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Don Filcek; Nahum 2 When the RESTORER Restores
You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan.
I'm looking forward to working with Trent. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I am glad you're all here. I hope that you equally are glad that you're all here, especially by the time that we get done with the message this morning.
I hope you're still glad, and that sounds ominous, but I say that because we're gonna be covering a section of scripture that is fairly intense this week, and then next week even more so. But one of our goals as a church is to take God very seriously, while not taking ourselves too seriously.
He is holy, he is exalted, he is perfect in all of his ways. We are not, and so how could we take ourselves seriously? But we certainly do him. My hope and prayer is that any intensity that you see in me ever up here comes from the word, and not from my opinions or preferences.
I can get worked up sometimes as I preach, and somebody even just identified last week, oh, preaching Nahum seemed to fit you well. Like, you seem to get kind of enthusiastic about that. That intensity comes from my confidence that this text really matters.
When we read about God's righteous wrath towards sin, we are talking about vital, intense, holy things, not my favorite things by any stretch of the imagination, but things that are true and real of God.
I often get a fire inside regarding the things that God has pressed on me during my study. Fundamentally, what you need to understand is that as I study throughout the week, God is doing his business in my heart.
Like, he's actually convicting me and drawing me in so that that intensity that comes out here only ever comes out here because it's already happened in here. So I'm never pointing fingers unless you recognize that all the fingers are coming back at me as well.
God's love and grace in saving and restoring people for his glory is complemented perfectly by his holy vengeance against his enemies. That might seem like a strange statement, but his love and grace is complemented by his wrath and vengeance.
What we see in the book of Nahum is that the eternal kingdom of God and the reality of wrathful judgment are not two separate puzzles that scripture puts together. We don't have, on the one hand, like an Old Testament puzzle that we put together that looks like fire and judgment and battle and conquest and all that stuff, and then another puzzle that we put together that looks like the New Testament with meekness and kindness and patience and sinless eternity on streets of gold.
Those are not two separate puzzles. God is not divided. He is not divided like there's the Old Testament God and there's the New Testament God, or even there's the Old Testament way of God and there's the New Testament way of God, not at all.
Instead, we have one big picture in which the puzzle pieces of grace and mercy and love toward his people require the other half of the puzzle, which is the removal of evil and all that opposes him in the end.
There can be no eternal, sinless, deathless existence without the complete eradication of wickedness and wicked people who despise him. Nahum is a really short Old Testament book that fits into the history of the world and really, it fits into scripture well as a clarification on the character of the Almighty God.
We need books like Nahum to fill out the picture that we have of the God that we worship. It's revealed for us in scripture because it's needed. It's often overlooked, but we need messages like this. The book of Nahum is comprised of three chapters of increasing intensity and judgment against the wicked nation of Assyria.
Last week was pretty tame. This week's getting more, the temperature's turning up, and then next week, the gloves are gonna come off. So I would even encourage you, as much as possible, maybe read chapter three this next week, and especially if you have kids that are gonna be in here, next week, you might wanna just read that because you might have some words you need to define on the way home next week.
So it might be good to be prepared for that if your kids are actually in here. And I'm saying that even from the reading of it. Like, I read the text and the kids go back to their classes. I'm saying even the reading of the text of scripture next week is gonna be intense.
But what we're dealing with is God's judgment against the wicked nation of Assyria, and they are a people of wicked brutality. They have ravaged Israel. They have subjugated, defeated, slaughtered, and enslaved most of the known world as of the writing of the book of Nahum.
And yet this book is one big predictive prophecy of the demise of that very powerful and wicked people of Assyria and their capital city of Nineveh. They are the superpower of the day. They are brutal in their attacks and in their military strategy.
And Nahum says 50 years before the fall of Nineveh, he predicts in quite clear detail through these three chapters the fall of Nineveh, their capital, and really ultimately the fall of the Assyrian Empire.
The book of Nahum uses the Assyrians, though. What you need to understand is like, why are we reading about Assyria? Why are we reading about ancient battle here? The Assyrians serve as a model of the judgment of God.
It's not as though he had it particularly only out for Assyria, particularly only out for Nineveh. But it's important that we see past the historical to the current. I like how he's been a lightning rod of a person and everybody's got an opinion about him, but I did listen to Mark Driscoll a lot in my younger years.
I still listen to him occasionally here or there just to check in on him. But Mark Driscoll will often say, the Bible doesn't merely record what happened, it records and tells us what always happens. How many of you know what I'm talking about?
Like, there's a cycle to history. Like, things just keep happening the same way over and over again, and if we don't learn from that history, we just repeat the sinful patterns of the past. But here's the point.
We can never let a history lesson from scripture settle on us as mere history. It's not recorded so that you can win at Bible trivia. It's not here so that you understand something about ancient warfare.
That's not the point of the text at all, but instead it's saying something to us here. It's saying something to us recast here in America, here in 2024, here in a very divided political climate, here in what for many of us may feel like a scary tipping point in history, at least as long as we've lived.
How many of you know what I'm talking about? Do you feel that? Do you feel like we're at a tipping point? You feel like we might be at a scary point as a culture? And God is speaking through Nahum into that situation, and here's what he's communicating.
God is not ignorant of the plight of his people. God's arm is strong enough to restore and liberate his people, and he promises that he will. And in restoring his people, he will bring just judgment on those who oppress and oppose his people.
The message of Nahum is a message of comfort for his people. Actually, the name Nahum means comfort. And while the battle language in this chapter appears violent and graphic, and even more so next week, it is written for the comfort of a heavily oppressed and marginalized people, his people.
So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Nahum chapter two. Again, Nahum chapter two, and recast. This is God's holy word. Good luck finding it in a paper copy of the Bible.
This is where digital copies really shine because what you're gonna do is you're gonna find Micah and then turn over to Nahum, but Micah's not any easier to find than Nahum, so there you go. You might end up looking at the index in the front to find it.
But Nahum chapter two, recast. I love to remind you of this every week, and especially when, man, these texts get a little weird and strange and out there. This is God's holy word. This is what he desires to communicate to us, and he has a message for you in this.
The scatterer has come up against you. Man the ramparts, watch the road, dress for battle, collect all your strength. For the Lord is restoring the majesty of Jacob as the majesty of Israel, for plunderers have plundered them and ruined their branches.
The shield of his mighty men is red, his soldiers are clothed in scarlet. The chariots come with flashing metal on the day he musters them, the cypress spears are brandished. The chariots race madly through the streets, they rush to and fro through the squares, they gleam like torches, they dart like lightning.
He remembers his officers, they stumble as they go, they hasten to the wall, the siege tower is set up, the river gates are opened, the palace melts away. Its mistress is stripped, she is carried off, her slave girls lamenting, moaning like doves and beating their breasts.
Nineveh is like a pool whose waters run away. Halt, halt, they cry, but none turns back. Plunder the silver, plunder the gold, there is no end of the treasure or of the wealth of all precious things. Desolate, desolation and ruin, hearts melt and knees tremble.
Anguish is in all loins, all faces grow pale. Where is the lion's den, the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion and lioness went? Where his cubs were, with none to disturb? The lion tore enough for his cubs and strangled prey for his lionesses.
He filled his caves with prey and his dens with torn flesh. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard.
Let's pray.
Father, I like reading about your patience. I like reading about your love and your grace. I like Jesus reaching out to touch the lepers and healing people, and I like the thoughts of streets of gold, the forgiveness of my sins.
But Father, may we not be a people who allow those thoughts to settle on us without first recognizing what we deserved, without first recognizing the weight of our sin before you, you who are holy, you who are righteous, you who are just in your vengeance and wrath towards sinners, you who are all about your glory, even declaring to us multiple times, Old Testament and New Testament, that you are a God who is jealous for your glory.
And that's reasonable because you are God. You are indeed all about your glory. So Father, I pray that as that terror of what we deserved, that darkness and the fear of what was really over us, that cloud of judgment that was coming for us, that that being released by you becoming a refuge for us, paying the price and paying the penalty for our sins, that we can be set free, no longer declared guilty, but declared justified, righteous in your eyes.
Father, that from that place of that massive, major twist of destinies that we've experienced, bound for eternal judgment, now bound for eternal glory, all because of what your Son has done for us. How can we not sing?
How can we not rejoice? How can we not be moved to joy? Father, I pray that whatever assails us, whatever troubles are on the horizon for us, whatever we face today in response to our own sin or in response to the sin of others, it's all light and momentary affliction in the light of the glory that awaits your children.
Father, we deserve judgment. We deserve to be chased into outer darkness. And instead, you have welcomed us into your strong tower. You are our refuge and our strength and our hope and our help and our forgiveness and our grace.
How can we not share that with others? And how can we not rejoice? So Father, I pray that you would light our hearts on fire with that realization of what's coming for us as Nahum communicates here, what's coming for Assyria, what's coming for those who refuse to repent, to those who will remain your enemies.
But we have been brought into family with you through your Son, Jesus Christ. Let that hope fuel our praise this morning in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Yeah, go ahead and be seated. Thanks to the band for leading us. I encourage you to re-find your place in Nahum chapter two. If you lost that spot, get back over there so that you got the Bible on your lap.
You can see the things that I'm saying are coming from chapter two of Nahum. And feel free to try to take notes while I'm listening, while I'm speaking, and listen to the Spirit. If we're open, I'm convinced that he, God's Spirit, will correct, encourage, strengthen, or guide our hearts through the study of his word together.
And so just, I encourage you to be listening for what he wants to say to you this morning. And I'm gonna start with a question. What does liberation look like? What does restoration look like? When God is restoring a people, when people are being liberated, what does it look like?
Start with the beaches of Normandy. Think about that. Those five beaches, each one with a name. Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juneau, and Sword Beach. The places of one of the most fateful days in modern human history where a battle took place.
It was a place of blood, a place of valor, a place of slaughter, and a place of the beginning of restoration and liberation for the continent of Europe. Over 5 ,000 ships and landing crafts participated in establishing a beachhead with about 132 ,000 troops landing on European soil that day, and that day alone.
Between the Allies and the Germans, about 10 to 15 ,000 people died on those beaches. Was D-Day an act of wanton violence, or was it an act of restoration? An act of violence, or an act of liberation?
I think you know what I think about that. It was indeed an act of restoration for an entire continent. At least the beginning of liberation. When we come to Nahum chapter two, we are given scenes of a battle.
From Nahum's perspective, it's a future battle, but it's a battle with theological significance. Future, yet to him, this is a book that is fueled by the very power and revelation of God that Nahum was able to look 50 years into the future and predict the downfall of a nation that nobody could see this battle coming.
But if you missed last week, I would encourage you to go to the Recast podcast and listen to it, just for the sake of context, if for nothing else. Again, next week we're gonna be wrapping up Nahum, and so it's good for us to understand the history.
As we enter this text in chapter two, it presupposes some understanding of what's already been said, and it's good for us to have that context, but I'm gonna give you just the high-level view of the history that you need to know.
Assyria was the global bully during Nahum's time. Through brutal warfare and psychological terror, they savaged the known world. They starved out the northern kingdom of Israel and conquered them after a brutal siege of their capital city of Samaria, so that half of Israel is under the absolute control.
Actually, half of Israel has been carted off, captives, to Assyria, and then many of them, then Assyria has repopulated that area in the north. They've threatened the southern kingdom of Judah with conquests, demanding heavy tribute of gold and silver.
They also required the southern kingdom of Judah to adopt the worship of the pagan idols during this time, and many of those kings of Judah, they were Jews, they were supposed to be worshiping the one true God, but in order to save their own skin, they acquiesced to the wishes, the demands, of the king of Assyria, and they were worshiping the pagan gods and goddesses there in Jerusalem during this time in order to appease the Assyrian oppressors.
But at the time that Nahum is writing,.
The people of God are waking up, they're starting to awaken to the need to come back to the worship of the one true God under a young king named Josiah, who is starting to, he actually found a copy of the Bible hidden in the walls of the temple, and he began to read that, and there's reforms that are starting to take place, and at the height, really the high point of Assyrian power and rule, the prophet Nahum is given these three chapters of prophecy predicting the downfall of Assyria, that massive juggernaut, that massive military power of the day, and he predicts their downfall and the downfall of their capital city, Nineveh.
That's Nahum, that's what we're reading, that's where we're at in history. Now, verse one starts with a warning to the people of Nineveh to prepare for the coming battle. It kind of begins to set the stage.
So the verse one is a bit of a taunt, and it's a taunt because the battle is already decided, as we're gonna see later, this is actually recorded as a book, so it wasn't recorded as progressive prophecy, like it was given him, and then he spoke a little bit, and then he spoke a little bit more, and then he spoke chapter three.
It was given to him as a book, and it was one big thing, and so the conquest is very clear, as you'll see by the end of chapter two, what he's envisioning here is a complete destruction of Nineveh, and so it's a taunt in that it says, go ahead and prepare, but you're not gonna win, Nineveh.
The battle's already decided, but he warns the Assyrians that the scatterer is coming, and whenever that Hebrew word is used as a verb throughout scripture, it's used almost exclusively as an action of God.
When we see the verb to scatter in scripture, God is the one who is scattering, and therefore, I would say, I have no problem understanding the scatterer has come up against you is that the almighty God has come up against you.
He is the one who scatters the enemies of God's people and brings them to nothing. I believe that God can be both the scatterer of the Assyrians and the Babylonians and Medes who are the ones who will actually conquer the city of Nineveh are also the scatterer,.
And what do I mean?
God is the one who is sovereignly used in global forces to accomplish his will.
Do you believe that God is sovereign.
Over the affairs of mankind? I do, and scripture seems to indicate so, so that both he is the scatterer, and so are those intermediate causes, those people that he uses to judge the city of Nineveh. So the king of Nineveh is warned, you better prepare.
Man your ramparts, set a watch over the road, gear up for battle, listen to your hype playlist or whatever you do before you go into battle, right? Like put that music on that really gets you pumped up because you're gonna have a battle on your hands, and what he's basically getting at, as I said last week, Nahum here is saying, my dad is on the way.
My dad is on the way. You can refer back to chapter one in the first several verses to see his description of the divine warrior. He is on the way to do battle with the wicked Assyrians. Verse two then seems like an interruption.
It'd be very easy to read chapter one. It starts to give us the battle scene, and it would be very easy to skip over verse two and go straight into verse three, but verse two seems like an interruption.
As a matter of fact, it interrupts so thoroughly that many scholars, who I think are too smart to see the obvious, anybody know somebody like that? So smart they can't see the obvious? They don't know what to do with verse two, and it's the core of the passage.
It's like the main point, but they don't know what to do with it because it interrupts the flow, and it's like, no, it's interrupting the flow so that you can see the theological significance of this battle.
If you take out verse two and try to move it around or think of it as a misplaced addition or something like that, you remove any theological force behind this text at all. Without verse two, chapter two is just a battle scene.
Just a battle scene with a couple of taunts, and that's the end. But here in verse two, we find out what is really happening in Nineveh as she is completely obliterated in one fell swoop. What's really happening?
What is happening on the global scene? The Lord is restoring the majesty of his people. That's what's happening here. He is defeating the plunderer, which is synonymous with restoring his people. What does it take for God to restore his people in a fallen, broken world full of oppression and full of people who hate him?
There is going to be some destruction before there is wholeness and peace. The Lord's restoring his set-apart people is the very reason for this destruction. God must destroy oppression in order to give freedom to his people.
Does that make sense to you? Raise your hand if that makes sense to you. You're getting that, okay? We see all kinds of things that God can do demonstrated in Scripture so that our faith is grounded in the reality of what he can do.
God is able to do a lot of things. Raise your hand if you know that. Do you know that God is able to do a whole lot of things,.
But how do you know? How do you know?
How do you know the kinds of things that God can do? He's asking us, he's calling on us, church, to believe him about some pretty fundamental things, like you're not gonna get cancer in heaven. How do you know that?
How do you know you're not gonna be blind in heaven? How do you know you're not gonna be maimed for eternity? How do we know these things? Well, he gives us evidences in Scripture. He doesn't just say, take it on faith that I got this.
He came down and showed us, did he not? So how do we know he can heal us forever? Well, he sent Jesus down who showed us his power over sickness and deformity and disability, amen? He showed us he has that power.
How do we know he can make a place where we don't need to fear cataclysm and catastrophe? In the world around us, he showed us his power over nature, even still in the storms. How do we know he has the power over death?
He showed us through resurrection, through Jesus' resurrection. How do we know he will defeat wickedness and sin? Here he is in the book of Nahum, showing us his power to overcome and bring to justice powerful wicked people, to put an end to wickedness and evil.
He shows us he has the power to do so. We ought to be just as encouraged in his power to defeat wickedness as we are in his power to defeat death. He who brings new life is also he who promises justice.
He is love, he is holy, he is gracious, he is avenging, he is wrathful. We should be able to say all of those things with the same tone. And it's worth our time to consider in verse two, what is the pride and majesty of Jacob that he's restoring?
Look at the verse. For the Lord is restoring the majesty of Jacob as the majesty of Israel. For plunderers have plundered them and ruined their branches. What is the pride or the majesty of Jacob? The glory of Jacob has always been his God.
That's the glory of Jacob. That's the glory of his people. Now, Jacob, do you know what the name Jacob means? Swindler, cheater? Like is the glory of Jacob his behavior? Is it his character qualities?
Is it his strength in the face of adversity? What is the glory of Jacob? Or church, what is the glory of us? Is it not our savior? Is it not our Lord? Is it not our God? He is our glory. He is Jacob's glory.
He is restoring himself to his people and his people to him. And the oppressor must be removed in order for his people to be able to worship him in truth. Do we trust in the divine warrior to rescue us, church?
Or are we proud enough to think that we can do it ourselves? We could take our religious rights by force and I ask you, ask all of us, to what end? So that we can establish our own kingdom? I want all of us to give this serious thought in this age of deep division on many substantial moral issues.
There are significant issues. There are major things that feel like they're at stake in this next election. There are big things that we disagree with others about.
You know what I'm talking about?
Anybody feel a little disagreement with something you've heard this past week?
Anything?
No?
Don't want to admit it? A few of us, our hands are going up and down. Yeah, yeah, I think we all have. But hear me carefully, church. Fighting the wrong battles in the wrong way will consistently lead to the wrong results.
Fighting the wrong battles in the wrong ways will consistently lead to wrong results. Let me give you an illustration from this text, from what we're talking about right here to bring it home, hopefully, for many of us.
Judah attacking Assyria was not God's plan.
So here Nahum says,.
The Almighty is going to defeat your enemy for you. And what would it look like for them to go, okay, he said that we're gonna win, let's go. Is there any call to battle here?
No.
It is the divine warrior who will fight for his people.
Amen?
Where is our trust? Oh, the church is gonna die in the next generation if, if, if, oh, is your God big enough to bring his church forward into the next generation? He's done it fine so far. Where is our trust, church?
Is our trust in him or our ability to get it right? Our ability to legislate and to work and to get the right leaders and do this and do that so that we can fight our battles? Is that where you wanna be?
Fighting your own battles? Or do you want to rest in the one who promises to fix it? The one who has done it for his people? The one who like in the book of Nahum says, you guys step out of the way and let the divine warrior do this.
Watch what I can do. Him conquering for his people. And I'm not advocating for a lack of action on your part in any way, shape, or form. Ask first, though. You must ask this question with authenticity and honesty in your own heart.
Am I seriously trusting God first and foremost? Is my hope placed in him to fix whatever ails me, whatever problems assail me, whatever concerns and fears that I have in my heart? And only once our trust is fully established in God, then we ought to act.
And according to Titus from a few weeks ago, that act, those acts that God calls us to must always be tempered with our central call, the central call on his people, the central call on his church.
Do good and declare good.
Do good and speak the good news to the world around you. How is this world gonna get any healing, any hope, any help? Through the Rescuer Jesus Christ, through the Savior, amen? That is our hope. And I wanna point out that even just to go forward to the final battle, which by the way, we have a tendency to think Old Testament battles and fights and all that stuff, New Testament grace and mercy and healings and all of that stuff, but Revelation records for us a final battle.
And God never once indicates that he will use us ever, ever as soldiers in a literal battle. He conquers the enemies in the book of Revelation. We don't come back bearing swords and machine guns, not at all.
We come back alongside a competent king who will meet the enemy with one word from his mouth and the battle is over. That's our king. One word from his mouth and the nations fall. That's it. That's what the battle looks like.
The last battle, no battle at all. How competent is your king, church? How capable is he to conquer wickedness and evil and bring to justice all? Is he a just king? Is he capable? Is he competent? Or does he need a little help from you?
Nahum begins to explain his vision of an epic battle. He is seeing it transpire in his mind's eye and the word back, if you look at Nahum verse one, the very beginning, an oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkash.
The vision, that word vision is a technical prophetic word that implies that he's seeing this. And what he records for us and writes down is like he's at the battle watching it. It's really, really kind of awesome.
Because remember, he's recording this about 50 years before these things transpire. And he's seeing it in his mind's eye, a miraculous revelation of a future event for him. In verse two, pauses to remind us of the reason this battle is even taking place.
And now from verses three through 10, we range across the battlefield, getting a high level view of the war from beginning to end. First, we get a vision of the invading army coming across the plains, coming toward the city in verse three.
The Babylonian invaders come dressed in red with blood red shields. It's very interesting and I think just kind of cool how God does this. But Ezekiel 23, verse 14, you don't need to turn over there, I'm not even gonna read it.
But Ezekiel 23, 14 tells us definitively that the Babylonian soldiers clothe themselves in red. Nahum's prophetic vision even nails the garb of the invading soldiers. He's given such a fresh and clear vision of this battle that he can even nail what they wear.
And there you go, yeah, like the Lord's calling. They come with chariots mustered in ranks, bristling spears like a sea of grain coming across the horizon. Like what is that that's shimmering out there?
It's just the sheer volume of spears coming to assail the city. The allied Babylonians and Medes advance quickly to the city and suddenly, much like I imagine war might feel, there's an impression in this text that's got pace.
Suddenly, the battle is engaged. Even prior to the walls were smaller villages and squares of settlements. Once the walls were built, they weren't mobile. So I mean, once you had an area in an ancient city encased in wall and you outgrew that space, well, there was a protected area within the walls, but then there were people living outside of the walls.
There were farmers and blacksmiths and people who were working outside of that city in various places. And I imagine like the suburbs of a major ancient city were outside of the walls. Now, there was actually a walled-in area that was protected and it was massive in Nineveh, but there were still people outside.
And so when you see these chariots racing through city squares and all of that, they're not inside the walls. Chariots were hard to bring to bear inside urban settings, but here they're trying to race to get to the wall to be able to breach it.
And the chariots are racing there fast like lightning, glistening in the sun, gleaming like torches. And one commentary said that the technology of the chariot during this time was much like talking about, like imagine that there's a city under attack today and you talk about the screech of the jet engines of the fighters overhead or the bombers coming in or something like that.
Like the technology of advancement of like, this is dangerous. These chariots are sweeping into the city and they're not prepared. Verse five shows us the shock and surprise of the defending force. How in the world could great Nineveh ever expect invasion?
Who would dare assault and assail this powerful, massive city? The king of Assyria is caught by surprise. He's used to taking the battle to others and here he is under attack. And he gets to the strategy late as evidenced by verse five.
He remembers his officers a little bit too late. The idea is that like all of a sudden he's like, oh, that's right, I got military at my disposal. They are not at the walls, they are not ready. So now he's mustering his military commanders at a time that is too late.
The word stumble demonstrates that the defenders are scrambling to the walls. They're not ready for this invasion. They hasten to the walls, but it's too late.
Why?
The very end of the verse, the siege works are already set up to breach the walls before the defenders arrive. Now I learned a word that I didn't know this weekend. I used to be that little boy who would go to the library and get out all kinds of like military stuff or science stuff.
And I would just be like checking that stuff out. I didn't go to the kids section. I went to like all the reference stuff. I liked that. And so it's kind of surprising to encounter a word that I hadn't heard before regarding siege warfare.
But the words translated siege tower here in the English Standard Version, there's even a footnote under that. A device called a mantelette. Anybody ever heard that? I'm just curious if anybody is like, yep, one, and I'm not surprised.
Mantelette is a, it's a device that actually was like a metal tent on wheels that you can imagine that you don't want things to come down on you as you're approaching a city wall, right? Like you're expecting like arrows and rocks and stuff, maybe even some boiling oil they would do that to pour down on people who are trying to breach the walls.
So you get this metal thing on wheels and wheel it as fast as you can, maybe pulled by a chariot and got into place and then quick run and get to the walls. So if you're up against the walls, they can't rain stuff down on you.
Are you getting the picture? Those are already in place. By the time that the Assyrians get prepared and get ready and they're like, oh my goodness, we're under attack. Go, go, go, get to the walls. And they're stumbling on their way and they're not ready and they're falling over each other.
The mantelettes are already in place. But here's the interesting thing. The mantelettes are not there to protect them from breaching the wall. They have a different plan. He remembers his officers, verse five, they stumble as they go, they hasten to the wall.
The siege tower is set up. The river gates are opened and the palace melts away. Where do they set up the mantelettes? At the sluice gates where the river comes into the city because we have great documentation of this battle.
The Babylonian kings love to record their exploits and they've recorded this battle quite clearly. And it indicates that they flooded the city by damming the river that runs through the city, through sluice gates and through all kinds of barred, so you can't get into the city through the river.
But at one end, the river runs out. They dammed the river up outside of the exit. And then the sluice gates, they could open and close them to dam up the river on the front end. So picture a big lake outside of the walls.
River runs through, they can open and control how much water comes in and out, but not if somebody else is controlling that sluice gate. And that's what they did. So they went there and they dammed it up down here and then they opened it up over here.
Can you imagine what would happen? In comes the lake, all the dammed up water rushing through the city all at one time. And that's exactly what the Babylonians did. And historical Babylonian and Greek documents mention the use of the river to flood the city.
It's very, very explicitly clear and it seems fairly well attested that the Babylonians did that. They dammed up the river downstream, opened those gates, flood. And that was not the only cause of death.
You can't picture a cereal, like as if Nineveh was a cereal bowl filled with milk. It's a massive, massive city, but the water that came through there had a dramatic impact on the battle, but there's still actual hand-to-hand combat and fighting that's happening during this battle.
The Babylonian documents say that over two miles of the city wall were compromised by flooding on this day. Two miles of city wall? Well, that's a lot of wall. This was a huge, massive city and that wasn't the majority of the wall.
But it was compromised by flooding, allowing the Babylonian forces easy access to the city. And they weren't prepared. The Assyrians were not ready for this. And in verse six, Nahum sees in this vision of the future the city gates being opened and the palace being compromised and crumbling in the violent floodwaters.
The start of verse seven has a word that isn't easy to translate and I think it's because it's a quite technical word. English interversion calls it the mistress and just leaves it up to your imagination, but I agree with Tremper Longman in his commentary on this passage.
The mistress that is stripped in verse seven is a reference to their chief goddess Ishtar. She was the patron goddess of the Assyrians during this time. She was the queen of love and all that comes with you putting the word love in air quotes.
Whenever you have to air quote the word love, you know what I'm talking about.
Love, right?
Like, you guys are looking at me blank.
Love.
Every generation has its worship of love. And I just say love isn't love, right? Like, it doesn't, not all the same. Not all equal, not all the same. She was the queen of all of that. She's been deposed.
And those women enslaved to her, here's another word in air quotes, enslaved to her services, they all lament and moan and beat their chest in grief. Their goddess has fallen and she can't get up. And I imagine that this would be a good time for her to have had life alert.
I think Jeremiah would be proud of that. He liked to taunt the idolaters. But again, the flood imagery of verse eight, Nineveh is like a bathtub and the plug is pulled. You can shout, you can pull the plug on the bathtub and then shout, halt to the waters, but guess what it does?
Nothing. The water keeps going out, is the imagery here in verse eight. They just keep flowing and in this case, the flood waters are sweeping the Assyrians away and I believe both literally and figuratively.
And then the battle is won. It's over quickly. We'll come back around next week to more graphic pictures of the aftermath of this battle and it is, again, I encourage all of you to read it before you come to next week.
Some of the words, it gets really harsh, but the waters of the flood cannot cleanse this city or sanitize the gruesome results of this battle. But as far as chapter two is concerned, the battle is over swiftly and the main task left is for the Babylonians to plunder the plunderer.
Note that Assyria was accused of plundering Israel back in verse two of chapter two and here we see the in-kind justice of God. You wanna plunder others? You're gonna be plundered yourself. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
The plunderer of the world's riches is herself here in this text being plundered. The exorbitant haul is beyond measure. Again, I just can't emphasize how much writing there is about this. The Babylonians love to record this kind of stuff and they love to record what they hauled in and this one's beyond measure.
They don't even give numbers. Silver, gold, no end to the wealth of precious things that Assyria had accumulated for themselves. They now Babylon and the Medes haul off to their own treasuries. And those who remain to be carted off to exile in Babylon look on in terror in verse 10.
The cry over the city is three similar words for devastation in Hebrew. It's translated the English standard version, desolate, desolation, and ruin, but that doesn't get to the alliteration that's used here.
All the words starting the same, sounding the same, kind of having a bit of a rhyme scheme to them, but all of them being dark and devastating words. I like the way that others have translated this, death, desolation, damnation.
Like all starting with the same and there's an increase in the length of the words as they go along, emphasizing the just utter destruction of the city. The hearts of the people have no more strength.
Their knees tremble in fear. They are in utter turmoil. And every face of any survivor, any surviving captive has gone pale in shock. They were just doing their thing a few hours ago and now their world is done.
Now their city is turned upside down and they are being carted off as captives. The captives from Assyria that were hauled off to Babylon are recorded historically as, quote, beyond count. Beyond count.
The battle was epic and Nahum saw it first through a God-ordained vision. And this battle was given theological importance for God's people to demonstrate that God is the avenger of his people. God will judge his enemies in righteous wrath.
Nahum picks up the taunt for the remainder of chapter two with a reference to a pride of lions. That's very intentional and even mocking to the Assyrians. They love to carve lions all over the place. Over the place that they conquered, they would carve lions on their city walls and friezes on their building.
Everywhere there were lions, lions, lions.
Because they liked to, they prided themselves. Ha, pride. They prided themselves in the power and ferocity. Did anybody get that? Pride, pride lions. And it just came to me, yeah. And it wasn't funny.
Bit of a groaner, but yeah, they carved lions all over because that was their symbol of their ferocity and their power. So the post-battle question is a massive taunt from the Almighty to those who ascribe themselves as powerful enough to take him down.
Where is your den? It looks like your den's caved in, bro. You who had this beautiful, massive, safe city, where are you now, says the Almighty?
You who tore the nations apart for meat.
For your young cubs and filled your caves with the torn flesh of all people, where are you now, says the Almighty, through the prophet Nahum? And what you need to understand is as of the writing of this, Assyria is still at full strength.
So the taunt could be perceived by some as just a bit optimistic. Just a wee bit optimistic on the global scene. Aren't we kind of like flexing a little too much over the superpower right now? I can't even imagine how they would be destroyed would be the average person's thoughts reading this.
And maybe Nahum's writing seems to some optimistic, but to others, dangerous. What if word gets out to the powerful Assyrian oppressor that people in this little vassal state of Judah are predicting their demise?
How many of you know that's not gonna go well for Judah? That's not gonna go well for Judah. At least it doesn't seem like it in common sense. How confident must Nahum have been to publish this prophecy?
He must have been very confident indeed. And yet the goal of this book, the main purpose of it is not to send it off to Nineveh so that they would read it. The main purpose is dissemination among the people of God for their comfort.
God's got you. He's gonna take care of it. The Restorer has set his eyes on restoring his people, says Nahum, and so he will scatter your enemies. He will scatter his enemies. And then this text ends with these chilling words to the Assyrians.
Behold, which is a word that means check this out, you gotta see this. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. Spoken to Nineveh. The title for God here, this title, Lord of hosts, is the one used when he wants to remind those in power that he is the commander of the hosts of the armies of heaven.
He has all power at his disposal. There is no question what the outcome will be when the divine warrior is against someone. The messengers of Assyria will be no more. There will be no more harassing the people of God by the Assyrians.
They will no longer send messengers to take your kids and take your children and take your wealth. That's not happening anymore, says God.
To the people of Judah.
Is this merely an Old Testament story of destruction with a theological moral to the story? Is this a case of God's people reading their own cause into historical events? Yes, the Babylonians attacked Nineveh, so we're just gonna say our God did it.
Well, I would just point out to you that this is thematic in scripture. It's eerie how closely Nahum reflects the fall of the great enemy of God in the very end in the book of Revelation. Now, many of us haven't read Revelation because it scares us, but that's to our detriment because that's where you see where things are going.
That's where you see the end and the great victory of our God and the great restoration of his people over and opposed to the enemies of God. Revelation 18, five through eight says this. You don't need to turn over there, but you could write that reference down, and if you got that scripture journal, it'd be good to look this over later.
But speaking of, in that context, Babylon is being used as the metaphor for the great sin against God that will be there when Jesus returns. Not necessarily indicated. I don't think it's gonna be Babylon proper.
No country's gonna raise up and call themselves Babylon. It's metaphorical. You could also put Assyria in there. It's the metaphor for the enemies of God, but it says this. For her sins are heaped up high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
Pay her back as she herself paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds. Mix a double portion for her in the cup she has mixed. Cup being used as a metaphor for judgment. So mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed.
As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, I sit as a queen. I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see. For this reason, her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire, for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.
Judgment of sin and the pouring out of God's wrath on his enemies is not a past thing that he used to do in the Old Testament. It is the future pathway to the ultimate restoration of his people. What he has done in cycles of history is heading toward a final act on the world stage, and he is faithful to warn those who oppose him.
I'm so glad that God is faithful to warn those who oppose him. The righteous judge is coming, and maybe he would use some of us to warn others of the coming wrath. But before we point fingers at those unworthy sinners out there, I want us to all consider that we were all born into foolish rebellion against our creator.
We were once against him. His righteous wrath was our destiny, for all have sinned and fall short of his glory. We were on the pathway to him burning our chariots and destroying our armies. We were on the pathway that ended with us being cut off and chased into the darkness by the Almighty.
That was the destiny of every one of us. This destiny is the default setting of every sinner, born in the line of sin-cursed Adam. And so, we have all the more reason to celebrate together the amazing turn of events brought about by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
He has graciously forged a people for his glory and for his worship. What are we, church? What are we? We are trophies of his grace. He has made a way for anyone to come to him for refuge. I mentioned last week that he is indeed terrifying in his power and in his holiness.
The fear of the Lord is called the beginning of wisdom.
Because fearing the Lord requires that we take him seriously as he has revealed himself in the Bible and even in passages like Nahum. Our God is avenging and wrathful toward his enemies, but he is a strong tower to those who run to him for refuge.
So, the very power that God uses to judge is the same power he applies to shield his people from the day of his wrath. So, let me ask you, have you run to him for refuge? Have you run to him for refuge?
The chilling words of verse 13 make my blood run cold, and the thought that this would be the statement over anyone that I love and know, I am against you, declares the Lord. Could there be any more chilling words than these?
Those who remain in proud defiance of the Almighty will receive the righteous and just wrath reserved for his enemies. But those who run to him for forgiveness, those who run to him for refuge, those who run to him for grace will receive salvation.
And this is why communion matters so much and is worth our attention every single week. We come together as those who have run to Jesus for refuge to take the cracker and remember how he took the punishment that our sins deserved, and he took that on himself at the cross, and we take the cup of juice to remember how he bled his blood to wash away our filthy sins.
The wrath of God was poured out on his son so that we, church, can be set free. I'll recast, this is hope, this is love, this is forgiveness, this is grace. So, let's go out from here this week as those who start with the terrifying reminder of what we deserved in our sinful rebellion against him, and then let's remember the great changes of fortune afforded to us by his grace and his grace alone.
We who should have been washed away in the flood of his wrath are now recipients of his loving care and protection only because of what Jesus Christ has done for us. Now, if you're here and you're not confident that you're shielded from the wrath of God through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, I'd encourage you to come and talk with me or come and talk with Pastor Trent or Pastor Ben or Dave, who is up here leading worship, or really, I mean, I'd encourage you, if you don't know who to talk to, just talk to someone, and I say this tongue-in-cheek, but if you find somebody and they can't explain to you how to start a relationship with Jesus, bring them to someone else, and then if they can't describe it, bring them to someone else, and eventually we might just get a chain of people who all need Jesus.
So, that'd be okay, that'd be okay. I'd talk to a group of you, but find somebody, be bold, because a lot is at stake, a lot is at stake. Your eternity is at stake in whether God is your refuge or whether he is your destroyer, and he is one or the other.
Father, I pray that you would allow this to be a place of salvation and rescue, rest for your people, hope for your people. Yes, we see you, we see you in many ways faulty. We don't have the full picture of your majesty and your glory and your holiness and what your just judgment looks like, and then we, it's just peeled back for us a little bit here in Nahum, and it makes us kind of like feel bad inside.
It can have a tendency to go like, is that our God? I thank you for revealing yourself in the way that you are that might light some fire under us to get out and share with more that those who are your enemies are indeed under the sentence of destruction, are under a sentence of judgment,.
That you are against them,.
But it might be our very words that bring them to you for refuge, that bring them to you for hope. Father, I pray that we would not lose sight of that and become so comfortable and confident and just glutted on your grace that we would refuse to share that with others, that you would give us a boldness, especially in these dark days, days of division, where we might be able to speak refreshing words of life and hope and help to the world around us.
I thank you, Father, for the refuge and the protection that you've provided for us from your wrath through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the technical word propitiation, that the wrath, he bore your wrath for us.
Thank you for that act of love that sets us free to now be useful to you in proclaiming that to others. Motivate us, encourage us, and help us to see you rightly this week in Jesus' name.