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Don Filcek; Nahum 3 Assured Destruction
You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan.
Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Felsick, I'm the lead pastor here, and it is a privilege to be together in this place to worship our God in community. God has brought us together this morning from all types of situations.
I recognize that all of us have different places in life, different things going on. Some of us are kind of at a high point, some of us are at a low point, and many of us are in between. But we come together to worship him in community, to hear from his word together, and to serve one another together.
He's been building this local church for the past 15 years. It has been such a privilege, such a joy, such an honor to have a front row seat to see the way that God builds a church, and it's been awesome over these past 15 years.
We stand and have stood all of these years on the core values that make up our name. They're above the donuts on the wall back there, replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. The last one is the most central of those core values, though, and I just want to point out, you can be a church without simplicity.
Some churches get pretty complicated. You can be a church that, without community, well, yeah, without blessing your community, that could be a possibility. Many of us have experienced church without authenticity, without just that ability to be honest about how things are going in your life and share your struggles.
But you can't be a church without the truth. You can't be a church without the capital T Truth of God's word, without, that's what makes us. That's what builds us. That's what has brought us together, and I hope that you see that, and that really matters, because it's the one value that encompasses all the other things that we as a church value.
We live in a culture that has abused the word truth significantly until it's almost unrecognizable. When you hear the word truth, you almost need a definition from the person that's saying it in order to know if you're talking about the same thing.
The motto of our age may very well be, you have your truth and I have mine. Any of you ever heard that? Is that not like the motto of our age, the motto of our culture? And so we come together each week as a mini protest against that motto, as we together sit under the truth of God's holy word.
We are so blessed, so blessed, and I don't know if we even realize it, because many of us were raised in it, and so we don't recognize what an incredible blessing we have to have a stable place to turn for guidance.
Amen?
A solid, rock-solid, studyable, reviewable, keep-going-back-to-it place of truth. A stable footing upon which we step together as a church to launch out into our week and out into our world with confidence and purpose and mission, all given to us by the very revealed word of God.
And that all sounds really nice. Like, it can be comforting to know we've got a stable place and all of that, and it sounds encouraging, you know, just that, like, oh, isn't that great? Doesn't that feel good to know what God is like and to be able to go back and see the way that we're put together and all of that?
But it's encouraging up to a point, and then it becomes very challenging. When we encounter a revelation of God this morning that is the apex point of a prophecy of divine wrath and judgment against wickedness, and our hearts begin to go, like, where's the comfort in that?
Where's the hope in that? We're gonna see here at the end of the book of Nahum that Assyria is in the sights of the Almighty God for his judgment and his wrath. And while we have to look at Assyria and kind of understand some of the history and the culture, our focus is not meant, in the book of Nahum, to settle on Assyria.
It's not telling us about them. It's not telling us, I mean, we certainly learn some things about them.
They're gone.
They're long gone.
It is not primarily recorded for us so that we can understand the history and cultural context of the Assyrian people in the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC. Not at all. Our focus is meant to be placed on our God.
He is showing us himself in the book of Nahum. He is showing us his position relative to wickedness and sinfulness. And he states his emphatic opposition to wickedness and wicked people. Our God is indeed the judge.
He is righteous and he alone is righteous. And he will punish all, all, all sin. Not because he's ticked, but because he is holy and just. He cannot be just and let those who remain in their wickedness go unpunished.
Wickedness must be punished. Our God has made a way for our sins to be paid for, praise God, by a substitute. How many of you are glad for that?
Amen.
The idea of substitutionary atonement for sin goes all the way back into the Old Testament. By the way, it's not a New Testament concept. It's not just mentioned in the era of grace, but it goes all the way back to where a ram in the thicket was substituted for Isaac.
And even before that, we see Abel himself early, early, early on in the book sacrificing a lamb before the Almighty, a blood sacrifice before the Almighty. But the New Testament testifies that God sent his son to be a really big word, propitiation for our sin.
I don't imagine that many of us in the room have an active definition for the word propitiation, so let me just tell you, that's a big word that means the appeasement of wrath. Was Jesus the appeasement of the Father's wrath for you?
I pray that that's so. He bore the wrath of the Father for us on the cross. Our sins are indeed all punished. It's just that God has laid the punishment for our sins on him. How many of you just kind of go like, whew, like that was a close one.
Like that was a close one. You'll see it in the text. That's where we're going. We're gonna end this sermon. By the way, we're gonna end this time this morning together with a big whew, because that's really what this is.
So as we're gonna read this passage in just a little while, keep it in perspective of what we deserve for our sins. Keep in mind the just, holy, and righteous wrath of God towards sin, and keep in mind what an amazing escape Jesus has provided for us.
Church, those of you that have been kicking around here for a while are gonna see that I'm about to do something quite different. We are gonna do something different and read the text after our time of worship, after the kids are out of here.
I gave a little bit of a warning about this last week, encouraging parents to consider your children, and then I realized that we have maybe potential visitors here who are going to be surprised by the content of this text this morning, and so I decided to make sure that the kids are all able to go to their classes before we read it.
So we're gonna pray. The band is gonna come up and lead us in worship. Then I'm gonna read the text afterwards, and you go, what did I just get into? Oh yeah, this is the word of the Lord. So Nahum chapter three.
So we're gonna let the kids get dismissed during connection time, some praise, connection time, a song, and then I'll read the scripture afterwards. So let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word.
It is all good. It isn't all age appropriate, and so Father, I pray that you would guide and direct our hearts this morning as we lean into a difficult passage, but one that highlights for us your great glory, your great saving work, what you have saved us from, rather, recognizing what we deserved and putting ourselves in the place of wicked Nineveh and recognizing the sinfulness of our own hearts and the darkness of our own hearts, and just very, very clearly explained in this text what our sin deserved, and we know what it is, what we've received in Christ, the promises, the hope.
And so Father, I pray from that place of that great big, whew, that was a close one, from that place of recognizing what we deserved in the darkness and what we've been given in the light. Father, I pray that our voices would mingle now and praise and worship to you with glad hearts, with rejoicing, with even a lightness in our step because of what we've been released from and also saved to, a relationship with you of love, an obedient love that comes from our hearts because of what you have sacrificed for us.
Father, I pray that this morning would all be pleasing to you and bring you honor and glory in Jesus' name, amen. Well, if you can go ahead and just quickly find your way over to Nahum chapter three, your scripture journal, your device, your Bible.
Again, quickly finding it in a paper copy might not be as easy. You just go to Micah and you turn right, and that's not, again, like I joke every week, that's not helpful because you're not gonna find Micah super easy either.
But it's one of those minor prophets, only three chapters. We're gonna read chapter three together. And I just encourage you, even though your seat doesn't come with a seat belt, buckle up. So, woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder, no end to the prey, the crack of the whip and the rumble of the wheel, galloping horses and bounding chariot, horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end.
They stumble over the bodies. And all for the countless whorings of the great prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings and peoples with her charms. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face, and I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame.
I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle. And all who look at you will shrink from you and say, wasted is Nineveh, who will grieve for her? Where shall I seek comforters for you?
Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile with waters around her, her ramparts a sea and waters her wall? Cush was her strength, Egypt too, and that without limit, put, and the Libyans were her helpers, that she became an exile and went into captivity.
Her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street, for her honored men, lots were cast, and her great men were bound in chains. You also will be drunken.
You will go into hiding.
You will seek a refuge from the enemy. All your fortresses are like fig trees with first ripe figs. If shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies.
Fire has devoured your bars. Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your forts. Go into the clay.
Tread the mortar.
Take hold of the brick mold.
There will the fire devour you.
The sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locusts. Multiply yourselves like the locusts. Multiply like grasshoppers. You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locusts spread its wings and flies away.
Your princes are like grasshoppers. Your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on a fence in the day of cold. When the sun rises, they fly away. No one knows where they are. Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria, your noble slumber.
Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them. There is no easing your hurt.
Your wound is grievous.
All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you, for upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?
This is the word of the Lord.
Intense? I'd say so. Any understanding why I wanted the kids to step out during that? Maybe, maybe there'd be some questions on the way home in the van.
Mommy, what's a whore?
I don't, I don't know. There's a time to answer that question. I just don't want to be the one who decides when your kid is asking it, so. In revealing the nature of our God, Nahum concludes his prophecy with the assurance of the destruction of wicked Assyria and her capital city of Nineveh.
That's what's happened historically in the book of Nahum. And as I've said in previous weeks, Assyria serves as an example of intense wickedness. She's a city that was given a message of hope through the prophet Jonah about 100 years prior to the writing of Nahum.
And they have squandered the grace of God, returning to wickedness and coming under God's divine judgment as of the writing of this book. And what we see in this concluding chapter is God's very clear warning of impending judgment of the wicked in no uncertain terms.
This is pretty intense. Our outline takes the form of three assurances of destruction over the wicked. The first, the first movement in the text is verses one through seven. Destruction is assured by their sin.
The second is destruction is assured by example, verses eight through 12, and destruction is assured despite their strength. There's no getting out of this, verses 13 through 19. So the first part that we're looking at here is in these first seven verses.
Destruction is assured by their sin, and he emphasizes it. There is no easing into this declaration of impending judgment. Right away, Nahum begins with indictments. The city of Nineveh is a city of blood, murderous, full of lies, and full of ill-gotten wealth.
They have preyed on the nations without end. Assyria was a superpower bully of the time, brutal in battle tactics, torturous toward those who were captured, grotesque in their treatment of those that they conquered.
And I don't even want to get into the details of some of the things that these kings wrote about themselves and what they did to their captors, but it is gruesome, gruesome, gruesome stuff. This is a wicked nation who often conquered through deception.
They actually, it's recorded for us in scripture, a false treaty with the king of Israel. While they were planning and plotting a siege of Israel, they were actually trying to make terms of agreement and acting like they were friends when they were actually planning to come and assault the city.
When I see the word city of blood here, it made me think of Augustine's City of God. In that book of that ancient writer, early Christian, he wrote, it's translated for us so that we can read it in English.
It's an excellent read for anybody who's got the interest in that kind of stuff. But the city of God, what he does in that book is he contrasts the city of God with the city of man, and I thought it was worth the contrast here.
He says, quote, Augustine's City of God, two sorts of loves have made two sorts of cities, the earthly love of self even to the contempt of God, the heavenly love of God even to the contempt of self. The one glorifies itself, the other glorifies the Lord.
And I think we can all recognize that we abide in one of those two cities, a city that is centered on self or a city that is centered on God. And which one is it Assyria had decided? Assyria had put its lot in with the cult of self-fulfillment and their choice has put them directly in the sights of the almighty judge of the universe, by the way, the universe that he created.
And so we're abruptly moved in the text from verse one to verse two from the indictment to sounds of battle right away. It's the way that he writes Nahum, it's creative. The artistry in Nahum's writing is some of the most picturesque in the whole Bible.
He was a prophetic wordsmith. And interestingly, this was not a oral tradition that he had spoken these things and then later it was recorded, it's actually declared a different word for it in verse one of this entire book, where it stated that it was a book.
Most prophecies were spoken and then eventually written down. This one was one that he crafted, he worked over it. He had probably rough draft one and rough draft two with the guidance of the spirit. There's artistry in the way that it's written and the emphasis in verse two is all sound words.
That's what it's emphasized. The sound of battle is emphasized in verse two and then the visual, the sights of battle are verse three. So sounds and sights. Crack goes the whip of the charioteer, rumble goes the chariot wheels, thundering go the horses pulling the chariots and the wheels on the bus go round and round, right?
Like it's all the things, this is the PG -13 violent battle version of that song but did you guys ever realize this? Like I was thinking about this this week. The word galloping, gallop is actually an onomatopoeia word.
Anybody know what onomatopoeia means? It's where a word sounds like the thing that it's saying. So gallop, gallop, gallop, gallop is kind of like the idea of the sound. All of these are sound words, all of this emphasis about the sounds of battle and it's like, hey, you're indicted, boom, battle.
Horsemen charging, flashing swords, glittering spears in verse three, all visual leading up to the most gruesome visual of all that grabs our attention. The words in the second half of verse three all drive towards amount.
They are quantity of what you're seeing with your eyes. Hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, without end, dead bodies. So many that survivors can't get away without tripping over someone. That's the image.
Bodies everywhere. But let me remind us what we know to be true.
Here in this gathering.
Bodies are never just bodies. Bodies are people. They are people made in the image of our God. Now in the fall, we sealed our mortality. 100 of people die. And while we can never minimize death and conversely, while we must value human life as God has commanded, death is indeed a part of reality.
How many of you knew that? Raise your hand if you knew that. I hope I'm not the first one telling you. Okay, we know that death is a part of this. It's a part of our reality, but we must all consider and we'd be wise to consider while we yet have life and breath and strength to consider and number our days while we can still honor our creator here.
But what do we make of death as mentioned in scripture like this? Death on a scale that seems to be spoken of flippantly by the Almighty. Just death everywhere. Just a bunch of dead bodies. I like the way that N .D. Wilson speaks to this in his book appropriately titled Death by Living.
Death by Living, the title says a lot, right? Death by Living. He says this, quote, God is a God of galaxies, of storms, of roaring seas and boiling thunder, but he is also the God of bread baking, of a child's smile, of dust motes in the sun.
He is who he is and always shall be. Look around you now. He is speaking always and everywhere whose personality can be seen and known and leaned upon. The sun is belching flares while mountains scrape our sky, while ants are milking aphids on their colonial leaves and dolphins are laughing in the surf and weed is rippling and wind is whipping and a boy is looking to the eyes of a girl and mortals are dying.
It's all part of our God's world. We live and we die. That is fact. But not all of us truly live. Not all of us truly live. Some remain in the shadows of life. The Assyrians chose the shadows. While God had offered them a way of life and repentance through Jonah 100 years before, they had seen it, they had tasted it, they had experienced it, and they had shunned it and pushed it aside for their own selfish gain, for their own power and their own authority.
To truly live is to run to God in repentance, exposing our sin to him and receiving forgiveness and hope. But not Nineveh. Now Nahum picks up the indictment again in verse four and it gets harsh. The city of Nineveh is likened to a prostitute who has enticed the nations with her sorcery and charms.
Nineveh and the Assyrians have not merely been satisfied to live in the shadows, but they have sought to spread the shadow. Do you see what I'm saying? Not just living in the darker places of life, but spreading it.
And while the use of such strong words in verse two about lifting skirts and exposing nakedness and all of this stuff, they're clearly intended as metaphor. The Assyrians exported very wicked practices through their goddess Ishtar or Asherah.
Asherah is the same name as the pagan goddess and you'll see her name mentioned multiple times in the Old Testament. And the Israelites were captured into the worship of Asherah. Her worship was defined by sexual immorality and debauchery.
Demonic is about the only word that I can think of to apply to some of the forms of her worship that were mentioned in the readings that I did this week. While Assyria is being indicted for her promotion of the worship of a wicked pagan demonic deity, I wanna point out that the spirit of the great prostitute has been plenty represented in every generation and in every culture.
There is always a call away from the Almighty into sexual sin. Every single culture has a temptation to run with the spirit of Ishtar or the spirit of Jezebel or the spirit of Aphrodite or the spirit of Pornhub or the spirit of convenience.
Just changes the name but it's the same thing. The consistent presence of sexual immorality in every generation, in every culture, over all time is evidence to me that this word is truth. What it indicts on the human heart is true and it cuts across all cultures, all places, all eras, and all times.
Are you kidding me? Not one single culture has fallen into God's sexual ethic,.
Not a single one?
Not a single one. This is true.
What it speaks of the human heart is true. Look at the culture that received the law on the mountain, like the finger of God writing the law for them and they're terrified there at the foot of the mountain and the holiness and the majesty as the storm comes down and the Almighty descends and meets with Moses and he comes down and his face is shining and all of that stuff.
And look at their, read the Old Testament.
To see their sexual ethics. Adulterous, incestuous, polygamous, deviant, and just not right. Do you see it in the Old Testament? All over. I like the way that Albert Moeller said it in a panel discussion I was at several years ago.
I got to witness this quote and I've heard other people quote it since. He was actually on a panel discussion about homosexuality and he began with this. He said, all of us are sexually broken. The only variable is in what way.
The only variable is in what way. But the Lord is just to judge Assyria for her enticements to the nations. And I confess that scripture often gives me a chill at this point as I consider what our nation, our nation, America, has been seeking to export regarding social issues overseas.
What are we exporting to the nations through our media and through our policies? And here he's indicting the Assyrians in Nineveh for what they exported to the nations in regard to debauchery and sexual immorality.
But verses five and six form a really uncomfortable punishment to us. Again, this is metaphorical for the destruction of Assyria. But in conquering them, God is exposing them and shaming them for what they truly are.
He's not literally exposing them in nakedness. There's not a literal prostitute that he's pointing out or utilizing as a case study. This isn't a literal thing that happened. The destruction is the thing that is the exposing.
But he is indeed exposing them for that wicked, shameful culture that they've become. He will let the nations see what Assyria really has been all of this time. This is an exposing of shame in the most graphic of terms.
But tracing a biblical theology of clothing throughout scripture yields some really interesting things. Sometimes it's good to just take a concept and see how it begins in Genesis and how it carries all the way through to Revelation.
And clothing is one of those weird ones that you wouldn't just think, I'm gonna go study clothes in the Bible. But it's an interesting one, like I said, yields some interesting results because we clothe ourselves, right, thankfully.
We clothe ourselves. This is the nightmare that I have that I get up here and I'm not. But every public speaker has that nightmare at some point. And it's like, I think I forgot something. But it hasn't happened yet.
We clothe ourselves because of shame, right?
Like that's the whole point.
Why?
Because that shame of exposure is the result of sin. Like Adam and Eve, not clothed in the garden.
Sin, now clothing.
And so exposing sin is often pictured throughout scripture as the exposing of nakedness and shame, as here in the prophets. And Jesus, this is again, tracing that idea, that concept, Jesus, unclothed in shame, bore our shame for us on that tree.
Oh yeah, we, you see the pictures, you've just never seen an accurate, you've never seen an accurate crucifixion. You don't see that because it would appear pornographic to us and disrespectful. He was exposed.
He was there for everybody to see naked on that cross. It says emphatically, they took his clothes and stripped him.
To put on him the consequences of our sin. To put on him the shame that we deserved. His exposure was not for the shame of his own sins, church, not at all. But he bore our penalty, our curse, our guilt, our shame on the cross outside those walls of Jerusalem years and years ago.
Our God has no, this text is pretty clear. God has no love for pretense and falsehood. He loves to expose corruption and sin wherever it thinks it's hiding. And so he put the Assyrians on a pedestal and exposes them for the wicked influence that they've been and he throws filth at them.
They who have tried to deceive the nations with a clean outside will now be seen on the outside as what they've consistently been, behind closed doors, full of all deception and abominable things. And this is a cautionary tale to all of us.
Be sure to know that what is in our hearts is fully exposed to the Almighty God. You can fool me all day, but you can't fool him for a second. Well, in verse six, we actually see a word, an interesting word, spectacle there.
I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle. Judgment is spectacle. The day of the Lord will be spectacle. It will be a train wreck that nobody can turn their eyes from.
I don't fear that day, and you shouldn't either if you're in Christ. I don't fear the day that I meet my judge. He is indeed my judge, but I don't fear that day because of what Christ has done for me.
But being a student of scripture also gives me plenty of reason to look at that as a day to endure. Do you guys get what I'm saying? The day of judgment is a day to endure. I fear no condemnation because of what Christ has done for me, but I fear for those who have not been rescued further.
I fear for their sins. Do you feel that fear in your heart for those you love, who this judgment settles on? The results of the public disgrace of Nineveh is that the world recoils when she's exposed for what she is.
There are none who grieve over her. There are none who comfort her. Nineveh's destruction is assured by their perpetual wickedness. That's our first point. The second thing, second movement of the text is in verses eight through 12, and in this we see that God is faithful to give us examples of destruction and that's assured by example.
He gives us those examples, and he does in the New Testament as well, explaining the idea of others who have been judged, and he does that emphatically in the book of Jude, for example. But the question is ironic at the start of verse eight.
Assyria conquered Thebes, which was the capital of Egypt at the time. Who is it that conquered Thebes?
Assyria.
The power of Thebes would be well known to the Assyrians who he's judging because they are the ones who drove down there and punched Thebes in the chops. Like, they're the ones. So all of this destruction of the city of Thebes, Assyria worked it.
The city of Thebes was massive. It was declared to be unassailable. No one, but nobody could, I mean, the word on the street, nobody could ever conquer Thebes. The city recorded for us was 27 miles in circumference.
27 miles in circumference. Now that's not all walled-in area, but 27 miles in circumference. Massive city. And to get there required the Assyrians to march over 400 miles through territories loyal to Egypt.
You weren't going through friendly territory to get there. And Thebes had all the power of Egypt at her disposal, as well as the powerful southern and western allies of Libya, Kush, and Put, and ancient cultures.
And they were all loyal to the Egyptians, or subjugated by the Egyptians. But she was destroyed. She was destroyed by the Assyrians in 663 BC, and taken into exile. Her celebrities and powerful people were gambled for by lots, and her infants were dashed in public.
That's why the Assyrians, put that on them, that's grotesque. That sentence is a terrible, unimaginable horror that the Assyrians afflicted on the Egyptians. And as much as that might trouble our ears, that infants dashed at the head of every street, at the risk of maybe a fair accusation of being an opportunist here, let me state emphatically what I believe to be true.
The destruction of babies is not made more humane when it happens in a clinic, in a hidden place. But I would guarantee, I would guarantee, church, that we have slaughtered more babies in our country in the past 50 years than were slaughtered by the wicked Assyrians in the capture of Thebes.
This crushes our sensibilities, does it not? And I know for many of us, our culture's worship of death, and as a means of convenience, grieves us as well, right?
Does it grieve you?
But I truly wonder if there were people in Assyria who also hated those cultural practices. I wonder if they ever attempted to speak up and say, enough of the slaughter. And I'll leave that there for you to wrestle with.
The example is a city conquered by the Assyrians, Thebes, and God is saying, if you think you cannot be conquered, think again, Nineveh. Everyone said the same thing about Thebes, and where is she? He says, just like Thebes fell in judgment, you also, Nineveh, will be drunk on the cup of God's judgment.
You will stumble about from the force of the blows of the judgment of the divine warrior. You will try to hide, you will try to find refuge, but your fortresses will fall easily like a ripe fig falling from the shaken tree straight into the mouth of the person who's hungry.
I find it interesting that two of the words in the start of this section of taunt to Assyria incorporate two words of comfort to God's people that were expressed back in verse seven of the first chapter.
The Assyrians will seek refuge. There's one of the words. The Assyrians will seek refuge but find none while God offers himself as refuge to any and all who run to him back in Nahum, one verse seven, and further in verse 12, God identifies that Nineveh's fortresses and other refuges will come to nothing while he identifies himself as a strong tower for his people.
He is our refuge.
He is our strong tower. They, their towers, what they've decided to put their trust in, what they've been running to for their refuge, what they've decided is their strong suit will come to nothing. Only having God as your refuge, only having God as your strong tower matters, and this is a good place to insert an application.
Consider where are you running for refuge? What is your strong tower that you run into? And what do you place your hope? Many things will purport to give us hope and peace, things like new stuff, diversions and entertainments and Netflix and sexual sins and pleasures, making money and working, family, and I add family on the end to some of your chagrin, like you go like, family?
Why would you add family to all of these other, this host of things that can corrupt us? Well, some of you are choking out your family members.
You just are.
You're choking out your family members because you've let them be your God. You've let them be your hope, and they can't sustain that. They can't be your God, and it's choking them out. There is only one strong tower that holds, only one firm foundation.
There is one refuge from the day of wrath, and his name is Jesus. He is the God who came in flesh to redeem and rescue and endure the just and righteous divine wrath that we had coming for us due to our sins, and anyone who runs to him for rescue will be saved on that coming day.
He will be to us a refuge and a strong tower on the day of judgment. But those, to those who refuse to repent and run to him, they sit under the assurance of destruction despite any strength in them. This is the third point, verses 14 through 19.
Destruction assured despite strength. It seems strange, it seems strange that this final point begins with a taunt, but what we see here in verse 13 seems, is diagnostic and calls for a course of ironic action.
In verse 13, I gave the wrong numbers there. It's actually verses 13 through 19, but we're looking at verse 13 right now. Nahum calls the Assyrian troops a bunch of Nancys, or somebody said Sallys was the word that they would use, but the pejorative is strong in the text and all kinds of pejoratives.
And while it might be a double insult in our culture to call a bunch of male troops ladies, to our fairly feminized ears, we're like, that was, I think you meant it as an insult, and now it's an insult to us, right?
Like, how dare you insult women that way? The world used to understand, the world used to understand the difference between male and female, amen?
Are any of you old enough to remember.
When we knew the difference? Okay, we used to know this. For millennia of human history, we got this. Now, it was quoted to me this week that the gun has been the great equalizer. I guess Colt said, God made man and woman, and Colt made them equal, or something like that, but that used to be an advertisement for Colt.
The gun has been an equalizer in battle, for sure, but when it comes to swinging swords and blocking with shields, men did this gruesome work, except for Mulan, and Eowyn, and Galadriel, and Rey, and every up-and-coming Disney protagonist who can beat up all the men, right?
You guys know what I'm talking about? Anybody uncomfortable?
Let me be clear.
Scripture has no shame in both stating and implying that men and women have different designs and different roles. It doesn't pull any punches, it just says we're different. Different in design, different in roles.
Men are designed and given the role of protector and provider. Women are given the role of nurturer and helper. Well, many in our culture can hardly see the insult that this passage is. It's meant to be a dig.
It is meant to be read that way. It's meant to be heard that way. It's meant to be an insult to Nineveh. It's meant to be an insult to Assyria. Your soldiers have all become women. But take it as what it is, and if you have any issues with that, you can come and talk with me, but I'm just gonna point you back to the text, and we'll go round and round.
But I can show you other passages as well. I don't mean to be callous about that, because there's plenty in scripture that I leave room for you to be confused on this. We're all raised in the culture in which we're baked, and so we have a hard time processing things like this.
And if that's you, I mean it sincerely, come and talk with me. But we need to move on, otherwise we're gonna be on this the entire time, and we'll miss the flow because of this. He says to Assyria, you need to step up and make some changes.
Your troops are weakened. Your city is exposed. Your gates are in shambles. So get to work, says Nahum, and taunt. Use all of your strength and get to work fortifying yourself. Fill your cisterns with fresh water for the siege.
Get to the brickyards to make bricks to reinforce the defenses. Hurry down to the brickyards. The emphasis in this is hurry, speed up. I mean, the oppressor is coming.
The conqueror is coming.
The scatterer is on his way.
You're gonna be destroyed.
Hurry up and fortify yourself. Because, dramatic twist, death is waiting for you at the brickyard.
While you are in the midst of preparations,.
Death will find you, Assyria.
While you're making preparations,.
Trying to fix yourself, trying to improve yourself, trying to judgment-proof your life, death will find you. Anybody making some connections to modern life? While you're trying to fix yourself, while you're trying to be good enough, while you're saying, just, I gotta clean up a couple more things and then I'll be okay with God.
It's only through Jesus Christ.
That anyone will avoid the judgment of his wrath. Now, not in your strength. You're not gonna fortify your life. You're not gonna make it, you're not gonna give enough, you're not gonna attend church enough, you're not gonna be good enough.
There's none of that. You cannot strengthen your fortifications enough and further, you cannot multiply your armies enough, he says to Assyria. Your economic power through your zillions of merchants is not getting you out of this judgment.
No amount of political clout from your princes is gonna get you out of this. Your learned men, scribes, in the English Standard Version, are not going to help you think your way out of this one. You are a powerful force, but just not powerful enough.
All your powerful men, like a swarm of locusts on a hedgerow, can disappear as the morning heats up and they will all be gone. In the final two verses, turn from what has been all of the yous in this passage up to this point, feminine, corporate, plural, just simply meaning that he's been speaking to the city and it converts in these last two to masculine, singular.
Up to this point, God has been addressing the city of Nineveh, cities were kind of given a feminine plural, but he concludes addressing the very proud Assyrian king and he says, your servants and magistrates are no help.
They're like shepherds who are asleep. Shepherds can't watch a flock while they're asleep,.
Can they?
They are useless and your people are like sheep scattered on the mountains with no one to shepherd them. There is no way to let you down easy, king. There is going to be a terrible judgment. This final death blow is to your entire wicked civilization and the text ends with the most egregious taunt.
People will clap when they hear of your demise. People will celebrate at your funeral and the text ends with a rhetorical question. Can you think of anyone, king? King of Assyria, can you think of a single, can you think of anyone who hasn't experienced your unceasing evil?
End, end of the prophecy.
And within 50 years, Nineveh is gone. The nations, he says, the nations will be glad when you're gone. It's interesting to note this, the way that Nahum is used, I did a little bit of research, I kind of dug in a little bit deeper on the front end of this just to kind of like figure out where some of these things, where some of these nuggets go and I thought here at the end of this series, it might be interesting for you to note this, I just, I love these tidbits, never quite know where to put them in.
I think it's probably for somebody, but it's interesting to note that German scholars during the rise of the Third Reich, a lot of German theologians, a lot of German biblical scholars did not like Nahum.
And almost universally, German scholarship is stunted to this day on Nahum because many during that era declared it to be a false prophet. They said this is false prophecy. Any wonder why? It proclaims the judgment of the oppressors, it comes too close to a judgment of the actions of the leadership of their own nation.
And there's a caution in this for us, church, we tend to seek to remove what convicts us or makes us uncomfortable. And so one point of application this morning is to beware of our own tendency to avoid hearing hard things.
Instead, take this book as a call to consider your own life in terms of the wrath of the holy God, the holy just God toward all sin. Rejoice in his forgiveness if you're in Christ while continuing to repent of your sin and obeying him out of love for him.
O. Robertson in his commentary highlights the tragedy of the king of Assyria, remembering that they actually had been reached. Jonah had preached to them and they had repented for a season. And so there's a caution to this and to us personally.
This is the quote.
The continuous patience of the Lord with the king of Assyria should have led him to repentance. His experience of the goodness of God ought to have turned his head toward mercy and grace in his dealing with others.
The ultimate tragedy of persistent sin is vividly displayed in the final word about the king of Assyria. God will destroy him along with his nation and people universally will break out in shouts of jubilation, clapping their hands at the destruction of their tormentor.
End quote.
Church, shouldn't we also be moved to forgiveness and grace to others because of the great and awesome forgiveness we've received? Remember that Jonah prophesied destruction to Nineveh over 100 years prior to this and Nineveh repented and received mercy.
Interestingly, the only other book to end with a rhetorical question in all of scripture, there are only two books to end with rhetorical questions and the other is Jonah. Yeah, there's Jonah. Kind of like, Jonah is Nahum part one.
Nahum is Jonah part two. People say it that way. There is, there in Jonah, the final question demonstrates that God has concern and love.
For this great city.
There in Jonah, it said, I have compassion on them. I look at them and I see them in their dust cloths and ashes, I see them repenting, I see them giving themselves over to me and I'm glad. And that's the end of that book.
But here he shows that he has concern also for those who have been oppressed by that wicked city. When it comes to the judgment of evil and kind of trying to figure out God, like how can the God of the book of Jonah who spared Nineveh also be the God of Nahum who predicts her very, very graphic demise?
And I want us to do a little exercise. I want you to think about how would you run the world different? How would you run it different? How would you run the world better than God? In a world full of oppressed and oppressor, and that's real.
Did you guys know that there's oppressors and real oppressed? How long would you wait to judge the abuser? How much patience, how much kindness is an abuser worth? How patient would you be? What unintended consequences would you unleash by your tendency to be too soft or too harsh?
How could we ever, and here's a fundamental question that we need to ask over the justice of God. How could we ever put God on the stand for his patience to Nineveh and Jonah and then turn around and put him back on the stand for his wrath toward them in Nahum?
The problem is in us, not in him. He's getting it right, we're getting it wrong. These two books show us that the same God who is full of mercy and patience is the same God who is exercising wrath and vengeance toward those who oppose him and those who oppose his people.
And so, church, we come to the part of the service where I'm gonna call it the big, whew, the big whew. This is the place of remembering wrath and vengeance that we deserved poured out on the shoulders of the Son of God for us.
That's why we take communion every week. That's why we do this. Because we don't have coming for us what we deserve.
If you have figuratively run to Jesus for forgiveness and refuge and atonement, and you are currently at peace with others here in this place, then please feel free to come to the tables this morning.
And maybe it would be appropriate, as you eat the cracker and drink the juice, to let out an audible, whew, because that was a close one, church. That was a close one. We who were once his enemies and under his righteous condemnation have been brought into his family, promised eternity with our Lord, declared righteous, and assured that our sins are already taken care of at the cross.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
So let's say it together if you belong to Jesus. We're gonna go ahead and say whew together. One, two, three, whew. All right, let's pray. Oh, Father, what I deserve is devastating. This text makes clear.
This text shows the pathway of just retribution to me for my sins and the ways that I broke in your law and the ways that I have sinned against your holiness and against your righteousness, sinning against people, breaking relationships, creating chaos in my life.
And you have come and rescued me from the city of man, a self-centeredness, an only-me focus to lift me up and place me in the city of God, your city, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Father, I pray that you would help us to go out through this week with a swing in our step in delight and joy, just recognizing the heat and the sweat and the heat on our back from what we deserve but the light and the glory ahead because hell is behind us and eternity is forward only because of what Jesus has done.
And so I pray that as we come into these lines and go to these tables that it would be so much more than an exercise of eating a cracker and drinking some juice but it would be a reflection, an accurate reflection on what you have done for us, your great grace, your great mercy, your great change of destinies for those who are in Christ.
Father, let us rejoice this week in light of this word of heavy judgment that was indeed ours and is no longer because of our Lord and Savior. And it's in Jesus' precious name that I pray.