than these three cities, because we see all of the things that Jesus has done.

And we even get a sneak peek into what happens between the father and the son as they're having sweet, intimate communion. And then we realize, well, you know what? In the middle of all that, we don't, I don't care.

I'm not that sinful. And I'll take my chances on that day. That's a woe. That's, that's stop. That's show some grief. So show some despair, show some contrition. And then there's one other woe that I want to talk about, and I guess that's probably what we'll have time for today for the woe and the wow.

The woe factor, the wow factor is Matthew 23. And essentially this woe is, if you're going to try to hurt the work of Jesus by adding man-made rules to dominate people and control them, there's seven woes.

This is from love incarnate, the Lord Jesus, of course. And Jesus has ultimate, true, verifiable authority. And he is going to tell these teachers, these leaders, these Pharisees that no matter how scrupulous they are, when they try to put extra biblical scruples onto people, God's people, instead of just even the resting, this is the exact opposite of rest, opposite of rest.

I'm going to write down in my notes. There's a woe. You see Jesus, and then you say, well, you know what, I kind of need to add to his work. And it is woe after woe after woe. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

Shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. You're going backwards. You're not taking people to heaven. You're taking people to hell.

Yikes. Hell. Yeah. You're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way, because if the gospel is all about Jesus and what he's done, and then your response is faith, and then you say, no, you have to do all these things.

That's not the religion of come and rest. That's the religion of do and be damned. Do and be damned, because you could never do enough. Do and be damned. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

You travel across land and sea to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourself. Yeah, evangelism is good when you give people good news.

You're going to just do the exact opposite of Matthew 11. Burden after burden after burden after burden. Do you do enough? Is it ever enough? And the answer would be no. You're going to have to make sure your righteousness surpasses that or exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, or you're no way going to enter the kingdom of heaven.

That means you need to have a perfect righteousness. Woe to you, blind guides. Can you imagine? Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Verse 23, you tithe mint and dill and cumin. You've neglected weightier matters like mercy and justice and faithfulness.

You clean the outside of the cup, verse 25. You are like whitewashed tombs, verse 27. But the theme with all seven of these is woe, woe, woe, woe, woe, woe. That's six, number seven, woe, building tombs and decorates and then kills them.

This is, this is a woe from Jesus. And if you wanted to summarize it by saying, you know what, let's make sure we give a wide to not confusing the first use of the law with the third use. The first use is for unbelievers and it's like a mirror.

I'm undone. I'm sinful and I cannot stand before God because he's marking my transgressions. And the third use of the law is, well, you know what? I want to obey God since I'm his child, but I'm trusting in Jesus who perfectly obeyed that mirror law.

And now this is just a guide for me. And therefore my status before God is not, I do these things. My status before God is it's been done for me. And therefore with the law now, I have a different use of the law.

I mean, it still says, don't, it still says, honor your parents, but I do it out of gratitude. Now I do it to glorify God. I do it to help my assurance. I do it for lots of reasons. Anyway, when you're anti God's people, there's a woe.

When you're anti seeing who Jesus is and you won't repent, there's a woe. And when you're anti faith alone, sola fide, there's a woe. There's the woes and the wow, and we're going to get to the wow in a second.

Don't fall into these traps and don't read the old Testament prophets and go, oh, that's just for them, woe. Because really the woe is worse when we have the ultimate prophet, the ultimate comforter, the ultimate Nehemiah.

God is my comfort. And that is the Lord Jesus. And if you're not going to rest in him and have to take comfort in him, then there's going to be no comfort for you. Remember S. Lewis Johnson would always pray for unbelievers and may they find no rest or comfort until they find their rest and comfort in you, Lord Jesus.

That's right. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. I'm No Compromise Radio. This is No Compromise Radio. That used to be No Compromise Radio, demonstrative pronouns back and forth anyway. You can always write us.

We want to serve you in any way we can. I've been recording some episodes for Brandon Kimber and the American Gospel. It'll be on the TV show, five-part series on law and gospel, law, gospel introduction, errors and implications.

So anyway, that will be coming soon, AGTV.

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

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