Nahum 3:19: On Whom Has Your Evil Not Fallen (Final Lesson)

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We're going to read verses 15 through 19, and then do a little quick recap of the whole book, and then the lesson.

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So here's God's Word, starting at Nahum chapter 3, verse 15. Their fire will consume you.

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The sword will cut you down. It will consume you as the locust does. Multiply yourself like the creeping locust.

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Multiply yourself like the swarming locust. You have increased your traders more than the stars of heaven.

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The creeping locust strips and flies away. Your guardsmen are like the swarming locust. Your marshals are like hordes of grasshoppers settling in the stone walls on a cold day.

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The sun rises and they flee, and the place where they are is not known.

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Your shepherds are sleeping, O Assyria. Your nobles are lying down. Your people are scattered on the mountains, and there is no one to gather them, regather them.

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There is no relief for your breakdown. Your wound is incurable. All who hear about you will clap their hands over you, for on whom has not your evil passed continually?

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Again, these are sobering words from the prophet Nahum with regards to who

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God is. So let's just do a quick recap of chapters 1, 2, and 3. It's going to be quick.

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Nahum 1 starts right out of the gate. A jealous and avenging God is the Lord. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

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That's something that you don't hear too often preached or taught on in modern evangelical circles, but this is who

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He says He is. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserves wrath for His enemies.

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The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means lead the guilty unpunished.

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In whirlwind and storm is His way, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet. Who can stand before His indignation, and who can endure the burning heat of His anger?

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His wrath is poured out like fire. But God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

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Those two things just don't coincide when you hear them. People have watered down who

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God is, okay, and tried to air condition hell to make it more easy for people to enter into heaven, and in doing so, they water down the message, and they misunderstand who

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God really is. Nahum 1 7, the Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him.

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You see, the wrath of God is designed to lead you to repentance, so that you would take refuge in Him, because He is good.

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And I like the way Paul Washer says it, you should be afraid of God, because He's good, and you're not.

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That's the problem. The problem is God's goodness. You're not going to be able to stand in the presence of a good

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God without being good yourself, okay. So here we're going to see, we see the contrast.

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What God is going to do to His enemies, and then what God does for those who take refuge in Him.

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Behold, on the mountains, the feet of Him who brings good news, who announces peace, celebrate your feast,

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O Judah, pay your vows, for never again will the wicked one pass through you. He is cut off completely.

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What does the word Nahum mean, the name Nahum? Comfort, right. This is designed to give comfort to the people of Israel in Jerusalem.

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They know that Assyria is there, and is about to take over, but Babylon's going to come in, and they're going to conquer the

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Assyrians. He wants them to know, continue being faithful to Me, to the ones who were.

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Many were not. And we have to remember that today, and what's going on in our country and around the world.

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We have to remain faithful to God. We have to continue to pay our vows, so to speak, to continue to worship and rejoice in Him, and find our refuge in Him, and not the things of the world.

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Nahum 2, the one who scatters has come up against you. Man the fortress, watch the road, strengthen your back, summon all your strength, for the

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Lord will restore the splendor of Jacob like the splendor of Israel, even though devastators have devastated them and destroyed their vine branches.

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So just remember, even if the whole United States goes down, God judges us, and the whole

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United States is wiped off the face of the map, the kingdom of heaven will not be taken over, right.

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God, Jesus is building His church, and the gates of hell will not prevail. Gates are designed to keep something out.

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It's not that the church, okay, is defending itself against the onslaught of Satan.

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The gates of hell are defending itself against the onslaught of the church. We're to be proactive.

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We're to be the ones moving forward, going in and taking these people captive to the

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Word of God. So this is encouragement. Nahum 2 .13, this again is against the

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Assyrians. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord. I will burn up her chariots in smoke.

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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.

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And to that we say amen, right. Those people who are enemies of God, God is against them.

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But what does Romans 8 say about the saints, the believers? Say, nothing will separate us.

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If I am for you, who could be against you, right? Once you repent and you trust in the

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Lord for your salvation, and you come under the Lordship of Christ, who can make a charge against you, right?

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If God is for you, who can be against you now? Nahum 3, again he says, behold,

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I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. What does the title Lord of hosts mean? Lord of the armies.

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This is not a God who plays around, right? He's the Lord of the armies. And I will lift up your skirts over your face and show the nations your nakedness, and to the kingdoms your disgrace.

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I will throw filth on you and make you vile and set you up as a spectacle. How many people in a modern evangelical church would say this about God?

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I would say not many. I would encourage them to read the book of Nahum, right? We need to know the full counsel of God.

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Who is God based on what the scriptures say? And it will come about that all who see you will shrink from you and say,

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

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Comforters, what's the word for comforters? Nahum. Where will

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I seek or find comforters, Nahums for you? That's us. We are the ones who have been reconciled to the one true living

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God and been given the ministry of reconciliation so that we can now go out and proclaim the gospel and see lives changed, to see

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God gather his elect to himself so that his kingdom would manifest itself here on earth.

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So we are those comforters. We are the hands and feet, the body of Christ who comes and brings the message of peace to the world.

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Nahum 3 .15, their fire will consume you.

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The sword will cut you down. It will consume you as the locust does. Multiply yourself like the creeping locust.

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Multiply yourself like the swarming locust. There is no relief for your breakdown. Your wound is incurable.

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All who hear about you will clap their hands over you for on whom has not your evil past continually.

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The incurable wound they've gone past the point. God has given them up over to the desires of their hearts.

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Okay, just like Esau who sought the blessing with tears. There was no room for it. God would not grant him that anymore.

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This is what happened with Assyria. They've gone past the point of no return. So that was chapters one, two, three in a nutshell.

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And those are heavy words. Those that presents to you an avenging and wrathful

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God who's going to pour out his justice upon his enemies. Yet it also shows you the kindness of a

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God who would spare his people in the midst of it. Those who would take their refuge in him. Okay, so this is a slide from last week.

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What's one fact about the book of Nahum and Jonah that no other books in the Bible share now except for Callista because she's the only one who got it right.

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All right. No, it was Callista. No, it was Callista.

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Who wants to take a shot at what the one fact about both of those books are?

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Oh, only Callista. Yes, Erin. Yes, two people.

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They both end in a question. The book of Nahum and the book of Jonah both end with a question. And this question becomes, as I looked into it, these two questions become very, very telling.

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So Nahum's question is, for on whom has not your evil past continually? And in Jonah's case, it should

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I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there's more than 120 ,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right hand, right and left hand, as well as many animals.

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We've got the animals in on the right. So these are the two questions. So now what type of questions are these again?

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Rhetorical questions. Rhetorical is designed to make a point. It's telling, not asking, right?

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It's telling you something, not necessarily expecting an answer in return. So these two questions are going to teach us something about the nature of God.

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Now, I put a little asterisk on this question, for on whom has not your evil past continually?

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Anybody recognize a scripture where it talks about evil continually?

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No? Genesis 6, right? Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

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And what happened after this? God flooded the entire earth. Then we have the

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Tower of Babel, and it's in the Tower of Babel that the people were supposed to be dispersed and scattered and make a name for God.

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Then they gathered together to make a name for themselves. And this is when this gives birth to Nimrod, who sets up Nineveh.

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Okay, so this all ties right back into him. Okay, for on whom has not your evil past continually?

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That's the question I want to talk about for the next couple of minutes. So what is this question telling us?

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Who is it addressing? Let me ask you that. Yes, Sarah.

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Yeah, right. And are the

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Assyrians believers or unbelievers? Unbelievers. So this question is pertinent to the unbeliever, specific to Assyria and Nineveh.

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Again, those two words I use synonymously. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria, so it's one and the same.

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So this particular question is addressing the unbeliever. So what is the answer to the question?

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For on whom has not your evil past continually? Go ahead, say it.

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Right. The answer to the question is no one. Everyone has had Assyria's evil wrath poured out to them.

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They were wicked to all of the nations around them. So this is designed to the relegated to the unbeliever, right?

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Assyria. And the answer to the question is no one. Their evil has been poured out continually on all the nations that surrounded them, right?

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And it wasn't just one person. It was everyone, every nation that surrounded them.

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They looked to conquer. They wanted to be the pinnacle. They wanted to rule the world, so to speak.

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And this is the plight of mankind. You look at Psalm two. Why do the nations rage?

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Why did the king's plot in vain? All of the world, all of the unbelievers want to overthrow

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God's kingdom here on earth. Okay, so now was this like a one -off situation?

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Look at the question. Was this some of the time that Assyria did it?

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Continually, right? It's on and on and on and on. It's not just one instance.

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This is who they were. They wanted to conquer all of the nations around them. This was how they operated.

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And it wasn't a mistake or a slip. It was evil. What they were doing was evil.

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It wasn't that they accidentally conquered the nation that was next door to them. It wasn't that they accidentally flayed their enemies or accidentally crucified them.

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This was intentional. So if you heard this question yourself, for on whom has not your evil passed continually, and you recognized that your evil, the evil that you did affected people around you, what could you not claim at that point anymore?

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Innocence. You cannot claim your own innocence or goodness as much as the human being, the depraved human being wants to.

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Oh, I'm good. I'm a good person. I haven't killed anyone. Praise God.

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You haven't killed anyone literally, but in your heart, you've cursed people many, many times. Have you ever driven on the

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LIE? You've cursed people. I know it. Right? So you can't claim your own goodness.

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You can't claim your own innocence of Syria. You're not going to get around this, right?

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So what is God telling them? He's revealing their heart and their actions to them.

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He's presenting them. It's like the rich young ruler. Oh, you've done all those commandments?

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Go sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and then follow me. He was identifying what his idol was.

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And here, he's addressing the unbeliever. His evil is going to cause them a problem.

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His evil, Syria's evil was poured out on all of its neighbors.

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This is addressing a misunderstanding of God and sin. How many people do you know?

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They think that God is not going to judge them. I believe in a forgiving God. He forgives and he does based on what repentance and faith, right?

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Every sin in this world must be paid for. It's either going to be paid for by you or someone else.

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His name is Jesus. So this question addresses and is letting people know, look, you are sinful before God and that's a problem for you.

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You deserve what I'm going to do to you. People are going to clap. Why? Because this is justice.

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I mean, we see this in so many of the movies that we watch. We see when the perpetrator comes and he's killing all these people and all of a sudden, the hero of the story comes and he's going to give him his, right?

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And you see that revenge or vengeance is taken out on the guy who was the bad guy, right?

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There's an internal desire for justice and to see our enemies conquered, right?

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And we clap, we clap in the movie theater when these things happen, right? So people are going to recognize,

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Israel is going to recognize that Nineveh is finally getting what it deserved and there will be no relief.

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You will get justice, right? And what is justice? It's fairness. God is going to be fair with you, right?

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He can show you fairness or he can show you favor. Which do you want? Because I've heard people when

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I've lined them up to the law, oh, I want God to judge me. And you just recognize in that moment that they have no clue of who

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God is and they have no clue of who they are. They're blinded to their own sin.

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All right, so that's this question. Anything else that you guys see in here that I may have missed or something else?

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Yeah, this is a summary statement of who God is. I'm a jealous and avenging

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God. You've sinned, you haven't repented, your evil fell on everyone and now you're going to get it.

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Very simple synopsis. Yes, Jerry? I think at this point, same as what happened, and this is a foreshadowing of what

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God did with Israel in destroying their temple. Okay, at that point they were beyond salvation.

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Now, I don't say that any one person in and after that could have come to Jesus.

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God in his purview could have drew them to him, right? Yes, to it, right?

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Okay, so now let's take a look at the next question, right? Jonah, should

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I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city where there are more than 120 ,000 persons? All right, so who is this question addressed to?

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Yes, Sarah? Jonah, right? This is Jonah at the end is having a conversation with God, right?

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And he's mad, right? He's under the tree and the sun scorched the tree and burnt it down and he's got no shade and he's mad and he doesn't want

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Nineveh to hear the gospel, although they've heard it already. He doesn't want God to have compassion on him. So God says, should

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I not show compassion? Should I not have compassion on Nineveh? So this is addressing

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Jonah and his misunderstanding of God's sin and mercy, right?

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Jonah's like, they don't deserve your compassion. What did he forget?

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No one deserves his compassion, right? And he tells

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Jonah, you should, this is kind of like him saying you should know better. The great city where there are more than 120 ,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right hand and the left hand, right?

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They don't know me the way you know me. What did the

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Israelites get? They got the law, the patriarchs, the prophets, the temple worship.

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They had all that to instruct them so that they would be a light to the Gentiles and instruct the

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Gentiles. They saw it as we're God's favorite. We're not sharing him with anybody.

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Why do that? He might actually like them, which is why Jonah didn't go into Nineveh because he knew

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Nineveh could repent and he would, God would use Nineveh to come in and shame Israel.

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So they don't know God the way Jonah did. Jonah's probably saying to himself,

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God should only show favor to good people, right? How many times have you, has that crossed your mind?

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How many people do you think would think like that? God should only favor to show, only show his favor to good people.

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You know, like me. He should only show, you know, his favor, his love.

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Santa Claus, Barney, right? Like me. Or, you know, some people are too bad for God to favor.

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You know, have you seen what this guy did? Not like me, right?

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So what happens? I become the standard by which we judge who's good and who's bad, right?

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You're driving on the LIE, the guy in front of you is going slow. Look at this jerk. Then you got the guy coming up behind you.

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Look at this maniac. If you're going slower than me, you're a jerk. If you're going faster than me, you're a maniac.

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I'm the standard. See? Don't drive around me like that. Well, God should treat people fairly.

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You know, that's unfair that he likes, you know, that he'll save someone bad, except for me.

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You know, it's okay that, you know, I have a relationship with God. You know, how many times have I heard this?

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Oh, I have a relationship with God. Oh, so that excuses you doing the things that I know you do?

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Well, because I have a relationship with him. Well, if you had a relationship with him, you would love him and look to please him, not sin against him, right?

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What this question is addressing is God is merciful to whomever he pleases.

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And guess what? We should rejoice over that. Even when the Ninevites were saved, wicked people, we should still rejoice that God is merciful and loving and saving these people, steadfast in his love for his people.

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We should not be upset when someone we don't like, or we see maybe in the news is somebody that really rails against everything we stand for.

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If God was to save a person like that, your inclination should be to rejoice that God saved that soul for all eternity.

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Why? Because that just as easily could have been me, right? Nineveh is a great city.

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God kept calling it the great city over and over and over. And every time he said great city, it grated on Jonah's nerves.

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That great city, I hate these people. But why? Why is it a great city? It's filled with image bearers of God, right?

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These are people who were created in the image of God, who are supposed to properly represent him to the people around them.

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Every image bearer of God is of infinite worth and value. And we should be upset when somebody passes into eternity that didn't know the

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Lord, regardless of our relationship with them, right? The people who we look at in Hollywood and all these other places that were like, oh my goodness,

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I can't believe this person has this view. And you start building up this anger towards them. When that person dies, that's a tragedy.

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They don't know the Lord. So what's happening in the midst of this question?

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God is revealing himself. He's revealing his nature. He's revealing his action and his ability to save whomever he wants.

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He can save whoever he wants to save. Mercy and justice are God's prerogative and his purview.

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And we should rejoice when someone is saved. We should do everything in our power to share the gospel and properly represent

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God to them, to show them that they're going to stand before a holy and righteous

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God. They're going to have to give an account of themselves. You remember in Exodus, it says, the

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Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression. But he will know by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the trillion to the third and fourth generation.

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Then the prayer is, please pardon the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people from Egypt until now.

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That was in numbers, actually. So that should be our prayer in the midst of unbelievers, whether it be at work, whether it be at home, wherever it is, our prayer should be that God would have mercy on these people.

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And we need to be agents of mercy, not agents of wrath.

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God's angels take care of that. Not you. Okay. Humanity is in no condition to judge or question

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God. God does what he wants. What can God do? Whatever he pleases in the heavens and on earth and beneath the earth.

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So aside from this, is there any other observations that you guys had that I maybe didn't put up here?

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Comments, questions? All right, let's move on.

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Okay. Humanity, the depraved heart, that just I started thinking about what the depraved heart thinks and does.

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The cry of the depraved heart is, I'm good. How many times when we're on the street in Port Jeff or elsewhere, you know, you ask that the person the question.

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So if God was to say, why should I let you into heaven? What would your answer be? Oh, I'm a good person. I think it's in Proverbs that says, given an opportunity, a man will proclaim his own righteousness, his own trustworthiness.

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Right? That's the cry of the human heart. I can't be bad. The cry of the depraved heart is also, bad people should get punished.

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Right? We also talk to people on the streets and talk to them about Hitler and ISIS and all these other groups.

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Oh yeah, God should punish them for sure. The depraved heart craves justice but doesn't acknowledge its own guilt.

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That's the problem. It's easy to see that someone else should be punished for their sin.

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It's not so easy to see that we should be punished for our own sin. For some reason, we insulate ourselves from that.

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We think, oh, that's for them, not me. Depraved hearts elevate themselves and degrade others.

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Right? You've seen me do this before. You, me. You, me. You're always trying to do something to push someone else down and really you don't have to be good enough yourself.

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Right? Let's say you're wicked. If you could just make the other person look more wicked, that elevates you. Well, I'm not as wicked as him.

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I'm up a step. The problem is Jesus is infinitely good and you're infinitely wicked.

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Right? You're not going to be measured against another guy or another woman. You're going to be measured against the

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King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who's sinless, spotless, son of God, son of man. Right?

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Depraved hearts quickly recognize sin in others, but not in themselves. Like Brother John says, I hate it when you commit my sins.

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Right? When you see somebody else commit the sins that you usually get, you don't like it. But then you look at yourself and you're like, oh my goodness,

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I do the same thing. Hopefully you say that. Right? Depraved hearts gloat over people's failure while excusing their own sin.

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Like I'm thinking a lot of people came down hard on Matt Chandler and Matt Chandler is a pastor in Texas and based on the office he's in, he needs to be above reproach.

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He had a mishap and is being dealt with because of it. But I can't tell you how many people online were like happy.

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Oh, he's going to get what he deserves. Is this how a brother, you're going to treat a brother in Christ who's done incredible things for the kingdom of God, who is in the crosshairs of the enemy.

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Like the enemy would love to pick this guy off. Our job is to pray for him, to help restore him.

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I mean, we don't know the details of the whole situation, but we need to be in prayer for guys like that. We need to be in prayer for each other, recognizing that the devil prowls around like a lion, right?

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Waiting to devour somebody. Our goal, our intention should be to see our brothers and sisters restored, not condemned.

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Depraved hearts think they deserve heaven for their good behavior. Look at all the good things I've done. You know,

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I'm a good dad. I'm a good husband. I often tell people, you're supposed to be a good dad.

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You're supposed to be a good husband. That's like stopping at every stop sign. Hey, I stopped at every stop sign.

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You know, you stop at 20, they send you a coupon, you can pass the next two for nothing. Like you're supposed to stop at the stop sign.

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You don't get a reward for that. Depraved hearts think others deserve punishment, hell, for their behavior, right?

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So quick, we look at somebody in judgment. Oh, that guy's going to hell. How dare, how dare we say something like that, not recognizing our own weak condition.

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Now, may they go to hell? Yes, they might. And it's our job to warn people that outside of Christ, you're going to have an issue.

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But it's not our job to condemn them to hell. Only God, only the judge does that.

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We do not judge that. God judges that. Our job is to come alongside them like a physician and present them the cure.

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Depraved hearts think heaven's a place for people who've done good, right? I was at a funeral once and the priest said, heaven is a place where good people go to continue doing good things.

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And I'm like, you just have no clue, no clue of the gospel, no clue of heaven, no clue of who

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God is. Again, these two questions are designed to show you the nature of God and the nature of man.

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Depraved hearts think God would never send them to hell. Oh no, God's a forgiving God and I have a relationship with him.

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How could he send me to hell? Deceived. Depraved hearts think

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God should send sinners, bad people to hell. Again, they're right, but they don't recognize their own badness, their own wickedness.

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Depraved hearts misunderstand the cross of Jesus Christ. This is what it comes down to. They do not understand wrath is going to be poured out on them.

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But for Jesus and God's wrath being poured out on him and absorbed by him, God's wrath will be poured out on you.

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You need a savior. Depraved hearts think they're not sinners. Depraved hearts are self -deceived, right?

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This all points to the depravity of man's heart. And Ligonier just did a survey.

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And you know what 65 % of evangelicals said? It is unsurprising that most

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U .S. adults believe that humans are born innocent, given the influence of humanistic philosophies and worldviews that teach self -determinism and the view of mankind as basically good.

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Statement number 15, everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God. 65 % of evangelicals agree with that statement.

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That's the church. The church is saying you're born good. That's why it's up to us as a church to teach them differently.

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We're born in sin, right? We need to be rescued out of that condition.

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So said. So these two questions, for on whom has not your evil past continually and should

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I not have compassion on that great Nineveh, that great city? They address the most basic misunderstanding of mankind about their own condition and their misunderstanding about the

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God of the Bible. To Assyria, you think your actions are beyond my justice?

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They're not. You think you can murder and mutilate image bearers of God? You can't.

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You think I don't know every single thing you've done? I do. You think you can get away with what you've done?

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You won't. You think sinful earthly conquest warrants heavenly rewards?

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It doesn't. You think that your strength can compare to mine? It won't. Ask yourself these questions.

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Do any of these apply to you? Do you think that your actions are beyond God's justice? Do you think that your love for the things of the world is going to be okay because you have a relationship with God?

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This is what Romans, this is what Paul says. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

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They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetedness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

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They are gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

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Though they knew God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

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That's the resume of humanity. So Jonah, you think the

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Ninevites are too bad to save? Why? Oh, you're so much better than them?

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You think that you're better than someone else? You think that your behavior warrants my blessing?

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Oh, you've done so good that I shall reward you with heaven? You think your behavior doesn't warrant my justice?

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You think they are inferior to you? Oh, they're not like me. You know, I'm the standard.

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You think that I think more of you than of me and my glory?

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Ask yourself those questions. Do you think that you're better than unbelievers?

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Do you think that unbelievers are inferior to you? Do you think God thinks more of you than of his own glory?

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Here's how Paul would counter that. Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges.

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From passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

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We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice those things. Do you suppose,

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O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?

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Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

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Now Paul was addressing the Jews, okay, who had the law and he contrasted them with the

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Gentiles who don't have the law on tablets but have it written on their heart, where the

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Jews would condemn the Gentiles, the goyim, for their sin, yet not recognizing their own.

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Here he's addressing the Jews and he's addressing all those who think that they're better than other people.

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What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means, for he says to Moses, I will have mercy upon whom

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I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then, it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy.

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Thank you, Lord, that my horrendous behavior doesn't exclude me from the kingdom of God because of Jesus.

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It's a grace walk. All right, what does he say to Micah? He has told you, O man, what is good and what does the

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Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your

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God. Never gloat, never be arrogant towards unbelievers.

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Those are image bearers of God and in God's purview, if he chooses to save them and use you as the vessel to bring them the message, praise

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God. You're not in a position to condemn them, all right? You can warn them that their behavior will be judged by God, a righteous and holy judge, but you cannot condemn them.

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That's God's purview. The gospel for the unbeliever.

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The Lord diagnoses the illness and the gospel presents the cure. Acknowledge your rebellion, your sin, and its harm to yourself and others.

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Turn from it. Trust, rely, depend on Jesus as the payment for your sins.

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That is the only way of escape, all right? The Lord knows those who are his and those who take refuge in him.

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God wants you to take refuge in Jesus for your sins. The gospel for the believer.

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You are more sinful and wicked than you could ever dare imagine, but you are more loved and accepted than you could ever dare hope at the same time.

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Just because God has saved you doesn't mean your behavior is 100 % righteous.

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There should be a change in your behavior, okay? You should be more faithful and acknowledge your weakness, but you still sin, right?

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Don't ever think, oh, I don't sin. I was in a position where somebody told me, oh, I don't sin anymore. There's another.

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You sin. We all sin, but for Jesus, we would have a problem. Ephesians 2, you were by nature children of wrath.

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That's believer and believer. He's addressing believers here like the rest of mankind, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace, you've been saved and raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

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For grace, you have been saved through faith and that, not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.

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Both sinner and saint are saved by grace. All right, somebody said

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God's riches at Christ's expense. I don't care how you recognize it, all right? You need to know you're getting something that you don't deserve.

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You're getting something that you didn't warrant or earn. You've warranted and earned hell, but you don't get that because of the kindness and the mercy and the grace of God.

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We should be agents of God's grace and mercy, not his condemnation. Nahum.

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What does Nahum mean? Comfort. Jonah. What does Jonah's name mean?

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Anybody remember this one? This is a long time ago. Yes, I'm going to say yes because you got the first one right.

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It means dove, right? And that's what is the dove in the New Testament likened to, right?

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Analogous with the Holy Spirit. And what is the Holy Spirit? He's a comforter. He comes to bring peace. John 14,

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Jesus says, I'm going to go and prepare a place and I'm going to give you the helper or the comforter. So Nahum is comfort to the believer.

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Jonah is comfort to the unbeliever. Jonah disobeys. This is the similarities between Jonah and Nahum at this point.

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Jonah disobeys God, but Nahum obeys God. Jonah goes to Nineveh.

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Nahum addresses Nineveh. The book of Jonah is focused on the messenger, Jonah. The book of Nahum is focused on the message.

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Jonah offers peace to Nineveh. Nahum condemns Nineveh. This is God's word to the

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Assyrians. Jonah was delivered through water. Nineveh was destroyed by water.

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But that was really interesting, right? The water is what Jonah gets thrown into and swallowed by the fish and delivered.

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Nineveh was destroyed by the water in the city coming through the city gates. And we went through that.

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Sailors cast lots to see who sinned on the boat. In Babylon, the Babylonians cast lots for Nineveh's honored men.

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But that was interesting, too. Jonah repented and relented. Nineveh didn't repent or relent.

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They repented when Jonah preached to them. But after that wore off, they didn't.

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The king repents and is healed. The king refuses to repent. His wound is uncurable.

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So when Jonah went in at first, the king repented. This king, I forget which one it was.

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It could have been Sinatra. He refuses to repent. His wound is incurable. God's grace and compassion to Nineveh, God's justice and judgment to God's grace and compassion to Nineveh versus God's justice and judgment to Nineveh.

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Jonah's wrath was refused. At the end, he wanted God to pour wrath out on them. Jonah's wrath was revisited after the period of repentance has expired, right?

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They went back to their old sinful ways, flaying people, destroying the nations around them. Jonah is angry for the wrong reasons.

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Nahum is happy for the right ones. And that's what we got to get in our heads. We have to guard our hearts, again, from getting angry with sinners and thinking that we're better than them.

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All right. And then we have to be happy when God judges somebody righteously. We have to get that right.

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God comforts his people in both of those circumstances. So whether it's in the time of Assyria or in the time of the

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Babylonian exile, God has a remnant. He's dealing with a group of people, and he saves his people and protects them in the midst of it.

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Nahum's question proclaims justice. For upon whom has not your cruelty been inflicted continually?

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It explains why God's vengeance at last must fall on the unrepentant city. Jonah's question proclaims mercy.

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Should I not have compassion on Nineveh? And it explains the long -suffering of God, which means salvation even for those who have done great wickedness.

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God brought down Nineveh to show his righteous wrath against evil. He did that to show that the most awesome, cruel regime imaginable was no match for an omnipotent

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God, to show categorically that evil in any form would be dealt with by a holy and righteous

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God. This is a God who does not wink at evil. He's going to remove it from his presence.

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Why did he assume our punishment and in Christ die for us? He wanted us to recognize our own evil.

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He wanted us to realize how we break God's laws and abuse his holiness, yet he wanted us to go free.

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So when you look at the cross, you see the wrath of God, and that should horrify you because Jesus took that on our behalf.

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It should also give us great joy that he would stand in our place and do that. God's undeserved mercy has been seen in saving his people and his awesome vengeance in punishing his enemies.

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In this, we are given a foreshadowing of what it will be like on the great day of Christ's second coming. When he appears, may we, by his grace and mercy, find ourselves warmed by his love and not the recipients of the fire of his wrath.

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J. Sid Lau Baxter gives the following warning to his readers. Let the peoples of today take a long, steady, thoughtful look at old -time

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Nineveh. She is one of God's special object lessons to all rulers and nations. It is the same

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God who super rules the world today. He is not less severe than he was in the

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Old Testament, and he is not more compassionate. He is just as uncompromising towards sin and just as compassionate towards the penitent, the same from age to age.

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He does not change. The idea that the gospel of Christ somehow tones down the severity in the divine character is wrong.

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Certainly, the gospel is the supreme expression of the divine graciousness, but it does not in the slightest degree modify the inflexible principles of righteousness by which

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God governs the nations. He has always been gracious, and God has always been intolerant of wickedness.

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He's the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow. We are horrified and appalled at the violence done by Assyria, yet we are not as horrified when we look at the cross and what

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Jesus endured in our place. Take comfort for believers.

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Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there was loud voices in heaven saying, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our

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Lord and of his Christ. He shall reign forever and ever. Take your refuge in him.

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And the twenty -four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give thanks to you,

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Lord God Almighty, who is and was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.

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This should be our cry, the cry of our heart. The nations raged, but your wrath came at a time for the dead to be judged, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and the saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and destroying the destroyers of the earth.

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Nahum says, The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him.

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Any final questions? So I hope that the series through Nahum helped you to understand that God is a

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God of comfort, but he's also a jealous and avenging God. He's a God who does not change. He's a

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God who does not look lightly on sin, and we have to recognize that, but don't misunderstand who

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God is and think that you're because you're saved or because you received God's mercy, that you're better than someone else.

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We need to remember that we're not. Let's close in prayer. Father in heaven, we do thank you for these words,

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Lord, that give comfort to the believer and should shake up the unbeliever, Lord God. We pray for anybody here who doesn't know you today,

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Lord, that your spirit would convict their hearts, that they would seek their refuge in you, that they would repent of their sins and trust in the

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Christ who you sent to save sinners. Father, we also lift up our worship service to come. We pray that what we say and do would be pleasing in your sight, and we would give you the worship that you're due, for you are a holy

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God, and how can sinners be made right in your presence but by the sacrifice of your one and only son.