Nahum 3: 6-7: Without a Comforter

Nineveh’s Shame and the Judgment of God

All right, so we're in Nahum. Today we're going to see Nineveh as a filthy, vile spectacle without a comforter. Very comforting words, right? All right, so let's begin by reading this passage. We're going to read Nahum chapter 3, verses 1 through 10.

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 the nations your nakedness, and to the kingdoms your disgrace.

And this is the verse for today. 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 waters 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 locks for her honorable men, and all her great men were bound with fetters. Again, as we're going through Nahum, this is heavy stuff. Again, we hear, Behold, I am against you. Today, I will throw filth on you and make you vile and make you a spectacle.

Shame, Exposure, and the Gospel of Righteousness

So just a real quick recap from last week with verse five. This was the second time that Assyria hears God say, I am against you. Like if there's any words you want to hear from God, it's not these. I am against you.

Like who is going to be able to beat back the Almighty? Who's going to be able to stand in His presence and win? No one. Assyria will receive the same treatment that they inflicted on others. Again, we see, you will reap what you sow.

The measure which you use, it will be dealt back to you. In lifting their skirts over their face, God will expose their shamefulness publicly. In a day and age today where people don't have any shame, back then they did.

This would be a disgrace for them and for the people around them. The natural and sinful instinct of man is to cover up sin, like Adam and Eve did in the garden. That's where we get that term, cover up.

It's a cover up. What are they covering up? They're covering up their guilt. They're covering up their crimes. They're covering up their shame. God will strip or uncover the sinfulness of the guilty. Ultimately, when the guilty stand before God, all of their deeds are going to be exposed and able to be seen.

And He will provide clothing for the faithful. This is the gospel. The sins of believers will be covered, atoned for, and removed, expiated. That's what the gospel is. When you place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, He covers you with His righteousness and removes your sin from you.

Salvation is being clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ. And thank God He gives that to us. It's something that we could never earn on our own. You read Romans chapter 4, Romans chapter 10, Galatians chapter 2, verses 15 and 16.

It is not by works. You cannot make yourself righteous. Once you drive a brand new car off the lot, it can never be new again. You can polish it up real nice. You can wash it. You can shine the tires.

It's a used car. The moment you're born into this world, you're born as a sinner. You need a new nature, and that's only possible through the gospel. You need your heart of stone pulled out and a heart of flesh put back in you with God's laws written upon them to move you to follow His law.

In the gospel, guilty harlots are made into faithful brides. There's not a one of us here who has been perfectly faithful to God. In fact, I would say us in here look more like Nineveh than we do Jesus.

If you really examine your heart, you'll recognize the sinfulness of your own heart. This is why we need a Savior. This is why the gospel is good news. So now, last week when Pastor preached his message, it was really, it brought me joy because what I had talked about in Sunday school coincided with what he was preaching on.

Anybody remember the word? Shame, right? Shame, right? Shame. God exposed shame, right? You're left naked standing before God without righteousness. You're going to stand before Him, and you're going to be ashamed because when the evil deeds of your heart are made known to the people around you, you're going to cower.

You're going to close your eyes and wish you weren't alive. So what was the scripture last week that Pastor used? Not Hebrews, but the other one, the secondary scripture. Anybody remember? All right, good.

It was Philippians chapter three. For many of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly, and they glory in their shame with mindset on earthly things.

Anybody give me an example of people who glory in their shame right now? Yeah, right. Pride month, right? Who else? Where do we go on Fridays? Pro-choice. I'm pro-choice. Really? Really? You're glorying in murder.

You're glorying in your shame. Then Pastor's next verse that he was preaching on, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Now, I wanted to look that up before I explained it, and what I found out, this was Kent Hughes. He says he endured the cross, scorning a chain. That is, he thought nothing of a chain. He dismissed it as nothing.

In other words, he didn't look at the shame like, oh, I'm going to become shameful. He looked at it as like, okay, I'm going to do away with their shame. Okay. I am going to cover them in my perfect righteousness.

Therefore, we will not be exposed. And what does this lead to? Colossians. This is what Jesus did on the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

So at the cross, he put the demonic rulers and authorities, the authorities in the dark places. He put them to open shame. Romans 10 for the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.

When you trust in Jesus as Lord, okay, you're going to get his perfect righteousness. It's called the great exchange. We give him our sin and he gives us his righteousness so that he gets the glory. He gets the vindication of his son.

When his son comes back to earth and separates the sheep from the goats, knowing that the sheep are the ones that he clothed in his righteousness. It wasn't anything that we did. It was what he's done for us.

Romans 1 16. Once you're clothed with the righteousness of Christ and you truly trust in Jesus and you know that he died on the cross in your place, you're not going to be ashamed of the gospel. You're going to publicly proclaim that as good news.

This is what God's done to me. This is what God has done to everybody who's placed his faith and trust in Jesus. This was what was promised in Genesis chapter 3 15. And I love what Sinclair Ferguson says.

The rest of the Bible is a footnote to Genesis 3 15. It's like God could have stopped right there and that would have been enough for the Messiah, right? But obviously he, he gives us more information.

God’s “I Will” and the New Covenant

Okay. Let's now turn our attention to verses, verse six. God says, I will throw filth on you and make you vile and set you up as a spectacle. And I highlighted that word, those two words, I will, because the Lexham English Bible translates it like this.

I will throw filth upon you. I will treat you with contempt. I will make you a spectacle, right? This is all God. I will, I will, I will. And when God says, I will, he does. God doesn't say I will and say, I changed my mind.

I'm not going to do it. When he says I will, he does. Is it good that God follows through with his I wills? Yes. Right. It's good. If your faith and trust is in Jesus, it's not so good. If you don't know the Lord or you've rejected the Lord, or you've reject the offer of the gospel, because he will make a spectacle of you.

He will uncover your nakedness. He will expose it for all to see. And you will be found guilty in God's sight. You don't want that, right? This is what's going to happen to the Ninevites. So now this, this, I will, it is good that all of God's I wills, uh, take place.

And you've heard me say this before, but I'm going to bear his witness again. This is what the essence of the new covenant is with Ezekiel, right? And this is God speaking. And he says, I will take you from the nations and I will gather you from all the lands.

And I will bring you to your land and I will sprinkle pure water on you and you will be clean from all your uncleanness. And I will cleanse you from all your idols. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit.

I will give into your inner parts and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh. And I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will give my spirit into your inner parts. And I will make it so that you will go in my rules and my regulations and you will remember, and you will do them and you will dwell in the land that I gave your ancestors and you will be to me as a people and I will be your God.

Nope. A little too fast. Okay. So here we got all the, the essence of the new covenant and all the I wills. So who's the one, um, performing the new covenant God, right? He's the one that says, I will, I will, I will, I will.

We're the recipients of it and we respond to it, but it's only because God says, I will. And there's more. He says, and I will be to you as a God, and I will save you from all your uncleanness. And I will call the grain and I will cause it to increase.

And I will not bring famine upon you. And I will cause cause the fruit of the tree and the crop of the field to increase so that you will not suffer again, the disgrace of famine among the nations, right?

There's a couple of things that we receive in there. And that might, you know, make us cheer and we should be grateful, um, in tremendous gratitude for the mercy that God showed us. But then look at what he says.

This is really, really important. Here's our part. And you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good. And you will loathe yourself over your iniquities and over your detestable things, but not for your sake.

Am I acting declares Lord Yahweh, let it be known to you, be ashamed and be put to shame because of your ways. Oh, house of Israel. We should never think that this new covenant had anything to do with our ability or our works or something that we did or said this covenant is made by God for his namesake and for his glory.

He rescues a sinful wicked people from the face of the earth for his glory because of his son, Jesus. Okay. We should never gloat. We should never be pride or arrogant about it. So God says, I will throw filth at you and treat you with content.

God’s Judgment on Nineveh as Public Shame

Again, this is not something that we normally talk about. This is not something that the church generally celebrates, but this is a reflection of the justice of God. The people who sin against God, who reject him, who spit in his face and poke him in the eye are going to receive justice.

Look at what this means here. Filth probably refers to all sorts of household rubbish. It may be that the treatment spoken of here is that given at the time to women who were known to have committed adultery.

Not only were they stripped in public, verse five, but they were also mocked by having rubbish thrown at them. I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt may be expressed in some languages as I will show you how much I despise you by throwing rubbish filth at you.

Some translators may follow the revised standard versions ordering of these clauses and say, I will throw rubbish at you to show you how much I despise you. Again, this is not something that we generally hear in church, but this is the word of God.

This is what the prophet is telling. Who's he talking to? He's talking to the Israelites and the Ninevites. Nahum means what? Comforter. Nahum means comforter. Nahum tells us that because of Nineveh's sin, she will be like a prostitute who is forced to walk along the streets so that the population can throw filth at her.

Nineveh will be treated with contempt, and just as an exposed prostitute suffers the humiliation of being treated like dirt, so proud Nineveh will one day be brought down to ruin. And when that day comes, no one will mourn for her.

We can imagine something of how the people of Judah must have felt during all those years of humiliation at the hands of the citizens of Nineveh. But at last, God has sent them a comforter in the person of his servant Nahum, the prophet whose very name means comfort.

Now, God is throwing filth at them because they're unrepentant. If a prostitute was to repent, if someone who was idolatrous and committing spiritual adultery repented, God would welcome them back into his loving arms.

He would bring them close to him. He would grant them repentance and forgiveness, right? But if you're unrepentant and you're going your own way, God's going to give you what you want. He's going to give you what you deserve because you don't want God.

So this is not to say, oh, God just hates prostitutes. God has a general love for all mankind, right? But if you're unrepentant and you continue to follow in your sinful ways and glory in your shame, glory in your sin, God's going to give you what you deserve.

The enemies of God. Okay, what are the enemies of God marked by? He says, I will throw filth upon you. I will treat you with contempt. I will make you a spectacle, right? These are the three I wills that God says to Nineveh.

But those who are friends of God, those who are born of God's spirit, born from above, right? Who belong to God. How are they treated? I will sprinkle pure water on you and clean you. Rather than filth, God cleans us.

He cleanses us from our sin. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. Rather than giving you justice, he gives you mercy. Receiving a new heart and a new spirit is not based on something you do. It's based on God's promise in the new covenant and him having mercy on you.

I will be your God. God will be the spectacle. He will be the one that everybody focuses on and say, oh my goodness, how gracious and merciful that God is to save a guy like Anthony Eugenio to save a person like anybody in here.

Because if all of our evil deeds were exposed, the thoughts of your mind, the inclinations of your heart, if they were made into a movie, would you want your family and friends to watch that movie? No, never, right?

That's going to be covered and expiated. There's a difference between how God treats the enemy, his enemies, versus his children. Isaiah 14, 6 says, those who see you will stare at you and ponder over you.

Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook the kingdoms? Isaiah is talking about the king of Babylon there, but it bears noting that this is how he's treating Nineveh as well. Nahum means what?

Oh come on, I gave you this already. Nahum means comfort, comfort. Don't forget that, right? But remember, you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good. You will loathe yourself over your iniquities and over your detestable things, but not for your sake am I acting, declares the Lord.

Let it be known to you, be ashamed, and be put to shame because of your ways, O house of Israel. What is this verse designed to do to us with regards to the gospel? An answer? Anything? Isn't this designed to humble us, to make our focus on God and not ourselves?

Shouldn't this evoke gratitude, right? Shouldn't this also bring to mind the things, the sins that are still occurring in our lives that we need to work on, right? We who are recipients of God's mercy, what should we not be?

No gloating, no boasting except in the Lord, no arrogance, no pride. When you've received the mercy of God, you cannot lord that over someone else. You are one beggar telling another beggar where to get something to eat.

Those are human beings created in the image of God. Our job is to go in as the hands and feet of the Lord, bring them the gospel, bring them what they need in order to see the image of God restored in them, and God be glorified, and Jesus be vindicated.

Around here, we have a question. How you doing? How you doing? What's the answer? Better than I deserve. Is that true? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's why we say this all the time. Better than I deserve.

It's a reminder not just to the person who asked us the question, it's a reminder to us. I'm doing much, much better than I deserve. That should evoke gratitude. That should evoke humility. That should evoke joy that Jesus died on that cross for my sins.

There's another answer I want you to potentially give. Blessed and highly favored. I am blessed and highly favored by God, not because of me, but because of Jesus. What a gift. We start taking our eyes off the God and on to the gifts, the blessings that God's given us.

We're going to forget the God who saved us, who gave us the greatest gift in Jesus Christ. When you have Jesus, you have everything. You have everything you need. So there's a difference between how God treats the enemies of God.

It's going to be bad, but there's also the way he treats his people. It's going to be better than good. It's going to be incredible. I will throw filth on you, make you vile, and set you up as a spectacle.

The Fivefold Judgment on Nineveh

First, God will uncover Nineveh's skirts before her own face. Like an alluring harlot, Nineveh had flaunted her gypsy skirts, tantalizing with flowered, free-flowing, colorful skirts, vibrating the movement in life.

But the shameful use of all that appeal is exactly like the wife dressed like a prostitute whose feet never stay at home. But God will expose the harlot for what she really is. Her game is up before the public eye, but also before her own face, so that she cannot hide from the disgrace of all of it.

Her lewd conduct shall be exposed. That's what's going to happen to all the enemies of God. And none of those enemies are going to be able to stand before God and say, well, I'm innocent. When they're standing before God, they're going to recognize their guilt.

They're going to recognize what they they deserve, and they're going to rail against it. This is that quote in Proverbs, Behold, the woman meets him dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart. She is loud and wayward.

Her feet do not stay at home. Second, God will let the nations and kingdoms stare at Nineveh's nakedness and shame. Even as the brutal armies of Nineveh had marched across the borders of numerous nations, so now the shame of her name will reach a universal scope.

In other words, Nineveh's shame is going to be known worldwide. All the dirty facts of her undercover deals will be fully known. Just like a politician or businessman caught in a criminal act whose name and face is exposed on the front page of every newspaper in the nation, so Nineveh's true character will be visible before all.

Now, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, this doesn't apply to you. If you're not a believer in Jesus Christ, not clothed with the righteousness of Christ, this applies to you. It doesn't have to. If you turn to him in repentance and faith, okay?

Continuing on, third, God will pelt Nineveh with detestable things. Marked with the inner filth of the heart, God shall bring an end to those deceitful pretenses of the hypocritical Ninevites. Splotched and splattered with outward filth, they will no longer be able to pretend piety.

Those abominations declared to be unclean in Leviticus shall be openly smeared on the skirts of the harlot. She will be openly naked and ashamed. So, when you see that inner filth and outward filth, what do you think of?

Do you think of a New Testament example of that? Here you go, right? This is one of the woes. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you're full of greed and self-indulgence.

You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate that the outside may also be clean, right? The gospel deals with the internal workings of man, the soul of man, not just the outward actions.

The outward actions are going to reflect the inward change of the heart. So, when God changes your heart, pulls out that heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh, now the deeds that come out of that heart are going to come out through your hands, right?

So, what comes in through the head comes out through the hands. Orthopraxy follows orthodoxy, right? So, what you learn as far as the gospel and what the scriptures say should come out in your actions.

Same thing happened with the Pharisees, right? They had this outward attempt to look good before their fellow man, to be exalted as the guys who keep the law. Meanwhile, inside they were full of dead men's bones, right?

The inside of mankind needs to be addressed, and that's what the gospel addresses. It addresses the internal workings of mankind, where the sin resides. The LLX, anybody want to tell me what the LLX means?

LXX, I'm sorry, LXX. Yes, 70, right? And what is it referring to when LLX, it says the term, the LLX term. I'm saying that, but the Septuagint, why is it called the Septuagint? 70 elders translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek.

So, anytime you see that term LLX, LXX, I'll get it right, LXX, LXX. Anytime you see that term, think 70, Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. So, in the Greek translation, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures for the term detestable things, filth, is, I'm not even going to pronounce that, you can read it, right?

And it's also used, this is interesting, this is why I put this up here, it's also used to describe detestable when it talks about abomination of desolation. In the temple of God, which marks the consummate defilement of the ages.

But when the Lord finally sets things right, those abominations, which might be esteemed highly among men who are glorying in their shame, they shall be denied any corner in the city of God. They're going to be exiled from the presence of God.

Babylon, the archetype of Nineveh, the mother of harlots, shall herself drink the putrefaction of her own abominations from the pretentious golden cup she holds in her hand. Right? Who is Babylon here?

Israel, right? Jerusalem, right? This is what the Israelites ended up being, the whitewashed tombs, okay, who were outwardly looking to be righteous, but inwardly ravenous wolves. They're going to be Babylon, riding the beast, which would be Rome.

Okay, they're the ones who are going to be exiled. Luke 16, 15 says, and he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts, for what is exalted among men is abomination in the sight of God.

That's that word in the Septuagint, in the book of Nineveh, detestable. It's an abomination in the sight of God. Revelation, and I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable.

There's that word again, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. So you have to ask yourself, are you clean or unclean right now? You're clean if you're found in Christ. You're unclean if you're found in your own righteousness, because your own righteousness is filthy rags before the Lord, right?

Your sin is going to go before you. When you stand before God, He's going to judge you for your sin, and there's going to be nothing wrong with that, because that's what you deserve. God is never unjust.

He will give you justice, and that's what God is. God is a just God, but He's also merciful and gracious. He offers His Son, Jesus. He puts His Son, Jesus, on the cross in the place of sinners. You need to repent and trust in that, or be found naked before God with just your sin.

God’s Foolishness, Nineveh’s Mocking, and the Call to Comfort Others

Fourth, God will mock Nineveh like a fool. There comes a time when a person is confirmed in his chosen ways of ungodliness. This is kind of like Romans chapter 1, where God gives them up to the desires of their heart, gives them up over to a depraved mind.

He gives them what they're pursuing. At that point, God will treat them precisely as their confirmed character deserves. So the time has come for God to mock Nineveh like a fool. Nineveh has passed the point of no return.

He shall treat them contemptuously, lightly esteeming their worth. The fool shall be answered according to his folly. Now remember, God sent who to Nineveh first? Jonah. Jonah preached to them five words in Hebrew.

He walked into the city, five words, the whole town repented. Don't you wish that happened with us when we get down to Port Jeff? So five words, you know, repent and be saved. That's what happened in Nineveh, right?

But 40 years went by, Nineveh went back to their old ways and destroyed the 10 tribes of Israel, the northern tribes. Now they're encroaching upon Judah and the other nations around them, and they are detestable in God's sight.

So God is just giving them what they deserve. Proverbs 26, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. Fifth and finally, God shall present Nineveh as a spectacle. The kings of Assyria often found crude delight in exposing their captives to public ridicule.

Ashurbanipal boasts in one of his inscriptions, I put him, doubt date, into a kennel with jackals and dogs. I tied him up and made him guard the gate of Nineveh. So he put this king in a cage with dog, with a dog in front of the gate as like he's one of the guard dogs to defend Nineveh's wall.

I mean, he's making a spectacle out of that king. What is God going to do? He's going to make a spectacle out of him. Such inhuman treatment of one person by another deserves like punishment. So the Lord declares that just as Nineveh had abused its captives, exposing them to public ridicule, so he shall make Nineveh a spectacle of shame that the nations will never forget.

Everyone shall come and stare at Nineveh. International shame and disgrace shall replace pomp and pride. You don't want to be pompous. You don't want to be prideful. All five of these actions described above are attributed to the Lord himself, not some chosen servant.

By his own immediate involvement, the Lord shall humble Nineveh before all the nations of the earth and before all ages of time. When God says, I will, he will. Now those five things came out of a commentary by O. Palmer Robertson.

So I just want you to know all those five reasons or things that we just went through came from O. Palmer Robertson. A spectacle. Yahweh will make Nineveh a spectacle by throwing filth and treating them with contempt.

The word translated filth is translated in other contexts as abomination. It is also a reference to idols which are filth to God. The image may be of God throwing Nineveh's idols back at it. This is what you want to worship.

Boom. That's what you get. Frightening. Frightening. Think about the idols sometimes that we fall victim to, right? That we start our minds straying towards. You want those things thrown back at you? No.

Come back. Ask for forgiveness. We have that promise, right? He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of our unrighteousness. Vile or treat you with contempt is from the root for fool, nabal.

It is an ironically appropriate description of a fool who made a pit to trap others but falls into it himself. To be treated as a nabal means that Nineveh will receive its own violent medicine. It's going to receive back what it administered to others.

Like Babylon. Those who see you will stare at you and ponder over you. Is this the man who made the earth tremble? Who shook the kingdoms? Who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities? Who did not let his prisoners go home?

All the kings of the nations lie in glory each in his own tomb. They will all die. They will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and be given what they deserve. There is a king who died but who's not in his tomb anymore.

He's on a throne. He's ruling and reigning till his enemies are made a footstool for his feet. Ask yourself, am I an enemy of the cross? Am I an enemy of Jesus right now? Or have I placed my faith and trust in him and truly believe what he who he says he is and what he's done on my behalf?

The human response to Yahweh's deeds of revelation follows in Nahum 3 7. They will flee and wonder who will mourn for Nineveh. Who will mourn for her? The entire area had been enslaved by Nineveh. Some were enticed, some were tricked, and some were forced, but all became Nineveh's slaves.

When Yahweh exposes the evil of Nineveh's actions, its corrupting of what had been created good will be obvious to everyone. All will see the festering diseases beneath its alluring beauty. No one will defend slavery and its promises of wealth, power, and prowess.

Yahweh's utterance concludes with the question that echoes Nahum's name. Where can I find anyone to comfort you? Where are Nineveh's comforters? What can you do when you look on sights that are repulsive?

All who see such sights must turn their heads in revulsion. Nahum described those who looked on Nineveh in just this way. Everyone who saw Nineveh the harlot would experience disgust. They would turn away in horror.

Who will mourn for Nineveh? The last two questions of verse 7 are rhetorical. No one laments over Nineveh. In contrast, all who heard of the fall of Nineveh would clap their hands in joy. Assyria drops out of history, friendless and unwept, because her calculated cruelties had irreconcilably estranged her victims.

Even the Lord could not find comforters for the wicked city. Where can I find anyone to comfort you? Is there a note of caring and concern on the part of the prophet when he asked that question? Comforters.

What is the word comforters in Hebrew? Nahum. Nahum means comfort. Where will I find Nahum's for Nineveh? What is Nahum? A prophet who brings what? Comfort. As a child of God, what are you? You're a prophet who brings comfort to wicked nations.

First Corinthians third, uh, first, second Corinthians one three, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions so that what so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Now, yes, I understand this, this, this pertains to physical illnesses, but this also pertains to spiritual illness, spiritual death. We have received the mercy and comfort of God so that when we see a Ninevite, someone who's pursuing the things of the world, someone who's pro choice, someone who's pro LGBT pro pride, we can go to them and give them the comfort that we ourselves received.

Never, ever, ever take your salvation for granted. It wasn't anything that you did that earned that salvation. Don't think that the Ninevites are worse than you. We again are closer to the Ninevites in our behavior than we are to Jesus.

What did Isaiah hear when he appeared before God? Who will I send? What does Isaiah say? Here am I, send me. I'll speak the truth to the people. I'll genuinely pray that they be saved, that they come in contact with the Messiah.

Never forget your mission. I am not ashamed of the gospel. And what does that mean? I'm just as wicked as Nineveh. Yet God showed me mercy. He gave me a savior. I placed my faith and trust in that. He is my hope.

That is my only hope in life and death to be found in Christ. No gloating, no boasting, no arrogance, no pride. When you walk out that door, you're entering into the mission field. You bring the comfort with which God comforted you to the world around you.

How are you doing? Much, much, much better than you deserve because of Jesus. Don't forget that. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, here am I, send me.

When you've received the comfort and the forgiveness that God offers you in Jesus Christ, you will be willing, not just willing, desirous of going and bringing that message to others. Amen. Any questions?

Let's pray.