Nahum 3: 18-19: Your Wound is Incurable

Okay. So as you know, we're in Nahum. Oh, look at that. I have 16 and 17. We're actually in 18 and 19, which is highlighted in red on the bottom here. So let's read the scripture and then we'll start going through it.

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 for yourself water for the siege. Strengthen your fortifications. Go into the clay and tread the mortar. Take hold of the brick mold.

See how he's pounding them, right? 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 then flies away. Your guardsmen are like the swarming locust. Your marshals are like hordes of grasshoppers settling into 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 mountain and there is no one to regather them.

There's 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?". Boy, I tell you, Nahum didn't pull any punches at all.

Assyria's Wealth, Locusts, and the Judgment of God

So let's recap verses 15 and 16. Assyria increased its merchants more than the stars of heaven. Remember, stars of heaven is a way to say numerous, numerous descendants in the Old Testament, and Assyria had many covenants with the nations around them such that they would go to Assyria.

Assyria was like the capital, kind of like a New York City trade center type of situation. Assyria's gains from an excellent trade balance and enormous income and heaps of goods from all over the world would become the enemy's spoils and be carted off.

The locust stripped them. The Babylonians are going to come, take everything that they've earned, all their spoil, and leave them with nothing. Very similar to when the Israelites were delivered out of Egypt and brought into the desert.

They received the gold and silver from the Egyptians that were there. In the eyes of the Lord of hosts, multiplication by men means absolutely nothing. All that matters is spiritual multiplication. You can multiply as many men as you want.

That will never be enough to fight against God. The creeping locust strips and flies away and leaves nothing left to use. Again, this is judgment from God upon Assyria. He's going to strip them bare. The church too can multiply traders and turn ministry into a business.

Remember, we see people fleecing the flock of God's sheep today, turning ministry as a means of gain. And this is horrific in God's sight. You do not want to support ministries like that. In fact, you want to call them out and draw attention to the fact that they're robbing God's people.

Just like Assyria, the church has to guard against certain people creeping in unnoticed. Jude 4. They too can harm and strip the church. It's our job to guard the garden, to guard the bride. Ultimately, Jesus does that, but we're to guard our hearts and share that with the people around us.

The guardsmen stripped the people like a locust would and then flee in the face of trouble and hide out of sight. In other words, the leaders of Assyria, when trouble came, you couldn't find them. They scattered, right?

When trouble comes, a real leader stands up and fights the trouble, faces it head on, and leads his people into victory. He doesn't hightail it and run away. Real leaders confront trouble and not run away from it.

Okay. Genesis 15 .5, and he brought him outside, meaning Abram, look toward the heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them. Then he said, so shall your offspring be. If you remember, you go down to verse 12, it says, and then the sun began to set.

When God took Abram outside, it was the middle of the day. He could not see the stars. So what was the point of that? He was teaching Abraham to rely on God's word, not what you see. All right. Very important.

We read God's word. That's what we build our life upon. What we hear directly from God's mouth. We walk by faith in God's word, not by sight and what we see around us. So let's get into today's verse, verse 18.

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. Nahum, surveying the wreckage of Nineveh, addresses its monarchy, its leadership, with sarcastic language.

Many of Nineveh's shepherds, the leaders and officials, and nobles are sleeping in the slumber of death. Many of the people are forever dispersed. This verse may imply, since the king is alive to see the aftermath, that a shadow of the Assyrian monarchy would continue briefly after the fall of Nineveh.

In other words, after the Babylonians come in, the king of Assyria would be alive to see all this take place. The incurable wound that is grievous is a fatal injury. The Assyrian monarchy has received a mortal blow and the absolute end is imminent.

The reign of the Assyrian empires from Nineveh had continually caused terror and suffering. Nahum foretells that the Assyrian monarchy and Nineveh will experience the same evil that it meted out to other peoples of the Near East.

Now again, we've gone through this countless times through the other verses in chapter one and two, even three, where you're going to, as you do it, it's going to be given back to you, right? So the measure in which you use, it will be measured back to you.

What the Assyrians did to other people is going to be brought back on them. Nahum closes with an epitaph for the king of Assyria. The word shepherds is a common Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern designation for rulers.

Without a trace, with the demise of the rulers and nobles, Nineveh's people will be scattered on the mountains without a trace throughout the nations, without the hope of any healing, without a chance of regathering.

Its passing will go unmourned. On the contrary, there will be a great rejoicing by those who felt the lash of Nineveh's endless cruelty. Again, we're going to get to the verse next where they're going to clap over Assyria's demise, and rightly so.

I mean, Assyria and Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was a ruthless, ruthless, cruel nation. You know, they deserved everything that they received. Unlike the earlier parts of the prophecy, which are addressed to the city as a feminine figure, these verses are addressed directly to the king of Assyria himself.

Now the of the of the of the verbs change. TEV, which it stands for today's English version, makes this change clear by putting the words emperor of Assyria first. Assyria was not only a country but an empire.

This is probably the reason the TEV uses emperor here rather than king, as in the Revised Standard Version. A king normally rules over a city or one country. An emperor, on the other hand, rules over a large number of countries and has many kings under him.

Some languages refer to this type of rule as a supreme ruler or chief ruler, ruler over many kings. Others have to have had to borrow the English word emperor with a footnote or explanatory note in the glossary.

So Assyria, a counterfeit of the king of kings, Assyria is rising up, and that king is an emperor. He's a king over the many kings of the nations that they've covenanted with. Your shepherds are asleep.

It is quite common in Hebrew to speak of kings and rulers as shepherds, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but this picture will not be clear to many modern readers unless sheep are important in their culture, and it may even give a wrong meaning.

Again, today's English version has therefore dropped it and stated its meaning in plain language as your governors. The use of the word your here does not mean that shepherds rule over the king. Rather, they and the nobles hold authority under him.

Asleep here is usually understood as a picture of death, and today's English version has made this explicit by saying your governors are dead. So we see, and we're going to see in a second, the next slide, the word sleep in the Old Testament, or sleep usually refers to death.

Now it's going to be one of two options, and we're going to go through them. So sleep usually means dead. Psalm 76, five and six, the stout-hearted were stripped of their spoil. They sank into sleep.

All the men of war were unable to use their hands at your rebuke, O God of Jacob. Both rider and horse lay stunned. Jeremiah, while they are inflamed, I will prepare them a feast and make them drunk, that they may become merry, then sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, declares the Lord.

Nahum addresses the Assyrian monarch directly with the grim words that all his shepherds and nobles have expired and are now dead. Leaders of various sorts were called shepherds in the Old Testament. One possibility of this verse, it is not that these leaders were sleeping on the job, but that they were actually dead.

Their rest was in the dust, no use looking for help from that direction. So this, one possible translation of this verse means that the leaders were actually dead. The Assyrian king was the only one left.

All of his other leaders, all the other people that were underneath him, that were under his control, governors, nobles, they were dead. Second possibility is the immediately previous context describes leaders that flee away like a locust horde and suggests that Nahum critiques the indolence, the negligence, and the slovenness of Assyrian leadership.

The parallelism of sleep with lie down supports this conclusion since the latter term is seldom used of death, particularly without specifying that a person lies down in death or grave, as in Isaiah 26.

In other words, one possible translation is that the men are dead. Another possible translation is that they're sleeping on the job. Sleep as in they might as well be dead. They're not doing anything.

So I tend to like the second possibility better. I don't think all the governors were killed, although at a certain point in time they would be. But being asleep on the job while this is all happening seems more probable to me, but it could go either way.

Psalm 121, behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. This is what the people of God have. Where Assyria and Nineveh have the king who rules over the other kings, we have the true king, the king of kings, the Lord of lords, who never sleeps, who never slumbers.

He is our keeper. We place our trust in Him. Okay, he's the one who keeps his people. He is the one who's going to regather us where the Assyrian shepherds had no one to gather them. They were scattered all over.

Our king is going to gather us back to him. Our shepherd doesn't sleep. Again, Nahum means, thank you, oh gosh, Nahum means comfort. This is designed to comfort us. In other words, this is the justice that's going to be poured out on the enemies of God's people.

The church today has enemies. You can be rest assured that the same fate of Nineveh and Assyria is going to happen to those who persecute God's church today. John 10, this is comforting news. I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. This is what the leaders of Assyria did, right?

They saw the Babylonian army come and they fled. The wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he's a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. That's not our God. I am the good shepherd.

I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay my life down for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice so there will be one flock and one shepherd.

Our shepherd, the King of Kings, God, comes in the flesh, lays his life down to rescue his people, save them from their sin, and regather them back to him. There's coming a day when Jesus is going to come back for the final time, and then it's going to be the end of history in that sense.

We're going to be regathered with our King, our shepherd, who did not leave us alone. Our shepherd doesn't scatter us, he gathers us. John 10, for this reason the Father loves me, because I lay my life down that I may take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. Revelation 117, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead, but he laid his right hand on me saying, fear not, I am the first and the last, the living one.

I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades. Our shepherd is alive forever, and you need not fear death or Hades when your Savior, your shepherd, is Jesus Christ.

He's the one who holds the keys of death and Hades. If your faith and trust is in him, you are born of God's Spirit. Jesus is your brother, okay? He's also your groomsman. He's the one who has the keys of death and Hades.

You need not fear Jesus. In other denominations, I shouldn't say denominations, different sects altogether, people actually pray to Mary to save them from Jesus. Save them from Jesus. They don't know Jesus.

Remember Nahum 2, chapter 2, verse 1. The scatterer has come up against you. The man, the ramparts, watch the road, dress for battle, collect all your strength, right? This is what God was telling his enemies.

The scatterer is going to scatter you. Why does he say that? Because this goes back to the Tower of Babel. This is how Assyria was built. Genesis 11, 4, the Tower of Babel. It started with Noah, right after Noah.

God tells them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Then they said, the people who heard this said, come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.

So where God says, go out, take dominion over all the land, they said, nah, we're going to gather together, we're going to concentrate our efforts, and we're going to make a name for ourselves. What does that mean?

They want to exalt in themselves. They want to trust in themselves. They want their name plastered on all the buildings. Like, do you ever see, you know, buildings that have the guy's name on the side?

Maybe like Trump. Trump, Trump Towers, Trump this, Trump that. Everything is Trump, right? He's making a name for himself. We do not want to make a name for ourselves. We want to lift up the name of Jesus.

He's our King. He's our Lord. I must decrease so that he must increase. So God, in their rebellion to him, says, oh really? You're going to gather together and make a name for yourselves? I'm going to scatter you.

That's not what happens to the people of God, though. Genesis 11, 5, and the Lord came down to see the city in the tower, which the children of man had built. That's important, the children of man. And the Lord said, behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do.

And nothing that they propose to do now will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down there and confuse their language so they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord dispersed them from there over all the face of the earth, and they left off building the city.

So God, in correcting them, disperses them throughout the land. Matthew 11, 12 says, whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. If your faith and trust is not in Jesus, and you're not born of God's Spirit, you're not neutral.

You're not kind on Jesus's side. You're either on one side or the other, and if you're not gathering with Jesus, you're scattering. Matthew 23, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent in it, how often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing.

This is directly spoken to the Pharisees who would not allow, who would teach contrary to Jesus and continue to question him and try to protect the people from coming to know who Jesus was. So again, you got two different groups of people.

Those who are going to place their faith and trust in God, who he's going to regather together with him, and then you got those who oppose God, who he scatters throughout the world. The destruction of Nineveh was a major milestone in human history.

With all the power and influence that Assyria wielded in its own time, nothing remained of Assyria after its fall but a bad memory. As such, it serves well as an example of the lack of a future for the kingdoms of this world.

Psalm 34, this is really important. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. Right? So again, when we examine the whole counsel of God and we see the wickedness of man's heart and how he rebels against God, does God have a general love for all mankind?

Yes. Does he have a special love for his elect? Absolutely. But he also hates sinners, right? The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut their memory off from the face of the earth, right?

You want to look up Psalm 5, Psalm 7, Psalm 11, Proverbs chapter 6. These are all verses that will point you to how God hates the evildoer, right? You can't say, well, God loves everybody the same. He doesn't.

He loves those who place their faith and trust in Jesus, who were redeemed by him. Otherwise, what sense is there to have justice, right? What is love? Love is a commitment, we learned last week from pastor.

Has Jesus committed to saving every single person regardless of whether they place their faith and trust in him? No. Psalm 21, your hand will find out all your enemies. Your right hand will find out those who hate you.

You will make them as a blazing oven when you appear. The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath and fire will consume them. You will destroy their descendants from the earth and their offspring from among the children of man.

Though they plan evil against you, though they defies mischief, they will not succeed. Again, these are heavy verses and you have to ask yourself, what do I think about these? What is my perception of God?

Is God just the, you know, the teddy bear in the sky that's gonna affirm you no matter what you do, no matter how sinful you are? Well, I got a relationship with him. He's okay with me doing this. Or do you recognize that God is a holy God, right?

And to fall into the hands of the living God is fearful. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. By contrast though, God's people have been scattered, dispersed. There is indeed a bright future, have been scattered, dispersed.

There is indeed a bright future as God raises up a shepherd and regathers them to himself. First Peter, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion, the diaspora in Pontus, Galatias, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

God's people were also scattered throughout the world, right? To bring the kingdom of God all worldwide, eventually he's going to regather all those people back to himself and the earth is going to be his throne.

James 1 -1, a servant of God to the 12 tribes in the dispersion, the diaspora. The people of the king of Syria have been scattered on the mountains and not one of his appointees had an inclination to gather them, much less had the king himself any inclination to gather the sheep.

What a contrast with the king of kings and the lord of lords, the son of God, who has the good shepherd laid down his life for the sheep. John 10, I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep.

We had gone through this before. I would refer you to Psalm 23. Memorize that psalm. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. All right, go through that over and over. What comfort that brings to you when you're in the midst of trials and tribulation to know that nothing happens apart from God for you.

John 11, being the high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. Your promise is if you're God's children, you're going to be reunited with him.

You're going to be brought back to his presence and he's going to be, the kingdom is going to come from heaven to earth as it is now, slowly, but it's coming, right? So that the kingdom will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas.

There is no relief for your breakdown. Your wound is incurable. Again, this is going to be the hallmark of every unbeliever. They have an incurable wound and they try to heal it themselves, but they can't.

Having declared the utter futility of all human resources that none of them might muster in their self-defense, the prophet now comes to his final word. For the third time in this chapter, he addresses a rhetorical question to the Assyrians themselves, now forcing them to acknowledge the tragic proportions of their collapse as an empire.

Judgment for everyone is inevitable. The question is, how will you stand when you're judged? Why can't there be no lessening of his, their punishment, meaning Assyria, no relief? Because although the wheels of God's justice may grind slowly, they grind exceedingly fine.

Everything is going to be judged by God. The time comes when the long-suffering of God will endure no more. Then he shall bring swift vengeance on his enemies. Such a message applies to every oppressor.

At a certain point, the time comes when the Lord will endure no more. For a while, he may suffer the tyrant to live in luxury bought by the blood of his martyrs, but a complete reckoning shall be required.

We are all going to stand before the judgment seat of God and give an account of our lives. All right, Matthew 25, when the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.

Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. So you're either going to be a sheep or you're going to be a goat.

You want to make sure right now that you recognize who Jesus is. You want to acknowledge your own sin, recognize that no matter what you do, you're never going to be able to overcome the sin and the penalty that comes with it yourself.

You cannot cure yourself. You need a cure from the outside. That's where Jesus comes in. You need to repent, place your faith and trust in Jesus to save you and reconcile you. Romans 14, why do you pass judgment on your brother or why do you despise your brother?

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, so then each of us will give an account of himself to God. That's fearful. That's scary to think that we're going to have to give an account of every idle word before God, right?

There's eschatological implications of the incurable wound. Revelation 14, if anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath poured full strength into the cup of his anger and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of holy angels and in the presence of the lamb.

And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image and whoever receives the mark of its name. Again, these are heavy words, right?

When you're looking at what God did to Assyria, you may say, wow, I'm not as bad as them. I haven't flayed anybody. I haven't crucified anybody. I haven't done all the things that they've done. No, you haven't.

But have you kept all the commandments? Have you lied? Have you stolen anything? Have you used God's name in vain? Have you murdered someone in your heart? Jesus says the law says thou shall not murder.

But I tell you, if you had a prejudiced, hateful thought in your heart towards someone else, you committed murder in your heart. Murder starts in your heart, right? Those 10 commandments are not just a list of things to do, those are a diagnosis of your condition.

You need to look at that, line yourself up to that, and if you're guilty, you need to repent and trust in Jesus. You cannot cure yourself. I'm going to skip that one. Revelation 18, for in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste, and all shipmasters, seafaring men, sailors, and all whose trade is on the sea stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning.

What city was like the great city? And he's talking about Jerusalem. So Assyria was burned to the ground. Nothing of it was left. Jerusalem in 70 A .D. was no stone was left upon another. It was wiped out completely.

Why? Because the Jews rejected Jesus in the day of his visitation, and God poured his judgment out upon them. Okay, this is also reminiscent of Psalm 2. If you're not familiar with this psalm, get familiar with it.

Why do the nations rage in the people's plot in vain? Think about what's going on today. Do you think the nations are raging and plotting in vain against God? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his anointed, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

I could be any gender I want. I can marry whoever I want, whenever I want, however I want. I can take care of a baby in the womb by exterminating it. My life is more important than that baby's life. He who sits on the throne sits in heaven last.

The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. Jesus is seated right now at the right hand of God, the father ruling and reigning right now.

His king is on the hill. I will tell of the decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you ask of me and I will make the nations, your heritage and the ends of the earth, your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. You see that happening right now? Maybe not, right? We see, we see, uh, the enemies of God multiplying and the, the, the true children of God being weeded out.

Eventually it's going to implode upon them now. Therefore, Oh, kings be wise, be warned or rulers of the earth presidents throughout the entire globe right now, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the son, Jesus, lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled. But blessed are all those who take refuge in him. Your refuge needs to be in Jesus Christ right now. Everybody's afraid and talking about a one world government.

All these governments are getting together and you know, they're going to rule the world. I'm like, yeah, that's what Psalm two is saying. You want a one world government. I do. I want a one world government with Jesus as King.

He's going to be the president of the entire globe. That's what I want. But you need to place your faith and trust in him now before the, the, the enemy overcomes that may have ends his prophecy with a view of the righteous and their triumph over the unrighteous.

This is something that the people of God need to be often reminded of because it often goes against present appearances because none of it was so well known, even renowned for its violence and cruelty.

No wonder Nahum sees the nation's applauding when the city is judged and destroyed. We are at one, one day going to clap over the, the judgment against the evildoers because our King is righteous. We love him.

We know that what he does is just and true. The city was dying from an incurable wound and it was on an occasion for joy. It was an occasion for joy, not sadness. No doubt there were many who would have gloated over the shocking events of her passing.

God's people should be different and realize that it was fulfillment of his word and therefore the song of praise should be raised for him protecting his people. If you're one of God's children, he protects you in the midst of this.

It doesn't mean that you're not going to be hurt. It doesn't mean that you're not going to lose your life. You're not going to lose your faith. Your faith and trust are going to be in him and he's going to persevere to the end.

In the end of his destruction, there was none to be found who mourned her passing. The fate of Nineveh had hung over the city for centuries and was long delayed. When God finally settles accounts, he settles them in full.

There's going to be perfect justice meted out for the enemies of God. The surrounding nations that had been terrorized for decades now shouted in relief at the demise of such a brutal force. All who hear news of you will clap their hands over you.

Thus a thunderous roar of approval and relief ascended toward heaven. The news of Nineveh's incurable wound and fatal hurt is received with general applause. The God of Israel to whom alone vengeance belongs finally puts an end to the continual wickedness that caused such injustice and suffering.

The vision of Nahum had its initial fulfillment in 612 BC but still awaits its final realization at the second coming of our Lord Jesus. While there was physical penalties for what they did now and the destruction of that city happened already, they are still waiting for the final judgment and stand before the Lord Jesus and they know that it's coming.