Mar. 11, 2018 PM A Comforting Word by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Mar. 11, 2018 PM: A Comforting Word Nahum 1:9-15 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Our second in the book of Nahum. And we'll look this afternoon at verses nine through 15 in the opening chapter of Nahum's oracle, this vision that God gave him.
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And as I read these, I'm going to announce before each section who is being addressed here.
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And understand as we go through this book that if this book were one sermon delivered to one people, it would have been delivered in Judah.
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Though in this oracle at various times, the king of Assyria or Assyria as a nation is addressed, but not directly as if Nahum went to that court in Nineveh and spoke to them some words and then came back to Jerusalem.
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No, the entire prophecy, this entire message was delivered by word from Nahum to Jerusalem, to the people of God there in that country.
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But in the literary sense, there's different ones being addressed here.
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And so I just want to announce them to you as we read verses nine through 15 of Nahum chapter one.
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So verses nine through 11 are addressed to Assyria. What do you plot against the
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Lord? He will make a complete end. Trouble will not rise up a second time. For they are like entangled thorns, like drunkards as they drink.
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They are consumed like stubble, fully dried. From you came one who plotted evil against the
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Lord, a worthless counselor. And now to Judah, to God's people.
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Thus says the Lord, though they are at full strength and many, they will be cut off and pass away. Though I have afflicted you,
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I will afflict you no more. And now I will break his yoke from off you and will burst your bonds apart.
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And now addressed in verse 14 is the king of Assyria. The Lord has given a commandment about you.
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No more shall your name be perpetuated. For in the house of your gods, I will cut off the carved image and the metal image.
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I will make your grave, for you are vile. And finally, verse 15, again to God's people in Judah.
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Behold, upon the mountains, the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace.
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Keep your feasts, oh Judah. Fulfill your vows, for never again shall the worthless pass through you.
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He is utterly cut off. That's the word of the Lord in our text for this afternoon.
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The prophet whose name is Comfort, you remember Nahum comes from the Hebrew, Naham, and that word means comfort.
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So the prophet whose name is Comfort, he brings this message that is meat to his name to God's people.
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A message of comfort. Their enemy, Assyria, their enemy will soon be cut off.
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They will again be able to worship the Lord in the manner that he has prescribed. God's unmitigated power, his sovereignty over everything is well rehearsed in the first eight verses which we looked at last
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Sunday. And now in these verses, the prophet speaks to these two nations in turn, to Judah and to Assyria.
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Assyria, cruel and proud and arrogant and mighty in battle. And then to Judah, small, surrounded, her national identity fading, her borders collapsing, her worship just a smoldering ember trying to spark again into the flame of revival.
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Assyria had in Jonah's time been at sort of a low point, but now they've returned to their former dominance.
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Now Judah at this time, we're gonna have some background so you understand the power of this message, so you understand the historical milieu, the context in which it was given.
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Judah was by this time under King Josiah, the last of the Davidic kings to be called in scripture, a good king.
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Just so you know, there's some difference of opinion as to exactly when Nahum prophesied.
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I choose to have it under King Josiah and hopefully you'll see my reasons for it, but we hold that a little bit tentatively, only knowing that it came after the fall of Israel in 722 and before the fall of Assyria in 613.
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I think King Josiah's reign fits best the message of Nahum.
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So Judah, I believe, under King Josiah, the last king to be called good. Before Josiah, the king of Judah was named
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Manasseh, who was perhaps the most wicked of all the kings, and there were some wicked kings in Judah.
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He reigned for 55 years, and after Manasseh, his son, which is Josiah's father, his son
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Ammon reigned for two more years. It was almost 60 years there between these two kings.
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Judah had been a vassal state for a long time, a vassal state to Assyria.
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They paid tribute in gold to their kings, and they paid tribute in worship to their gods. With Josiah, who began his reign when he was eight years old, there was famously revival.
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You remember this? When he had the temple cleansed from the disuse, the misuse of his father and grandfather,
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Ammon and Manasseh, you recall that the book of the law was found. As it were, dusted off, it was hidden away somewhere, and all of a sudden, somebody comes out and said, we found this book, and the book is brought to the king,
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Josiah, and they read this book, the book of the law, to Josiah, and you remember, he rends his clothes, he tears his clothes in a sign of repentance, and he says, essentially, now we know why we're in such distress.
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Now we know why the Lord has been angry with us. We have failed to keep covenant. We have failed to obey
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God's law, as Israel had promised to do. Under his direction, a national
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Passover was held, perhaps the last one observed by a king in Judah.
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Under him, there was a national repentance, there was a return to the Lord. The people came before him and renewed the covenant with the
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Lord, once Josiah knew that the covenant even existed. I believe that's the context into which
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Nahum preached this oracle that God gave him, this vision God gave him. Assyria, though,
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Assyria still looms. Just over a century before this, they'd conquered
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Israel to the north and evicted them from the land, so Judah stands alone. Josiah, this king, was faithful to God, but to not bow down to Assyria's gods was for them an act of rebellion.
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It was one for which the retribution was famously swift and harsh.
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Even King Hezekiah, the great King Hezekiah, one of the greatest of all David's sons, Manasseh's father, he had sent to Assyria, and do you remember what he said in Chronicles?
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I have done wrong, withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me, I will bear.
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They'd been a vassal state to Assyria for a very long time. So here comes
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Nahum with this oracle during Josiah's reign, and there was in the land under Josiah a flicker, this last sigh of hope.
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If only they will stay the course. If only they will remain true. They had repented.
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The king had torn his clothes, led the nation in falling down before God and begging for mercy, returning to faithfulness to this covenant law.
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It's just a beginning ember of revival. The prophet
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Isaiah said, a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench, and quite to the contrary,
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Nahum's message of comfort mends that bruised reed. It blows gently on the burning wick.
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It preserves what strength it has so that it might one day grow into a great bonfire of revival and faithfulness to God.
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So what does Nahum's message say to Judah? It says, stay the course. Keep the feasts.
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God will surely destroy your enemy and will, by the same power that brings them to their knees, he will keep and preserve you.
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Stay the course. Your king, by hearing the word of God, by the power of God's spirit, attending that word with power, has brought you in a new direction, a different trajectory.
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Stay the course. Your enemy is encroaching upon you. He's fearsome, he's invincible.
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God is bigger. Stay true to what's begun here. And the message to the church today is really not much different, if different at all.
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We, like Judah, were surrounded by those who hate our Lord as much as by those who deny him.
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We, like Judah, are surrounded by those who would pass laws that would make the scriptures weep.
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We, like Judah, in Nahum's day, were small, we are weak, we seem unable to affect any change against our detractors.
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False gods loom on every corner, from the literal idols of the Hindus or the Buddhists to the pervasive worship of self, the quest for human autonomy.
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Remember that while this nation who is a subject of this oracle alternates between Judah and Assyria, the entire message was delivered exclusively to God's people, and it is this message of comfort.
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It is a message from the prophet to that people that I believe was sent to them to strengthen them and to reinforce them and to keep them on this course that good
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King Josiah, as we so often call him, set them on. Nine through 11, in these first few verses, they tell of Assyria's certain destruction.
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As I said in the first eight verses, God's sovereignty, his might, his control of history, his control of nature, his unmitigated, unimaginable power is in those first eight verses, and this is the
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God who says in verses nine through 11 that they will be consumed, that they are going to be done with.
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He will make a complete end of them. There was an Assyrian proverb in that day that went something like this.
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The word of the deity will not be spoken a second time. So what they meant by that was their goddess,
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Asherah, who was the goddess of war, goddess of the world, when she spoke, that was it, okay?
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What tribute she demanded, she only asked for once, and God's answer to that is he will make a complete end.
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And once he acts, there's no second chance. No one's going to look at God and say, what is this you have done?
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What is this timing that you enacted? No, God'll speak but once, and then his will will be done.
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They plotted, said what is this you plot against the Lord? Is it not a comfort to know that when
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Assyria plotted against the people of Judah, Jerusalem more specifically, that God took that as a personal affront to him?
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He says, you're plotting against the Lord. You're not coming against me. When you speak against Jesus Christ, you're not plotting against me, though it hurts me to hear his name taken wrongly.
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And though my heart, like yours, would be for people to know Jesus and know the peace with God that we have through faith in his blood.
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But see how God takes this. Not what are you doing to these humans over there? If they're in my name, this is a plot against me.
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In 2 Samuel, we read of David sending an emissary to an
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Ammonite prince to give him condolences after he lost his father. And these emissaries were treated shamefully.
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They cut off half their beard and exposed their buttocks and sent them back home. Terrible way to treat them. And David took that as an affront against him personally.
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And our Lord is no different. Jesus Christ told the Apostle Paul, but when he was still the
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Pharisee, Saul, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Now, he was persecuting the church and he was doing harm to people.
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But take comfort, church, that Jesus Christ, that God Almighty takes this very personally.
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They plotted against God. He says, what is it you plot against the Lord? They had plotted against Jerusalem when they attacked the city soon after Israel's fall.
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You read about that in 2 Kings chapter 18 and you read there how King Hezekiah brought the threatening letter to the
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Lord and laid it there. He didn't call up the army. He didn't sound the trump. He laid that letter and says, Lord, this is against you.
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And that evening, the angel of the Lord went into the Assyrian camp and killed 185 ,000 of them.
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Yet they kept their hands, their feet on the necks of the Judaic kings. Until the alliance of the
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Babylonians and then the Medes finally crushed Assyria once and for all. Assyria was warned.
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Assyria's been told, you think you're just gaining land? You think you're just getting captives?
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No, you are plotting against me, the Lord God. But they continue.
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They don't stop so proud, so arrogant they are. And they remind me of the men in Revelation. Do you remember these?
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The ones who are suffering these terrible, painful boils. And they know what they're from.
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It says in the scripture that they know they're from the Lord. That it's God judging the inhabitants of the earth.
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And yet, knowing that their punishment is directly from the hand of God, while the angel is flying and calling for repentance and giving men this last chance, what do they do?
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They blaspheme His name. They blaspheme His name, even knowing that it is
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God who gave them the sores, the trials, and even while ignoring the great trump call of the angel to repent.
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Hostility towards God is ultimate folly. Punishment delayed is so often misconstrued as punishment vacated, as Peter says.
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The cynic says, where is this coming you tell of? Because today things occur just as they did yesterday.
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It goes on and on, just as it always has. I get up in the morning, I go to work, the door's still there, my cubicle's there, my computer works, and I go home and dinner's on the table.
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I get a good night's sleep. And I get up the next morning and I go to work and it goes on the same way.
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And this cynic looks to the Christian and say, where is this promise that you have? What is this hope you have of Christ's return?
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How long has it been? It's hostility towards God.
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And it's ultimate folly. And they think that because God is delaying his punishment, it's not
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God's mercy, but make God out to be a myth.
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Or a liar, or worse. And God takes that very seriously. Men take patience to mean tolerance, and then tolerance brings forth complacency.
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All the parables in Matthew 23 and following. You've heard this from me before.
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What do they have? One big point. Be ready. Do not be complacent, be ready. The Lord will come at an hour which you know not.
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So take comfort here. We need to, as a church, take comfort. Those who preach peace when there is no priest are worthless counselors.
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They are the useless trio in verse 10. They're thorns, hopelessly entangled. They're good only for the fire. They're drunkards who are too inebriated to make any sense of anything, yet they're drinking all the more.
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They are no more substantive than stubble, which the lightest breeze can pick up and carry anywhere.
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So then verses 12 and 13, he speaks again to Judah. Judah, whose deliverance is as certain as their enemy's demise.
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Though they are of full strength and many, they will be cut down and pass away, no matter that they are in a mighty position now, no matter that they are a fearsome army at the top of its game.
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Their numbers are beyond counting. The Lord, who will not speak about this a second time, says what?
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They're going to be swept away. They're going to be cut down. They will be no more. Take comfort, says the prophet.
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Take comfort. Now Israel once stood on the banks of the Red Sea and chasing them, with them having nowhere to run, was the
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Egyptian army, Pharaoh having changed his mind, having changed his heart again, and wanting to slaughter, or at least, return the slaves to himself.
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And so Israel looks and sees this army coming to them, and Moses calls out to them.
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Do you remember what he says? He says, fear not. Stand firm and see the salvation of the
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Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again, for the
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Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. It's the same old story again and again and again in the scripture.
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Israelite slaves facing this mighty Egyptian army. Abraham's 318 trained fighters against King Tadalaamor and his allies.
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David facing off against the Jaya. It's Hezekiah looking out at this army of 185 ,000 seasoned warriors.
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And it's us looking at an entire nation moving with ever -increasing animosity and vehemence against God and anyone whose hope is in his son
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Jesus Christ. So let us just say with the apostle and with Moses at the
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Red Sea, David facing off against Goliath, Hezekiah against that army that came to him, let us say with the apostle, if God is for us, who can be against us?
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Let us remember, consistent throughout the scripture, that the insult against us, if we're bearing the name of Jesus Christ, and he be the cause for the insults we receive,
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God takes that as an insult against him, as if this person, as it were, was standing in his face, thumbing his nose at him, and insulting him directly.
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Well, of course, no one like that could ever stand in God's presence, but that is the way
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God takes this. And see also here that God takes full credit for the trials that Judah endured at the hand of their soon -to -be -vanquished foe.
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Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more. There's an end to God's anger. Judah had been wayward for a long time.
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God sent prophets to warn them, yet largely they persisted in their sins. In his mercy, he endured all that.
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In his mercy, he sent affliction. And how was affliction mercy? By the simple fact that they would see
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Assyria fall. Those who God used to afflict them, they would see them done with. And also that they were there.
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They were there in the land. They were not vomited out of the land as their northern kinsmen had been. The yoke of bondage to Assyria's kings and to their gods would soon be broken.
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Josiah's cleansing of the temple, the priesthood, proper worship, the festivals was for them an act of rebellion against Assyria.
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But before Josiah died, Assyria would be no more. You see how
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God protected and nourished their re -entrance into faithfulness? How often do we, as believers, perhaps even as a church, have to rededicate ourselves to the
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Lord, not make a new covenant, but to repent for having not followed as we should, and come to the
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Lord and say, I rededicate myself, I steal myself again, to follow your ways, to do your bidding, to be true to your scripture.
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this little creature might just be the slightest little ember, and yet God, like a good boy scout camping, has just this teeny little spark and gently cups his hand to protect it from the wind, and softly blows on it until he can get a leaf on it.
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And after the leaf, perhaps a twig, and then a set of twigs, and you know how this goes. The next thing you know, you have this great bonfire.
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Everyone could come in and cook and stay warm. See how God protects and nourishes this small nation surrounded by enemies, but with just this beginning of repentance led under King Josiah, and now confirmed and propagated by the prophet whose name is
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Comfort. The Babylonians and the Medes were a growing concern for Assyria.
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Had that not been the case, retribution against Josiah would have been immediate. That tiny spark might well have died.
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And so we know that God watches over us, do we not?
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And that you and I as individuals, when God gives us a heart to repent, when he shows us our error, shows us our sin, and we just gently get back on that road again as Judah was here, see how
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God protects us and draws us along and shows us more and more and more of himself, and brings us to full repentance, and not in the meantime allowing us to be taken away by our enemies, carried away, as Paul says in 2
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Corinthians, by too much sorrow. See how good God is. See how nations, whether they will or not, all bow down before our
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Lord's design. Assyria would have stamped out repentance at the first sign they saw of it. They had afflicted
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Judah, but only within the scope of God's will. Good King Josiah, true to the
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Lord with all his heart, would not be stifled by this enemy. Judah had been a vassal state for over 100 years, but that would soon end.
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Verse 14 goes to the Assyrian king. The Lord has given a commandment about you. The Lord, he for whom trouble has no second chance, has commanded that his name, the
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Assyrian king's name, his gods, his descendants, are all coming to an end. Now there's no subject to the command.
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It doesn't say the Lord has given a command to so and so about you, and I take it to mean the Lord's given a command to history.
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It's the Lord's decree how events will unfold to accomplish his will. The Lord in whose hands the hearts of all kings reside, the
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Lord who is beyond being asked, what is this you have done? He who made, as Paul says, from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.
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He says to that wicked king that he is vile, and his end is simply the grave. And finally, verse 15, behold upon the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace.
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Keep your feasts, O Judah, fulfill your vows, for never again shall the worthless pass through you.
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He is utterly cut off. Good news to Judah, that the enemy will bother them no more.
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The significance here is beyond just the fact of God defending his people. He says, keep your feasts.
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Josiah had restored the Passover. It says in Chronicles, no Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet.
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None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah. And what does
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God say? He says, continue. Restore all the feasts.
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Let the men of Judah keep their vow and present themselves to me at the appointed times.
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Worthless men shall not rule over you or keep you from this. He says, return to me.
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Return to me as I've given you opportunity. Return to me and I will return to you. And these are glad tidings.
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This is good news. He had chased away the enemy. It was he, it was God who made all this possible.
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And no less does he protect us today in this church. And how many times, so rare really in world history right now to be able with confidence and freedom and without fear to gather together in a beautiful facility like this and simply worship.
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Simply sing to Jesus Christ our Savior to call him the eternal son of God. There is none other.
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And no one comes here to stop us. No one does us any violence. Because God, our
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God, our mighty God watches over us. And should someone come, like sheep to the slaughter as the
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Apostle Paul says, if that be God's will, that be his will. And we knowing that the insults we bear,
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God takes as his own. So God says he's given Judah this period where they can, without fear, because the fear is taken care of, worship
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God, return to God, continue the repentance, let revival grow. So verse seven had said in last week's message,
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God is our stronghold. And now with him as their refuge, they're free to once again worship without any fear of retaliation.
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See, whenever we're able to assemble here, whenever we're able to praise our
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Savior Jesus, it's because God makes it so. If we leave here today in safety and comfort, we thank
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God who said to our detractor, no, you are not to enter in. I am pleased to hear their songs.
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I am pleased to hear their prayers because they offer them to me in the name of my son Jesus who died for them.
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This people, in Nahum's time, Judah, they had repented of their sins.
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And so their offerings to God were pure. And God says I would have them to continue.
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So see this mighty God crushing armies, preserving this small, surrounded, weak nation.
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Amos said this of Israel, but it applies to Judah. Amos said it of the northern country years before this.
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When he heard of the coming catastrophes and armies against Israel. I'll paraphrase and say, oh,
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Judah, he is so small. Lord, have mercy on them. How can they handle all this?
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Providence Bible Church. Could we not on our knees before God say, oh, Lord, we are so small?
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We are so small. And yet our God is not small. Our God is a mighty
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God. Our God is telling the most powerful nation known in that land at that time, you will be no more.
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He bothers not to explain it any further because he is God and he owes no one any explanation. I think it's a privilege every
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Sunday to come before the Lord in prayer and in worship as we sing his praises morning and afternoon, have our fellowship together as we just had in the annex when we were able to sit down and have a meal together.
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We have to remember that it is God who moment by moment makes this possible.
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It is God who, as he did here with Judah under Nahum's preaching, gives us comfort by his word.
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It is God who holds enemies at bay so that we have this safety. So let us always remember to give him the praise, give him the thanks, to take full advantage of the opportunities he's given us even here as we talked about this morning to build one another up.
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We have ministry opportunities in this place even though we are small, as Judah then was very small.
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Even though we are weak, as Judah then was weak. Our God is neither of those.