Nahum 3:1: Woe unto you Assyria!

Okay, so like I said, we're actually in chapter 3, verse 1. Alright, so I'm going to read the end of chapter 2, because that was the heavy verse, and we'll go on to verse 7.

God's Word says, Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. I will burn up her chariots in smoke.

A sword will devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the land, and no longer will the voice of your messengers be heard.

Woe to the bloody city! Completely full of lies and pillage. Her prey never departs.

The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of the wheel, galloping horses and bounding chariots, horsemen charging, swords flashing, spears gleaming, many slain, a mass of corpses, and countless dead bodies.

They stumble over the dead bodies, all because of the many harlotries of the harlot, the charming one, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations by her harlotries and families by her sorceries.

Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. And I will lift up your skirts over your face and show to the nations your nakedness, and to the kingdoms your disgrace.

I will throw filth on you and make you vile, and set you up as a spectacle. And it will come about that all who see you will shrink from you and say,

Nineveh is devastated. Who will grieve for her? Where will I seek comforters for you?

Again, those are heavy, heavy words. So real quick, I just want to do a quick recap of chapter two, starting in verse one.

The one who scatters, this is referring to God. God is speaking, He's going to be the one who scatters them.

And this is actually a reference back to the Tower of Babel in Genesis 10. Okay, because God was the one who scattered them when they congregated together to build a tower for their name.

So the scatterer, God, is back and going to do a number on Nineveh. God taunts them by telling them to man the fortress, man the road, summon up their strength.

Basically telling them, go ahead, get everything you got to come against Me. I'm ready. God is taunting them.

God is going to restore Jacob, His people, like the splendor of Israel, the vine.

Again, we're going to continually see a contrast between the enemies of God and the friends or the children of God and how

He treats both sides. Babylon will intimidate the Assyrians with red colored shields and flashing steel.

Remember, this was, again, a way to intimidate the Ninevites as Assyria was coming in.

God uses water and flood imagery to describe the demise of the Assyrians. The gates of the rivers are open.

Nineveh was like a pool of water. Now they are fleeing. Nineveh was once that lush pool that they would water the nations around them.

Now, they're being flooded and the gates of the city are going to be taken down because of the floods.

Nineveh will be plundered of all the silver and gold and wealth that they stole from others. What they've done to others is now going to come back and happen to them.

Nahum uses lion imagery to describe Nineveh. Where now is the den of lions?

Again, this is a taunt by God. They were set up as the lions. We saw the pictures of them killing lions.

Now, instead of them being the lions hunting the prey, they're the prey being hunted by the lion.

The lion tore enough of her cubs and filled her lair with prey, but now God will become the lion and they will become the prey.

The Lord finishes with the worst possible thing anyone could hear. I am against you.

Frightening, frightening words to hear from God. God says,

I will burn your weapons, devour your lions, cut you off, and blot out all memory of you.

Again, devastating. God is against the Assyrians and God is for His people.

And like we went through last week, I should say, Romans 4, if God be for us, who can be against us?

So in the midst of the Assyrians coming in to ravage

Jerusalem and fight all the surrounding nations, God is still for His people.

He was disciplining them, but He was also for them. Okay, so let's get into chapter three, verse one.

Woe to the bloody city, completely full of lies and pillage. Her prey never departs. The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of the wheel, galloping horses, and bounding chariots.

The expression of woe that opens this chapter controls its mood until the last verse.

This is gonna be the tenor of the whole chapter. The various parts all contribute to its literary unity, and together they emphasize the irreversible doom of Nineveh.

The prophet no longer focuses on Israel and Judah alone, but places the fate of Nineveh in a universal perspective.

This section, with its tense, powerful phrases, depicts Nineveh in a typical battle, overwhelming yet another hapless victim.

The woe here is a divine denunciation and pronouncement of judgment. Verse one masterfully depicts both the character of Nineveh and the source of its prosperity and greatness.

It was built on bloodshed and deceit, and can only maintain itself and continue to grow by ruthlessly devouring other cities and kingdoms.

Her appetite for blood and plunder is insatiable. Nineveh was a great and powerful city, proud of its achievements, but now comes

God's assessment. So Nineveh and Assyria was the largest nation at that time, rich in all kinds of things, but also rich in bloodthirstiness.

They would devour their nations, and they were probably the most cruel nation on the planet, definitely the most cruel nation on the planet at that time, and I'm gonna emphasize that through this for a specific reason, which we're gonna get to.

Yahweh is the one who issued the preceding judgment against Nineveh, and he is the one who issues this woe against her.

It is time for Nineveh to lament. She is full of wickedness, and the judgment will come with the enemy's horses, chariots, swords, and spears.

It will be a devastating and mournful time. A staggering number of Assyrians will die because of their sins.

This judgment is coming because Nineveh behaved as a harlot, okay? There was a point in time when

Jonah went into Nineveh, they actually repented, they turned towards God, but over the course of time, their repentance kind of faded away as new generations of Assyrians were born, and they turned away from the

Lord and became a bloodthirsty nation once again. We can imagine the people living in Judah at the time of Nahum regularly thinking, the

Israelites, why doesn't God do something about these Assyrians? Why does He allow them to harass us all the time and cause us to tremble in fear because we don't know what they'll do next?

Some of us are feeling like that now in the United States, right? This is what the psalmist says.

The cry of the psalmist is often heard as how long? In Psalm 6, he cries, my soul is in anguish.

How long, O Lord, how long? Turn, Lord, and deliver me, right?

We're kind of feeling that in our country right now. Part of the problem is that a lot of Christians in the

United States are just praying for the rapture. Lord, when are you pulling me out of here? When they don't realize that we have to get to work.

The church has to do its job and bring the gospel to a dying group of people. Psalm 13, his lament is, how long must

I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Hmm. The same kind of agony is also expressed in Psalm 35. O Lord, how long will you look on, rescue my life from the ungodly ravages, my precious life from these lions?

So we look at these things and we might say, we might ask ourselves these very same questions about our current situation.

How are you guys feeling now? I mean, are you feeling confident? Are you feeling like, woo, we got this thing licked?

Or are you feeling like, man, we're in trouble as a nation? And this is definitely gonna hurt the church. So, a couple of things.

First, our level of discomfort doesn't compare with theirs. Right? You know, the enemies of the

Assyrians were being flayed, beheaded, crucified with a spear through their bottom, out through their mouth.

I mean, these were brutal, brutal people, right? So our level of discomfort doesn't compare to theirs.

We still live pretty comfortably and we still have some freedoms, although they're being eroded. And if the church doesn't do anything about it, it's gonna get worse.

So that's first. Second, as believers, we have the Holy Spirit within us and the inspired promises of Jesus before us.

Right? As believers in God, who are his children, we take Jesus' word seriously.

He says, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Right? He commands us to go and he will be with us even to the end of the age.

Right? We have a savior that goes before us, stands behind us, that works for us.

We know that no weapon formed against us will prosper. We know that if God be for us, who could be against us?

And we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us that testifies to that. The righteous are as bold as a lion.

We need to start acting that way. So we have Jesus' promises. Everything that Jesus promised will come true.

He's God in the flesh, right? Third, we have the luxury of the scriptures and looking backward and forward at God's track record.

Now they didn't have the New Testament at that time and probably not all of the writings of the prophets, but they saw

God's track record. They saw how God delivered them from the Egyptians and Pharaoh into the promised land.

Right? They had that. And we have that and more. Right? They were looking forward to the coming of the

Messiah, saying, oh, he's coming. There's gonna be a deliverer. He's gonna crush the head of the serpent.

He's coming. But they didn't see it. So we have the Old Testament that shows

God's track record, then the promise of the Messiah, and then we have the

Messiah come. Not that we've seen him with our eyes, but the New Testament records for us that Jesus was the

Messiah. He's God in the flesh. He's our redeemer. So God made good on the promise of sending a savior, a redeemer for us.

And then we have all the writings of the New Testament and things that we can read and say, this is true.

So we have more than what they had in the sense that we have the completed canon of scripture and the fulfilled promise of the

Messiah. So our discomfort wasn't as bad as theirs. We have the inspired promises of Jesus and we have the risen

Messiah. Fourth, we have a theological understanding of God's providence and sovereignty.

Right? Do we believe that all things work together for good? Do we believe that God is sovereign over history and orchestrating it for his glory and our benefit?

Sometimes when things are going really, really bad, we question that. How could this possibly be

God's plan? But then you look back and you see what the Assyrians did to Israel and the surrounding nations.

And then you see how God is gonna now punish the Assyrians. You say, okay, he is working through this.

And last, let me ask you something. Who says we're not losing? Who says we're losing?

How do you know? Are you sure we're losing this battle? Isn't it ironic, not to quote a song, isn't it ironic that during Pride Month, Roe gets overturned?

Pride Month. Isn't it ironic that the right to prayer after a football game is upheld during Pride Month?

Isn't it ironic that New York Supreme Court strikes out a New York gun law restricting concealed carry in a major Second Amendment case?

Pride Month. Mississippi governor proclaims June as the Sanctity of Life Month.

Oh, how we're losing. Now, don't get me wrong. We have a lot, lot, lot more work to do, right?

But this is a glimpse of what could happen. Now, I know a law,

Roe getting overturned is not gonna change the hearts of people. That's why we're gonna go out this afternoon on the street to Port Jeff and proclaim the gospel.

I invite you to come with us. Anywhere we can get a chance to go and preach the gospel, we need to be doing that.

So I don't necessarily say that we're losing. We're not gaining as much ground as we'd like, but we have to remember there's a spiritual reality behind the physical things that we see.

So think about it. The one who reads a newspaper knows what's happening in the world, but the one who reads the Bible knows why, right?

We have to stick with the scriptures to understand that there's a spiritual reality behind everything that we see right now.

And very important, right? Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but the powers and the spiritual forces of darkness behind those things.

Again, we have to exercise our weapon of prayer every Wednesday night. Prayer meetings have started to get more and more crowded.

Praise God, if you can make it come, okay? This is a weapon, right?

And then sometimes you look out at the world and you say, man, we're being buried.

That's one way of looking at it. When in reality, maybe you're being planted. You're being covered with all this dirt.

Oh, I'm being buried. That's how a seed grows. You're being planted for something bigger.

It's only through adversity that we wrestle with those things and start battling against them.

When things are going good, we tend to take it easy. When things are going tough, we tend to dig in our heels and say, we got to get to work, right?

Okay. We need to remember that Satan is a defeated foe.

He may appear to be very powerful and active in unsettling God's people, but it is

Christ, not he, who has won the victory. Jesus is Lord. I say it every week from the pulpit.

Why? To remind myself and to remind you that he is Lord and he is ruling and reigning until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet.

I can't hear that enough. I need to hear that every day. When the Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died upon the cross of Calvary, he defeated sin, the world, and Satan.

Believers should constantly keep before them this fact, Christ has won the victory, and this is what the last chapter of Nahum is all about.

Remember the word, the name Nahum means comfort, okay? We have to remember in the midst of darkness and the things that we're going through right now,

God is in it with us, and he's gonna comfort us through it. So, Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil,

John, 1 John 3, 8, and we're gonna actually read these in a second. To destroy the one who has the power of death,

Satan was disarmed, Satan was judged, Satan was cast out, Satan was bound by Jesus so that he could plunder his house.

Satan's work was being restrained, 2 Thessalonians, and here are those scriptures. So, 1

John 3, 8, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil, right?

That's why Jesus came, to destroy the works of the devil. Hebrews 2, 14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil.

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him, at the cross, right?

He put Satan to open shame. John 16, concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged already.

Now is the judgment of this world, now will the ruler of this world be cast out. Well, how can someone enter a strong man's house, and this is

Jesus speaking, and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man, then indeed he may plunder his house.

I don't know about you, but I believe that Jesus bound Satan, and he's plundering Satan's house right now.

And we're on the right side of that if our faith and trust is in Jesus, and we're born again, we're born of God's spirit. Revelation 20, and he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who was the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

If you're amillennial or postmillennial, you'll believe right now that Satan's bound for that thousand years, a long period of time.

Second Thessalonians 2 .6, and you know what is restraining him now, so that he may be revealed in his time, okay?

So although Satan still prowls around like a lion waiting to pounce on you, okay?

He is restrained to a certain extent. He can no longer deceive the nations.

So when your faith and trust is in Jesus, you need not fear that enemy, okay?

Jesus is the one who we're following. He's the one who says the gates of hell will not prevail.

Gates are designed to keep something out. We go into those gates and pull people out of darkness and bring them into the kingdom of light.

Not we ourselves, but through the proclamation of the gospel and God's spirit, he opens their eyes, the areas in their hearts, and he pulls them into that kingdom, right?

We have to remember who we are as believers, and we have to remember who our father is, okay?

If your dad was, I'm trying to think of somebody, no, I can't even. If your dad was really, really, really rich, would you worry about the price of gas right now?

Probably not. You'd probably own a Tesla anyway. You'd be driving an electric car, right? But you wouldn't be worried.

Like if your dad was filthy rich. I don't want to say Bill Gates or Elon Musk, but you know what I'm saying. Like somebody really rich.

You wouldn't be worried. Wouldn't be worried. Your father owns the entire universe. Right?

And we're on a mission. We have to stay on mission. We have to stay on point.

We have to not fear the world around us. We do not walk, we walk by faith, not by sight, right?

We are not to fear what's going on. It should motivate us. It should push us, all right?

It should push us to plug in more, to be more united together as a body and pressing in to the things of the world around us.

Of the kingdom, so that we expand God's kingdom with him and for him. Okay. Woe to the bloody city.

Grammatically, the first verses of chapter three continue to picture the fall of Nineveh begun in chapter two.

They are very vivid and very abrupt. And in fact, do not form full sentences in Hebrew. They're mainly phrases strung together without formal connection.

So it kind of sounds like the whip, the rattling, the wheel, galloping horses, bounding chariots.

We translate it in kind of like sentences, but it's just like boom, boom, boom, boom. Their effect is to reinforce the impression of confusion and panic.

And translators should try to create a familiar effect in their own language. Some may be able to use a string of phrases like the

Hebrew while for others, this may result in nonsense. Some languages have special grammatical constructions to express a series of dramatic descriptive phrases such as those in verse two.

Each translator has to make the decision how best to achieve an effect equivalent to that of the

Hebrew in the receptor language. Now, I just put that up there just for reference to let you know this is why it's bullet pointed like that.

Oh, I gave it away again. I do this all the time. And you know, anyone that had to say woe in Hebrew, I put it up, come on.

Oi, oi, oi, right, oi, that's what woe is in Hebrew.

And it's an interjection meaning ho, woe, alas. It is used in lamenting a person's death.

It's used in prophetic announcements of judgment of threats, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos. It's used to draw attention to an unexpected but momentous occasion or to a hope -filled and joyous expectation.

In this case, the woe is not good. This is not a joyous expectation, although it would be joyous for the

Israelites. They'd be like, yes, God's pronouncing a woe on them. And if it's a woe on them, then our enemies are gonna be defeated.

Woe to the bloody city. Woe to here is a statement rather than a wish as it is sometimes elsewhere.

Doomed is the city. Today's English version may also be rendered as the city will certainly be destroyed or there is no escape for the city.

The word bloody is used here in its original meaning, causing bloodshed and is not to be misunderstood as the common swear word used in dialects of English like British, you know, like the bloody people, whatever, you know.

The city is called bloody and full of lies referring to the cruelty of its armies toward the people they had conquered and to the deceitfulness of the rulers in making false promises.

Today's English version reverses the order of these statements and says, doomed is the lying murderous city.

Since murder is generally reckoned to be more serious than telling lies, the sequence forms a better climax in English.

So the emphasis is on murderous. They are liars, right? And they're following their father who's the father of lies, but they're murdering people.

The prophets reserved the cry of woe for use against those who had been doomed by God. Isaiah, Micah, Amos, Habakkuk.

Though the word was used against Israel, it was employed more frequently against foreign nations.

A woe oracle has two parts to it. First, the accusation in which the evil provoking the announcement of doom is stated, and second, the declaration of punishment by God for such evil.

It is made clear here that the declaration of God's punishment comes after he has patiently waited for some sign of repentance of a nation's long list of crimes against others, and is finally triggered by particular deeds.

In other words, this is the last straw. The force of the woe on nations to whom it was pronounced was like a dirge at a funeral for the nations were as good as gone.

Again, we remember in past lessons, when God says something and pronounces something, it's a certainty.

This is not a possibility that Assyria and Nineveh is gonna be destroyed. This is a certainty.

God has said it. Nahum's curse came because of three crimes.

The prophet charged Nineveh with breaking the sixth, eighth, and ninth commandments. The men of Nineveh had murdered, stolen, and lied on a multinational scale.

So again, I'm highlighting, emphasizing the wickedness of Assyria for a reason.

Assyrian armies inflicted these horrors on conquered enemies. The inscriptions of Asher Nassipal give the most frightening reports.

I captured many soldiers alive. The rest of them I burnt. I carried off valuable tribute from them.

I built a pile of live men and heads before his gate. I erected on stake 700 soldiers before their gate.

I raised, destroyed, and turned into ruin hills the city. I burnt their adolescent boys and girls.

Horrific, horrific. When Sinatra conquered Babylon, he related, I left no one.

I filled the city squares with their corpses. Relief sculptures depict

Assyrian soldiers bringing the heads of their enemies for secretaries to record. In a treaty in Aramaic, the suzerain threatens to pile corpse upon corpse in the vassal's town should he prove unfaithful.

Boyce, I don't think it was James Boyce, he quotes some of the choice boasts from what the

Assyrians did. These were inscribed on their monuments or written in their annals. I cut off their heads and formed them into pillars.

Ubo, son of Ubo, I flayed in the city of Arbella and I spread his skin upon the city wall.

I flayed all the chief men who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins. Many within the border of my own land,

I flayed and spread their skins upon the walls. I cut off the limbs of the officers, the royal officers who had rebelled.

3 ,000 captives, I burned with fire. Their corpses, I formed into pillars. From some,

I cut off their hands and their fingers and from others, I cut off their noses, their ears and their fingers and of many,

I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of the heads.

I bound their heads to posts round about the city. This is gruesome.

So what were Nineveh's sins? It was a city stained with blood. The city was stained with the blood of her foreign conquest and with the blood of her internal strife.

It was a city full of lies. Nineveh was noted for her international lies, for her covenant breakings, her truce breakings and her treaty breakings with the other nations around them.

It was a city full of robbery. Violence was practiced inside and outside the city. It was a city full of prey.

The latter years of Assyria's existence were years of almost constant warfare against the nations to conquer them, spoil them and to carry away the loot to Nineveh.

And I'm emphasizing this for a reason. Could Nineveh be considered the most wicked nation ever?

Would you say they're at the very least in the top 10 worst nations ever, right?

When you think about the way they conquered their enemies, you know what flaying is? I mean, that's cutting the skin off of a live human being.

I mean, it's beyond barbaric. So could Nineveh be considered the most wicked nation ever?

I say definitely within the top five or 10. The enormity of these crimes makes the following statement by Jesus all the more astonishing.

Think about this. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it.

For they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

The Ninevites are gonna stand up and point to the generation of the

Pharisees that saw the Messiah, rejected the Messiah, crucified the

Messiah, and Nineveh is gonna condemn them. One of the most wicked nations ever to be on planet

Earth is gonna condemn the Jews for crucifying the Messiah. When we add the crimes of Sodom to those listed in Nahum 3 .1,

we have two societies responsible for some of the most egregious breaches of the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth commandments that are recorded in the

Bible. We cannot imagine the horror or anger that Jesus' audience must have felt in hearing those words.

On what basis could Jesus have made this claim? What standard did Jesus use to rate one sin higher than another?

In all four cases, Nineveh, Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, Jesus stated that the advantage lay in their willingness to repent.

Should Jesus have preached there? Of the four, only one of the cities had repented. The Bible records the reason that Nineveh repented and the people of Nineveh believed

God. This is when Jonah came in. And again, Nahum is Jonah 2 .0. This is the second half of the story of what happens with Nineveh.

So none of the other nations except for Nineveh repented. Nineveh is gonna be the nation, one of the most bloodthirsty, vicious nations ever to be on the planet and condemn the

Jews at the time of the Messiah. In contrast, Israel refused to believe in Jesus.

This hardness only increased throughout his ministry. Because of this, Jesus too took on the prophetic role of preaching a sermon of woe.

Matthew 23 records this series of seven woes against the scribes and Pharisees. This chapter repeatedly reinforces what

Jesus' earliest statements of woe had already declared. That offenses against Christ and the gospel come under greater judgment than offenses committed against humanity.

This is why I think the woes that came upon that generation and the destruction of the temple in 70

AD, that's the great tribulation. If we hold to the scriptural understanding of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the punishment must fit the crime.

So what is the greatest crime humanity could ever have committed in its existence?

Putting God on a cross. Jesus claimed to be God. They rejected that and put him on a cross.

That, by inference, would result in the greatest punishment for the greatest crime.

Okay, so I think that was the great tribulation. And I'm accompanied by Bruce Gore, who's a theologian and a historian who agrees with me.

I actually interviewed him and he agreed. That's why I say that. Anyway, Matthew 23, these are the woes to the scribes and Pharisees.

He shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would go to enter in.

They were preaching legalism, strict adherence to the law as the way to get into heaven, not by faith.

For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte. And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourself.

When you teach people that it's what they do that gets them into heaven, you just fed into the sinful, prideful heart of humanity and you reinforce their rejection of the gospel.

It is nothing, nothing based on what we've done. It's based on what God has done for us.

He's the one who rescues us. And thank God is right. Because if it was based up on us breaking one law, if you broke one law, you've broken them all.

So thank God for grace. Thank God for mercy. Thank God for the cross, all right?

And thank God for God giving us eternal life as a gift. It's not something that we earn.

We could never earn it. Woe to those who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing.

But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he's bound by his oath. You blind fools. They had more faith and trust in money than they did the temple.

For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, for justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self -indulgence.

Right, most times people think that the problem, their problems lie outside of themselves.

Oh, it's this person who's hurting me. It's this situation at work. It's always something else outside of themselves.

That's the problem. Rarely do people look inside themselves because the problem resides within us.

Our hearts are depraved. Our hearts are full of wickedness. That's what needs to be changed.

That's why the gospel is an inside job. It works from the inside out. You look at the old covenant and it seems to move from the outside in, but it never gets to the end.

The New Testament, the new covenant is from the inside out. For you are like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and uncleanness.

How many times do you see people who outwardly look like nice, nice people, but inwardly their heart is twisted?

They're full of greed, lies, envy, all these things. For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous.

You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

So along with Jesus sentencing them to hell, He's gonna have Nineveh standing and condemning them too.

The brutal nation of Nineveh, who did repent at one point in time, is gonna add to the condemnation of the

Pharisees and the Jews that rejected Jesus. When we see something like this and we recognize just how much

Jesus has impacted the world and we recognize the truth of the Scriptures and the truth of God's Word and how it never changes, how are we going to stand in the judgment if we reject

Jesus, right? Every sin in this world will be paid for.

It will either be paid for by you or by Jesus. You need to know right now that you have to change your mind the way you think about your sin.

You're not gonna be able to escape the judgment of God. You need a savior.

You need an advocate with the Father. Another term for advocate is lawyer, right?

If you were convicted or not convicted, accused of a serious crime, would you go in and represent yourself in a federal court case?

Or would you try to find the best attorney you knew, the best attorney that you could afford to defend you?

As far as I know, Jesus has never lost a case He tried. When He stands up,

He says, it is finished, paid in full. I paid for His sins. Is He guilty? Absolutely He's guilty. But I paid for those sins, right?

You need an advocate with the Father. So what's the opposite of a woe?

Aren't you proud I didn't show the answer? Like I always spill the beans. What's the opposite of a woe?

A what? A woe and a wheel. Okay.

I was thinking a blessing. Same thing, okay. I got stumped, all right.

It's my PowerPoint, I get it. Okay, a woe, a blessing, a wheel. I'm gonna call it a blessing. Is a blessing a wheel?

Is that, okay. So I kind of got it right. I didn't hit wheel. All right. So let's look at the blessings, which are also known as the

Beatitudes. These are the blessings for those whose faith and trust is in Jesus.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy. My goodness, don't we want mercy?

So many people say, oh, I want justice. I'm like, if you want justice, you're in big trouble.

You don't want justice. You want mercy, right? Justice, mercy, and grace. What is justice?

Getting what you deserve. You don't want that. What is mercy? Not getting what you deserve.

That's good. What is grace? Getting what you don't deserve, right? So when we stand before God, not only do we receive mercy,

He now gives us His righteousness, something we don't deserve so that we can be in union with Him in heaven forever.

Blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, but theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

This is how God treats His people. I'm in a situation right now that's just, it's internal toil for me.

And it's a situation where, thankfully as I'm going through this, I'm like, oh my goodness, this person doesn't understand that they are enemies of God right now.

And I've shared the gospel with this person several times and they're doing something to me. Look, will

I get through it? Of course I will. Of course I will. And I stand on the promises of God knowing that whatever

I miss out on now on the other side, it'll be returned to me more than I can imagine, right?

I'm not concerned about it hurting here. Life is gonna hurt here, right?

So my view goes to the spiritual. I say, man, on the other side, if this person doesn't repent,

God is gonna be against him. So for whatever it is I'm losing, I'm speaking the gospel to myself and reminding myself that I'm to love

God and love my neighbor, the guy I'm supposed to bless those who persecute me, right?

Pray for those people. I should pity that. And I'm working in my heart to pray for this person, that God would redeem them now before it's too late.

Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Woe to the bloody city completely full of lies and pillage. The bloodthirsty mindset displays itself by the never ending lying, profiteering and victimizing.

No sin can exist by itself. Always the viper's nest in the sinner's heart is named legion.

Because Satan is the father of lies. His offspring cannot help but lie.

But none of it has carried the matter of lying to the extreme limit. The whole thing lives a lie.

Every time each citizen opens its mouth, beneath his most convincing straightforward statement is a twist, a hidden intent, a conscious ambiguity.

In order to flatter, to cover up, to detract from actual intent, the citizen of Assyria dissimulates, equivocates, veils the true purpose of his heart by the cautious form of the words he utters.

By prearranged pointing of the foot, by the wink of the eye, he and his secret accomplices victimize even the most cautious.

The term used for lie derives from a root which also can mean fall or grow lean.

The fact that the product of the oil tree has failed suggests that the expectation created by full foliage is sadly disappointed when an examination is made for fruit.

All right, what does Jesus say? They will know you by their fruit. So the city of Nineveh promises prosperity and every advantage to those who will barter with it, but beware, all of it is a lie, as the text reads literally.

Her prey never departs. Nineveh had many of the spoils of its plunder. At its height, the

Assyrian Empire controlled the Middle East from North Africa to Iran, and the city of Nineveh received many stolen treasures.

Nineveh's merchants were like locusts that descended on conquered cities and stripped them of all their goods. This city of blood was never without victims.

Nineveh's sins also included greed, extortion, opposition to all that God is and stands for.

Its victim or prey never departs. The word for victim or prey denotes that which a wild animal rips, tears, or devours much as a lion does to its victims.

Thus, there was no end to Assyria's history of pillage, raping, and bringing devastation on others.

Any questions? Yes, Jerry. Okay, thank you.

Wheel, W -E -A -L for those of you who, and it means prosperity, blessing, thank you.

So we see the dichotomy, the way God treats His enemies and the way God treats His people. Again, there was two thieves on either side of Jesus.

One was cursing at Him. The other one recognized, this is the Son of God. Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Okay, the key to this is repentance, recognizing that the way you live your life is sinful.

Okay, you need to change the way you think about your sin. It's an abomination in God's sight. Turn to Him.

He's made provision in His Son Jesus to pay for all your sins, past, present, or future.

pray. Amen.