Nahum 1:12-14

So this morning we're going to continue our study. We're going to read, actually go through two verses, three verses this morning. I know we're really going to speed things up. We're going to go through, so let's read them.

I don't know why that says 6 through 16, that's a, oh that's the whole verse. Alright, alright, here we go. I'm really on target today. I need my coffee. Anyway, here now God's Word, Nahum chapter 1, verses 6 through 16.

The Justice and Goodness of God in Nahum 1

Who could stand before his indignation? Who can endure the burning of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken up by him. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him.

But with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of its sight and will pursue his enemies into darkness. Whatever you devise against the Lord, he will make a complete end of it. Distress will not rise up twice.

Like tangled thorns and like those who are drunken with their drink, they are consumed as stubble, completely withered. From you has gone forth one who plotted evil against the Lord, a wicked counselor.

Thus says the Lord, though they are at full strength and likewise many, even so they will be cut off and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no longer. So now I will break his yoke bar from upon you and I will tear off your shackles.

The Lord has issued a command concerning you. Your name will no longer be perpetuated. I will cut off idol and image from the house of your gods. I will prepare your grave for you are contemptible. Behold on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace.

Celebrate your feasts, O Judah, pay your vows, for never again will the wicked one pass through you. He is cut off completely. So just a quick review of what we went through last week. The Assyrians were like thorns, drunk and stubble.

They were tangled then in a stupor and finally dried and lifeless. Their end will be final, complete. They will be consumed like flames. Stubble is dry and God's fire will burn them up. The one from Assyria, the Assyria is the you that Nahum addresses.

You were the one who did this. The one is a wicked king. We believe it's Sennacherib, but it would represent all of the other kings as well. He, like all the unbelieving kings, plotted evil against the Lord.

There's demonic activity behind all of these actions. Remember, the spiritual world is the real world. We are just an outgrowth, a reflection of it. And Belial, Belial, I should say, is the wicked counselor.

So let's look at our first verse this morning. Thus says the Lord, though they are at full strength and likewise many, even so they will be cut off and pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I'll afflict you no longer.

So now we'll break his yoke bar from upon you and tear off your shackles. So we're going to transition from, remember last week we talked about Rabshakeh, who said, do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying the Lord will surely deliver us and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.

Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria. We're going to transition from that to, thus says the Lord, even though they are full strength and likewise many, even so they will be cut off and pass away.

The Lord has a lot more authority than Hezekiah is the king of Assyria. We're going to go from you, Assyria, from you has gone forth one who plotted evil against the Lord, a wicked counselor, to though I have afflicted you, meaning Israel now, I will afflict you, Israel, no longer.

Okay, so we're going to get a word from the Lord which trumps a word from the Assyrian kings and now this particular passage, the affliction is going to be directed towards Israel. God's going to take that affliction away from them.

The book of Nahum opened with a hymn that exalted the character and the person of God. Now Nahum addresses the people of Judah with the assurance that this God who they were introduced to will liberate them.

In other words, Judah will now see God's divine nature in full operation against Nineveh. This in turn will suggest what He is like in His ability to secure their total release and redemption and our total release and redemption.

Just to bring you back to verse one, Nahum says, A jealous and avenging God is the Lord. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and He reserves wrath for His enemies.

The Lord is slow to anger, great in power, and the Lord will by no means lead the guilty unpunished. In a whirlwind storm is His way and the clouds are the dust beneath His feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry.

He dries up all the rivers. That's what this verse is pointing us back to. This is the nature of God and what He's going to do to His enemies. So in verses 12 through 13, we'll see that God is going to liberate the afflicted.

Who's the afflicted? The you is Israel right now. He will judge the oppressor. The oppressor is Assyria. And then God will announce good news. And that's that we're going to get to next week. That's verse 15.

Great passage. The great promise addressed to Judah is that even though they, Nineveh, are safe at full strength, they're at peace and secure at this point in time in history. And likewise, many, they got a huge army, yet in this manner, they will be cut down.

Nothing could save Nineveh out of God's hand except God Himself. And He's decreed that they will be cut off. D .J. Wiseman translated the Hebrew word selamim, rendered here as safe as allies. Using Wiseman's translation, the text says that neither treaties with allies, vast numbers, nor anything else will save Nineveh from the hand of God.

Obviously, back then you would make a treaty with another nation. You'd get together and oppose your enemies together. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? So what he's saying here is even if they allied themselves with another superpower, that's not enough to overthrow the word of God.

Thus says the Lord, you're going to be cut off. God will now cut down or cut off the Assyrians in verse 12. The same verb is used to describe shearing sheep, right? You shear them, they're cut down. Assyria had been cut down or mowed down.

That's actually where we get that that idiom, they were mowed down. So Assyria had been cut and mowed down once when 185 ,000 military men died in one night by the mysterious act of God during the 701 BC invasion by Sinatrib.

Sinatrib had boasted through his commander Rabshakeh, which we again read last week, that not one God had been able to resist him and wondered how Hezekiah of Judah thought his Yahweh could match Assyria's military prowess.

Sinatrib got an answer fairly quickly that very night. He was killed. This time God will give Assyria his final answer. You remember that show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Final answer, you're cut off.

That's it. There is no other answer. This was news that brought tremendous relief to those who were afflicted or those who were humbled in Judah. They found great consolation in the fact that they would now be liberated from the beastly Assyrian nation that had terrorized them for so many decades.

Could you imagine living next door to a nation that was breathing down your back and had a reputation of flaying people, of crucifying them, putting spikes through your body? I mean, horrendous, horrendous things the Assyrians did.

You no longer have to worry about that. Some of you who are about my age remember the Cold War. Remember when the United States and Russia were at odds with one another to the point where you were scared of nuclear war?

I mean, in the 50s, they used to have these drills. You'd have to hide under, you know, the bell would go off and you'd have to hide under your desk. There was a real fear until tear that wall down. And the USSR was disbanded.

And now there's no more of that fear. This is what the Israelites had to deal with on a daily basis. Assyria was right next door, conquering all their neighbors. The suffering of the previous decades was going to end.

God's no more is His note of finality. So that brings up a question. Does God afflict people when He says to Israel, I will afflict you no more? Though I have afflicted you, I'll afflict you no longer.

Would God afflict someone? Would God afflict His own people? Yes. Thank you. That was quick. Any other answers? Anyone want to know? No. Yes. Steve, please. That's a great answer. Psalm 119. Thank you that I was afflicted.

And I think you were looking at my notes or you read the same Bible, right? Okay. So let's talk about this. Isaiah 30, look what Isaiah says to Israel. And though the Lord gave you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teacher will not hide himself anymore.

But your eyes shall see your teacher and your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it. When you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, right? What is bread and water symbolize?

What is it? Yeah. Body and blood of Christ. Sure. Absolutely. What else? What is bread and water generally? Food, right? God is going to feed you affliction. Why? So that you don't turn to the right or to the left.

Your teacher is with you. He's going to allow you to be afflicted, to show you the consequences of your sin. So you recognize this is a fruitless end. I'm going to continue in my sin and it's going to end up in more pain, right?

He's speaking to us. God does not afflict without purpose. He doesn't afflict you just to afflict you. God's intent is good. It's like discipline. He lets you see what's in your own heart, allow you the consequences of what's in your own heart to pull you back, to recognize that that is the wrong way.

That's also part of the new covenant in Ezekiel 37. We're not going to get there this morning, but it is. Proverbs 20, 30 blows that wound cleanse away evil strokes may clean the innermost parts. Sometimes it's in that affliction that we're cleansed, right?

We don't like to hear that, but it's true. In fact, when things are easy, it's more difficult to get back into God's word, to follow God. Why? I don't need them, right? That's what the church in the book of Revelation says.

And the angel says to him, you're wretched. Although you're rich, you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, naked. You have all the things that the world offers, but internally you're rotten. Psalm 119, it is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.

Good for me that I was afflicted. Take that health, wealth, and prosperity, people. Deuteronomy 8, 2, and you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

Sometimes in the middle of, in the midst of the affliction, we turn away from God. Let me go to the easy route, whatever feels better, right? And God is trying to, not trying, he's humbling us and allowing us to see what's in our own hearts so that we would cry out to him all the more.

When you see that, that's God granting you repentance. You recognize the severity of your own sin, and you don't even know the depths of your own heart, right? Everybody in the world today tells you, oh, follow your heart.

The Bible says guard your heart. Follow your heart is foolish because your heart will lead you in a way you do not want to go. Genesis 32, 25, when the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled him.

This is important. Actually, providentially, pastor is going to be speaking about Isaac today and Jacob. Why did God put out Jacob's hip? Right, he afflicted him for a good purpose, right? So now every time everybody sees Jacob walking with a limp, they can say, what happened?

I wrestled with the Lord, but I won. He afflicted me in the midst of it, but that was the blessing. I was touched by God. Why? Because when he wrestled with the angel, the angel said to him, who are you?

He says, I am Jacob. It's the first time he ever admitted he was Jacob. Jacob means deceiver. I'm the deceiver. I was the one who tricked my brother out of his blessing. He came clean with his own sin, and that's what we need to do as sinners.

We have to come clean to God and bear our souls before him. I'm the liar. I'm the thief. I'm the sinner. Save me. I don't want to let go of your blessing. I'm not going to let go until you touch me. And then you walk with that limp.

You recognize and you tell the world, though I'm limping, God saved me. Right? Romans 12, rejoice and hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Where some people are trying to bind the evil spirit that put them in this tribulation or rebuking this affliction, what does Paul tell us?

Be patient in tribulation. God is working that out to humble you, to shape and mold you. Now, I'm not saying be happy when things are afflicted, when you're being afflicted, okay? But look introspectively.

What's going on in my heart? How am I handling this affliction? Am I grumbling and complaining like the Israelites in the desert, who God brought them through the desert to humble them and show them that they were not keeping his commandments?

Is that what's happening as you're being afflicted now? Maybe we should do what the Apostle Paul says. Rejoice always. Right? In the middle of, I say this all just about every week in the book of Philippians, Paul uses that word rejoice 14 times.

He's in the middle of prison, right? Shackled to a Roman soldier, rejoice. He says, I know that I've been put here for the furtherance of the gospel. Maybe wherever you're put in that affliction, you're there to further the gospel.

At least in your own heart, you can be satisfied in God, that God is sovereign. Job was struck by God and blessed. Joseph was struck by God, sold into slavery by his brothers and blessed. Jacob was struck by God and blessed.

Israel was struck by God and blessed. Paul was struck by God with the thorn in the flesh and blessed. And guess what? Jesus was struck by God and blessed. I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.

But Jesus would rise again and show them that that's not the end. Okay. Death is not the end. Death of self is the beginning. Okay. That's where we begin as Christians, dying to self and living for God.

Jacob's limp was a mark of God's grace. If you've been saved by God, you bear that limp, right? We are saved by grace, not by ourselves. He says, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. You will never see in prosperity what God can show you through affliction.

Your eyes see different things when things are going bad. When you're, we really can see in affliction. We're really blinded when things are going so well. How many times did Israel, they were doing so good following God's law, right?

And this is the book of judges. They were doing so well. They climbed that hill. They had the mountaintop experience. They took their eyes off God. God's like, no, no, no, no. Back on me. Yeah. Right.

They cherish the gift, not the giver. You need to cherish the giver, not the gift. A gem cannot be polished without friction. The same way the child of God cannot be perfected without adversity. How many times do we hear Romans chapter five, right?

Second Peter, do not be surprised that this fiery trial comes upon you, right? These trials, these afflictions are designed to work, bring about endurance, endurance, hope, hope, character, right? So that we become polished to better reflect God.

If Jesus was struck and blessed, what should we expect? Right? We're going to go through affliction. It's how you handle yourself in affliction that matters. If you're failing, right? Seven times you get knocked down, seven times you get up.

We have that promise that we say every, every week, right? If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us so that we get back up and we continue to pursue him. In order for God to end the Assyrian affliction, he had to break his yoke from off you.

That's to Israel. Nahum here alludes to Assyrian writings over and over again. The Assyrian Kings described conquered people as under their yoke. One of the most common Assyrian metaphors is the yoke as a symbol to depict Assyrian suzerainy.

The subjugated vassal is pictured as an ox wearing the yoke of its master, the Assyrian King. The metaphor is distinctly Assyrian and it occurs rarely in the literature of other ancient near Eastern nations.

Assyria claimed and God agreed that Judah had served Assyria as a draft animal. They were under Assyria's yoke. In Nahum 1 .13, God promised to deliver Judah twice for Judah had two problems. One external, the other internal.

We know from verse 12 that the root of Judah's affliction came not from Assyria, but from God, right? God was the one who sent the Assyrians into Judah to discipline them. The Assyrian armies were merely a tool in God's hand.

He had used that tool to chasten Judah's adulterous heart. Remember, Judah was sacrificing to different gods. They had set up high places. Although they claim God on one hand, with the other hand, they're worshiping other gods.

They're making treaties, covenants with Assyria and other nations around them when their covenant should have been with God and God alone. Remember, Judah's heart brought about the treaty with Assyria.

Judah needed salvation not only from its outward oppressor, but much more from its own inwardly defiled nature. Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

These are what have defiled a person, right? So you did have Assyria's external yoke upon them, but there was this internal sinfulness of their own heart. Jesus came to cleanse us internally, to cleanse, change our evil hearts.

The gospel, according to Nahum, declares this as well. God uses affliction to make his people hate their sin. By causing us to know the bitterness of our defilement, he causes us to cry because of our taskmasters, right?

When we recognize that we're in sin, but this gracious and loving God put his son on the cross in my place, and I find myself sinning again and again, and my heart is wrong before God, I turn back. I know.

I know whom Jesus is. God will break off Assyria's yoke from the Judeans, outward and external yoke, and tear off your Judah's shackles inwardly. Judah covenanted, shackled themselves to Assyria as a vassal state when they were shackled to El Shaddai, God Almighty already.

Outwardly, they wanted the security of the other nations and not the security that God offered them. It was Assyria's yoke, but Israel's shackles. Assyria's yoke was from the outside. Israel's shackles, Judea's shackles were from the inside.

The depravity of their own heart craved the protection that other nations could give them, when in reality, it should have craved the protection that only God could give them. God delivers them from both of those things mercifully, graciously, not because they deserved it.

The Decree Against Assyria’s Name, Idols, and Grave

Verse 14, the Lord has issued a command concerning you. Now this is back to Assyria. Your name will no longer be perpetuated. I will cut off idol and image from the house of your gods. I will prepare your grave for you are contemptible.

The attention shifts back to Assyria, the you now, in verse 14, specifically the king. This is the command, literally the decree of God. That's what the word command means. It's the decree. God will cause their name, okay, his name, their lineage to cease.

God says no longer will your name be perpetuated. God will destroy their temples and idols. He will cut off the idol and image from their house. God will dig their grave and bury them. These are words you do not want to hear.

If you don't know the Lord, this is your end. Turn. Turn to the only one who promised to save you. Turn to the only one who was willing to love you to death, Jesus. This is the clenching indicator of the imminence of God's judgment upon Assyria, and it's found in the establishment of a divine decree.

God has given a command. Once that decree has gone forth, it cannot be recalled. God does not change his mind. Israel may appear impregnable, but the publication of the divine decree seals their faith.

The predictions are not the mere expressions of fallible men. They are rather the immovable decrees of the eternal God. When God decrees something, you can rest assured it's going to happen. When God says something, you can rest assured it's going to happen.

When God says all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, you can be rest assured that will happen. If you call upon the name of the Lord, recognizing your own sin, you'll be saved. These are words of comfort for the Judeans and for us.

Now Nineveh is addressed directly, and the word is most assuredly from God. Your name shall be perpetuated no longer, declares God. This was an especially bitter pill for the Assyrian kings to swallow, since they went to such great lengths to preserve their names on building inscriptions and the like.

In fact, when I did the series on Jonah, they had these obelisks, big black onyx towers, and they had all the inscriptions of the kings and their lineage and their boasts, their conquests, all on the obelisks.

Ashurbanipal placed a curse in the annals on anyone who removed his name, invoking even the most powerful gods in the Assyrian pantheon to deal with such culprits. But alas, now God himself would remove his name and the king would be without progeny or succession.

God cuts off the seed of the serpent when necessary. One of the most sorrowful tragedies of the ancient peoples involved not producing offspring who would carry on the family name. Even contemporary people feel the sorrow of the end of the family name.

God commanded that the Assyrian destruction would be of such magnitude that the nation would have no more offspring, literally seed, to carry on its name. The memory of one's king of Assyria, I'm sorry, the memory of one's name was very important to Near Eastern royalty.

Again, Ashurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria, praised that the son who follows him would honor and preserve his name on the building inscriptions he had carved as his own memorial. But the decree of God declares no one shall survive to maintain his name.

So here the the nation of Assyria, all the kings, they want to perpetuate their lineage, right, their house, their name. God says, I'm cutting you off. I was the one who sent you into Judah to discipline.

You went too far. Your hearts were wicked. I'm cutting you off. The second part of God's command involves Assyria's worship and its power. God vowed to cut off the idols of Assyria. The NIV adequately distinguishes between the two kinds of idols to be overthrown.

The first declares, describes images carved from wood or stone, while the second indicates metal that is melted into a cast, melted and cast into a mold. By using these two words, Nahum referred to all kinds of images or idols.

Nineveh boasted that its gods were invincible and more powerful than those of any other nation. Sennacherib, again, as the representative of Assyria's deities, boasted that no foreign god, including the god of Israel, could stand against him.

This is a boast you don't want to make. You don't want to say, thus says the king, you're not going to trust in Yahweh, are you? Really? Who has he delivered? Oh, craziness. Yet the Lord God declared that he would throw Assyria's gods on the trash heap and level their temples.

This would be a fitting punishment for Assyria since it had desecrated the temples and gods of a host of other nations. It was the normal practice of the Assyrians when they captured a city to remove the images and gods, metal or wooden statues, from its temples.

This was to show that these gods were less powerful than the gods of Assyria. Nahum here says that the Lord will remove the Assyrian images from their temples to show that he is more powerful than they are.

Now, just to let you know, when God set up the earth, he set it up as a temple, and on the last day, the sixth day, what does he do? He puts two people into that temple. Those are images of who? God, right?

Since God's temple is never going to be destroyed and he will build his church, God's people will always be on the earth to represent him. There will always be a remnant. Thankfully, as Daniel says, the mountain of the Lord is going to cover the earth.

He is going to produce more and more and more offspring such that we can see, optimistically, that the world will get better over time. We can see the kingdom of God come on earth as it is in heaven if we continue to be faithful.

Finally, God proclaimed that he would prepare Assyria's grave. If the tomb was ready, Nineveh's demise must be at hand. Nineveh deserved to be discarded for it was vile. Morally, the people of Nineveh had been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

That's in Daniel chapter 5. Egyptian tomb paintings depict the souls of the departed being weighed on scales to see if they deserve to enter paradise. The persecutor of God's people would be completely destroyed.

God's people had no fear that they would rise and harm again. So what do you guys think about your life being weighed on the scales? You think that's a good measure? Is that how God does it? Does he weigh on the scales?

All right, you were bad. Good. All right, you're good. Outweighs. You're bad. Bingo. You're in. Is that how God does it? No. No. Good. Everybody should be saying no. Thank God. Right? Right? One sin is enough to condemn you.

Right? I heard it said this way and it's just something that I remember. God doesn't grade on a curve. He grades on a cross. Right? How we are identified as people of God, those who declared innocent in God's sight, is what we do with the cross.

Right? What do we do with Jesus? Was Jesus sacrificed in my place such that when he was sacrificed, I was sacrificed. When God's wrath was poured out on him, it was poured out on me such that there's no wrath left for my sins.

He paid it all. It is finished. Those are music to our ears for Christians. Right? It's not music to the ears of the unregenerate, to the unbelievers, because every sin in this world will be paid for either by Jesus or by them.

Right? God graciously provides a savior. This also was prophesied by Ezekiel. Ezekiel 32, Assyria is there and all her company, its graves are all around it. All of them slain, fallen by the sword, whose graves are set in the uttermost parts of the pit.

And her company is all around her grave. All of them slain, fallen by the sword, who spread terror in the land of the living. God ensured that they would be buried in a grave. Okay. When we go back to Genesis and examine the lives of Jacob and Esau, we discover something interesting.

While God did bless and prosper Jacob, he also afflicted him many times, right? That's what happens to the people of God. They get afflicted. Jacob didn't have an easy life. His difficulties culminated when God wrenched his hip.

That was a mark of grace. After many years, Jacob looked back on his hardships, on the hardships of his life and called God, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day. Even back then, God was shepherding his people, right?

We look forward, we see Jesus says, I'm the good shepherd, right? We are, have a tremendous advantage because we have the scriptures and we can look back to the cross, which is a historical fact, knowing who Jesus is, right?

And what he's done. They didn't have that. They had God's word that said it's coming. They had to believe on credit on what's going to happen. We believe on a debit card, the money's in the account already.

Okay. In contrast, the Bible's records, no such struggles for Esau. Esau had Isaac's love. He had his dad's love. He had strength. He had skill. He prospered and became a wealthy warlord. Esau despised the promises of God and God granted Esau everything he wanted.

Power, wealth, food, wives. Malachi 1 and Romans 9 demonstrate that God shows his love by chastening his elect. Sometimes God shows his hatred by giving reprobate men and women everything that they want.

Going back to Romans 1, what does God do? He gave them over to a depraved mind. He gave them over to the lust of their flesh. It brings a little bit different spin on Romans chapter 9 when we read, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.

Did God treat Esau bad? No, he gave him everything he wanted, right? It's Esau who despised the promises of God, gave it up for a bowl of stew. Jacob was the deceiver, but he came clean. He longed after God's blessing and wrestled with the angel until he got it.

So you can see affliction is a sign of God's love and also his plan to sanctify his people. There's always two lines in the Bible, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. The seed of the woman will be perpetuated forever, right?

Until Jesus comes back. The seed of the serpent will continue on, but at certain points in time, he's going to cut off their name like he did with the Assyrians. So we remember, God's going to liberate the afflicted.

He's going to judge the oppressor and then he's going to announce good news, which is going to be next week's verse. So any questions with regards to what we heard this morning? Yes, Sean Asher, which was a, that was their main God.

Asher is the God of war and they imitated that God of war very well. That's why they were so warlike. That's why they went in and completely annihilated and destroyed their enemies in, in the most vicious, horrific ways that are known historically could have been.

Yeah. What was his name? The Vikings got Odin Thor. Okay. Don't say that too loud. The Marvel people be like, no, it's not right. No, it can't be. All right. Let's let's close and we'll look forward to next week's verse.

Father in heaven. We do thank you for this time. We thank you for your word. We thank you for your spirit, Lord, knowing Lord that even you afflict us in certain ways, but it's for our benefit. It's for our good.

It's, it's to help us to get our eyes off ourselves and off the, the things that we're pursuing in this life and back onto you. The only thing worthy of our worship. Father, I pray for anybody here who seeking after the things of the world.

We know that being friends with the world is, is to be at enmity with God. Father, we pray through the message and through your spirit this morning, that you would change minds and change hearts, that they would turn from their sin and trust in you.

We pray for the worship service upcoming Lord, that you would have your way and your word would go forth with power and do what it's intended to do in the minds and hearts of the believers. It's in Jesus name we pray.

Amen.