He Is Not Safe But He Is Good

Our Old Testament scripture reading is Deuteronomy 32, starting 28, go to 43.

For they are a nation void of counsel, and there is no understanding in them.

If they were wise, they would understand this.

They would discern their latter end.

How could one have chased a thousand and two have put 10 thousands to flight unless their rock had sold them

and the Lord had given them up?

For their rock is not as our rock.

Our enemies are by themselves.

For the vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah.

Their grapes are grapes of poison.

Their clusters are bitter.

Their wine is the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps.

Is not this laid up, is not this laid upon, is not this laid

up in store with me, sealed up in my treasuries?

Vengeance is mine and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip from the day of their calamity

is at hand and their doom comes swiftly.

For the Lord will vindicate his people and there is none remaining, bond or free.

Then he will say, where are their gods, the rock in which they took refuge?

Who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offering?

Let them rise up and help you.

Let them be your protection.

See now that I, even I, am he and there is no God beside me.

I kill and I make alive.

I wound and I heal.

And there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, as I live forever, if I sharpen my flashing sword and

my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who

hate me.

I will make my arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour flesh with the blood of the

slain and the captives from the long -haired heads of the enemy.

Rejoice with him, O heavens.

Bow down to him, all gods, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his

adversaries.

He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people's land.

New Testament reading is in James chapter five, starting in verse one.

Come now, you rich, weep and how for the miseries that are coming upon you.

Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth -eaten.

Your gold and silver have corroded and their corrosion will be evidence against you.

You will eat your flesh like fire.

You have laid up treasure in the last days.

Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud,

are crying out against you and the cries of the harvesters have reached out to the ears of the Lord of

hosts.

You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self -indulgence.

You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

You have condemned and murdered the righteous person.

He does not resist you.

Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.

See how the farmer awaits for the precious fruit of the earth, being

patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains.

You also be patient, establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged.

Behold, the judge is standing at the door as an example of suffering and patience.

Brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast.

You have heard of the steadfastness of Job and you have seen the purposes of the

Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

You may be seated.

Nahum, so if you will, take your Bibles and turn to Nahum chapter one.

We'll read the first eight verses.

You know, I love the minor prophets and one of the reasons why I love them is

because no one ever talks about the minor prophets.

We hear a lot from the Torah, the first five books.

We hear things from Judges and Samuel and Kings and the big prophets, but not the minor

prophets.

Now, you're allowed to look into your table of contents to find the book of Nahum if you don't know exactly

where it is.

So if you're there, I think I've given you enough time.

You follow as I read the first eight verses.

An oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkash.

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God.

The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

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

His way is in the whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

He rebukes the sea and makes it dry.

He dries up all the rivers.

Bashan and Carmel wither.

The bloom of Lebanon withers.

The mountains quake before him.

The hills melt.

The earth heaves before him.

The world and all who dwell in it.

Who can stand before his indignation?

Who can endure the heat of his anger?

His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble.

He knows those who take refuge in him.

But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of the adversaries

and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word.

Would you please help us now as we look into this?

Help us, Lord, to gain hope.

Help us to see your character.

Help us, Father, as we walk away to understand just who you are and what you intend on doing.

Now, Lord, give us grace to understand and to have

the ability and the willingness to do and to think the way you would have us.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

It's really bad out there, isn't it?

It seems like evil rules the day.

We've seen Afghanistan fall.

We've seen a bunch of terrorists take over that country.

We hear of people who are being killed, of demonstrations that are being wiped off the streets, of women who

are now going to be oppressed in a way that is sad.

We see 16 -year -old children strap bombs on their bodies to kill people they hate, and they've been taught to do that since they were

little.

But it's not just the international scene that causes you to feel the surrounding evil.

There's these people who are militantly zealous for the right

to kill babies in the womb.

And it even gets us to the point of the staff at the nursing home that just doesn't seem to care for your ailing

mother.

You watch angry parents verbally taking their children apart in the grocery store aisles,

and the darkness just seems to close in on you until you want to scream, where is

justice?

God, where is your justice?

Well, sometimes we're tempted to think that our God sits impassively in heaven, just sitting there while the world descends into a

chaos of evil.

Is there any hope for us?

Well, Nahum answers that question in our text this morning, and Nahum is a particularly interesting prophet

because he also lived in a day of terrorists.

This is an oracle concerning Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire.

The Assyrians were the first people to utilize terrorism as national policy.

They did horrible, horrible things to the people they conquered.

They would come to a city and say either surrender or we'll just kill y 'all.

There's a story told of the Assyrians defeating an army, taking all, just cutting the eyes out of

all the troops that survived except for one, and he was to lead them back.

The Assyrians were horrible, horrible.

They would fit the, what you might call, they would fit the definition of terrorists that we use

today.

So what is the answer in an age of terrorism?

What do we have to say?

Where is our hope when evil seems to just engulf us?

Well, your hope does not lie in a government program or some sort of peace conference or an anger management

class.

Your hope lies in the character of God, and Nahum, in this oracle,

pictures God as a divine warrior, a divine warrior who's going to war

against his enemies, and this divine warrior reveals his character

in the face of the terrorists, of the evil of Nahum's day, and in that revelation, he shows us

where our hope lies.

Where do we need to go?

What do we need to know?

How should we respond?

Well, the first thing we wanna see in verses two through six is meet the God who is not safe.

Meet the God who is not safe.

This God, first of all, that we have to see is just.

Look at verse three, the second part of

verse, I'm sorry, the second part of verse four.

The Lord is avenging, where am I?

The second part of verse three.

Believe it or not, I go over my sermon like three times on Sunday morning before I preach it.

Here it is, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.

If you're guilty, you will face justice.

God is just.

Now, how do you view God?

Do you view God as merciful and loving?

That's good, because that's the way God is, but that is not the complete picture.

That is not the whole of God, and many people today wanna look

at God as just this kind of benevolent grandpa who sits in heaven and

just loves everybody, just like grandpas do, and

they don't have a complete picture.

Of course, he's not a grandpa either.

He's an actively loving God, but he is also a God of justice.

He loves justice, and he holds both people and nations to

account because of his justice.

Not just people, but nations are accountable to a standard of righteousness.

God cares when the nation of the Ukraine is gobbled up by the Russian

military machine and bringing with it all the heartache and the humiliation and everything, but he is

also concerned about the bully who's terrorizing your son at school,

and he sees and he keeps records of the way your company takes advantage of you, expecting more and

paying less.

James 5 made that clear today, didn't it?

Did you hear the New Testament reading?

How those who don't pay you what you're worth and they hoard their gold are the ones that are,

the corrosion on the gold that they withhold from their workers are gonna stand as a witness against them on

judgment day.

He cares about racial equality and racial justice.

God does, but he also takes note of the husband who betrays and takes advantage of his wife.

He knows all of those things, and he is a just God and takes account of all of those things.

I recall a woman that I'll call, I'll call her Trina.

She had a husband who'd betrayed her, but he seemed to be repentant, but she wasn't buying it because

she knew he knew all the right words to say and he could fool people, and what she was afraid of

was this.

He's gonna get away with it.

He'll get away with it, and she wanted justice and she wanted it now, and she

had to be reminded that even if her husband could fool everyone, the Lord will

not leave the guilty unpunished.

Do you remember that?

When you're facing difficulty, when you're facing unjust treatment, and you want justice now,

right?

And justice just doesn't seem to be coming.

Remember, God will not leave the guilty unpunished.

He is keeping track.

He is keeping record, and so we have to trust him for that.

What is your situation?

Where do you find yourself today?

Do you need to be reminded that God is a God of justice who will not leave the guilty unpunished?

Now, is God unmoved, impassive, uncaring in all of this?

No, he will not leave the guilty unpunished because of what drives that justice.

What drives that justice?

Look at verse two.

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God.

The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

Here's one thing that drives his justice.

God is jealous.

God is jealous.

I remember at one point, and here's one underlined in red in my Bible, when I went through the Old Testament,

well, the whole Bible, and I tried to find every reference to the jealousy of God.

This is one of them.

God is jealous.

Now, God's not subject to petty suspicions.

When we think of jealous, we think of like Sally.

Sally spends all her time with her best friend, Tina, and they do everything together.

But yesterday, Tina went and did something else with somebody else, and Sally was in a tizzy, and when she saw Tina

again, she says, who were you with?

What did you do?

You took a lot of time with her, right?

Are you hanging out with somebody else?

Just this kind of jealousy that's so petty and ridiculous.

But that's not God.

God isn't jealous in that way.

He demands loyalty from those, exclusive loyalty from those that he relates to by covenant.

These people here were his people by covenant, and because they are his by covenant, he wants exclusive

loyalty.

The same thing is true of us.

We are related to God by a covenant, the new covenant, the covenant ratified in the blood of Jesus.

We relate to God by that covenant where he says he's gonna forgive all our sins and write his

law on our heart.

But this God wants our exclusive allegiance, and he's jealous if people try

to intrude on that.

I mean, face it.

How would you feel if you knew someone was interested in your wife, and you saw him singling her out

in social situations to talk to her, and you see that over and over?

Would you be jealous?

Do you think that's a proper emotion at that point?

Absolutely it is.

When someone starts moving into the territory that's yours by exclusive covenant,

you're gonna be jealous about that person.

And God becomes jealous when anyone or anything seeks the loyalty of those people that he has bought with

the blood of his son.

Look at chapter three, verse four for a moment.

Chapter three, verse four.

He's talking about Nineveh.

He's talking about Assyria when he says, and all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly

charms, who betrays nations with her whorings and peoples with her charms.

God's jealousy was aroused because Nineveh sought to draw away his people by their idolatry and

their power, their power.

When you read the history of the Old Testament, you see that Assyria was trying to seek an

alliance with Judah.

And Judah had always been told, you never seek alliances with another nation.

You always trust in me.

And so Assyria is trying to woo them away.

And God is jealous about that because those are his people.

And God's jealousy requires vengeance.

Do you notice in verse two that vengeance is mentioned three times in the space of

one verse.

Vengeance, God, the Lord is a jealous and avenging God.

The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

Now, I don't know about you, but I get the picture that God's a God of vengeance just from that one verse.

God takes vengeance.

Vengeance is the retaliatory punishment for wrongs done.

And as such, it is an expression of justice.

God solemnly declared that it was his place to take vengeance.

You heard it.

Did you listen to the Old Testament reading, Deuteronomy 32?

That passage there made it absolutely clear where it talks about God taking his

sword and blood being all over it because he takes vengeance on his

adversaries.

It's clear that God takes vengeance.

In Deuteronomy 32, verse 35, you heard it already.

Vengeance is mine in recompense for the time when their foot shall slip for the day of their

calamity is at hand and their

doom comes swiftly.

So God's justice requires vengeance.

In other words, if God is just, he will take vengeance on those who are

unjust, on those who refuse to bow to him or who seek to lure

his people away.

God's justice requires vengeance.

And so wrath then, notice in verse two, wrath fuels those

acts of vengeance.

Because others terrorize his people, God is filled with anger.

God is filled with anger for those who would terrorize his people.

Now that, for some people, that's shocking, but it shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be.

Some people think that anger is always wrong.

It is not.

Listen, what would you think of the father who just finds out that his little girl has been molested?

And he says to you in response to the news, oh, that's too bad, that's tragic.

Say, what do you think of the Buckeyes?

How do you think they did?

What would you think of that guy?

You would say, what's wrong with you?

Don't you have a moral compass?

You should be angry about that.

And so the same is true of God.

God's wrath does not flare up unnecessarily.

And notice as well in verse two, he must maintain his wrath.

He has to maintain his wrath and keeps wrath for his enemies.

God will not forget any injustice perpetrated against his people.

He will not forget.

We shouldn't expect God to say, oh my, that happened so long ago, let's just forget about it.

He maintains his wrath because he's just.

The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished, you see?

So we see then that he must be angry.

But then Nahum says something to us that's just a little bit off.

It's in the first part of verse three.

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

The Lord is slow to anger and great in power.

And great in power.

God is not only just, is not only angry, is not only vengeful, but God is forbearing,

all right?

Now he's telling this to a people who probably are wondering where is the justice of God?

And he's explaining to them, God is forbearing.

God does not get angry in an instant.

And here's our problem.

In the midst of suffering and terror, we often interpret God's

forbearance as he is unjust.

He does not care about our suffering.

I think this is a key for us to understand.

As we just hear about God's anger and his jealousy and his vengeance and the fact that he

keeps his wrath, the first thing that may pop into our minds is so where is it?

Well, he says the Lord is slow to anger and great in power.

He's forbearing.

And so when he's forbearing, sometimes we misinterpret that and say God doesn't care.

Listen, forbearance does not mean the complete end of wrath.

It does not mean that God renounces his anger.

It means that alongside his wrath, there is a divine restraint that

postpones its operation.

Okay?

It's not that forbearance means there's no wrath.

It means that there's this divine restraint that says I won't exercise it now.

Okay?

And this reminds me of Romans chapter two, verses four and five.

Romans two, four and five.

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, but

because of your hard and impenitent heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself on the day of

wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

Do you see that?

God's forbearing, which gives you an opportunity to repent, but many people don't, most

don't.

And so they're storing up even greater wrath for themselves on the day of wrath.

Those who presume on God's patience will be faced by an angry, all

-powerful God.

He is forbearing, but that doesn't mean that his wrath will not find expression.

Now note, God has the power to execute his justice.

And here are some vivid pictures of the power of God.

Last part of verse three through verse six.

Notice what he says.

His way is in the whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

He rebukes the sea and makes it dry.

He dries up all the rivers.

Bashan and Carmel wither.

The bloom of Lebanon withers.

The mountains quake before him.

The hills melt.

The earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it.

Who can stand before his indignation?

Who can endure the heat of his anger?

His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.

Wow, notice this.

He rides the storm clouds into battle.

So think of a hurricane here.

Hurricane with winds of 150 miles an hour sweeping inland and just destroying

everything like it did in Louisiana a couple weeks ago.

In those kinds of wind storms, blowing down trees, ripping trees out by the roots, ripping

the roofs and sidings of buildings.

Not only that, but knocking buildings down entirely.

That's a terrorizing experience.

And we seem powerless in that.

And we're afraid because we cannot escape the fury of those forces.

I've never been in a hurricane.

All right, I've never been in a hurricane, but the things I've seen, they're pretty,.

I'd think, terrifying.

Especially when they get up to be category four and category five storms.

That's unbelievable.

Nahum says that that hurricane is

God walking by, and the clouds that you see are like the dust of his

feet.

As you walk in a dusty road and you see these little puff of dust,

he says, that's what the clouds are like.

They're just dust from God's feet.

You ever look up in the sky and you see those gigantic, those gigantic clouds, right?

That's just like a puff of dust as God's walking by.

That's how powerful he is.

Not only that, he merely can blow out his breath in the oceans and the rivers dry up.

He dries up a sea and his people walk through without any bit

of mud sticking on their feet.

They come to the Jordan, same thing happens.

The river widens, it dries up, and they walk across on dry ground.

Have you ever stood on the beach at an ocean?

And I think probably all of us have been there.

You stand on the beach and you look to the ocean spreading out to the horizon.

It's so unbelievably awesome.

You know, whole fleets of gigantic ships have sunk in that

ocean, never to be found.

And yet, all God has to do is, and the whole ocean dries up.

When we go to Iowa, we always cross the Mississippi.

And I don't know about you, but they have these, you know, how you feel, but they have these bridges that

I don't know how to describe it.

You know how you can look down and see right through it to the water?

You know what I'm talking about?

They're made with things like this, and you just have to look down, you can see it.

Just as you're driving, just look out the window and you can see right straight down into the river.

It gives me the willies sometimes when I do that.

And you look down, you see that water, and you realize if you fell off that bridge, right?

If you fell off that bridge, you'd plunge into the middle of that river, no doubt

die as the currents sweep your car away.

But all's God has to do, just, and the Mississippi just

doesn't roll along anymore.

That's how God is.

Guess what it will be like when the divine warrior shows up to execute justice?

If that's how powerful he is, do you think you'll be able to stand before that?

Then he talks about the leaves of

Bashan and Carmel in Lebanon, all the blossoms and the things.

You know, autumn, I love autumn when the leaves turn colors and after about a month they fall.

Well, what happens when God shows up?

Everything withers like that.

There's no leaves, just like that.

I mean, think about the corn.

You've seen corn that's been laid down because the wind has gone through and the corn is absolutely flat on the ground,

okay?

When this angry God shows up, everything dies immediately.

Mountains, he goes on to say, mountains quake and disappear and the whole earth shakes.

You ever seen the Rockies?

The Rockies reach to the skies, it seems.

But in a moment, God makes them disappear and you're looking at

the plains of Montana, right?

These are the pictures he's drawing for us to show us the power of God,

things that we cannot even imagine.

And then he asks the question in verse six, who can stand before

his indignation?

Who can endure the heat of his anger?

His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.

No one be able to stand against or escape the indignation of God.

No one will have the ability to endure when God promises to take vengeance on our and his

enemies.

When his jealousy is aroused, you can count on the fact that he will act.

He has the power to accomplish his purposes.

And he draws the picture, literally, of rocks exploding right in front of you.

Who can endure that?

Of a flamethrower, the flame of his fury, do you think that you will

survive that?

Who will be able to stand in his indignation?

This is a powerful and terrifying spectacle.

That's what he wants us to see.

And listen, as I read this, I think,

wow, we don't have this view of God very much, do we?

This is a God who's gonna take vengeance with fury.

And it's not gonna be some petty jealousy.

It is a vengeance that is just and righteous, and it is beyond

description.

All who stand before the judgment of God will experience a fury that is

hell, right?

No one be able to escape that.

And yet, having said that, Nahum tells us to meet the God who is

good.

This is amazing to me.

After all that he said, then in verse seven, what does he say?

The Lord is good.

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble.

He knows those who take refuge in him.

The Lord is good.

The avenging, powerful, sovereign God who is just is also good and provides a refuge

for those who trust in him.

Now, one of the most famous scenes from the Chronicles of Narnia in the book The

Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I don't know if you've read that.

I've read that one, at least.

You find a conversation between the children, right, and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver

about Aslan.

Now, if you read the Chronicles of Narnia, it's an allegory.

It's telling the story of who Jesus is through all these symbolic means,

these metaphors, and Aslan is this lion that represents Jesus, and

here's the conversation.

After telling the children that Aslan will put everything right, Mr. Beaver says

that they're going to see him, and here's the conversation.

But shall we see him, asks Susan?

Why, daughter of Eve, that's what I brought you here for.

I'm to lead you where you shall meet him, said Mr. Beaver.

Is he a man, asked Lucy.

Aslan a man, said Mr. Beaver sternly.

Certainly not.

I tell you, he is the king of the wood and the son of the great emperor beyond the sea.

Don't you know who is the king of beasts?

Aslan is a lion, the lion, the great lion.

Oh, said Susan, I thought he was a man.

Is he quite safe?

I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.

That you will, dearie, and no mistake, said Mrs. Beaver.

If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than

most or else just silly.

Then he isn't safe, asked Lucy.

Safe, said Mr. Beaver.

Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?

Who said anything about safe?

Course he isn't safe, but he's good.

That's exactly what Nahum is saying here.

He's not safe, but he's good.

The Lord is good because he's a refuge for those who trust in him.

He is a refuge for those who trust in him.

The Lord himself shelters his people.

He's a refuge because he has destroyed our enemies.

His judgment against those who have crossed his justice turns out to be our deliverance as well.

I want you to think this for a moment.

When you read in the scriptures,.

Oftentimes you see salvation and judgment connected.

The judgment of God is the salvation of his people.

The judgment of God on our enemies is our rescue.

So judgment and salvation are not merely as we would often think as opposites.

Judgment and salvation work together.

When God judges, he delivers his people.

In the judgment of God is our salvation.

God's judgment is a double -edged sword.

It destroys and it saves, okay?

You think about that.

You see this all the way through scripture.

God's judgment is our salvation.

You see that at the cross.

God's judgment on his son is our salvation.

His wrath against sin poured out on his son, right,

is our salvation.

But here's a question.

How do you make God your refuge when it seems that he is not acting?

All through the Psalms, for example, you read David saying, the Lord is my refuge.

This is one of those questions that has been on my mind for a long time.

How is God a refuge?

I've spent time thinking about that.

Let me just share some things with you.

How do you make God your refuge when he doesn't seem like he's acting before he

executes his justice?

Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to believe that he is just

and that his wrath will be poured out against your enemies and his.

So you need faith.

You have to believe that what God says is true.

You have to believe that what he says here is really true, even if it doesn't look like it right now.

You've gotta believe that that's true.

Second, you need to feed on the promises of God.

If you want God to be your refuge, then feed on his promises.

Know the promises.

Know the things that he has said to you.

When he says he's working all things for good, right?

Feed on that.

Feed on these promises that he says I will take vengeance.

So feed on the promises of God.

Rehearse the character of God.

Is God cruel and unkind to his people?

No.

He's good and loving and merciful.

Rehearse the character of God in your mind.

Is our God a God of justice?

Yes.

Well, then that means that injustice will not survive his indignation.

Okay, you rehearse the character of God.

Rehearse the deeds of God.

Remember the things that he has done.

Remember the works, the deeds, the actions that he has taken.

And so when you read the Bible,.

When you read the Bible,.

You have a whole book full of the actions of God, of a just God.

Rehearse those in your mind.

Rehearse the times God has worked on your behalf in your life, all right?

As I was thinking through this and meditating on this, it occurred to me that

those of us who struggle sometimes with worry, those of us who have to deal with that, what do we have to do?

We have to take refuge in God.

So I have to do all the things I've said to you, but one of the things that has helped me is to look back over my life

and to say, do you remember when that was going on and you thought it was gonna be really bad?

What happened?

Well, a lot of times I can see, well, it didn't turn out the way I thought it was.

God had a different plan.

Sometimes it was worse than I thought, but God brought me

through, right?

So rehearse the deeds of God.

Fifth, leave the vengeance to God and continue to do good in the face of

evil.

Just because justice hasn't showed up doesn't mean that you take vengeance, right?

It means that you do good.

God will take vengeance.

You continue to do good in the face of evil.

That's how you take refuge.

And then lastly, saturate your life in prayer.

You saturate your life in prayer.

Now, those are just some ways that God can become your refuge when it

looks like he isn't your refuge right now, that he hasn't executed his justice.

Make God your refuge.

He is good.

He gives refuge to those.

And by the way, all the things that I've said are the things that he has said.

This is how he tells you to take refuge in him.

Now look, while he protects you, he pursues his enemies to their just end.

Verse eight, but with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of the

adversaries and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

Several years ago, I don't know how many years ago it was, you folks at Honda can remember this, the

tsunami that hit Japan and Thailand and a few other places.

You remember that?

Have you ever seen the videos of that, as of the waves coming in?

And sometimes, tragically, they show the people are just swept away.

Well, God's wrath is like that tsunami, right?

He's gonna pursue his adversaries and they will not escape.

That wave of his justice is gonna come sweeping in and no one will be able to outrun it.

It'll come in and take them, all right?

It'll pursue them to the end.

They will not escape.

But you need to ask this question.

Were you not at one time an enemy of God?

Were you not at one time subject to this most powerful indignation?

What's happened?

When you trusted in Jesus, that wrath, the wrath described here,

this explosive, flame -throwing, unbelievably

powerful wrath was spent on Jesus so that if you trust in him,

not one bit of that wrath rests on you.

In Jesus, the substitute, God has taken his vengeance

and so his vengeance is not yours.

You won't have to suffer the vengeance of God.

And yet, remember that the Lord is slow to anger.

Even his enemies, our enemies, and they're the same, by the way, have not experienced vengeance.

And in his forbearance, God actually invites his enemies to be reconciled to him through Jesus.

And yet, he maintains his wrath against all those who refuse his terms

of peace.

At the end of the day, he will not forget those who abused his people.

He will not forget.

Listen, listen, we're tending to start to get worried about how Christians are

gonna be treated in this country.

Maybe things will happen and maybe they won't.

But know this, know this, that

God will not overlook the people who abuse

his people.

He will not overlook that.

He will not tire so that his justice fails.

He maintains his wrath against our enemies and his.

And the wrath that God will yet express, he will express through Jesus.

And the wrath of Jesus will be far beyond what the Assyrians experienced centuries ago.

This wrath will be the direct fury of a righteous God.

The vengeance promised against Assyria is but a shadow of the great vengeance that will yet

come.

So, is there any reason for hope?

You have reason for hope because in a world that hates God's people, God will see that his justice is served.

You have reason for hope because in Jesus, you have refuge from the justice of

God.

Father, thank you for your word.

Even these prophets of days long ago speak truth to us that we need to hear.

Help us now, Lord, to find our hope in you.

Help us to realize first our hope is that you will not maintain your justice against

us for you have served that justice in the death of Jesus for his

people.

Oh God, help us to remember that and to rejoice in that.

And Lord, help us to find hope in the fact that that you are a God of

justice.

And that even now as you forbear of exercising that justice, you are summoning people to

peace.

But remind us again that those who refuse will face your judgment.

Those who persecute and harm your people will face the

judgment of God.

So Father, give us hope in these things we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen.