Mar. 4, 2018 PM A Hymn to the Lord – His Power and His Patience by Pastor Josh Sheldon2

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Mar. 4, 2018 PM: A Hymn to the Lord – His Power and His Patience Nahum 1:1-8 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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We'll continue this afternoon series going through what are called the
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Minor Prophets, having last week finished the book of Jonah, and this afternoon we will open up the book of Nahum.
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And this morning, we'll only go to the eighth verse of the first chapter.
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Nahum's prophecy here beginning, where all worship of God really must, and that's with an ode, extolling the
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Lord, singing out his glories, calling out his qualities, declaring eventually his mighty works and his deeds on behalf of men.
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But first, simply his qualities, simply who he is and what he does. The first eight verses of this prophecy are gonna really set the tone for all three chapters.
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Starts starting at verse nine, which we will pick up next week. I think all the attention is on the object of this word of prophecy, which will be the
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Assyrians, enemies to God's people, and so enemies to God, and also enemies to the people in the north,
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Israel, and to the south in Judah. But before Nahum gives us this prophecy, these oracles against this nation who we met in the last few weeks in the preaching of Jonah, we're going to hear this doxology, if you will, this ode to the glory of God, to him, to the
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Lord, about his power and about his patience. Just the first eight verses this afternoon.
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An oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkash. The Lord is a jealous and avenging
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God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.
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The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
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His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry.
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He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither. The bloom of Lebanon withers.
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The mountains quake before him, the hills melt. The earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it.
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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.
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The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those who take refuge in him.
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But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of the adversaries, and will pursue his enemies into darkness.
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May God bless the reading, the hearing, and even now the preaching of his word.
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So before we delve into this prayer, and it's a prayer that I think would fit well in the book of Psalms, I would like to set forth a few background matters, but only briefly, because I want to dive in quickly to this hymn of praise to God.
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But to understand this book, and why we did this book after Jonah, Jonah preached in Nineveh about 750
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BC. And you may recall that's when that nation was at a low ebb in its power.
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Now less than 30 years after that, when they returned to their previous might, when they were once again the force in the ancient
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Near East to be reckoned with, in 722, with that re -found power, they conquered
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Israel. They smashed Samaria, which is just another way of saying
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Israel, the northern country. Israel's idolatry had been tolerated by a patient God for a long, long time, going all the way back to the time of Jeroboam, who rebelled against Rehoboam, Solomon's son, and thus split the kingdom into the north and south,
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Israel and Judah. And in the north, at the very beginning, they began worshiping two golden calves, or calves.
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And the Lord had sent prophets, the Lord had tolerated this with great patience until he finally acted through his instrument,
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Assyria. And 722, Assyria, as God's instrument of judgment, destroyed that nation and sent them into exile.
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Nahum's prophecy came about a century later. We say about, we say roughly because the clues, the cues that we have can keep us only within several years of accuracy.
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There are some events in Nahum's prophecy we can date with precision, like the fall of Thebes in chapter three and verse eight, which we'll get to in a few weeks.
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That was in 663 BC. And then the fall of Assyria itself, which we know was in 612
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BC. So somewhere within this half century, 663 to 612, Nahum, our prophet, received this oracle.
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And all we know about this prophet, this man, Nahum, is his name. Nahum, which means comfort, the same word we have as in Isaiah chapter 40, comfort, comfort my people.
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The word in Hebrew is Naham, Naham, my people. That's his name, Nahum, or Naham.
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We know his origin, Elkash, but we know nothing about Elkash.
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Now the best guess is it's a little bit north and east of the Sea of Galilee, but that's a guess at best.
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It's an informed guess from the scholars, but we really don't know anything about where he was from, Elkash.
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And we know, and more importantly, we know, that he delivered the oracle that God gave him by way of vision.
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He calls it an oracle concerning Nineveh. That's what we're receiving.
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The book of the vision, that's what he received. So the vision he received from God delivered to us in the form of an oracle.
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There's been some variance where Nahum has been placed in the order of the prophets in various versions of the
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Bible, and there's different opinions about when he preached, but no controversy as to the validity of this prophecy as the word of God.
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There's been no controversy in the church that this is the inspired word of God and properly belongs in the canon.
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Nahum's prophecy really matches his name. Nahum means comfort. It is a comfort to serve a
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God who is patient with sinners and who judges with fairness and finality. And the people of God whose faith is in Jesus Christ and therefore are able to come standing before that God because of the faith in the blood of Christ, this is a comfort to us.
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And so just as a way of introduction to get us ready to go through this prophecy of Nahum, this prophecy which is filled with oracles against this nation and the judgment coming against it, and it's going to sound like it's just God thundering from on high and smiting his enemy, which it is.
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It's an intensive oracle or prophecy in that sense. And yet to the people of God, people who know that God's judgment against them was turned away from them and onto the
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Lord Jesus Christ, now looking at this book with those eyes, with gospel eyes, with Jesus Christ -filled eyes, looking to his cross, a book even of terrible judgment, talking about the awesome power of God is a book of comfort to us.
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If you look at verses four and five of what I just read, we find that he is master.
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Excuse me, and that's in the whole thing. In verses five or four and five, what do we find? But all nature bowing down before him.
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He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither.
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The bloom of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake. The hills melt. The earth heaves. The world and all who dwell in it.
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None but a mighty God, a master of all, could do something like that. Think of the sea.
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The sea exists by his command and he remains at his indulgence. You think of creation when he gathered the waters in one place and he made a distinction between the waters and the dry land.
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And think of the flood. When it was his will, the waters receded. How many times it repeats how all the high hills were covered.
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Everything perished. The whole earth is covered with this flood. And yet when the
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Lord speaks against those waters, it is, as the psalmist says, they run, they flee in terror from this
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God. The waters receded when his anger had been assuaged and he could again deal with a few survivors of the race that had brought such fury upon the world.
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Think of the Red Sea, how it parted at his word and on dry land, Israel escaped
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Egypt's last attempt to keep them in slavery. Think of Israel before they crossed into Canaan.
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And there's the Jordan River blocking their entrance. And at the word of God, what did that river do?
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It stopped and it piled up in a heap sort of like the Red Sea did.
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And led by the priests, carrying the ark, Israel crossed on dry land. He rebukes the seas and makes them dry.
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Verse 1 -4 of Nahum. Mountains shivering before his majesty.
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Think of Sinai. Sinai covered with thundering and lightning and a thick cloud. And when he appeared to Elijah at that same place on that same mountain,
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God appeared in a strong wind that tore the mountain and broke rocks into pieces. Think of Bashan and Carmel.
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They were known for their lush verdant, for their agrarian productivity. Their production was a crucial source of food for the whole region.
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And how many times do we read of Lebanon's cedars? Remember how much Solomon wanted those for building the first temple.
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And those cedars were huge and mighty trees and often pictured in scripture as a symbol of might and power and strength and stability.
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Pride and joy of that country. They were the envy of the world. And what does the scripture here in Nahum say?
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That those trees wither at the presence of God. They hide away, as it were, in sheer terror.
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They refuse to issue so much as a blade of grass until the awful presence of God has departed.
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Because this God speaking this oracle to us is that kind of an awesome and powerful
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God. I mean, truly awesome. Not the way awesome is misused and so often used to the point where it doesn't really mean anything in the way it's used commonly.
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I mean, truly an awesome God who speaks and oceans depart, who speaks and floods recede and rivers make way so that his people can cross on dry land.
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The whole earth heaving up before him. This is the God who's making this prophecy through the prophet to us.
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He's master of everything he's made. Even in Israel's deliverance, he showed himself Lord of all.
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Think of the plagues against Egypt. Each plague overwhelmed some aspect of the natural world that Egypt attributed to some idol.
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And what does Nahum say looking back on that possibly? Each of those idols melts and quakes and is shattered before him because they had a word from God.
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Everything that men thought they stood for was bent to his will and his purposes.
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This is the first thing we see about this God who is going to, through Nahum, pronounce this judgment upon Assyria, who he used to pronounce his judgment upon Israel.
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This God is the one he asks who can stand before his indignation.
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We'll let the question hang. Let's not try to answer that. I think it's pretty obvious. He's master of everything.
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And who can stand before his indignation when he speaks and this judgment to come?
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If the seas cannot, if rivers fear his voice, when whole regions tremble and quake before him, the earth itself heaves.
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When whole regions do that, if all this is impotent before him, how much more man who's the subject of what is to come?
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So the book of Nahum is going to go on to declare this coming judgment against this nation, this
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Assyria. They had been introduced to God by Jonah. They saw firsthand his patience and his forgiveness, which was soon forgotten.
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And we can think about that right away and remind ourselves when punishment is delayed, how quickly we forget the dread we felt when our sins and their just recompense were set before us.
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Like children, if we don't get the spanking right away, minutes later we think, whew, they forgot.
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Or it wasn't so bad. Or they changed their mind. No, this nation, having heard about this
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God from Jonah, having repented and seen the patience of God for them, how quickly they forgot.
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As I said, it was not a half century later when they had returned to their power and with that power returned to their cruel ways.
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And almost immediately upon this return to ascendancy came against God's people, the very people that Jonah was a part of who had preached to them to their then salvation, or at least being saved from the immediate judgment of God.
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No, too easy for us to, when we're not immediately punished, think that we got away with something or that God just got busy over here or too much to think about over there and he's not gonna notice again.
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We join the cynics, we say, where's the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.
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But see, God has acted. He has, and in these great acts of deliverance meted out his judgment against sinners who mistreated
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God's people. The book of Revelation tells us that no sin is ever ignored, that God will avenge himself against his enemies.
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And as the church of God, as the people of God, those who make themselves our enemies are really not so much coming against us.
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What power do we have to expel that sort of thing? Very little. But they've made themselves
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God's enemy. And so this book relates to so many things that are happening today as the laws and as the social pressures crowd in upon the church.
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This comfort we have of Nahum is at the outset, God knows.
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And this God, who as it were, snaps his finger at oceans and they flee away and all of a sudden dry land appears because he said so.
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And so that God, the book of Revelation tells us, has forgotten nothing.
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He's absolute master. If we jump back up in Nahum chapter one, look at verse two again, we find this
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God to be jealous and avenging, avenging and wrathful, heaping up the attributes there.
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He takes vengeance, he keeps wrath, he is great in power, is testified by the verses we just looked at.
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So what hope can there be in all this? What hope can there be if this
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God is going to avenge sin? And we as God's people know this definition of sin.
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In the middle of verse two it says, he is avenging and wrathful. And it's a phrase I wanna take a moment to look at.
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What the text actually says, listen carefully to this, what the text actually says is he is the
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Baal of wrath. That word Baal, B -A -A -L, do you recognize that?
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Baal was that terrible deity that Israel had worshiped for so long.
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It's the one that Jezebel brought in and Ahab, her wicked husband, the king of Israel, so much promoted.
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The word Baal though, just the word, means master. And so what this says, when it says the
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Lord is avenging and wrathful, he is avenging and wrathful. We've seen how much power he has to execute his judgments, but he is the master of his wrath.
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He's the master of his own wrath. He keeps wrath for his enemies. It's stored up, it's written in a book as it were, and when does it come out?
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How does it come out? To whom does it come out? To who he says.
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Because he's the master of his own wrath. Read the imprecatory prayers in the book of Psalms.
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God is the master of his wrath. As much as David so often said these people deserve your wrath and called down this upon them, it is
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God who decides what he will do and when. Wrath is not something that just bursts out of God when he's angry.
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That's more like us. He's not like that at all. With God, wrath is a measured response to unmitigated sin.
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And for us, we can praise God that as much as he is rightly wrathful at the many insults that he bears from his subjects, he is at the same time patient.
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There's a 19th century commentator named Charnock, and he wrote about the nature of God's patience.
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He said this, it is a part of the divine goodness and mercy, yet differs from both.
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It differs from mercy in the formal consideration of the object. Mercy respects the creature as miserable.
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Patience respects the creature as criminal. Mercy is one end of patience.
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It differs in regard of the object. The object of goodness is every creature.
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The object of patience is primarily man. So why does God withhold wrath?
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Why does he treat us with this merciful patience? I like Charnock's explanation.
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But really, what I just read you is more of a definition. If we want to ask ourselves why, why does
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God withhold wrath? Why is he patient? I would go to 1
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Timothy 1 .16, and what the Apostle Paul says. Speaking of himself, he says, but I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost,
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Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who are to believe in him for eternal life.
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The foremost of sinners, receiving mercy, receiving patience, receiving patience. Why? So that God might display his patience and be an example to those who believe in him for eternal life.
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Mercy is shown so that the recipients of the mercy might become showcases of God's patience.
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Do you know God's mercy? If you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then he has shown you his mercy, because in his mercy, the judgment that you deserve for your sins and the judgment that I deserve for my sins was put upon him, upon Christ.
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Undeserved mercy to us. All of us whose faith is in Christ Jesus can stand with the
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Apostle Paul in this instance. By his mercy, he had an eye on our weaknesses.
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By his patience, our criminality was forgiven. And so Nahum goes on, verse seven.
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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 his adversaries and will pursue his enemies into darkness.
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So the Lord is good. The storehouse of his wrath is fairly bursting at the seams, yet he delays, yet he forgives.
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A day of trouble comes when we can no longer deny our sin or the awful penalty that it deserves.
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We have this day of trouble when we cry out with the men at Pentecost, brothers, what shall we do?
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And then we hear the merciful response is repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins.
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Repent and be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Repent of your sins and come to this
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God who has withheld judgment against you because he is kind and generous and merciful and patient and he is the master of his own wrath.
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And so it comes out when he says, and not against those who he has before the foundation of the world placed in Christ Jesus his son.
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Assyria would soon, after this prophecy, feel the sting of God's hot displeasure.
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That great city would soon fall, but the nation they had for so long troubled would go on, which is
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Judah, and at least for a time. It says God is a stronghold in the time of trouble.
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And for them, he would certainly be that. He would watch over, he would hold them together, he would shelter them through this
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Assyrian storm and the judgment that they were experiencing. So we move to the
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Lord's table this afternoon again. As we move there, remember that the ultimate stronghold is what?
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Well, it's the cross of Jesus. It's the cross of Jesus where we know that the trouble that we deserve is not ours to endure, that Christ Jesus endured it on our behalf.
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You see, when our sins were no longer avoidable, when excuses finally ended and we saw our shame before our maker, when that day of trouble came, where was our stronghold, where was our refuge?
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The cross of Jesus Christ, knowing his suffering for me, knowing that his body was broken for me, that his blood was poured out for me.
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And this is that patient, merciful, enduring God who's master of his own wrath, and yet, at just his whim, can make entire oceans run away.
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All wrath that God our master had kept for all this time, finally expelled and exhausted on Christ.
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How is he our stronghold? Because by faith in him, we are sheltered from what he endured. All him, none us.
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All of faith given to you by God, none of us. All our suffering placed upon him, and none upon you.
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That's how he's our stronghold. That's how the cross actually fulfills everything that Nahum puts before us.
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All God's wrath poured out on him. Every measure of vengeance, he's a vengeful God. And his vengeance was completed, his vengeance was fulfilled for your sins, for my sins, upon Christ.
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None held back by the master of his own wrath. Had such fury been sent down upon me or upon any one of you, there'd be no survivors.
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The great flood would be, by comparison, just a slightly wet season, a dewy morning compared to God's wrath against the things that we had done.
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The Lord knows those who take refuge in him. This is faith.
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Is your refuge in Christ? Is your faith in him? Faith that he, Christ the son, came and bled and died and rose again, all for your salvation.
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Faith that the complete end you or I deserve has been replaced by the promise of eternal life in Christ Jesus, our
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Lord. This is the God that Nahum received the vision from.
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This is the God who gives us this oracle that we're going to go through for a few weeks. To remind ourselves of his might, of his power, of his absolute mastery over his own wrath, mastery over everything he created, which is everything.
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This is the God, justly angry at every affront against him who has brought us to this place, this place of faith.
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This table, this reminder, this book of prophecy, this entire scripture.
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We come in the afternoon to hear the word of God again, to take the table as we do because we have faith that the complete end you or I deserve or deserved has been replaced by the promise of eternal life in Christ Jesus, our
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Lord. This is the God that Nahum received the vision from. This is the God who gives us this oracle To remind ourselves of his might, of his absolute might. And Lord, one with these thoughts, we will proceed and be able to partake in a worthy manner as we participate together in this table, amen.