Let me ask you to turn with me this evening to the prophecy of Nahum. Nahum is getting into that section of the Minor Prophets where you kind of have to start working through them in your mind to get to the page. It's one of those more obscure places for the teacher and the sword drills, I recall, when we were younger. I want to read tonight the opening chapter and then turn to read a few verses at the beginning of the third chapter. So Nahum chapter 1 as we begin. The Burden of Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkishite. God is jealous and the Lord revengeth. The Lord revengeth and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies. The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. He rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry, and dryeth up all the rivers. Bashan languisheth, and Carmel and the flower of Lebanon languisheth, The mountains quake at Him, and the hills melt. The earth is burned at His presence, yea, the world and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before His indignation? And who can abide in the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him. The Lord is good. a stronghold in the day of trouble. And he knoweth them that trust in him. But with an overrunning flood, he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies. What do you imagine against the Lord? He will make an utter end. Affliction shall not rise up the second time. For while they be folded together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry. There is one come out of thee that imagineth evil against the Lord, a wicked counselor. Thus saith the Lord. Though they be quiet, and likewise many, yet thus shall they be cut down when He shall pass through. Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more. For now will I break His yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds and sunder, and make a new commandment concerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown. Out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image. I will make thy grave, for thou art vile. Behold, upon the mountains, the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings that publish peace. O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts. Perform thy vows, for the wicked shall no more pass through thee. He is utterly cut off." Now over to chapter 3. Woe to the bloody city. It is all full of lies and robbery. The prey departeth not. The noise of a whip and the noise of the rattling of the wheels and of the prancing horses and of the jumping chariots. The horseman lifted up both the bright sword and the glittering spear. And there is a multitude of slain, a great number of carcasses. There's none end of their corpses. They stumble upon their corpses because of the multitude of thy whoredoms, of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts that selleth nations through her whoredoms and families through her witchcrafts. Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face. I will show the nations thy nakedness and the kingdoms thy shame. And I will cast abominable filth upon thee and make thee vile and will set thee as a gazing stop. And it shall come to pass that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee and say, Nineveh is laid waste. Who will bemoan her? Whence shall I seek comforters for thee? We'll end our reading in verse 12. We trust the Lord will bless even this sober reading to every heart. Let's bow our heads together. Our Heavenly Father, we tonight join in as we have throughout this day with those that have gone before and written testimonies of grace And we say, how can it be that You would love a soul like me? So we praise You. And Lord, we ask tonight as we continue our study in these shorter books among the prophets that You called and sent among Your people, that You'll give us grace and wisdom. Lord, a morsel to close out this Sabbath for our souls. Lord, by Thy Spirit then take up the word we ask in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Well, tonight as we continue our journey through the minor prophets, we come obviously to a new prophet, the prophet Nahum. Little is known of Nahum save his city that is mentioned in the opening verse, and yet even that, scholars are unsure as to exactly the location of the place that he's from. Some even suggested Capernaum in Galilee. That in some ways would be unlikely because it would have already gone to the Assyrian captivity at the point at which Nahum would have lived and written. Probably a city in Judah in the south that is where he came from. But that, as with so many of the prophets, is not really the import, it is the message that is so vital. Name's name means counselor or comfort. Some suggest it is a shortened form of the name Nehemiah that was more common. But it's interesting that a prophet whose name conveys consolation or comfort is a prophecy that speaks judgment. And yet it is a prophecy of the judgment of Nineveh. It's a prophecy of God's hand of judgment against a nation, against a city leading a nation, that had become the oppressor of God's people. Micah, his contemporary, be seen and considered last time in our visit with the prophets, had prophesied similarly or at a similar time, but he was given under God the opposite, as it were, of Nahum's task. Micah preached against Judah's sins. He was crying out against the hypocrisies, the injustices, the ungodliness, the idolatries of God's people. Nahum is called, though he mentions Judah, primarily to the sins of Nineveh. But Nahum wasn't like Jonah sent to Nineveh. Jonah had prophesied more than a century before. Jonah's word had been blessed. Nineveh had been blessed. Nineveh had been at that time spared. But those that repented at the preaching of Jonah were not followed. and their posterity by those that repented against Israel's God. No, they pursued their sin. They with violence came against nation after nation. They were used of God to send the northern tribes of Israel into captivity. Remember Amos' striking prophecy of the inevitability of judgment for the northern tribes. Nineveh, capital of Assyria, was the vehicle of that judgment. It was used as the fulfillment of God's promise to judge Israel. But in the sovereign purpose of God, in the counsel of God, in the justice of God, the fact that God judged Nineveh in His chastening of Israel did not excuse Nineveh for their sin. And so Nahum is given to prophesy against Nineveh, to speak of Nineveh's judgment. I want tonight just simply to seek to give a summary of the book. I'm actually going to... Well, I don't know if I'm breaking a rule of homiletics or not. I remember sitting in homiletics with Dr. Cairns I had three homiletics teachers over the years, one at VJ previously, and we had been taught in one class that it was good in your messages to let your first point be your longest and then a little shorter on the next point and a little shorter again until the last point was the shortest of all. Dr. Cairns was lecturing about how to structure your proofs They were called in his class instead of points, and he suggested an equal treatment of all, and I shared this comment from the previous teacher. Not so much challenging, Dr. Cairns. Well, it met with a pretty fierce response. Who's right? I don't know. But I intend at least tonight to follow the previous instruction and have a decreasing length of attention to the three points that I want to suggest to you this evening. So, I guess we'll have to wait to glory to find out which teacher was on the money with regard to that homiletical rule. But I do want to share, as I said, hopefully in summary of the book, these three focuses, foci, of our attention tonight. The first one is the certainty of God's judgment. The striking words of the opening chapter and equally striking some of what we've read there in the third. It's sobering to consider the character and the amount, the strength, the ineffability, the awfulness. Words could go on of the judgment that God is sending upon Nineveh. But as we look at the certainty of God's judgment, there are a couple of things that we keep in mind as we see how He describes Himself and describes the judgment that He will send. The character of God in sending judgment. We mentioned Habakkuk's words that we may come to in our next prophet. He's of purer eyes than to behold evil. There's been no evil in God in making use of the Assyrians and the Ninevites in His judgment of Israel. But He holds them accountable for their own sins. And as He describes Himself and the certainty of His judgment that He will send upon them, I say we see something first of God's character. We read that He is, verse 2, jealous. God is jealous. Now we most often use that word in a context that can be negative. Jealousy is a trait that can be wrong. We can be inappropriately jealous. Jealous when we have no reason to be jealous. Jealous when we're jealous for something perhaps that doesn't rightfully belong to us. But there's a good point of jealousy. Jealousy for that which is right. Jealousy for where such things belong. The fact that God is jealous teaches us that holiness permits no rivals. It's not a weakness in God that He's jealous for His own name and for His own glory. It's not that we could do just as well if we were to follow another God and His jealousy then is like ours. No, His jealousy for His own glory, His jealousy for His own name is also jealousy for our good. What good comes to us when we worship a false god? What good comes to any when they follow idols? Idols mock and ultimately slay their worshipers. God is jealous. He permits no rivals. And in Him, can we understand that covenant fidelity? He is a God to His people. We also find the character of our God is avenging. Three times in verse 2, God's judgments are spoken of here as His vengeance. Again, vengeance not as often as the case among sinners. God's judgments, God's vengeance is not the uncontrolled whim of an unrighteous anger. Rather, it's again part of His holiness. Part of meeting out what His law prescribes. So God is jealous. God is avenging. And while God is holy and without sin, we say in putting forth these characteristics, it is still, perhaps, well certainly, all the more so sobering for those upon whom His judgment will fall. But also as Nahum continues on, God is jealous, he says, verse 2, revenge us and taketh vengeance. And then verse 3, slow to anger. If you were in a Hebrew class, you may have Dr. Barrett give you one of the more memorable ways to understand a phrase underneath. This one would be long of nostrils. The flare of the nostril. Part of anger. But God being slow to anger. But notice what it says following that. Slow to anger and great in power. In the human arena of warfare, to be patient, to be slow of anger, if you will, could be a detriment to allow an enemy time to gain strength, to build up its resources, plan its attack. This slowness to take vengeance, this slowness of anger would, I say, in human warfare be a detriment. But not with God. God couples patience with power. No matter how long He forbears sending His judgment, No matter how long-suffering, how patient, how slow to anger he is, no enemy will achieve a strength that can dare even approach the power of our God. He will but speak a word and they are consumed in a moment. God is slow to anger and great in power. Such power is linked to His character and His holiness. And we need not fear that power unless we're transgressors of His holiness, transgressors of His power. If you notice in verses 3 and following, these descriptions of that power, The Lord's flow to anger great and power will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm. The clouds are the dust of His feet." Some of Nahum's descriptions of the power of God are such that they're even out of the context of his prophecy. He dries up the rivers. Beishan languisheth in caramel in the flower of Lebanon. Mountains quake at Him and the hills melt. The earth is burned at His presence. Yea, the world and all that dwell therein." I think here in the prophecy against Nineveh, perhaps some harbingers of the second advent. and the flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not His Gospel. We read of it in 2 Thessalonians 1, last Lord's Day. But notice in verse 6, the sequence of rhetorical questions. Who can stand before His indignation? And who can abide the fierceness of His anger? These rhetorical questions admit of only one answer. None. Nineveh boasted its power, the city, the greatness of its walls. The moat, I forget, was it something 120 feet across and 60 feet deep, fed by the Tigris River, which ultimately flooded and breached the walls and made a way for the Babylonians to get in. But Nineveh boasted that she couldn't be overcome And God speaks the Word. Who can stand? Who can stand? None. The certainty of God's judgments. Certainly what is put here in Nineveh with regard to the city of Nineveh is true of that last day, really of every enemy of God's people. But I think the harbingers are here of that Babylon the Great that comes, as we read, in the days that are yet future for us. The power of God in taking vengeance. But I want to come to a second thought this evening. The certainty of God's judgment is based on His character and His power. And of course, these are unchanging and apply today and to the end of the age and forever. But I want to think secondly on the blindness of God's people. I put a little parenthesis here with regard to the title of this thought because this is a potential blindness. It's not a universal blindness. It's not always true of the church, of the people of God. But sadly, often it is. Nahum ministered and wrote best we can determine in the reign of Manasseh. Manasseh was a wicked king. If you read in Kings and Chronicles the description of Manasseh's reign, he was so wicked that it said he made Judah to sin more so than the nations that surrounded them. He pressed them to a level of ungodliness that outstripped the ungodliness of the Gentiles. He was remarkably ungodly. He was numbered among those that had his children pass through the fire. There's a level of idolatry that frankly boggles the mind. Manasseh's father, Hezekiah, had seen the armies of Assyria The Ninevites come against and take away the northern kingdom. But they and all their power came against Jerusalem. It seemed indeed hopeless according to human things, according to natural power and outcomes. Jerusalem was toast. But read Hezekiah's prayer. And I always marvel when I read that portion of Old Testament history. Be careful in how I phrase this. Certainly, what God did in rescuing Jerusalem was in answer to prayer. In answer to Hezekiah. What Hezekiah had done in his prayer, he'd spread out the letter. The blasphemous letter. Who is your God? Is He any better than the gods of His other cities and kingdoms that we've overwhelmed? We're going to overwhelm you as well. They mocked the Lord. We could say, in a sense, God was responding not merely to Hezekiah's prayer, but to Rabshakeh's blasphemous speech. And what seemed impossible was impossible to men. What God did without Jerusalem lay on the land. Rescued them from the mighty armies of Assyria. Manasseh has this miraculous deliverance, this answer of the true God to prayer offered from His people in his immediate history, if you will. The previous generation had seen God rescue them undeservingly, and yet an answer to prayer. You would think Manasseh would have been the beginning of a turn then, a reviving direction in Judah. But instead, he teaches Judah how to sin more. That is, I say, an example of the blindness of God's people. I've often, in recent years, had the parallel come in my own heart and mind of our own nation, the nations of Western Europe, the Second World War and the threat of Nazism, the unvarnished evil of Hitler, and the remarkable victory that God gave, you would think that with the real threat of what a very possible Nazi victory would have meant, and the knowledge of that, those that rescued those in the prison camps and in the concentration camps, we think there would have been a solemnity that have come upon the nation that would have almost brought revival here and thanksgiving for deliverance. But what generation followed that generation? The 60s. Sexual revolution. Every other kind of revolution that's brought us to where we are. I've thought a few times in recent months reading news articles. Sometimes I scam the article quickly to get the gist of it and read the comments. I don't know how much more news there is in the comments, but you get a little piece of what people are thinking. Sometimes it's quite humorous. All the time it's staggering with regard to grammatical errors, but those are in the article now too, but I digress. But I think about a few times I've read of some of the leaders of the 1960s and 70s in pop culture. The sex, drugs, and rock and roll people that have, in some cases, spoken out against the madness of our current generation about the amazingly awful things that this generation is embracing and promoting. And I scratch my head. You know, somebody can read that and think, oh, well, one of our generation is saying something good. No. They're just giving an example of a world they tried to create. Let's just break these parts of God's law. And that'll be fine. And that'll be fine. We can't pick and choose what parts of God's law we think are okay and we want to abide by. And what parts of God's law we think are a little outdated and we'll have our fun. But yet, don't we often do that? We become selective in our applications of truth. It doesn't work that way. For any leader of the 1960s that wants to cry out against what's being pushed down the throats of our culture today, you just have to say, you can complain, but you opened the door. You gave them the currency to deal with. You taught them how to rebel. He taught them there were no real rules. But we're speaking of the blindness of God's people. Manasseh. He should have been humbled by the mercy of God. Instead, he deepens Judah's sin. And as we think of Nahum, This is certainly conjecture. But as Manasseh reigns, and he had a lengthy reign, he would have heard Micah. He would have heard preaching against the sins of Judah. He obviously ignored those until ultimately God chastened him and sent him into a virtually personal captivity and brought him back. But he perhaps could have looked at Nahum and said, now here's a prophet. Here's a man of God we need to listen to. He's preaching against Nineveh. He's preaching against our enemies. He's preaching God's judgment upon them. And boy, what a preacher he is! Who can stand against God? That's true. God sent Nahum to display and predict his judgment against Nineveh and the Assyrians. But it doesn't mean Manasseh and Judah are sinless. It doesn't mean he gets to listen to Nahum and not listen to Micah. And I wonder in our context today how many in professing Christendom are happy enough to hear prophecy messages against the coming man of sin and Babylon the Great and all of these things which are true, but yet give no thought to the sins of God's people, to the errors of the church, to the Jerusalem and Judah of this day. Let's not be a people that will listen when Nahum preaches and not listen when Micah or an Amos or a Habakkuk come to preach. The certainty of God's judgment, the blindness of God's people, But lastly, the comfort of the remnant. Nahum mainly speaks words of judgment to and against Nineveh. But he also gives words of comfort to the remnant of God's people. Those who are not as Manasseh blind to their own sins, but mindful of their sins. Crying to God for the sins of the nation and the sins of their own heart. And the comfort of this oracle of judgment against Nineveh is that whatever in the providence of God, God allows to transpire in history. The end of the story is the blessing of His people. It's the prosperity of His kingdom and the casting down and away of every enemy of Him and of us. And they are sober words for those that are ungodly in this world. but given in a season in which we need wisdom to hear such words and to have a Gospel comfort and not a false comfort. Not a comfort of the false prophets in Judah that said Jeremiah was the traitor and that Jerusalem could never fall. No, let us hear truth and not lies. Well, I trust the Lord will prosper these brief thoughts from this prophet of judgment to Nineveh. The Nineveh's of our day will deal with the same God as we. Let's bow our heads together. Our Heavenly Father, we are grateful tonight that You are the same God who sent Nahum to preach against the sin of Nebuchadnezzar. You had previously sent Jonah to preach to them a coming judgment, and yet You granted them repentance in that hour. A repentance not followed by those that came after. Lord, help make, keep us a penitent and believing people. And give us wisdom for our days. Lord, let us never be as a manasseh thinking we can entertain our own idols and God will deal with the Nineveh's and leave us alone. So Lord, give us gospel wisdom to be truly among the believing remnant of your heritage. We pray it in Jesus' precious name. Amen.