Nahum 3:14-15 Water, Clay, Bricks, & Locusts

Okay, so we're in Nahum still, water, clay, bricks, and locusts.

So I'm going to be reading verses 11 through 18 and highlighting the ones we're going to talk about today in red.

You too will become drunk. You will be hidden. You too will search for a refuge from the enemy. All your fortifications are fig trees with ripe fruit.

When shaken, they fall into the eater's mouth. Behold, your people are women in your midst. The gates of your land are open wide to your enemies.

Fire consumes your gate bars. Draw yourself water for the siege. Strengthen your fortifications.

Go into the clay and tread the mortar. Take hold of the brick mold. Their fire will consume you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, some sobering words from the prophet Nahum with regards to the

Assyrians. Just a real quick recap from last week. Nineveh would become like a staggering drunk, a panicked fugitive, a trembling fig tree, a feeble woman, and a city with gates thrown open.

Basically, they're ripe for the picking. They're going to get overthrown. She would become drunk by drinking the cup of God's wrath.

This is God's doing. He's the one bringing judgment upon Assyria, and when God brings judgment upon a nation, there's no escaping it.

He doesn't say He's going to do something and then not do it. What He says,

He does. God hides Nineveh in that they become a forgotten and insignificant city, which is what was prophesied.

Nineveh will search for comfort in all the wrong places, in her might, in her location, in her monetary system.

All the things that the modern world seeks to find their refuge in and seeks satisfaction in are the things that Assyria is going to put their satisfaction in and think is going to help them, but it doesn't.

All those things are going to fade away. Like a ripened fig tree, her fruit will fall off at the bump.

Her soldiers will be like women. Nineveh's gates will fail to keep out the enemy. Fire will consume them.

Conversely, God's people are spared His wrath because Jesus drinks that cup, and I highlighted that because there's a scripture that I should have put in there last week that I'm going to show you at the end of the recap.

God's people find their strength and their comfort in Him. What does the name Nahum mean?

Comfort. You need to remember that. The prophet Nahum is coming to God's people to tell them that Assyria is being judged, but they will be protected.

There will be fallout for sure, but ultimately in a salvific sense, it's there for comfort.

God's people penetrate the gates of the enemy and speak life to the dead. That's what we do. We take the gospel.

The gates of hell will not prevail against us. Gates are designed to keep something out. As Christians, there is no inch on God's earth that Jesus doesn't scream, mine.

So we kick those doors open. We go in. We speak to the dead. We speak the gospel to them in hopes that God will bring them to life spiritually.

So here's the verse that I should have put in last week, but we'll look at it today. Romans 9 22.

What if God desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy which

He has prepared beforehand for glory even us whom He has called not from the Jews but also from the

Gentiles. So here God is bringing wrath upon Assyria and the

Israelites are witnesses to this. What should that evoke in them? That should evoke a sense of gratitude in the sense that God has saved them.

He's chosen them out of the world. He's placed His spirit in them. Not quite yet. That's the new covenant.

He's given them His covenant. They are part of His people. Those whose faith and trust are in Him and not in the things of the world are going to be spared that judgment.

All right. So God does this to display to the riches, to the vessels of mercy what ultimately is going to happen to those who reject

God. Okay. So this is the display. Again, a good book for you guys to read is J. Adams' The Grand Demonstration.

That would be a real good reference book for you to see more about that. Okay. So this morning we start off with Draw for Yourself Water for the

Siege. In imperatives filled with ironic overtones, Nahum urges the

Assyrian defenders of the capital city, almost like a cheerleader, to spare no amount of effort getting ready for the massive attack they're about to face.

Every precaution must be taken. Store up enough water, reinforce every vulnerable spot in your defense system, and store up enough baked clay bricks so that you can easily repair any unexpected breach in the walls.

Okay. Though God told them that they would be destroyed, He also ironically tells them to prepare.

Prepare to be defeated. Everything that you do is going to be for naught because God's judgment is against you.

Preparations will do no good. Now it is as though God were blocking Assyrian resistance by echoing the encounter between Himself and the forces of Assyria that occurred a century earlier.

Assyria will fall just as other nations have fallen. Their fortresses are on the verge of collapse.

Their fortresses are like ripe fruit that is about to fall off the vine into a hungry mouth.

They think they are secure in their defenses, but they are on the brink of ruin. Their troops may as well be untrained women, and their gates may be as well left open.

They can try to strengthen their defenses, but they will be destroyed. Their destruction will be unrelenting.

As they flee, others will rejoice. Now as you can look at this verse, you see, draw yourself water, strengthen your fortifications, go into the clay, tread the mortar, take hold of the brick mold.

Again, this is reflective of what we saw in chapter one and two where God's giving them just quick, short admonishments to do these things, knowing all the while that they're not going to be able to succumb.

They're not going to be able to defeat God in his judgment against them. As the enemy draws close,

Nahum tells the city to get ready for the siege. However, any preparations they make will be useless.

So I want to talk about what this means to draw water. The Ninevites can't anticipate the enemy will shut off the city's water supply by closing the river gates and blocking the aqueduct system built by Sennacherib.

So now there's water that comes into the city that's necessary to feed the animals, to feed them, to clean them.

Water is a necessity. It's an essential. All their water is going to be cut off. Water could be stored inside the city in vessels and cisterns.

The fortresses and other fortifications at the wall within the city would be strengthened or repaired with bricks, which were made from clay shaped by molds and held together with mortar.

Again, water was also used in the formation of those bricks. Without water, they wouldn't be able to do that.

Without water, they wouldn't be able to feed their animals, their horses that were necessary to fight the battle.

Draw waters for the siege. Literally, it says, water for the siege, draw for yourself.

Water naturally symbolizes refreshment, joy, life, peace, but waters for the siege bring an ominous note.

They speak of rationing, of deprivation, of a dreaded struggle for the most basic elements of life.

Only extensive preparation and stringent self -discipline may provide any hope for survival.

So what's the one thing you need to survive if you're stuck out in the wilderness or desert?

Water. You could survive a long time if you're drinking water, but without water, you're going to go down quickly.

Because water is an element essential to life, its meaning and evocativeness are universal.

The significance of water was heightened for biblical writers who lived in a region where water was scarce and drought a constant threat to life.

Water figures in the Bible in three main ways. As a cosmic force that only God can control or govern, think about the flood with Noah.

As a cleansing agent and as a source of life. We can also detect the polarity at work in the 600 biblical references to water.

Water can mean both life and death. It can mean blessing and it can mean affliction.

It can mean order and it can mean chaos. Again, the differentiation between these things is going to be whether you're part of the people of God or whether you're one of his enemies.

Whether it brings life or death, whether it brings blessing or affliction, whether it brings order or chaos. It all depends on what side of the cross you're on, literally.

Genesis 1 -1, think about it. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the

Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The earth started out with waters and then

God separates the water from the land. Water represented chaos at that point in time.

God was bringing order to the universe. Genesis 2, a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden and there it divided and became four rivers.

The name of the first is Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah where there is gold.

The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush and the name of the third one is

Tigris which flows east of Assyria and the fourth river is the Euphrates. Anytime you see water and a garden, think kingdom.

Okay, that's what it's pointing back to. Water, garden, think kingdom. Revelation 22, then the angel showed me the river of the water of life bright as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the

Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month.

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Now you got to remember everything that starts off in Genesis is going to be restored in the book of Revelation.

So where there was rivers flowing in the garden of Eden, there's going to be a river flowing in the city that comes down out of heaven, the new

Jerusalem. Now it's not a literal city coming down out of heaven, it's us bringing the kingdom on earth, okay, so that we see the manifestation of the kingdom on heaven.

It's not a... it is a literal river in the sense that it's the Holy Spirit. We are people filled with the

Spirit of God and our spirit when we minister to someone else is for the healing of the nations. So if you're a

Christian, you have the Holy Spirit inside of you. You are commissioned to go to the people who are lost, who are needy, who are in need of physical healing and spiritual healing and you pray for them and you give the gospel to them and hopefully that river will flow through them and they, like Jesus says, rivers of living water will flow from their belly, from their inside.

We're going to hit that verse in a second. God's people have the Holy Spirit and the

Holy Spirit is likened to water. Isaiah 55, come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, he who has no money, come buy and eat, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

God freely gives his spirit to those who ask him for it. John 4,

Jesus said to everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, right, he's talking about the water that was in the well, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

He's speaking about the Holy Spirit. So what we need to recognize here in our verse today with regards to the

Assyrians, there's a literal water and a removal of it that God's enemies are going to get and then there's spiritual water which are going to feed and nourish

God's people and sustain them through the judgment. Remember, Nahum means comfort.

John 7, on the last day of the feast, that great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

Now he said this about the spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Right? So the believers in Jesus, those whose faith and trust in him, are granted the Holy Spirit and that spirit is constantly moving within us in a sense, purifying us, sanctifying us, conforming us to the image of God.

Have you ever seen what water can do to a rock? If it's pointed at a specific stone, over the course of time, over years, it will erode that stone away and smooth it out.

Very similar to what God does with us. He's working in us and that spirit is constantly flowing, shaping us, molding us, conforming us to God's image.

In fact, Jesus would say, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Now most translators would take that word and and say even. So unless one is born of water, even the spirit, because they're alike, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

This is not talking about physical birth. This is not talking about water baptism. This is referring to Ezekiel chapter 36, where he talks about the new covenant and he says,

I will sprinkle clean water on you. Okay? This is not a verse that affirms baptismal regeneration.

You need to be born in the waters of baptism. Okay? Your baptism points to what God has done in your heart already.

Okay? Showing that you were sprinkled with clean water. You were cleansed by the Holy Spirit. Now you go into the waters of baptism.

You go under that water, showing that you've been judged already and you came up with Jesus innocent because of Jesus.

It's an incredible picture. Strengthen your fortifications.

Go into the city. Tread the Nineveh has already possessed fortresses that had given it a sense of security for 100 years, but now their strength must be increased.

Every bit of energy must be poured into these frenzied acts of preparation and self -protection.

Those untiring last -minute efforts might make the difference. This is God's sarcasm.

No, everything they ever trusted in will fail them and prove itself to be futile. So God's giving them these short little sentences.

Oh yeah, go strengthen your fortifications, get the water, do all this. Sarcastic. God knows that no matter how much water they get, no matter how much they fortify the walls of their city,

He's coming and they're going to fail. And this should be an illustration to us that no matter what we do, okay, we cannot fend off God's judgment, nor can we save ourselves.

We're helpless in that. God has to act. He's the one who has to rescue. Rescue us.

If you recognize that you're sinful and you're going to stand before a holy God and you're going to be found guilty, cry out to Him to save you because He can.

He will give you His Spirit. He will change you from the inside so that you would be innocent in His sight because of Jesus.

Again, not because of you. Strengthening the walls would depend on the making of an adequate number of bricks.

The Romandia verse 14 reflects the process of making bricks. God has called Nineveh to a superhuman effort in defense preparations.

They're not going to be able to do it, and all of it will be to no avail. Bricks were made by people going into the clay and trampling the mortar to make it possible to be shaped.

At this point, the workers placed the clay into a wooden brick mold that would ensure them uniform size for bricks.

When the bricks dried, they would be ready for repairing the weakened portions of the walls. The ironic nature of these exhortations is made apparent by the context.

They're never going to be able to do this. And I just want to... bricks.

Sound familiar? Where else have we heard about bricks? Egypt, right?

It's a masculine noun, meaning a brick kiln, brickwork. It designates a molding for setting bricks.

It's used of the brick floor in Pharaoh's palace, Jeremiah 43 .9.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah and Taphanes, taking your hands, large stones, and hide them in the mortar, in the pavement, in the bricks that is at the entrance to Pharaoh's palace in Taphanes, in the sight of the men of Judah.

The Israelites were commissioned constantly to get twigs and clay to make bricks for Pharaoh's house, okay?

What Egypt commanded the Israelites to do is now what

God is going to command the Assyrians to do. Yeah, go get your bricks. Let's see how that's going to work for you. All right, like Pastor says all the time, he likes to quote

Pastor Phil. How's that working out for you? Exodus. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick.

It's not the same word, but it's the same connotation. And in all kinds of work in the field, in all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

So now the Assyrians were going to be slaves to God, whereas God's people are no longer slaves, they're what?

Sons. Second Samuel, and he, meaning David, brought out the people who were in it and set them to labor with saws and iron picks and iron axes and made them toil at the brick kilns.

And thus he did to all of the cities of the Ammonites. Then David and all the people returned to Jerusalem.

So David is a type and shadow of Christ. Okay. He made his enemies make bricks. So here it is pointing to God.

God is the one who's going to make them toil in the ground. And it gets better. Go into that word.

That phrase go into means immerse yourself in the clay, literally to go or come into the clay.

The literal meaning of the phrase suggests total absorption in a project or circumstance.

Joseph's soul came into iron, meaning that his life was absorbed in this new condition of imprisonment.

Coming into old age meant that a person's life was characterized by that circumstance from that point on.

If a city came into siege, then all of the activities of the community had to be adjusted for the sake of this new reality.

In the modern slang, a person may be said to be into art or into computers, meaning that that person is totally absorbed in that one particular interest.

So that term go into, immerse, what does that make you think of? Baptism, right?

They're going to be baptized in the dirt. They're going to go. How did God create man? He scooped up the dirt.

And what did he do? He breathed into it. That's the water, the spirit. They're now going to be, the water is going to be removed.

They're going to go back to dirt. Nahum's admonition to Nineveh is to go into the clay, immerse yourself in this particular project, get up to your elbows in the mud, make a superhuman effort in your defense preparations.

And again, all of it will be to no avail. Where God's enemies are told to go into, immerse, baptize themselves in clay, which is originally where they came from, and then shaped by the potter and given life through his spirit,

God's people will be immersed into Jesus by the Holy Spirit. But he who's coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals

I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Okay.

So the fire for the believer is the fire of the Holy Spirit within them.

The fire for the unbeliever is the judgment outside of them. Right? If you have the Holy Spirit, think about it.

The fire in you is greater than the fire outside of you. You will not be scorched. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Our God can, our God will, but even if he doesn't, I will not bow down to that idol.

Remember that. By this mockery, Nahum is not saying that all human effort is pointless.

His message is much more specific. He is saying that all human effort to avoid or escape the coming judgment of God is futile.

People often get the wrong impression thinking that in their lives they strive only with human forces or natural circumstances.

So they conclude that a little more effort may enable them to evade the threatening calamity. How many people today, when we're out on the streets in Port Jefferson and witnessing, they think that they're okay and God's sight.

Oh, that's okay. Or you tell them about hell and they're like, Oh yeah, that's where everybody goes. It's fun. That's where all my friends are going to be.

And they have no clue. They just have no clue of what they're saying. It's up to us who understand the severity of that message to understand the severity of God's judgment, to go in and warn them to avoid the judgment.

God has made provision for you. You don't have to do anything. You can't work your way to heaven.

God has done that for you. Take advantage of that. Repent of your sins and trust in Christ. It's that simple.

Faith on one hand is the easiest thing you can do. On the other hand, it's the most hard thing, the hardest thing you can do because you can't do it in and of yourself.

You need the Holy Spirit to do that work in you, but cry out to God. There, the fire will consume you.

The sword will cut you down. Nahum's satire and irony rise to new heights. Having called

Nineveh to battle, he immediately describes the depth of their defeat. The walls of the city of Nineveh will become the borders of their tomb, not their defense.

As if to emphasize the futility of their preparations, Nahum told them that the fire would devour and the sword would cut them off.

No matter what they did, destruction was inevitable. The possessions and powers of this world do not avail against the

Lord of hosts. What does that word host mean? Armies. He's the

Lord of the armies, right? One of the psalms, I forget which one, it says, God who strengthens our hands for war or battle, right?

We are in a battle. We are part of God's army if the Holy Spirit resides within us. Fire, which can terrify as well as benefit, is also an instrument of warfare.

Throughout the Bible, many battles end with victors, sometimes at God's command, burning down the city of losers.

This is why war itself or its fury can be likened to or spoken of as fire. In the association of fire with wrath and the fact that God sometimes destroys the wicked by raining fire make it natural that eschatological judgment be depicted as fire.

Who wants to tell me what eschatological means? Say again? Study of the end times.

So when he says eschatological judgment, he's talking about a future end time when Jesus comes back on the last day where he separates the sheep from the goats.

So this fire that we're hearing about in Nahum and throughout the Bible, there's going to come a day where there's a final fire, a final judgment.

The enemies of God are going to be sent off into what? Everlasting fire. The friends and the people, the sons of God are going to be brought into his presence and have everlasting eternal life.

Furthermore, although the prophecy in Zephaniah, in the fire of my jealous wrath, all the earth shall be consumed, is probably figurative as for me personally, this verse in Nahum 3 .5

can be taken both literally and figuratively. I think it's both. Okay, there's a literal fire that's going to come in and burn the city of Nineveh down.

Okay, and it is spiritual sense. There's fire, that's spiritual fire.

God's judgment is coming upon them. Mark 9, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.

And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

The eschatological reality is that hell exists and people will go there. You need to recognize that.

You need to recognize that we have family and friends and other people who don't know the Lord. Maybe you don't know the

Lord in here right now. Hell is a reality, okay? Do not play or trifle with God.

You have to recognize your sinfulness before Him. Repent of that sin. That doesn't mean just to say,

I'm sorry, although it includes that. It means to turn away from it. Change your mind about the way you think about your sin.

Recognize that it's an abomination in God's sight and He will give you justice for it unless you place your faith and trust in Jesus, who took

God's wrath on Himself for His people. However, all of this would be in vain for the

Ninevites, for the fire will devour you. The sword will cut you off. It will eat you up like a locust. Both the fire and the sword would eat through the clay like locusts devouring everything in their path, leaving only the scorched earth in their wake.

True, the city had a population that was about as numerous as a swarm of locusts. Locusts have an amazing ability to reproduce and Nineveh had an estimated population of around 300 ,000.

It was an enormous city at that time. In addition to her military prowess, Assyria had a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

She, Assyria, carried out, carried on in her day. Down, I'm sorry, she multiplied her merchants more than the stars of heaven, right?

So she constantly made covenants with nations around them and they were business deals, okay?

So if you did this, they would do that. They multiplied their traders. What a lucrative trade

Assyria carried on in her day. Down the Tigris river, her merchants would go to gain access to the sea and link up with the

Phoenicians. Nevertheless, Assyria's gains from an excellent trade balance, an enormous income of heap of goods from all over the known world, would become the enemy's spoils to be carted off.

The enemy would be as though, as though in looting Assyria's goods as locusts which scour the land and suddenly fly away.

Assyria would go from riches to rags in a matter of hours. Nahum 316, you have increased your traders more than the stars of heaven.

The creeping locust strips and flies away. In other words, you can create a big booming economy.

Now let's you create a big booming army. Again, this is sarcasm.

God knows that they can't do it. He's taunting them. Oh yeah? You think you're so good? Let's see.

You created yourself a big booming economy. Stock market's doing great in Assyria, right? Let's see what you can do with your army.

Frightening. So what do locusts make you think of? Say again?

Plagues? Sure, yeah. What else? Devouring? Yes. Famine?

Yes. All excellent things, for sure. While locusts in the Bible are mainly a negative image, they are not always a negative image.

To our surprise, locusts were a ceremonially clean insect that Old Testament Jews were allowed to eat.

Yum. Locust Sunday. People on the recording are like, what?

Taco Sunday, we eat tacos. Locust Sunday, we don't eat locusts. Trust me. The image of locusts as an image of sustenance is rendered memorable in the picture of John the

Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, an image of the acidic piety of a wilderness experience.

Mainly, though, locusts in the Bible are an image of terror and destruction of crops, usually with the added connotation of there being an agent of God's judgment against a rebellious nation.

And Brother Jerry talked about this as he went through Joel and I'm sure we're going to hear about it again as we go through Ezekiel.

The first destructive swarm of locusts that we read about in the Bible is the plague of locusts that falls on Egypt to devour everything growing in the fields, establishing locusts as an agent of terrible divine judgment.

So the locusts that are coming into Assyria is representative, again, of God's judgment.

The locusts strip the trees of all the leaves, of all the fruit, of anything that could offer them sustenance.

That's what the armies of Babylon are going to do to Nineveh and the armies of Assyria.

Thus, the inclusion of locust plagues among the curses for covenant disobedience warns the people of God not to be like the

Egyptians. It was for deliverance from such plagues that Solomon dedicated the temple, the judgment of locusts.

So, like an army, the sheer number of locusts in a swarm be representative of a giant army coming against Assyria.

The physical resemblance of their heads to horses' heads, right? Horses, again, representative of army and war.

They're unbroken advance. When you see a swarm of locusts, they come as a unit and they're not broken, right?

It looks like a big, if you have ever seen a big swarm, right? They all come together at you at once.

Their ability to strip the land, again, they're going to strip the land of any sustenance. Their thunderous approach, they're making noise as they come.

They make a plague of locusts a suitable metaphor for the invading army. The prophecy of Joel was occasioned by an invasion of locusts, which in Joel's prophetic vision became an emblem of divine judgment against the apostate nation.

Joel describes the invasion with minute and technical accuracy, referring, for example, to the cutting locusts, the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, and the destroying locusts.

Joel compares the sight and sound of a plague of locusts to a powerful army drawn up for battle.

So, have you ever seen a locust? They're ugly. Can you imagine a swarm of them coming at you?

I'm not a bug guy. The tour de force of locust passages in the

Bible is the apocalyptic of locusts in Revelation chapter 9. Beginning with a literal locust as the core of the description, the author's vision then transformed the insect into a fantastic and terrifying image of judgment.

The locusts look like horses prepared for battle because they came as a force with destructive intent. The crowns of gold on their heads are the glistening effect of sun on their exoskeletons, and their faces resembled human faces by conveying malice and threat.

Their hair, like a woman's hair, might be a fanciful account of their antenna. The lion's teeth signal the destructive gnawing ability of locusts as they chew grain, and the iron breast plates again refer to their exoskeletons.

Keeping the imagery of military attack alive, the author compares the combined sound of the locust wings to the thundering of horses and chariots rushing into battle, and to heighten the destructive effect, he gives the locust tails and stings like scorpions.

Multiply yourself like the locust. Again, sarcasm. The locusts are stronger than the

Assyrian army, and guess what? God is sovereign over the locusts. He can get the locusts to do whatever he wants.

Ultimately, it's figurative. There's going to be a literal army that comes in, the Babylonian army, that conquers

Nineveh. So, we have water, clay, bricks, and locusts.

For God's people, they have water. They have the Holy Spirit. God's enemies, they need it.

They're going to thirst, and their thirst will not be quenched because they're going to the wrong place. They're not going to God's fountain.

They're not going to God to receive his Holy Spirit. Clay, we are immersed in Christ.

They are immersed back into dirt. Think about it. This is deconstruction language, right?

This is God destroying that nation, but unfortunately, he's not going to rebuild it.

With the Israelites, he would destroy them, tear them down, and then build them back up.

When Jesus comes, he's the last Adam, okay? What the first Adam failed to do and God did away with, now

Jesus comes to bring in a new kingdom with a new covenant, with a new heavens and a new earth.

He's going to bring the Holy Spirit to be in believers permanently. Once the Holy Spirit comes inside of you, he doesn't leave.

He's that promise, that earnest deposit that secures your salvation.

So now the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon all flesh. For some, it's going to be fire on the outside.

For believers, it's going to be fire on the inside. We build bricks.

We build God's temple. They build Pharaoh's temple. Now when I say we build God's temple, what does that mean?

Who's the temple of God? The church, right? We build God's temple.

God's temple is the church. Each one of us is a brick in that temple. And how do you build the temple of God?

By sewing into people and building the brick, making it stronger. So we are assembled as God's house, as a temple of people.

So you want to build God's temple? Sow into people. Bring the gospel to unbelievers so that they would come to life and be a brick in God's temple.

It's a metaphor. Locusts. We are God's army and they will be defeated.

Jesus is the Lord of hosts. He's the Lord of the armies. We are enrolled in God's army as believers.

Unbelievers will be defeated. Jesus himself says the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.

The church ultimately is going to win. The church is going to be the mountain that covers the world as the waters cover the seas.

Okay? Nahum means comfort. This should be comforting for us seeing the judgment that's upon America right now, seeing that there's no way of escape for them.

There's no way they're going to get out of it. We need to be faithful now more than ever.

We need to be knit together as a body. We need to be in fellowship with other believers, strengthening our faith, knowing that judgment's going to come, and there may be collateral damage, but we know we need to be faithful to the

Lord. He is Lord over all. Any questions? Yes, John. Just for the record,

I won't say on the tape, on the recording, I had nothing in mind with regards to the pastor and his sarcasm, although he has had a bad outbreak lately.

We need to pray for him. All right. Any concluding thoughts?