Sermon Tone Analysis

The Sequel is Always Better

Everyone loves the sequel, right?

Newer is always better.

Teen Wolf 2. Jaws 2. Rocky 2. (These are some recent examples).

Okay, maybe not.

Shrek 2? Pretty great.

Did better than the original.

Maverick better than Top Gun, supposedly?

Jonah

I LOVE Jonah!

I love the ridiculously awesome adventure story.

God tells prophet to go West, so he runs east, stormy seas, would rather die than obey, thrown overboard, drowns or almost drowns, “saved” by getting ate by a giant fish… Vomited on land… reluctantly obeys God.

Then he gives the weak-sauce “you’re going to die” speech to Niniveh… and they actually hear it and repent and God relents!

It is salvation to the Gentiles.

And it is an answer to the question of what God is doing in the rest of the nations before Jesus.

In large part the world is waiting for Jesus… but God is still sending His Word and His Prophets out.

We don’t know how many Jonah’s there were to other cities and other nations.

I LOVE Jonah.

But I don’t think many other folks, contemporaries of Jonah and after, I don’t think they loved Jonah.

Nineveh becomes the capital of Assyria.

Assyria very quickly becomes the big bad imperial nation of the Ancient Near East, and all the prophets we have been reading prophesy that God is going to use Assyria as an instrument of judgment and wrath and destroy Israel, the northern Kingdom.

And in 722, Assyria comes in and does.

(Description of Assyria’s destruction).

And they don’t leave Judah, the southern kingdom, alone either.

So when folks 100 years after Jonah are reading the story, they identify more with Jonah who was furious at God for his mercy.

It’s like reading a story about how God spared Berlin and Germany in the decades following World War II.

God sent a prophet, and they repented for like a few years… but then they turned around and wreaked havoc across all the surrounding nations!

Think how much destruction, how much grief, how much sin, how much evil could have been prevented if God had followed through on his judgment on Nineveh and Assyria.

I don’t think folks liked Jonah so much.

Or at least, they see a different hero.

They cry out against God with Jonah as he pouts.

How long will God allow evil to continue?

Nature of evil?

How can a “good God” allow evil to continue?

To flourish?

“How long, oh Lord?”

Here comes the sequel to Jonah.

Part II.

This is the other side of justice.

This is “peace-making”.

Nahum answers this decades or century-long prayer of God’s people.

ESPECIALLY in the decades since the destruction of Israel by the hands of Assyria.

Yes, God used that nation to render his judgment.

But also, that was a great evil and injustice.

They weren’t righteous judges, they were a human empire full of sin and wickedness… as are all human empires and nation from the Fall through today.

They were an extant evil and a present-danger to the people of God.

“How long will they be allowed to continue?”

Nahum

Nahum is the sequel to Jonah.

And it is everything Jonah wished happened in the first book.

It is the fulfillment of judgment upon Nineveh and all of Assyria.

Three chapters of celebration.

This is D-Day and V-Day all wrapped up together.

Nineveh was the largest city in the world for approximately fifty years.

Just a few years after Nahum’s warning, God’s judgment fell on Nineveh.

Nahum calls out a few things in his prediction of the coming destruction.

They would hide behind their famous brick walls

They would be destroyed by flood

Fire would devour them

They would be stripped of their gold and then forgotten.

We are going to read the WHOLE book (3 short chapters).

Lest it become a wash of “Bibley sounding words”, listen in for these things, these specific predictions of Nahum.

And then we will hear what happened in Jonah Part 2 - the Drowning Fire.

The city of Nineveh.

Surrounded to the west and south by two rivers (Tigris and Zab).

East and North were two MASSIVE moats, the equal of the rivers.

According to an ancient source, Diodorus, might be a questionable historical source.

But he describes:

The King of Assyria had become overjoyed with his past victories, so he began a celebration for his soldiers serving them with great quantities of wine and other provisions.

Learning that the army was drunken and relaxed, the Medes quickly attacked their camp by the cover of night catching them off-guard.”

After slaying many of the soldiers, they pursued the rest of them as far as the city . . .

The rebels then massed their forces on the plains before the city and defeated the Assyrians in two battles . . .

some Assyrians were cut down while fleeing, while others, who had been shut out from entering the city, were forced to leap into the Euphrates river.

They were destroyed almost to a man.

So great was the slaughter that the water mingled with blood and could be seen for a great distance.

Furthermore, now that the Assyrian king was shut up in the city (of Nineveh) and surrounded, many of the nations revolted, each of them going over to the side giving freedom from his rule.

They were destroyed almost to a man.

So great was the slaughter that the water mingled with blood and could be seen in the river for a great distance.

Furthermore, now that the Assyrian king was shut up in the city and surrounded, many of the nations revolted, each of them going over to the side of freedom from his rule. . . .

"Now there was a prophecy which had been handed down to him from his ancestors that "No enemy will ever take Nineveh by storm unless the river shall first become the city's enemy."

Assuming, therefore, that this would never be, he held out hope, his thought being to endure the siege and await troops which he hoped would be sent from his subjects . . .

The inhabitants of the city had a great abundance of all provisions, since the king had made plans for this situation.

Consequently the siege dragged on. . . .

But in the third year, after there had been heavy and continuous rains.

it came to pass that the Euphrates running very full, inundated a portion of the city and broke down the walls for a distance of 20 stades (approximately 2 1/4 miles.)

At this the king, believing that the prophecy was fulfilled and that the river had plainly become the city's enemy, abandoned all hope of saving himself.

And in order that he might not fall into the hands of the enemy, he built an enormous pyre in his palace . . . he consigned . . .

himself and his palace to flames. . . . the silver and gold was carried off.”

The rebels, on learning of the death of the king, took the city by forcing an entrance where the wall had fallen.

Then they loot and burn the place.

It wasn’t until 1800 that archaeologists began digging up and discovering portions of ancient Nineveh.

No matter the evil worked against you.

No matter how dark the days get.

No matter how desperate it gets.

No matter how long we have to wait… this we know:

Justice is coming.