Keep sharing good news without ads.
Bro. Bill Nichols
Okay, good morning. Mother's Day. You know, the one who every day decides to visit her,.
And I was going to make my visit a birthday visit, but I decided to push it forward a couple of weeks. Her birthday was on the 4th of July, and I thought it would be a good time to do all of these things together, to visit her, to visit my family, to celebrate the 4th of July, to celebrate her birthday and all of that.
And it would have been a wonderful time, but as I thought about it, I decided I was just going to go ahead and go right at the beginning of summer, the last week in May or the first week of June. So I did.
And I drove out there and I visited her. She was in the mid-stages of Alzheimer's, so sometimes she knew who I was and sometimes she didn't. But this time she did. She knew who I was and she talked and she was pleasant.
We had a good day and we had a good week. And I visited all my folks and I turned around and went home, heading home about the middle of June. Got home in about a week. Got a phone call from my sister that said mother had passed away.
Well, it didn't surprise me that she passed away. Because she was 93 years old. And when that happens, when you get that age, the Lord, you don't have a long amount of time left. But as I thought about it, I said, you know, the Lord was so good to me.
He let me see her during the last month of her life. He let me see her when she was lucid enough that she recognized me and knew who I was and who she was talking to. And we had a very, very nice visit.
My sister told me that her son, who was staying with mom and taking care of her at the time, said that he came in from work and mother had just finished doing a jigsaw puzzle. She loved to do those things.
She used to do jigsaw puzzles of a thousand pieces. And she'd lay it out on a coffee table and she'd just do it, put it together. It might take her a week or a month to do it, but she'd always get it done.
Well, as time passed, she was not able to do so much. And so she wound up doing smaller and smaller puzzles. So at this stage of her life, she was doing the little kid jigsaw puzzles, maybe 50 pieces.
I don't know how many there are in it, but in any case, he said she came in. She put her jigsaw puzzle together. She wished him good night. They said hello and good night. And she went to bed and he went to bed.
And when he woke up the next morning, she was gone. What a peaceful way to go. And I just praise God every day for, not every day, but every time I think about it I do, for allowing me to see her one last time other than see her at a funeral.
And I waited until I intended to, I would have seen her at her funeral. But allow me to see her when she was alive, to allow her to be lucid enough that we could communicate when I saw her. It was just like a blessing that the Lord gave me.
And I thought, you know, the one thing we need to do is make sure that we tell our mothers and our fathers and our significant others all of whom we love just exactly how much we love them as often as we can, because there is no assurance of tomorrow.
I'm glad Brother David is not in here right now, because I don't want to make it any harder on him, but I do see some that are also in here that this is hard on her. His mother, your grandparents, your grandmother, just recently passed away.
She was a great woman. And I know you guys told her as often as you could just how much you loved her. And that's a good thing. My mom told me after my dad died, she missed him. But she had no regrets.
She had nothing unsaid that she needed to say. That's what we should be. We should not leave anything unsaid that we need to say. So I want us to begin with a prayer, and then we'll do our normal lesson.
Most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, and thank you for giving us the opportunity to come into this place of worship where we may study your word. Thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit to guide us in our understanding of the Holy Word.
Bless us for your son that you gave us to come into the world and bear the penalty for our shortfallings. None of us are perfect, but we are perfect in him. Bless us and keep us to go through the services today.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So I guess I will get to my intended lesson. The Book of Nahum, and we're going to begin at Chapter 1. Now, before the holidays, before Easter and Mother's Day and all the holidays, we spent several weeks studying Jonah, the Book of Jonah.
Now, the Book of Jonah is a book that detailed an account of a prophet with a message of doom for Nineveh. It was a message that the entire city heard and responded to. It was a response that did not surprise God.
He knew that the entire city would repent, and he forgave them, every man, woman, and child. And, of course, Jonah suspected that that's what Jesus would do or what God would do, and that made him angry.
Which just goes to show he wasn't God. Now, you need to consider how the citizens of the city of Nineveh must have felt as time went forward. God had forgiven them. God had shown them mercy and grace when they deserved punishment.
He had blessed them instead of cursing them. And one might imagine that they thought that his blessings would last forever. Now, this is a thought that could be similar to the way the people of the U .S. might feel today.
We're indeed a nation blessed of God, and we may also feel that those blessings will last forever. That's my hope as well, that the blessings will last forever, or as long as this country lives, lasts.
But that's not likely. Remember our study of Jonah when we read Jonah 3? As we explored the question, does God ever change his mind? Let's lay that question out there. Do you think God ever changes his mind?
Another way to ask that question is, do you think God ever learns anything about anything that would make him change his mind about anything? Well, as we explored that when we were doing Jonah, we found this from J. Vernon McGee.
And I thought this was the best explanation. It was not his explanation. It was a guy, Dr. G. Campbell Morgan's explanation. But I wanted to read it one more time. Someone, this is McGee writing. Someone asked that of Dr. G. Campbell Morgan.
Does God ever change his mind or does God change his mind often? Someone asked that of Dr. G. Campbell Morgan years ago in England. Dr. Morgan, is God as changeable as a weather vane? And his reply was, you used the wrong illustration.
A weather vane is not changeable. It never changes. It operates according to a law that says it doesn't matter any difference which way the wind will blow. The weather vane always points in the direction the wind is going.
It's the wind that does the changing. Well, it wasn't God that changed. It was the people of Nineveh. The people of Nineveh changed and God forgave them. Now, at this point, it might be instructive to consider the question, was McGee correct when he stated that Nineveh was not destroyed?
What do you think? Was it destroyed? Not at the time Jonah said it. It was destroyed. It was just not destroyed 40 days later, like Jonah said. It took more than 100 years. And then it was not only destroyed.
It was destroyed so completely that it was hidden for almost 2 ,500 years. So the years pass. And the people of Nineveh change again. And now, more than 100 years later, God sends a new prophet, Nahum, with a message similar to that delivered by Jonah.
So we're going to look right now at Nahum 1 .1, the burden of Nineveh. It's a burden because the prophecy is a message of doom. The burden of Jonah. I did it again. The burden of Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum, the echo site.
Now, when I looked up, as I was studying this, I looked at Dr. John MacArthur's commentary about Nahum. And the first thing he did is he spent a lot of time resolving or trying to resolve a difference, a dispute between two sets of religious biblical scholars.
I'm just going to read what he says. All that is provided in the scripture about Nahum is here in this verse. He was an echo site. This may refer either to his birthplace or his place of ministry. Attempts to identify the location of Elkosh have thus far been unsuccessful.
Elkoshite is thought by many biblical scholars to be a reference to the little city of Elkosh, located in Galilee. Now, there's another city in Galilee in which Jesus spent most of his ministry, a city near the Sea of Galilee.
You know what that city is? Capernaum. You know what Capernaum literally means? The city of Nahum. And it is thought by a second group of scholars to be Nahum's birthplace. So we have two groups of biblical scholars arguing about the birthplace of Nahum.
Isn't that like Satan? To interject controversy over a point that is not very important. But this is important. Nahum forms a sequel to the book of Jonah. The two books need to always be studied together.
Jonah first and then Nahum. Jonah for one reason and then Nahum for another. Over a century earlier, Jonah had recounted the remission of God's promised judgment toward Nineveh. Now, more than a century later, Nahum depicts the execution of God's judgment.
Nineveh was proud of her city, a city thought to be invulnerable. It had walls reaching 100 feet high. It also had a moat 150 feet wide and 60 feet deep. But Nahum prophesied that the sovereign God would bring vengeance upon those Ninevites who violated his law.
And indeed he did. The same God who bestowed his loving kindness upon the repentant Ninevites judges the unrepentant ones as well. Now, I've got this just a little bit of out of order and I thought I had it fixed, but I didn't.
The point of the book of Jonah was not the great fish. The book of Jonah was not about the great fish. The point of the book of Jonah is God's children will always repent, but they will do so on God's timetable.
The point of Nahum's prophecy is not Nahum's birthplace. It is this. God's children will never repent no matter how much time they're given. Now, Nahum's prophecy brought doom and it brought comfort as well.
It brought doom to the Assyrians and comfort to Judah and to all that feared Assyria or Nineveh. Nahum said that Nineveh would end with an overflowing flood. And it happened just that way when the Tigris River overflowed to destroy enough of the walls to let the Babylonians through.
Nahum also predicted that the city would be hidden. And after its destruction in 612 B .C., the site was not rediscovered until 1842 A .D., more than 2 ,000 years later, almost 2 ,500 years later. And interestingly enough, the same biblical scholars that that disputed the existence of Nineveh.
As they read it in the Bible as well, it's just a story like. What's the city that was Atlantis like, like Atlantis, it's just a mythical city. They couldn't believe the Bible and the biblical scholars, but they could believe when some geologists said or archaeologists said that they found the remains of the city of Nineveh.
They could believe that, but not the Bible. It says something about the nature of the biblical scholars. Maybe they're not biblical scholars at all. Maybe they're just scholars who are studying the Bible.
In any case. The Burden of Nineveh, the Book of the Vision of Nineveh, the Ecclesite. God is jealous and God revenges. God revenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries and he reserves wrath for his enemies.
Well, let's look at it piece by piece. God is jealous. His jealousy emphasizes God's burning zeal for Israel. It is the cause of his passionate reaction against anyone guilty of spiritual adultery. He's possibly talking about the captivity of the 10 northern tribes in 722 BC or the invasion of Sennacherib about 20 years later in 701 BC.
The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries. Man needs to understand that he cannot fight God and hope to prevail. Everyone who sets himself against God will end up being the object of God's vengeance.
No one will ever succeed in opposing God. Verse 3. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power and will not always acquit the wicked. The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
God is far more patient than man. However, there is a time and a place where he does display his anger. But it doesn't come quickly or capriciously. Charles Spurgeon said this. God's sword of justice is still in its scabbard.
It's not rusted in. It can be easily withdrawn. But it is held there by the hand that presses it back into its sheath, crying, sleep, O sword, sleep, for I will have mercy upon sinners and I will forgive their transgressions.
And a little later, this is Charles Spurgeon. God is not like an unjust judge who simply lets the guilty go out of a sense of compassion. We can't just figure that God will say, let's let bygones be bygones when we get to heaven.
Sin must be accounted for because he will not acquit the wicked. Every sin will be paid for. Every sin will be paid for, either in hell or on the cross. If your sin was not paid for on the cross, then it will be paid for in hell.
If it wasn't paid for you on the cross by Jesus, it will be paid for you by you in hell forever. Never once has he pardoned an unpunished sin. Not in all the years of the most time, not in all the days of his right hand, has he once blotted out sin without punishment.
Did he blot out your sin without punishment? Well, no, but you didn't have to bear it. Jesus bore it for you. Now look at the phrase, the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm. God's power is so great that it controls the mightiest forces known to men.
A huge whirlwind or storm is nothing to God. He has his way in them. There is nothing about the storm that is a threat to God. Or there's nothing about a storm that is in the real sense a threat to any of God's children.
Oh, you may die in the storm, but that won't take you away from God. It will just take you to him quicker. He rebuketh the sea and to make it dry. He drives up all the rivers. Bashan languishes and Carmel and the flower of Lebanon languishes.
The mountains quake at him and the hills melt and the earth is burned at his presence. Yea, the world and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can abide in the fierceness of his anger?
His fury is poured out like fire and the rocks are thrown down by him. Now, when God has resisted long enough and rejected strongly enough, eventually his judgment comes. He is slow to anger, but when it does come, his anger does come, his fury is poured out like fire.
Understanding this should make men quick to repent and wary of presuming on God's patience. We tend to think, well, I'll ask for forgiveness tomorrow for the sin that I'm going to indulge in today. Have any of you ever done that?
Have you ever said, don't answer that, I'll just answer it for you. There have been times when I was tempted to sin. And there's times when I was tempted to sin that I didn't. And the reason I didn't is because I was walking hand in hand with God at that time.
But there's been times when I've been tempted to sin. And I decided, well, I'll sin today and I'll ask forgiveness tomorrow. I hope none of you do that. I'm trying my best to stop doing that. But I'm like, in that way, I'm like Paul, oh, wretched man that I am.
That which I want to do, I don't do. And that which I know I don't want to do, that I do. And the only thing that can keep me from doing it is God. And he will only keep me from doing it if I'm walking hand in hand with him.
When I'm straying from him, I'm on my own. But fortunately, like Jonah made lots of bad decisions, the Lord never let him get away. And I'm hoping that that's the case for me. No, I know that's the case for me.
We should be quick to repent and wary of presuming on God's patience. We should not take into our heads the idea that, yes, I can sin today and ask forgiveness tomorrow and God will forgive me. If that were to happen, you sin today, you ask forgiveness tomorrow, God will forgive you.
But what if you sin today and die tomorrow before you ask? Well, I don't know that that's possible. But especially if you're his, I don't know that it's possible. But you should be wary of presuming on God's patience.
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the days of trouble. And he knoweth them that trust in him. That's comforting. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. Those who love him and trust him see the goodness of God and find protection in his stronghold.
Spurgeon says this, remember that it is only a day, not a week, not a month. And God will not permit the devil to add an extra hour to that day. It is a day of trouble and there is no end to all of our griefs.
I'm sorry, and there is an end to all of our griefs. God is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. Those who love him and trust him see the goodness of God and find protection in him. He knows those who trust him.
God knows those who trust him. Not only does he know them in the sense of identification, but also in the sense of an intimate relationship. Trust implies relationship, and God knows those who trust in him.
And again, this is Spurgeon. Once more, dear friends, this word know means loving communion. God knows us. He knows our prayers, our tears. He knows our wishes. He knows that we are not what we want to be.
But he also knows what we do desire to be. He knows our aspirations, our sighs, our groans, our secret longings, our chastenings of spirit when we fail. He has entered into all of it, and he says, yes, dear child, I know all about you.
I have been with you when you thought you were alone. I have read what you could not read. The secrets of your heart that you could not decipher, I have known them all, and I still know them. That was Spurgeon.
It's no wonder that he's known as the Prince of Preachers. But with an overflowing flood, he will make an utter end to the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies. That overflowing flood was fulfilled both literally and figuratively.
According to secular accounts, during the final siege of Nineveh by a rebel army of Persians, Medes, Arabians, and Babylonians, unusually heavy rains caused the rivers to flood and to undermine the city's walls, which then collapsed, and the invading armies entered the city through the breach in the wall.
Verse 9, what do you imagine against the Lord? He will make an utter end. Affliction shall not rise up a second time. The utter end of the place was also literally fulfilled. Not only were these people lost from history, even the city was lost until it was rediscovered by archaeologists at the beginning of the 1840s.
He will make an utter end of it. Nineveh was ripe for devastating judgment. This was not a harsh chastening. It was utter destruction. It was more than a harsh chastening. It was utter destruction. And it was to come upon the city.
The promise affliction will not rise up a second time might sound encouraging until you realize the reason it won't come up a second time is Nineveh won't exist a second time. For while they be folded together as thorns and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.
The dry leftover stalks of grass are ready to be devoured by the smallest of flames. This is how ripe Nineveh is for judgment and how complete the fire of judgment will be when it comes. That should give us some concern as well.
We are but by leftover stalks ready to be devoured by the smallest flame. Verse 11. There shall one come out of thee that imagineth evil against the Lord, a wicked counselor. Maybe I need to explain that.
There is one that will come out of thee. That's Nineveh. There's something that will come out. The Assyrians. That imagineth evil against the Lord, a wicked counselor. What we have here, I believe, is a near and a far prophecy.
The near prophecy begins relating to the completion of God's wrath, which began when an emissary of Sennacherib threatened to deliver a threat to Jerusalem, after which the Lord intervened and destroyed his army.
You probably remember that from 2 Kings. If you didn't, if you don't, I'm going to read it. It's kind of humorous. And it came to pass that night after the emissary of Sennacherib had told the Jews that the Assyrians were going to destroy them.
And it came to pass that night that the angel of the Lord went out and smoked the camp of the Assyrians. A hundred, four score, and 5 ,000. That's 185 ,000 men. And when they arose the next morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.
I thought that was funny. But they who arose were not the Assyrians. They who arose were the Jews looking over. When they arose and got down to check to see why they hadn't been destroyed, they found that the whole Assyrian army were dead corpses.
But it sounds like the dead corpses arose. I pushed the wrong button, sorry. Got to be careful as I do that. Okay. Okay, so that was completed as prophesied by Nahum with the complete destruction of Nineveh.
That was the near prophecy. The near prophecy is what's going to happen to Nineveh. Now, the far prophecy is a prophecy that I believe is still in the future. It's the prophecy of Antichrist, named in at least one other Old Testament book as the Assyrian.
This is a passage that we always read at Christmas. But now, Bethlehem, Eliphah, though they be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall come forth unto me. That is, to be a ruler of Israel, whose going forth have been from old, from everlasting.
And that, of course, is Jesus, the Messiah. And that's usually the end of that paragraph, the verse that we put on the walls at Christmas time. But if you keep reading, you'll see that it goes on to say, Therefore will he give them up until the time that she which travaileth, that is getting ready to give birth, Israel, hath brought forth, that would be Jesus being born.
Then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel, and he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord and the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they shall abide.
For now he shall be great unto the ends of the earth. And this man, the Messiah, Jesus, shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land and when he shall creed in our palaces. Now, there's something to consider.
Nineveh was located just across the river from what is now Mosul, Iraq, in the heart of what used to be the Assyrian Empire. Verse 12,. Then saith the Lord, Though they be quiet and likewise many, yet shall they be cut down when he shall pass through.
Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more. Though they are quiet, the enemies of Zion look mighty. They were safe and there were many, yet they will be devastated by the judgment that the Lord promised.
Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more. The God's people look weak and afflicted, yet God promises them that they will be strengthened and restored. Verse 13,. For now I will break his yoke from off thee and will burst thy bonds asunder.
And the Lord has given a commandment concerning them, that no more of thy name may be stoned. Out of the house of thy gods I will cut off the graven image and the molten image. I will make thy grave for thou art vile.
He's talking again about Nineveh. The city of Nineveh at once was instantly recognized as one of the greatest power cities in the world. God promises to bring that wicked city so low that they lose their legacy and they lose their name among the nations.
I will make thee a grave for thou art vile. God warns Nineveh of its coming judgment and destruction. But unlike the Ninevites of Jonah's time, who all repented, every last one of them, every man, woman and child repented and God forgave them.
He's just given a greater threat to the Ninevites of Nahum's day. But unlike the Ninevites in Jonah's time, the Ninevites of Nahum's time did not repent. As far as I know, not even one repented. And that would be even worse than Sodom and Gomorrah when they had a few that got out.
Behold the mountains. Behold upon the mountains the feet of them that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace. O Israel, keep thy solemn feast, perform thy vows, for the wicked shall no more pass through thee.
He is utterly cut off. There'll come a time when there'll be no wickedness in Israel. That's not now. But it's a time that's coming. The contrast between the fate of the godly and of the wicked are bad news to the Ninevites, but good news to Nahum and to all people of God.
And that's about the end of, that is the end of the chapter. Any comments or questions? That was in Micah. I'll get back to it in just a second. It was Micah 5 verse 2. That's the Christmas passage, and we end at the end of verse 2.
But if you keep reading, it's going to talk about the other things that will happen, and it will prophesy the coming of the Antichrist. And it calls that man, what it calls the Messiah. This man shall be the peace.
That's the Messiah. He shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land. That would be the Antichrist. It kind of tells you, where will the Antichrist originate? It kind of says out of Assyria.
Well, people always say, well, in Daniel, it said out of the Roman Empire. Remember that? The prince of the people that shall come? And everybody says, well, that's out of Rome. Rome was only half of the Roman Empire.
The other half, the eastern half of the Roman Empire, outlasted the western half by over 500 years. And the eastern half had in it Turkey and Iraq and Iran, all of the ground where the old Assyrian Empire was.
So I think that tells us that the Antichrist is going to originate up from Iraq, or what is now Iraq. But I may be wrong. That's conjecture. That's why I didn't bring it up before. But it is interesting.
Any other comments or questions? If not, most gracious heavenly father, thank you for this day. Thank you for giving us your scripture, your son, the Holy Spirit. And thank you especially this morning for giving us our mothers.
Bless them and keep them and remind us day by day to tell our mothers how much we love them. We can't presume to know anything about tomorrow. But we do know about today. Right now, we can tell all of those that are important to us how much we love them.
And how much they mean to us. Bless us and keep us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.