Nahum and a Dizzying Judgment

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Anyway, I think, you know, we wrote it in kind of a more modern style, but I think it still holds value.

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I've been studying the book of Nahum, as some of you might know, and I'm looking at Nahum chapter one and watching, reading, listening to it.

I watch it, I guess, with my eyes. I read it with my eyes. I listen to it with my ears.

And I am, I don't want to say I'm obsessed with Nahum, but I'm all in because I like to baptize myself, immerse myself into the passage and text so I can preach it.

And of course, with this minor prophet, right, it's a minor prophet, just because it's not a large book, a major prophet might be

Isaiah or Jeremiah, but it's not a minor truth because it is God breathed.

And this revelation we have from God, this revealing of his mind is very, very important.

And when I said watch earlier, what I meant was it's poetically brilliant.

I'm not an expert on poetry, but I can read commentaries that talk about it like that. And when I read it, it's fast paced.

It feels, remember, I only try to use the word feel if I mean it in terms of a verb versus thinking.

It thinks or I think or I feel, both are fine, but there's a particular order and sequencing to those.

Lots of people today just say, I feel, right? If you ask me, what do

I feel about the Joe Osteen cube or what do I think about it? What do I feel about it? I think it's moralistic pietism on steroids.

And what do I feel about it? I feel like I want to throw up. That's how it makes me feel. Okay. In my opinion, he's probably got a lot of big lawyers, don't you think?

I know he blocked me a long, long time ago or whoever's controlling the Twitter account blocked no compromise radio quite some time ago, but I do follow

Joel, not Joel, which is funny. I know the man who runs that and he's quite, he's got quite the wit, right,

Bill? Let's see. What else was I going to say? Oh, so when I say I watch it, it almost makes you feel like you are watching a scene and there's this intense judgment and vengeance from God on Nineveh, the adversaries of God's people.

And it is, it is an exciting book. When you read it, it is really fast paced and it is not a book like many other books in the

Bible. For example, one man said that this book Nahum is a violent nationalistic book, one morally repugnant to modern persons.

It's moral inferiority, however, does not masks, does not mask its literary artistry.

And here, and here's the line that's very fascinating to me. Nahum is a bad book written well.

Now every time I laugh, I think of those reviewers on iTunes for No Compromise Radio. He laughs at his own jokes.

It's like he's, you know, one person alone in a room laughing at himself. Cue Billy Idol.

I'm laughing with myself. Nahum means console, comfort from God.

God Yahweh is my comfort. Nahum Maya is the longer form and the abbreviated form is

Nahum. And God's people have been oppressed by the Ninevites.

Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. And sometime after Jonah's message of repentance was received, and I think there was real repentance, they've gone back to their old ways and they're persecuting

Judah. Of course, God is using that persecution to chasten Judah. But the book isn't really about that.

The book is more about God is going to take out His wrath on the enemies of His people.

And when you try to be cruel and wicked to God's people, you're being cruel and wicked to God Himself.

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me, Jesus said. And Saul never persecuted

Jesus. And while he was there for the persecution of Stephen and then he was going house to house and he's on his way to Damascus to do more of that, he never persecuted

Jesus literally when Jesus was on earth.

But since he persecuted the church, Jesus's church, Jesus's bride, he persecuted

Jesus himself. There's another man who wrote something about Nahum and how well it's written, even though they don't agree with it.

Nahum has an unexcelled capacity to bring a situation vividly before the mind's eye. That's what

I mean by watching. His constructive imagination lays hold of the central elements of a scene and with realistic imagery and picturesque phraseology, recreates it for his readers.

Accurate and detailed observation assists in giving his pictures verisimilitude.

Through the whole scene, there moves a mighty passion and a great joy which lift the narrative out of the commonplace into the majestic and make it of great literature."

It is written well. So I hope you like the book of Nahum. I hope you would read the book of Nahum. This burden or oracle that Nahum receives, he proclaims it is from God and it is against Assyria.

And while Obadiah was against Edom and Habakkuk was against Babylonians, Babylon, Nahum is against Assyria, Bob Chisholm said, the sovereign

Lord who is the most powerful of all warriors would avenge the harm done to his covenant people by appropriately and thoroughly judging their

Assyrian oppressors. And you might want to look on a map where Nineveh is.

And if you move from Israel to the north east a little bit, you'll see a couple of main rivers there, the

Tigris and the Euphrates, and you'll probably see on the map, a little dot there, Nineveh. Remember Jonah was supposed to go to Nineveh and he got in the boat to go the opposite direction.

Luther, Calvin, they also affirm that Nineveh, when they received the message of Jonah to repent because the city was going to be overthrown, that it was a temporary repentance,

I think maybe Luther called it a shallow repentance. It wasn't long lasting.

And therefore, Nahum is written. And this has nothing to do with nationalistic spirits and somehow thinking the nation of Israel is so great,

Judah is so great, and therefore everybody else is bad. Remember, we're not trying to say

Israel and Judah in this particular case are so wonderful and so great.

The only reason God chose them, remember Deuteronomy 7, I believe, it could be 9, but I think it's 7, maybe it's 7 -9.

Let's find out since I have a Bible here. Sometimes I use the Bible on No Compromise Radio, and it is good just to have your

Bible handy, of course, and open. It was open, but it was just open to a different passage. Deuteronomy 7 -9 is a wonderful passage, but it's just towards the end here of Deuteronomy 7, verse 7.

That's what we're after. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the

Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the

Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them.

He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.

You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and statutes and the rules that I command you today.

There in Deuteronomy 7, we see why God picks Israel, and it's not because they're great, and it's not because they're perfect, and it's not because they're the model country or something.

They're always doing the right thing. And therefore this false canard, this false accusation about this naturalistic, nationalistic spirit that Nahum has, has nothing to do with anything.

Don't believe that. That's not true. But what is true is that the book of Nahum reminds all of us that if you are going to oppress and persecute and trample down the people of God, God notices and there will be a payday one day.

This is a call. This is a clarion call. It is a warning to make sure that if you are a power in the world, and whether you're

America or you're in the Middle East, whether it's a thousand years in the future, if the

Lord cherishes or a thousand years ago or 3000 years ago, you are going to answer to God.

And there will be that day, that day of judgment. It could be a lot of judgment, of course, temporally, right on earth, there can be judgment that way.

But what is way worse is, of course, eternal judgment. There's accountability.

People will stand before the judge of the earth to give an account. And if you're going to oppress

God's people, it's going to be especially bad for you. And that's one of the things that the book of Nahum teaches.

This is an oracle concerning Nineveh chapter one, verse one, the book of the vision. So he received the vision from God and wrote it in a book of Nahum of Elkosh.

And remember, Nahum is found elsewhere, if you want to just have some fun,

I think I've told you this before, but Kaper Nahum, right? That's where Jesus's home base was for his ministry between the ages of 30 and 33.

I have not discussed this in the past, but it's good to talk about now. The first eight verses,

Nahum one, one to eight, and I've taught those before. They're an acrostic, right?

A, B, C, D, think of that, of course, but we're not using English letters, but they are only a partial acrostic.

And without getting into every little detail, what I can say is there's a lack of completeness with a partial acrostic.

Acrostics would talk about fullness, right? Because if you used every letter of the alphabet, I mean, there are no more letters.

You've said everything you've wanted to say, right? And maybe you've stretched it some from the human perspective.

And I've done this in the past, A through Z or Zed. And I try to just say something about every one of those letters for Kim.

And I say a few comments about whatever I think about her with the letter A, and then I write it and then

I send it to her. And I'm kind of like, well, I've kind of said really what I wanted to say with like 12 letters, but I've got to fill it out anyway.

Of course, that's not true in divine revelation because there's no inadequacies or extra for no reason.

Everything's given for a reason. And even this partial acrostic, I think it's fair to say this first section, the first eight verses, it's partial because the fullness is going to come here shortly, i .e.

the rest of chapter one, chapter two, and wait till you read chapter three.

The rest is yet to come. Ouch. People have also said about the book of Nahum that it's kind of like a

Psalm here in the very beginning. This song that we've discussed on this show and in the pulpit of verses two through eight, the song about that nature and characteristics of God, right?

His essence, the simplicity of God, yet we see because of our frail minds, God is a wrath.

God is an avenging God. God is good. He's all those things at the same time, and he's not component parts made up of those.

Excuse me, he just is. But it looks like a Psalm. And when you look at warrior

Psalms, they call them battle Psalms, they can be sung three different times.

Think about when would you sing a battle song? Well, we're going to battle, right?

We're on our way, and you sing this Psalm, praise to God, and God help us. You could also sing a battle song while you're fighting, help, we need protection, guard us.

In the middle of the battle, you could sing it. And any guesses on when you might sing another battle song?

After the battle. Hey, we won. I guess you could sing it if you were lamenting that you lost, but you've also could sing it because victory has been won.

God wins for us. We recognize that he's the one that has given us victory.

And if you had to pick Nahum chapter one, verses two to eight, to fall into one of those categories, it would fall into the celebration section.

This is a victory. You said, Hey, something's not happened yet.

There actually hasn't been a battle yet. I know, but it's celebrated before the battles even waged because God's victory against the

Ninevites, the Assyrians, it's certain. He's been given this

Oracle. He can look into the future. He can look into the past. He can look anywhere he wants with God's help.

And he knows by this vision that there's going to be a reckoning for these

Ninevites. And so it's as good as done. God's not going to lose. God is going to win.

And therefore the heavy emphasis of the word Yahweh in the first eight verses, Yahweh Lord, the covenant keeping name of God, the

God who is the God who exists, the God who is self -existent, the God who is of himself, the

God who personally takes care of his people and will redeem them and keep his promises.

This God, this warrior God, this King, this God will judge all the enemies of Israel.

He will judge all sin. He will judge all evil. There will be an accountability day. And it might be on this earth for temporal accountability, but it will ultimately lead to eternal accountability.

That's the first eight verses that talk a lot about who God is and who can stand before his judgment.

Thankfully, the Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those that take refuge in him.

Now we move to verse nine, and I know that's a long intro, 19 minutes for the intro, but that's okay.

At least you got some daily affirmation to start the show. We move now to verses nine through 15 to finish out the chapter, and I don't think we're going to finish it today on the show.

I still keep the shows at 24 and a half minutes because we have an intro and a close, and then we also had commercials and a commercial break, and like the weather for the station that we used to be on,

WVNE. I would be back on WVNE here locally, 760, except it costs too much money, and I don't ask money for you guys, nor am

I asking right now for money to be put on the show, but I'm not against the station.

I think they put Rick Warren in my slot. I am against that, and there are 12 of you that are

Patreon supporters, and I appreciate that. A few hundred dollars a month support, I really appreciate it.

I was listening to Whitehorse Inn last night, and they need $4 million by the end of the year to do their projects.

Now, I'm not doing the projects they do, but $4 million, let's see, so I've been doing the show 11 years.

They've been doing Whitehorse Inn for 30 years, and so 30 years, $4 million, 11 years, 300 and some, 350 bucks.

Shouldn't I be at like $1 .3 million a year? What if the giving at No Compromise Radio was $1 .3

million a year, what would I do? I would start a non -profit. Here's what one of the commentary says on Nahum 1, 9 to 15.

Verse nine abruptly shifts, and I like this, to a dizzying passage, dizzying,

D -I -Z -Z -Y -I -N -G, D -I -Z -Z -Y -I -N -G, dizzying, dizzying, dizzying passage.

When do you ever say that? Is that right? Dizzying, dizzying, dizzying, dizzying, sounds like a firecracker that went off or something.

He shifts to a dizzying passage in which the prophet accuses, condemns, and passes sentence on various adversaries of God without naming any of them, end quote.

That is cool. That is great. He abruptly shifts, dizzying passage, condemning, not naming.

That made me want to read it, make me want to preach it. I can't believe I haven't preached

Nahum in the past. I have preached, I preached Obadiah, Jonah, I think

I started to preach through Hosea and maybe quit, or was that Micah? Habakkuk I've preached a couple different times.

I think that's it for Minor Prophets. That is a crying shame they used to say.

I don't know the etymology of crying shame, but I would like to know what that is. Let's see if there's anything else here that I've preached in this.

I started Zephaniah once and never made it through. I don't think so. Hosea?

No. Joel? Amos? Micah? Zephaniah?

Haggai? Zechariah? Malachi? Oh! There! I knew there was something else. I preached through Malachi. So I might have to do

Haggai, maybe next, or Zephaniah or something like that just to do a few of those and check them off the list because I'm getting older.

I am 60 years old. I have been in better health and so who knows what will happen.

We have all these plans and you never know. If I don't make it to preach every book of the

Bible, which I never will, I'll die trying. How's that? How should

I think rightly about God's adversaries? People persecute the church. What if it's government control of the

House, Senate, and Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, all these other things? What are we going to do?

This will be a good section for us. So I think that's about as far as I want to go because I said dizzying too many times.

Once again, if you want to order books, the Sexual Fidelity book, if you order it, I will send you a free copy of Things That Go Bump in the

Church, a good chapter there on church discipline, how to hear God, etc. I'm glad that you listened.

I hope you tell your friends. God has been faithful this year. Praise God from whom all blessings flow, even in 2020.

We can count it joy. We can know God's causing everything to work together for our good and His glory.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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