The Figs Have Fallen

Nahum 3:1-19

2 Timothy 2:8-14a- Bible

(vv.1-4) Woe to the bloody city

A city of wickedness

The pernicious (murderer)

This text:

No end to the prey

Hosts of slain

Heaps of corpses

Dash infants against the walls and rocks

Bodies without end

Historical record:

Brutality in almost every conceivable way

Dismemberment

Impaling men on poles

Skinning enemies alive

Hanging heads from city walls

Shalmaneser III wrote:

“I slew their warriors with the sword, descending upon them like Adad when he makes a rainstorm pour down. In the moat (of the town) I piled them up, I covered the wide plain with the corpses of their fighting men, I dyed the mountains with their blood like red wool. I took away from him many chariots (and) horses broken to the yoke. I erected pillars of skulls in front of his town, destroyed his (other) towns, tore down (their walls) and burnt (them) down.”

The plunderer

They took plunder from countless conquered cities and nations

The prostitute

They allured opposition into submission by promising benefits pleasures to be enjoyed by those who become vassals states to Assyria

The Pretender (liar)

They always turned against their word and took rather than gave

Thus is the world and its deeds

We should not be surprised by the existence of sin all around us

The horror of our own sin

How awful do you think your own sin to be?

Do you think yourself more deserving of God’s grace than these Ninevites?

Romans 3:10-18- Bible

Romans 3:21-25a- Bible

(vv.5-17) The figs have fallen and are shamed

The Lord of Hosts is against Nineveh

I will lift your skirt over your face

He will strip and expose her in order to shame her as other nations watch

(vv.8-9) Are you better than Thebes?

Could be translated: “Will it go better for you than Thebes?”

It had:

Massive walls

Great geographic defenses

Strong allies on every side

And yet Assyria destroyed Thebes (v.10)

You also

Will be as a staggering drunk

Will go into hiding

Will seek refuge from the enemy

Will fall and be devoured as figs

Will become like women

Will be like a gateless city

The locus and grasshoppers will be no more

They have increased their merchants and important men

Nahum sarcastically tells them to increase them even more

It will not matter because they will be utterly gone

(vv.18-19) Your wound is incurable

They will not survive this

They will be utterly destroyed because the One of infinite power is against them

They have no hope of victory or national survival

They are doomed

The Lord of Hosts is against them

The great Gospel connection

Christ came to pay the price of sin for all who believe

2 Corinthians 5:21- For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Christ will return to judge the world and put away sin forever

Fall like figs

Revelation 6:12-17- When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

Feast of the birds

Revelation 19:11-21- Bible

Future glory

Revelation 21:1-4- Bible

All Sufficient Merit- Shane and Shane

All sufficient merit shining like the sun

A fortune I inherit by no work I have done

My righteousness I forfeit at my Savior's cross

Where all sufficient merit did what I could not

It is done it is finished

No more dеbt I owe

Paid in full all sufficient

Merit now my own