Book of Nahum - Ch. 1, Vs. 1-15 (10/13/2019)

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Bro. Bill Nichols

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We're going to go into an entire new chapter, an entire new book today,
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Nahum. Yes, and I'll tell you how to find that.
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It's about two or three verses, books, over from Jonah.
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We've been in Jonah, we're going to go to Nahum. I think that's the way you pronounce it.
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It's a, I'm not sure I'd ever read the book of Nahum, except on the little machine that I had, that I would put,
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I had the entire Bible on a tape and I would listen to it, and it read the whole Bible to me as I drove back and forth.
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And I probably heard Nahum then. And that's the only time I had entered into the book of Nahum until I started studying
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Jonah. And that's where we've been the last three or four weeks.
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The book of Jonah, a book that details an account of a prophet with a message of doom for Nineveh.
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A message that the entire city heard and responded to. A response which did not surprise
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God. He knew that it was coming. And he forgave the entire city.
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Now I've been considering since I've been looking at Jonah, how the citizens of the city must have felt as time went forward after God forgave them and spared them.
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God had forgiven them. He had shown them mercy. He had shown them grace.
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And he had blessed them. And I'm sure that they thought that his blessings would last forever.
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And just a thought that occurred to me as I went through the process of studying, that could be the way the people of the
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U .S. might feel today. We are indeed a nation blessed of God.
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And we may also feel that those blessings will last forever. But that is not likely.
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It's not likely that the blessings that God has shown us are going to last forever any more than it was certain that the blessings that the
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Lord showed to Nineveh lasted forever. And then I went back to a piece of Jonah that we studied to introduce a concept again.
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We read from J. Vernon McGee this quote. Someone asked of Dr.
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G. Campbell Morgan years ago in England, Dr. Morgan, is God changeable as a weathervane?
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And his reply was, you used the wrong illustration. The weathervane is not changeable.
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It never changes. It operates according to a law that says it doesn't make any difference which way the wind is blowing.
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The weathervane will point in the direction of the wind. And then
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I added to his statement, it wasn't God that changed. It was the people of Nineveh.
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Well, we also at that point considered the question, was McGee correct when he stated that Nineveh was not destroyed?
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And if you remember, we looked ahead and we discovered that Nineveh was destroyed.
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It just wasn't destroyed 40 days later. Like Jonah had said, it was destroyed over 150 years later, at least more than 100 years.
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It was not only destroyed, it was hidden from view. No one knew of its existence for almost 2 ,500 years.
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So just keep that in mind, what happened to Jonah. And also keep in mind what might be happening to the
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USA. So years pass. And again, the people of Nineveh change.
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And now it's more than 100 years later. And God sends a new prophet, Nahum, with a message similar to the one that he sent by Jonah, but with a different outcome.
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Verse 1 of Nahum. I guess we've had time to find it. The burden of Nineveh.
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It's a burden because the prophecy is a message of doom. The burden of Nineveh.
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The book of the vision of Nahum, the Echoshite. That's all we know about Nahum.
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That's all the scripture tells us here in this verse. He was an Echoshite.
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This may refer to his birthplace, or it may refer to his place of ministry.
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Attempts have been made to locate Echosh, and all have thus far been unsuccessful.
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An Echoshite is thought by many biblical scholars to be a reference to a little town of Elkosh that's located in Galilee.
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Now there's another city in Galilee that you're familiar with. The city where Jesus spent most of his ministry.
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Near the Sea of Galilee. The city is called Capernaum. Do you know what the word
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Capernaum means? I didn't either. It means the city of Nahum.
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That's the literal translation of the word. So it's thought by a second group of scholars to be
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Nahum's birthplace. So some think it's Elkosh, and others think it's
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Capernaum. That's not really important.
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What is important is the book of Nahum forms a sequel to the book of Jonah.
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Over a century earlier, Jonah recounted the remission of God's promised judgment toward Nineveh.
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Now more than a century later, Nahum depicts the execution of God's judgment.
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That was from Dr. John MacArthur, by the way. Nineveh was proud of her city.
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A city thought to be infernal. It had walls reaching 100 feet high.
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That's pretty tall in those days. It had a moat 150 feet wide surrounding it.
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The moat was 60 feet deep. But Nahum established the fact that the sovereign
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God could and would bring vengeance upon those who violate his law.
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The same God who judges evil also bestows loving kindness upon the faithful.
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The prophecy brought comfort to Judah and to all who feared the
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Assyrians. So there's two peoples involved here. The Assyrians and those that feared the
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Assyrians. The book of Nahum brings judgment to the
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Assyrians and comfort to the ones that were terrorized by the
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Assyrians. Nahum said that Nineveh would end with an overflowing flood.
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And that is exactly how it was destroyed. When the Tigris River overflowed to destroy enough of the wall to let the
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Babylonians through. Nahum also predicted that the city would be hidden.
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We'll see that later. After its destruction in 612
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B .C., the site was not rediscovered until 1842 A .D.
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So now we're going to jump into the book. The Burden of Nineveh.
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The book of the vision of Nahum, the Echoshite. God is jealous and the
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Lord revenges. The Lord revenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries and he reserves wrath for his enemies.
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Well that's what he's going to do. He's going to pour out his vengeance and his wrath on his enemies.
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But the Lord is slow to anger and great in power. And he will not at all acquit the wicked.
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The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm and the clouds are dust in his feet.
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God is far more patient than man. However, there is a time and a place where he does display his anger.
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It doesn't come quickly or capriciously. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said this.
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God's sword of justice is in its scabbard. Not rusted in.
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It can be easily withdrawn. But it is held there by that hand that presses it back into its sheath, crying, sleep,
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O sword, sleep. For I will have mercy upon sinners and I will forgive their transgressions.
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So Spurgeon is saying the
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Lord has as his primary motive mercy and forgiveness and grace to the sinners.
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But that's not the only thing that comes to pass.
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Spurgeon goes on to say God is not like an unjust judge who simply lets the guilty go out of a false sense of compassion.
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We know they did it. We know they're guilty. I'm just going to let them go in order to be compassionate. We just can't figure that God will say, let's let bygones be bygones when we get to heaven.
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Sin must be accounted for because he will not acquit the wicked. Every sin will be paid for, either in hell by the person that did the sin, or at the cross by Jesus Christ who bore the punishment of the sins for all of us.
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But God will not acquit the wicked. Never once has he pardoned an unpunished sin.
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It's either the sin that was punished by punishing Jesus on the cross, or it is the sin that's punished by the wicked being in hell forever.
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Not in all the years of the Most High, not in all the days of his right hand, has he once blotted out a sin without punishment.
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So every sin will be paid for. And the wages of every sin is death.
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So every sin will demand a death. Either the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, which stands for you and your sin, or the death of you forever in hell.
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Those are the two choices. Those that belong to him, and those that don't. Those that receive his blessing, and those that don't.
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Well, I've just been rambling through. Anybody got anything to say at this point, or to comment?
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But he did die, and of course that wasn't me. It was Spurgeon that I'm just reading.
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Not ever once has any sin ever not resulted in death.
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Oh yes, Jesus rose again. And we'll die, and we'll rise again.
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And some will die and not rise again. And that's the difference.
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Verse 4. He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and dryeth up all the rivers.
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Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, the flower of Lebanon languisheth.
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He can make droughts come anywhere he wants. We've experienced a little of that in Texas this last two months.
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And of course he sent relief this weekend. For some of us a lot, and for some of us a little. You guys got a lot, we got a little.
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But we got some, and we don't think he's through yet. The mountains quake at him, the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence.
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Yea, the world and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before his indignation, and who can abide the fierceness of his anger?
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His fury is poured out like a fire, and rocks are thrown down by him.
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Okay, I read a lot together, all of it having to do with the powerfulness of God, the omnipotence of God, and the result when
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God decides to exact his vengeance on the sinner.
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When God has resisted long enough, and rejected strongly enough, eventually his judgment comes.
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He is slow to anger, but when his judgment does come, his fury is poured out like a fire.
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Now what does that make us think? If we understand that, it should make us quick to repent, and be wary of presuming on God's patience.
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We kind of think that since God hasn't punished us yet, he won't punish us at all. There will come a time when if we continue to sin, his punishment will be poured out like fire.
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But the Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and knoweth them that trust in him.
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Those who love him and trust him, see the goodness of God, and find protection in his stronghold.
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What's the stronghold of God? The Lord himself. The Lord himself is our stronghold.
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Spurgeon also said, remember that it is only a day. It's not a week, nor a month, and God will not permit the devil to add an extra hour to that day.
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It is the day of trouble, and there is an end to all our griefs.
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The trouble that is upon us, because of the assault of the devil, will not last forever.
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The only trouble that lasts forever is the one that God enacts upon us, in his judgment of us, if we bypass
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Jesus or try to. If we don't have Jesus in our lives, then we will bear the entire brunt of God's judgment, and we will bear it forever.
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But fortunately, we don't have to bear it for even a second. Not God's judgment.
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Impositions of Satan can come to anyone. We spent a day or so, or most of a day, last time talking about Job and all the trouble that he had.
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But it was temporary. It was final. It was over, and when he was done with, he was restored more than what he had in the beginning.
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There is an end to our griefs, if we belong to him. If we don't belong to him, there is not an end to our grief.
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He knows those who trust in him. Not only does he know them in the sense of being able to identify them, but he also knows them in the sense of a relationship.
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Trust implies a relationship. God knows those who trust in him. And once again,
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Spurgeon says this, Once more, dear friends, this word know here means loving communion.
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God knows us. He knows our prayers and tears. He knows our wishes.
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He knows that we are not what we want to be. But he knows what we do desire to be.
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He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our aspirations. He knows our sighs, our groans, our secret longings, our own chastening of spirit when we fail.
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He has entered into it all. And he says, Yes, dear child, I know all about you.
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I have been with you when you thought you were alone. I have read what you could not read.
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The secrets of your own heart that you could not decipher, I have known them all. And I still know them.
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So God is not only all powerful, he is all knowing. And he knows all about you.
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He knows about what you pretend to be. He knows about what you are. He knows about what we try to do.
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And he knows about what we fail to try to do. And he doesn't punish us or reward us on the basis of what we're doing.
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He punishes or rewards us on the basis of his loving knowledge of us, that we belong to him.
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Anything? This is a, again, a book that I haven't spent as much time preparing for.
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And so there will be things that come up that I don't have a good handle on.
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And I would certainly appreciate it when you join in and help me out.
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Verse 8. But with an overflowing flood, he will make an utter end to the place thereof, and the darkness shall pursue his enemies.
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That overflowing flood was fulfilled both figuratively and literally.
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According to secular accounts, during the final siege of Nineveh by a rebel army of Persians and Medes and Arabians and Assyrians, not
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Assyrians, Babylonians, unusually heavy rains caused the rivers to flood and to undermine the city's walls, which then collapsed.
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The invading armies entered the city through the breach in its defense. That's how it fell.
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It fell because of the hand of God entering and causing the flood.
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What do you imagine against the Lord? He will make an utter end. Affliction shall not rise up a second time.
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Now I thought that was interesting. He's still talking about Nineveh. He will make an utter end, and affliction shall not rise up a second time.
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What he's saying is Assyria will not be punished again like it was punished this time. That sounds like a good thing, doesn't it?
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It sounds like a good thing. Let's go back to the first one.
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The utter end of its place was also literally fulfilled. Not only were these people lost from history, even the city was lost until it was rediscovered by archaeologists beginning in the 1840s.
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This was a city of close to a million. It had 120 ,000 children so young that they could not tell their right hand from their left hand.
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120 ,000 children. Young children, younger than these two that are out here.
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If you kind of extrapolate that to an entire population, something about the same size as Austin, Texas.
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We went through this before. I said larger than Austin, but since then
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Austin has grown. I didn't have the current...
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Austin is about a million people now, and Nineveh was close to a million people, about the same size.
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It was, and there were two or three different descriptions of this three days journey, a city of three days journey.
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The most common thought is it took three days to walk around it. That would be a pretty good sized city, but one account
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I read said it took three days to walk through it. Now, if it takes three days to walk through it, and you can walk 20 miles a day, that's 60 miles.
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That's 60 miles. That's the size of Dallas. I don't think it was all inside the wall, but Virgil, I just don't know.
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Well, yes, but now you know there's the Great Wall of China that extends over 1 ,000 miles. In those days they could build walls.
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Well, the ones that wanted to work didn't mind working, and those that didn't want to work were slaves and they had to. And they got her done.
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Either way, it's an awfully big wall. A hundred feet high, it didn't say how thick it was, but surrounded by a 150 -foot -wide moat.
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You're right. If you tried to build a wall as wide as this building, this room, and you built it a hundred feet high, it would fall over,
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I think. That's interesting. It would have to be bigger than that, I believe.
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And you think about the thing that was just a little bit hidden from the idea of a wall here.
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But this city, this king didn't. It is amazing. This king understood for some reason that the god of Jonah was capable of destroying his city, however he would do it.
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They shouldn't have feared an invasion because an invasion should not have been able to take the city.
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They had waters. They had supplies aplenty. They had everything they needed to withstand a siege, and yet they repented every last one of them.
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That is a miracle itself, isn't it? That may be the biggest miracle in the whole book of Jonah, bigger than the whale, bigger than anything, is the fact that they all repented, every last one of them, except maybe
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Jonah. That's right.
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Humans and their stupidity. And, Ron, it's amazing to me.
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In the beginning, when our country was formed, it was formed by god -fearing men, and we held those men in high esteem.
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We recorded what they did. We studied them in history, and we honored them, and we kept on the same path that they did, and we managed to do that for 150 years, maybe.
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But now we have slipped away, and Christianity is not held in the same high regard as it used to be.
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In fact, in some places, it's labeled as a hate crime, and you can only imagine how much we have slipped over the course of time.
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That's what happened to the people of Nineveh. They started out, after the threat by Jonah, after Jonah's prophecy, they started out every last one of them believing.
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And that's amazing all by itself. And probably their children believed. And that's right,
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Virgil. Sin came in, and they were destroyed. Well, how did it come in? Because they didn't maintain themselves tied to their past.
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They didn't study their past. They didn't study what happened to them. They didn't study the blessings they had.
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They slowly slipped away until the time comes that the
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Lord sends another prophet to judge them. And that's one of the reasons
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I wanted to do this. The second reason is to not leave it hanging up in the air, what happened to Nineveh.
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Nineveh was not destroyed in 40 days. But they were destroyed. And they were destroyed probably like no other city has ever been destroyed.
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They were destroyed so thoroughly that they weren't re -found for 2 ,500 years.
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Enough time that biblical scholars claimed that Nineveh never really existed.
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The Assyrian Empire never existed. That was just a story made up in the Bible. Well, in the prophecy, it says affliction will not arise a second time.
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That says Nineveh is not going to be destroyed again. The reason it's not going to be destroyed again, it's not going to be there the second time.
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It was destroyed so well the first time that there will never be another Nineveh to be destroyed.
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Oh, there's a city, Mosul, in northern Iraq that is located where Nineveh used to be, but it's not
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Nineveh anymore. It's Mosul. And that's the little corner of Iraq that they had all the fighting in.
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For a while they will be folded together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, and they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.
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We know about that in Texas. You look out in the fields yesterday or three days ago and just wonder what would happen if a single cigarette were thrown out on the highway and the fire department didn't get there in time.
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Look at California right now. Dry leftover stalks of grass ready to be devoured by even the smallest flame.
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And that's how ripe Nineveh is for judgment now at the time that Nahum is speaking to them.
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And when the fire of judgment comes, it will burn it all to the ground. There will not be anything left.
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There is one that come out of thee that imagined evil against the Lord, the wicked counselor.
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I have no idea what that verse is talking about. You know, it just passed through my mind just now.
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That might be referring to the Antichrist. And if that's the case, that is a new discovery that I made like four seconds ago.
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We know that the Antichrist is referred to as the Assyrian. There is one that come out of thee that imagined evil against the
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Lord, the wicked counselor. I have no idea why that's there except maybe to let us know if we bother to read the book of Nahum, he will tell us that yes, indeed, the
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Assyrian is going to be Antichrist and that the
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Antichrist will not come from Rome or Greece or Romania as the
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Left Behind series had him portrayed, but will come out of Iraq, Assyria.
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That's scary. Verse 12.
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I'm just going to leave that there unless you guys got something to say about it. I'm going to have to go back and do a lot of searching on that verse because I think that's an important verse.
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So 10 says that they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry. You're referring to that? And in 11, it says there is one that come out of thee.
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That's also interesting. It is and I think that there are parallel threads throughout the
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Bible and it's important to take one of those threads and follow it all the way to the end and then take another thread and follow it and it's just amazing what is revealed when that happens.
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Well, I got sidetracked there. Verse 12.
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Thus saith the Lord, though they be quiet and likewise many, yet shall they be cut down when he shall pass through.
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Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more. Okay. They're quiet.
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The enemies of Zion looked mighty, but they were safe and many. Yet they will be devastated by the judgment the
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Lord promised. And then he goes on to say, Though I have afflicted thee,
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I will afflict thee no more. That thee is God's people. God's people looked weak and afflicted.
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Yet God promises that they'll be strengthened and restored. For now
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I will break his yoke from off thee. That's the yoke of the Assyrians. I will break his yoke from off thee and I will burst thy bonds in sunder.
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So he's going to free the Israelites from the bondage of the
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Assyrians. And now that I'm on a parallel course, the power of their oppressors will be broken.
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He says, I will break off his yoke from thee. Could a believer today who is trapped or oppressed by sin, sin that he does as a feature of his being bound by the yoke of the wicked counselor, ask
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God to break the yoke of sin. Can we ask God to break the yoke of sin? And if we ask him that, is he able to do it?
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The answer to that is clearly yes. That's the only way the yoke of sin can be broken.
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But if you ask the Lord to break the yoke of sin about you, then you must have a complete willingness to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
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You can't just ask him, Lord, remove this sin from me. Having asked that, knowing that he is capable of doing that, that's not all of it.
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The next part is, you have to walk as you ask him to allow you to walk.
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With complete willingness to walk in the freedom that the Lord gives you. But only
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God can break the power of the thing that binds us. Only God can break the power, but you have to walk the walk.
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Verse 14. And the
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Lord hath given thee a commandment concerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown out of the house of thy gods, and will cut off the graven image and the molten image, and I will make thy grave for thou art vile.
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The city of Nineveh, which was once instantly recognized as one of the great power cities of the world, to them
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God promises that you will be brought low. So low that you will lose your legacy and your name among the nations.
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They will not even understand that you existed. I will make thy grave for thou art vile.
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This is a vivid, almost extreme imagery. God warns Nineveh of its coming judgment and destruction.
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Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace. O Judah, keep thy solemn feast.
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Perform thy vows, for the wicked shall no longer pass through thee. He is utterly cut off.
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The contrast between the fate of the godly and the wicked is nothing but good news for Nahum and the people of God.
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Isaiah 52 .7 uses a similar expression. Isaiah marvels at the beauty of the feet of them who bring good news.
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Nahum would certainly agree. But the good news that Isaiah is referring to relate to the coming
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Messiah. The feet speak of activity and motion and progress to those who are active and moving in the work of the preaching of the gospel.
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They are the ones that have the beautiful feet. In Isaiah the good news is the coming
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Messiah. In Nahum the good news is the feet of the enemy. Revelation 17 and 18 describe the fall of Babylon representing the world system.
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Revelation 18 -19 shows how the kings and merchants of the earth mourn at the fall of Babylon.
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But in Revelation 18 -20 it talks about how the heaven rejoiced over the fall of the world system.
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So we've got two kinds of behavior here. We've got the mourning on the earth for the exact same thing that is applauded in heaven.
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So things can be mourned on the earth and rejoiced over in heaven.
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What was mourned on the earth was applauded in heaven. And the same thing applies to Nahum's prophecy of Nineveh's fall.
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It was mourned in Nineveh and applauded in the rest of the world.
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Knowing that grace and mercy of God to his people should not make the believer careless in obedience, but it should make the believer more careful to obey every word of the
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Lord. So just because we know that God shows grace and mercy doesn't mean that we should try to take advantage of that grace and mercy and expect it to last forever.
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It should only make you more careful to obey every word that God tells you to do.
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Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for all the many blessings that you have given us. Bless us and keep us through the rest of the day.