The Figs Have Fallen
Notes
Transcript
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