Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning.

The Apostle Paul once said “If I must boast I will boast of the things pertaining to my weakness,” so this morning I'm going to boast in my weakness.

Well, I'm not really boasting, but I'll talk about it.

A weakness and a challenge for me is responding properly to hearing opposing views.

My tendency is to automatically reject an opposing view because I'm right and they're wrong.

Rich Mullins once said, “If God gave us the Bible it wasn't so we could try to prove that we're right about everything.”

If God truly gave us the Bible it was to communicate something to us about Himself.

Therefore, our goal when studying Scripture must be to find out what God's truth is.

We have to accept that our views are not always right, so if we find something in Scripture that seems to contradict our belief then we must examine it to find the truth that's there rather than ignore it, because just like putting masking tape over the gas warning light in the car, ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

Today I'd like to read to you a viewpoint of the Bible that will probably oppose our beliefs...it might even challenge them.

Or, maybe like me, your response might be to automatically reject it and write it off as evil and leave the room.

The following is a quote I pulled off the internet.

I don't know the author's name.

The subject he is writing about is the supposed discontinuity between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.

“For far too long priests and preachers have completely ignored the vicious criminal acts that the Bible promotes.

The so called “God” of the Bible makes Osama Bin Laden look like a Boy Scout.

This God, according to the Bible, is directly responsible for many mass-murders, rapes, pillage, plunder, slavery, child abuse and killing, not to mention the killing of unborn children.”

Then he goes on to say...“I know that most Christians believe that God is a good and loving god, and wants people to do good things.

I believe that most people want to do good things and behave morally.

I also believe that many Christians haven’t really read the Bible, or just read certain passages in church.

This is understandable, as the Bible is hard to read due to its archaic language and obscure references.

Also many priests and preachers don’t like to read certain passages in the Bible because they present a message of hate not love.”

Could this be true?

Let's be objective here... could it be that all along we have had a mistaken understanding of the Bible due to our unwillingness to objectively examine all Scripture?

Are we narrow-minded to the point of not being willing to hear views different than our own?

Let's consider the subject at hand...is the God of the Old Testament the same as the God of the New Testament?

Is the God that pours out His wrath in the slaughter of many nations the same God that “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten so that whoever believes in Him will not die but have eternal life?”

During the time the Reformer Martin Luther was still a monk, the stumbling block that consumed his spiritual life was not understanding how he could be forgiven by this angry God of wrath.

After all, if God is so angry and judgmental...do we want Him as our God?

What kind of God is this?

Well, this morning I'd like us to take a look at one of these passages often cited as proof that God is only evil and angry.

Let's take a look at one of these passages that internet writer says Christians are not willing to read, and let's see for ourselves what we should make of it.

We're going to be in the book of Nahum, Chapter 1.

It's six books left from Matthew.

This is apparently the most overlooked, under-taught book of the Bible, so this is perfect for our consideration this morning.

Nahum Chapter 1, verses 1-8.

Now, most of us are familiar with the prophet Jonah who went to the wicked city Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and prophesied to them.

Nineveh repented and God spared their city.

Nahum was the second prophet to deliver a message regarding Nineveh, only this time 100 years of wickedness have followed their original repentance.

The Assyrians were a nation God used to punish His own people,Judah, for their own disobedience.

Now Judah's affliction was complete, and so was God's patience with the Assyrians, because even though it was God using them to carry out His will, they were still a wicked people deserving judgment.

To begin this message Nahum gives us this amazing, but intimidating description of God's character.

Let's look at verse 1.

2. /The oracle of Nineveh.

The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite./

The first thing Nahum does here is say this is a revelation from God, so these words are the words of God.

The following description of God's character is God's own description of Himself.

Verse 2: /A jealous and avenging God is the LORD./

Jealousy isn't normally considered a positive character quality.

How is it a good thing that God is jealous?

In the Hebrew the word means an intense passion or zeal for something.

Throughout the Old Testament God is described as being jealous...jealous for His own glory, and jealous for His people, meaning He deeply desires their affection as well as fights for their protection.

But right from the start here we see that this character trait is balanced with being an avenging God.

/A jealous and avenging God is the LORD.

The LORD is avenging and wrathful.

The LORD takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies, or He keeps or maintains wrath for His enemies./

This phrase, “avenging and wrathful,” literally says that God is a lord of wrath or a possessor of wrath.

Righteous anger and vengeance belongs to no one else, but God Himself.

And One who is a lord of wrath and maintains wrath for His enemies is one who exercises perfect, calculated control of the wrath that He pours out on His enemies.

3.

However, we should never think of God as an angry ogre always on a rampage after those He doesn't like, because of what we read in verse 3: /The LORD is slow to anger and great in power./

Rather than immediately flying off the handle at everything He disapproves of, God is slow to anger.

He allows lot of time to pass before He carries out judgment.

This is exactly what's going on here.

Nineveh repented after hearing God's message from Jonah, and God relented from judgment because they sought His forgiveness.

But then they turned back from God and went back into a life of wickedness.

Only now after 150 years is God going after them in judgment.

Now, having said that, just because God is patient and slow to anger does not mean that He is weak, because here it's balanced out with His being great in power, And the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.

This means there is no wrong that can be done anywhere or at any time by anyone that will not ultimately find its punishment in God.

He's keeping track.

4.

There are a lot of people who think that somehow they are exempt from God's judgmental because they are good people.

“How could God judge me?,” they say.

“Do you really think He would judge a nice person like me?”

The question for the person who says that is, “If you were arrested for committing a crime, and you went to court, would you rely on your being a good person to get out of punishment?

Is the judge going to relent from making sure you serve out your sentence simply because you're a nice guy?” /He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.

/

5. Now that God has announced His character as jealous and avenging, how does that vengeance play out?

If God were to pour out that wrath and vengeance on the earth, what might that look like?

Let's look at the second half of verse 3. /In whirlwind and storm is His way, And clouds are the dust beneath His feet./

If God were to come down and walk upon the earth, His path would be a whirlwind and a storm, and in the same way that people walk on the dust of the ground, so God walks on the clouds of the sky.

God is bigger and more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

Now look at verse 4: /He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; He dries up all the rivers./

The same way that God dried up the Red Sea in Exodus and the Jordan River in Joshua, so God can just as easily speak and dry up all the rivers on the entire earth.

The amount of water is not the question; the only question is God's will...is it His choice to do it?

Bashan and Carmel wither; The blossoms of Lebanon wither.

Three places used in the Bible as symbols of fertility and power...

At the simple rebuke of God the rivers will dry up to the extent of withering the most lush, the most powerful and the most fruitful.

6. Verse 5: /Mountains quake because of Him And the hills dissolve; Indeed the earth is upheaved by His presence, The world and all the inhabitants in it./

This phrase literally reads “the earth lifts up from before Him.”

The image Nahum is painting is like a model village.

Imagine if you had one of those elaborate model villages with the train set.

You spend hundreds of hours collecting, painting and assembling this village.

You've got the town square over here with the church and the park.

Maybe it's Sunday in your model so you've got people coming in and out of the church.

You've got people in the park flying a kite and ducks in the pond.

And there's the train tracks running alongside the park, down the hill and through the valley where it winds around the lake and up to the sawmill.

The sawmill runs 24/7 in your town so it's full of people even though it's Sunday... you've got all this business and all this activity, and all these people...but there is one problem.

You're village rests, not on a sturdy wooden table, but on a flimsy card table... and then a big guy walks by, stops at the village, raises his fist and pounds the model as hard as he can on that flimsy card table...every person, duck, park bench, building and train track is going to fly up into the air, and come back down in complete disunity, complete disarray and is no longer anything that resembles a village.

If God decided to pour out His ultimate, totally destructive judgment on this earth, every little thing on it would erupt in total chaos.

Thank God He is slow to anger, and exacting and calculated in His judgment.

7.

So where does this leave people in relation to God? Look at verse 6: /Who can stand before His indignation?

Who can endure the burning of His anger?/