Nahum and a Dizzying Judgment

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Joel Osteen-Style Affirmations and the Show's Tone

I declare, God is going before you making crooked places straight. He�s already lined up the right people, the right opportunities, solutions to problems you haven�t even had. No person, no sickness, no disappointment can stop His plan.

I declare, what He�s promised for you will come to pass.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. That is the Joel Osteen Cube, and we have daily inspirations, daily affirmations, daily constipations, and sermonettes for Christianettes.

Well, you could expect a lot of things in No Compromise Radio. Hopefully one is Bible teaching. Our tagline is essentially always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. In the old days, I probably stirred the pot a little bit more than I do now in terms of controversial subjects.

My friends tell me that if I would talk about controversy more, we�d have more people listen. But that�s not the point now, is it? Or maybe it is. You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com, or if you�ve got more of a background question or something like that, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

Not a lot of speaking engagements. I get the privilege of preaching at Bethlehem Bible Church every Sunday, and the only thing I think I have coming up, well, I have some Zoom classes for Germany for a preaching class.

That�s like six days in a row. I was going to go there, but couldn�t go. And I think I�ll be in Ohio with John Tucker at Community Bible there in Beloit, Ohio. That will be in April, Lord willing. But you never know what�s going to happen in this world, right?

What else could I tell you? If you order Sexual Fidelity at nocompromiseradio .com, I will send you a free copy of Things That Go Bump in the Church, a couple chapters of Things That Go Bump in the Church that I wrote, a couple collaborators, but the ones that I wrote, How Do You Discern God�s Voice? Does God Speak to You Today? Church Discipline, Unconditional Election, Hell, and a couple other chapters.

Anyway, I think we wrote it in kind of a more modern style, but I think it still holds value. Israel 2022, we�ve postponed that for a year, but it�s not too soon to start saving your proverbial shekels.

How many shekels in a dollar now? Four? Three and a half? Four? I haven�t looked for quite some time. Anyway, you�d love to go to Israel sometime, and if you�d like to go where Pat Ebendroth at omahbiblechurch .org and Mike Ebendroth teach, we would love to have you.

Nahum as a Fast-Paced Prophetic Vision of Judgment

I�ve been studying the book of Nahum, as some of you might know, and I�m looking at Nahum chapter 1 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. 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. In my opinion. He�s probably got a lot of big lawyers, don�t you think?

I don�t 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 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 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.

Its moral inferiority, however, does not mask its literary artistry. And here�s the line. It�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 one person alone in a room laughing at himself. Cue Billy Idol. �I�m laughing with myself. Whoa-oh-oh. �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. While Obadiah was against Edom and Habakkuk was against 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. You might want to look on a map where Nineveh is.

If you move from Israel to the northeast 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 on 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. 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 the Sederko 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 3 ,000 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.

The Opening Oracle Against Nineveh and the Acrostic in Nahum 1:1-8

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' 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 1, 1 -8, 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.

When I, 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, um, this, 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 we, 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, uh, another, um, 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. And you said, well, Hey, Hey, something's something's not happened yet. Uh, 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, he, 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, um, uh, 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.

Verses 9-15: The Dizzying Judgment on God’s Adversaries

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 off the chapter.

And I don't think we're going to finish it today on the show. Uh, and 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, uh, 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, um, I, I'm not against the station.

I think they put Rick Warren, uh, 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 white horse in 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, uh, they've been doing white horse in for 30 years.

And, uh, so 30 years, 4 million, 11 years, 300 and some 350 bucks. Uh, shouldn't I be at like 1 .3 million a year? What if, what if the giving and no compromise radio was 1 .3 million a year? What would I do?

I would start a nonprofit. Here's what one of the commentary says on Nahum 1 9 to 15 verse 9 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. Uh, I think I started to preach to through Hosea and maybe quit. Or was that Micah? Habakkuk I've preached a couple different times. Um, I think that's it for minor prophets.

That is a, that's a crying shame. They used to say, uh, 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. Uh, Hosea, no. Joel, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. Oh, there. Yeah. 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, uh, 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, um, 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, of the house Senate and executive branch, legislative branch, all these other things, you know, what are we going to do? Uh, this will be a good, good section for us.

So I think that's about as far as I want to go. Cause I said dizzying too many times. Uh, 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 a church discipline, how to hear God, et cetera.

I'm glad that you listen. I hope you tell your friends. God has been faithful this year. Praise God from whom all blessings flow, uh, even in 2020, right? 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.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 15. And in the evening at six, we're right on route one 10 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 5 0 8 8 3 5 3 400.