The Surety of Judgement
Nahum: God of Wrath and Refuge • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 40:57
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· 12 viewsThe Divine Warrior will judge His enemies because their wickedness is full, His past judgments are precedents, and their pride seals their fate.
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1 Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder— no end to the prey!
2 The crack of the whip, and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot!
3 Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end— they stumble over the bodies!
4 And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms.
5 Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame.
6 I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle.
7 And all who look at you will shrink from you and say, “Wasted is Nineveh; who will grieve for her?” Where shall I seek comforters for you?
8 Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, and water her wall?
9 Cush was her strength; Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers.
10 Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity; her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains.
11 You also will be drunken; you will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy.
12 All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs— if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.
13 Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars.
14 Draw water for the siege; strengthen your forts; go into the clay; tread the mortar; take hold of the brick mold!
15 There will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust. Multiply yourselves like the locust; multiply like the grasshopper!
16 You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away.
17 Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences in a day of cold— when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they are.
18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.
19 There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?
We have seen over the last several weeks.
2 The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.
Yahweh is jealous and avenging on all His enemies.
The God who is love is like a mighty warrior that has had his wife ripped from Him.
His jealousy boils over out of love for His bride.
His love is a Holy Love which at times manifests itself with raging wrath toward evil doers.
God’s holiness means that He is “set apart” and “seperate.”
“But there our troubles begin, because naturally I think I'm lovely. So if God is "set apart" from me, I assume the problem is with him (and I can do all this in the subtlest, most subconscious way). His holiness looks like a prissy rejection of my happy, healthy loveliness.” Delighting in the Trinity, pg 114
The sinful human heart hates consequences.
We hate consequences because it would imply that they did something wrong.
We hate consequences because we sense it to be “unjust” in some way.
We hate consequences because we subtly believe that the issue really wasn’t that bad.
“Now if God's holiness can seem off-putting, his wrath can seem hideous. And if God is not triune, it is. If God is just the biggest boy in the school who must have his every way or else lose it in fits of carpet-biting rage, then his anger is repellent. All his other good qualities would be as nothing when we saw those red eyes. Yet that is just how God's anger is often seen.” —Michael Reeves
As one theologian that lived during the tyranical ethnic warfare happened around him. A Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf.
“‘I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn't God love? Shouldn't divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That's exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of God's wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grand-parently fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators' basic goodness? Wasn't God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God's wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn't wrathful at the sight of the world's evil. God isn't wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.’”
The Bible is clear.
God’s wrath is coming toward the ungodly.
Why Nineveh though?
God will give even more evidence.
There was no need for any more evidence.
The verdict is clear, but He will just continue to heap up the offenses.
The Divine Warrior will judge His enemies because their wickedness is full, His past judgment are precedence, and their pride seals their fate.
The Divine Warrior will judge His enemies because their wickedness is full, His past judgment are precedence, and their pride seals their fate.
Their judgment will be because of three things: Wickedness, Precedent, and Pride
The Divine Warrior will surely judge because of wickedness
The Divine Warrior will surely judge because of wickedness
1 Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder— no end to the prey!
A “woe” is common in the prophets because it’s a final word of warning.
These messages are “prophetic threats that had their primary context in funeral dirges” (NIV Application).
We’re hearing a funeral song her for the people of Nineveh.
1 Woe to the city guilty of bloodshed! She is full of lies; she is filled with plunder; she has hoarded her spoil!
Their wickedness was to the brim.
Their wickedness was to the brim.
The city is filled with blood because of the bloodshed they have committed!
Taken advantage of the poor and misfortunate for too long.
Yahweh will put up with it no longer!
Like we saw before, all of this destruction will come at the hands of another.
God hands people over to their sin.
2 The crack of the whip, and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot!
3 Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end— they stumble over the bodies!
You can hear the ominous sound of the their defeat.
The Babylonians and the Medes are thundering on the horizon.
Their wickedness was that of a sorceress harlot.
Their wickedness was that of a sorceress harlot.
Notice the reason that God gives in Nahum 3:4…
4 Because you have acted like a wanton prostitute— a seductive mistress who practices sorcery, who enslaves nations by her harlotry, and entices peoples by her sorcery—
Literally “whore of whores” or the most pervious of any other peoples.
Nineveh has been whoring after the “gods” of “greed, sex, and power” (NIV Commentary).
Though this city looks abundantly beautiful on the outside, it is filled with endless dead bones that are rotting and dying.
Just as David looked upon Bathsheba and saw a beautiful woman who he was willing to loose his whole kingdom for…
Here is this city that looks beautiful but will truly destroy all that yoke themselves to her.
3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, 4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
Application for Believers
The world will tempt you with any number of things that look appealing on the surface.
The world will bait the hook with many tempting forms of bait, but we must see with the eyes of faith.
11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore,
12 cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble,
13 cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls.
We must consider how tame and normal they appear on the surface.
Always asking ourselves the question,
“Do we have things?”
“Do our things have us?”
Not only was it vain beauty masking rotting bones…
Assyria was obsessed with magic, witchcraft, and even sorcery.
The ancient world reveals thousands of tablets from Nineveh describing their own obsession with sorcery.
4 Because you have acted like a wanton prostitute— a seductive mistress who practices sorcery, who enslaves nations by her harlotry, and entices peoples by her sorcery—
As C.S. Lewis showed us in That Hideous Strength, the modern world has not abandoned magic.
It has simply baptized it under the label “science.”
The same desire for hidden, godlike power remains—only the tools have changed.
Just because a man puts on a lab coat and calls it “science” does not mean
They used their sorcery as means of gaining power.
Power to control the physical realm and all on the backs of others.
Judgment is coming because their wickedness is full to the brim!
5 Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts…
Their wickedness will receive perfect retribution.
Their wickedness will receive perfect retribution.
What kind of retribution though?
Shame is something that sticks.
It’s sticks to those who have been shamed because it cannot be easily taken back.
Nineveh has shamed her enemies.
But now she will be shamed with an immovable shame.
5 Behold, I am against you…will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame.
Perfect retribution of shame.
Don’t ever say that God doesn’t taunt His enemies, because He surely does!
God will bring the shame that they brought upon others upon themselves.
Yahweh will lift their “metaphorical skirts to show the world the detestable truth” (NIV Commentary).
Other nations will marvel at their shame.
They will marvel at their exposure.
6 I will pelt you with filth; I will treat you with contempt; I will make you a public spectacle.
7 Everyone who sees you will turn away from you in disgust; they will say, ‘Nineveh has been devastated! Who will lament for her?’ There will be no one to comfort you!”
Application — Hell as the Haunt of the Shameful
When we hear phrases like, “Go to hell!”
This impious phrase has become so normal that people do not fathom what they’re saying.
Hell will not be the place where they get to hang out with their drinking buddies.
It will be the place of complete and total separation from God.
Part of the separation will be the utter sense of shamefulness.
Every sin will be revealed.
Every life will be opened to God’s perfect scrutiny.
Application to All
The cross is the perfect picture of this.
As Jesus hung on the cross we see some people wagging their heads in disgust (Matthew 27:39).
Some taunting him to shame Him.
Others wept.
But Jesus prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them!” (Luke 23:34).
This picture is the most profoundest of realities.
Crucifixion was the most shameful of punishments.
Worse still… “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Galatians 3:13 citing Deuteronomy 21:23).
The Son of God bears the shame of sinners.
The unrighteous enemies are clothed with His righteousness.
2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Judgment is coming because their wickedness is full to the brim!
And praise be to God that the Christian can look at the cross and know that their shame has been bore.
The Divine Warrior will surely judge because of precedent
The Divine Warrior will surely judge because of precedent
Often when we approach a biblical passage of judgment we walk away with the wrong conclusion.
For instance, think of how God dealt to Egypt when Israel was taken from the Red Sea.
We often leave this story thinking,
“Well that was all fine and good, and I’m glad God delivered His people.”
But what if when we read about the foreshadowings of judgment…
We should leave with a different conclusion?
What if we should leave that account and stand back with fearful trembling that we have been passed over from judgment as Christians.
And all those who are outside of Christ have judgment awaiting them.
The precedent anticipates final judgment.
The precedent anticipates final judgment.
8 Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with water around her, her rampart a sea, and water her wall?
9 Cush was her strength; Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers.
When we hear about Thebes we don’t get what Nahum is talking about, but in the Ancient world everyone would have known about it.
These cities that the Assyrians destroyed are now being described back to them.
“Do you remember that city that you destroyed, Thebes by the river? That’s your destiny!”
These cities thought of themselves as impenetrable, until they weren’t.
They gave no thought to enemies until they were under siege.
10 Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity; her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains.
11 You also will be drunken; you will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy.
Application — All previous judgments are a warning.
The precedent reveals the manner of judgment.
The precedent reveals the manner of judgment.
The manner of judgment as we have seen is God handing Nineveh over to their sin.
12 All your fortresses are like fig trees with first-ripe figs— if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.
All of their fruit will easily fall into the mouths of their opponents.
13 Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars.
Notice the evidence of a nation experiencing judgment.
Women fighting battles
It’s not that women can’t fight battles.
It’s that they shouldn’t!
They shouldn’t fight battles because they were made to bring forth life.
They were not made to take life.
Open borders
Their borders were gone because they were destroyed.
A city without walls is defenseless.
They are open to any manner of attacks.
Fire and destruction
Their city is being burned while they’ll be in it.
The Divine Warrior will surely judge because of pride.
The Divine Warrior will surely judge because of pride.
Pride in their self-determination.
Pride in their self-determination.
14 Draw water for the siege; strengthen your forts; go into the clay; tread the mortar; take hold of the brick mold!
15 There will the fire devour you; the sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locust.
Pride in their leader’s self-preservation.
Pride in their leader’s self-preservation.
Multiply yourselves like the locust; multiply like the grasshopper!
16 You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locust spreads its wings and flies away.
17 Your princes are like grasshoppers, your scribes like clouds of locusts settling on the fences in a day of cold— when the sun rises, they fly away; no one knows where they are.
18 Your shepherds are asleep, O king of Assyria; your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.
Pride in shaking their fists at heaven.
Pride in shaking their fists at heaven.
19 There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?
The ungodly have always sought to erase this fact though.
4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.”
Some interpret Christ’s delay in coming to judge sin fully and finally as His neglect.
But this is the wrong conclusion.
God is not slow to fulfill His promises.
7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
The Divine Warrior will judge His enemies because their wickedness is full, His past judgment are precedence, and their pride seals their fate.
The Divine Warrior will judge His enemies because their wickedness is full, His past judgment are precedence, and their pride seals their fate.
Benediction
Benediction
