Nahum: Justice Served

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A while back I was driving down Nishna toward 59. As most of you know, the speed limit is 25 there. Now I usually keep a close eye on my speed, but this particular trip down Nishna my mind was elsewhere and I was running a little fast. Not to mention the tires on my jeep are bigger than what the speedometer is set to.

Needless to say I was recorded as going 13 miles over the speed limit. When I saw the flashing lights behind me, My first thought was, “Oh man, I sure hope I don’t get a ticket.”

I was breaking the law…but I didn’t want the consequences of my actions. In other words I didn’t want Justice Served!!

Create Tension

Do we truly want justice served? or do we want our interpretation of Justice to be served?

When I am driving down the road, going the speed limit, not breaking any laws, and a car comes zooming past me I often thing and sometimes say, “I wish there was a cop around to give him a ticket!

We want justice but what kind of justice?

Provide Solution

There is a prophet in the OT that deals directly with God’s Justice. That prophet…Nahum.

Nahum 1:1–3 “1 This message concerning Nineveh came as a vision to Nahum, who lived in Elkosh. 2 The Lord is a jealous God, filled with vengeance and rage. He takes revenge on all who oppose him and continues to rage against his enemies! 3 The Lord is slow to get angry, but his power is great, and he never lets the guilty go unpunished. He displays his power in the whirlwind and the storm. The billowing clouds are the dust beneath his feet.”

There is not much known about the prophet Nahum except that he is from Elkosh. But the location of Elkosh is highly debated.

To truly get a good understanding of Nahum you need to think of it as “Jonah Part II.”

In the book of Jonah, we see God sending the prophet to Nineveh to call the people to repentance. and thought a series of events we find that the city repented and was saved from the forthcoming judgement.

Now fast forward about 100-150 years. Nahum was sent to pronounce doom on Nineveh. For they had repented of their repentance.

As a nation they no longer lived repentant of their sins, and as a result, judgement was to come upon them. God’s Justice was going to be administered…

A lot of people have an issue with Nahum because we are told to love our enemies, but it seems here that God is going to destroy his enemies.

God is above us, we want a loving God and only a loving God.

You can not have a Perfectly Loving God without having a Perfectly Just God.

Hebrews 12:6 “6 For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.””

God’s Discipline is tied to God’s Love, and so is his Justice!

In the same way you would not know what freedom was if not for confinement, you can not know what mercy is without justice.

Why was God so bent on Justice against Nineveh and not the other nations who didn’t worship him but false gods’?

First, their cruelty people they captured was beyond imaginable and they were proud of it and displayed it, especially to the innocent.

It included but not limited to:

Skinning people alive, putting their skins on the city wall

Removing hands, feet, arms, legs, tongues, ears, eyes and if they are lucky their head.

Sometimes a noble would be paraded through town with the head of other nobles on their shoulders

Or their heads would be stacked up in a pyramid or like a totem pole.

They would take women to sell as slaves and if they had infants they would dash them not he rocks

Impalement

Trampling

First, they had already experienced God’s forgiveness because of their repentance and turned away form it.

God doesn’t take lightly those who are forgiven and eventually turn away from that forgiveness.

2 Peter 2:21–22 “21 It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. 22 They prove the truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.””

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