N1 Sept19

Nahum 1-3 Well Good morning Let’s pray Intro Illustration Years ago, I can remember driving from Canberra to Orange, I was going to catch up with some friends for a weekend. I made it through Canowindra and was heading towards Cudal, both are fairly small towns, dots on the map really. It’s a pretty quiet stretch of road and I only saw one other car…… it was the police car. It was pretty hard to miss I came around a hill and I saw him. Lights were flashing…. Or at least they were when he clocked me with his radar. I pulled over and waited. He pulled in behind me and slowly got out and walked towards me. It’s one of those moments in life where everything goes in slow motion. You can guess what he asked me can’t you…. How fast were you going? it was a rhetorical question he didn’t need me to tell him he already knew how fast I had been going. He knew the penalty for breaking the speed limit too. 109 in a 100 zone. He handed me the ticket and walked back to the car. I drove off feeling pretty down. The little slip of paper a reminder of my punishment. I later heard a lot of other people getting booked around Cudal & Canowindra. It seemed that this Policeman had pulled up countless people breaking the speed limit, breaking the law. I even heard that he booked his mother in law for speeding!!!! Wouldn’t that be a fun household at Christmas……. Now there is no need to raise your hand and confess but I wonder if you have been pulled up for speeding. Have you received punishment for being on the wrong side of the law? Sometimes we can think of God in this way. You might be someone who is always looking at God and think he is like that policeman just waiting to pounce on you when you do the wrong thing. Waiting to punish you. It’s possible to see this in today’s book. God the Policeman punishing the Ninevites Background Before we get started on Nahum it’s helpful to briefly look at the background to the story. The story of Nahum involves a city called Nineveh. It’s the capital city of a powerful nation called Assyria. Nineveh… you may remember it as the city that God told Jonah to go to. It’s the city tat Jonah initially ran away from To help us put it into order, the events that occur with Jonah take place about 100 years or so before what we are about to see happening in the book of Nahum. Jonah the reluctant prophet. The one who ended up taking Gods warning to the evil city of Nineveh. The people of Nineveh much to Jonah’s annoyance repented at this point and God spared them. The Assyrians were one of the most brutal empires in history Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. Cruelty and torture were a common occurrence. They even had sculptures made showing the torture scenes on display. They gained a reputation as a nation to be feared. The surrounding nations were terrified of what would happen if they lost a battle to the Assyrians. The northern and Southern Jewish Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were no exceptions. Has anyone watched a movie or TV show about gangsters? Have you ever seen where they get the shopkeepers to pay them protection money… basically the shopkeepers pay money so the gangsters don’t beat them up, steal their money or burn their shop down! Well Assyria is one of those gangsters and both the north and the south Kingdoms Israel & Judah paid protection money to Assyria so they wouldn’t get attacked and wiped out. The violent nature of the Assyrians even saw that despite the protection money being paid God used the Assyrians to decimate the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722BC. Assyria persecuted Israel for decades before the full-scale invasion. You can read about the unfaithfulness of Israel and their rebellion against God and God punishing Israel, being the tough cop elsewhere in the Old testament The Southern Kingdom of Judah endured Assyrian persecution for100 plus years before God delivered this prophecy through Nahum. Nahum 1 Let’s move on now and have a look at the book of Nahum. Nahum is a fairly short book 3 chapters in all. It’s a prophecy a warning written to the people of Nineveh, The Assyrians. While I will mainly be working from chapter 1 I will touch on a few thing sin chapters 2 & 3. Please keep you bibles open there It can be seen as quite a dark book talking about punishment and destruction yet interestingly enough the name Nahum means Comforter! Nahum opens up in verse 2 telling us something about Gods Nature, The Lord is Jealous God is an Avenging God; he takes vengeance on his foes. God vents his wrath on his enemies, wrath that will be poured out like fire! God talks about the total destruction he is going to bring upon Nineveh. Destruction that is so severe that there will not even be any descendants of the people of Nineveh to carry on the family name in V 14 . They are to be wiped from the face of the earth. How do you feel when you hear these phrases about God, you may be thinking that perhaps we are reading from the wrong book, surely this isn’t in the Bible! These passages don’t line up with the picture of a Loving God we may have. God is not lashing out or reacting like someone not in control. God is in control; wrath does not control him but rather he controls his wrath. The book of Jonah shows God being gracious to these people. They repented from their evil ways, if even for a moment and God was Gracious. God knew exactly what they were like the brutal torture they would inflict on people the pain and suffering they would cause. God knew what they would go on to do yet he withheld his wrath. The judgement to be poured out on Nineveh has been coming for some time. Now their time is up. Nahum tells us how great and powerful of God. He is in the whirlwind and storm, and he dries up the oceans and the rivers. It is God who makes the mountains quake and the hills melt away. The world and all in it shall tremble at his presence. This should remind us too that God should be feared. Verse 6 in Chapter 1 asks us two Rhetorical Questions Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? The answer is of course none of us…. Nahum has just described the enormity of God’s power. God enemies may do well they may even prosper for a while. They may even be spared from his judgment and wrath for a while. We can see this in Nineveh as God spared them from judgment at the time of Jonah. BUT when God chooses to bring judgment with his indignation and fierce anger none can withstand. As with much of the Bible there is a layer of meaning for some of the verses here, particularly verse 9 where is says that trouble will not come a second time. The first is that Nineveh will fall and not rise again, this is in line with what we read in the rest of the book. The destruction of Nineveh will be complete and will not rise again. God the Policeman stopping the lawbreaker in their tracks. As a result of this destruction to Nineveh though there is an underling message to God’s people. They will no longer be troubled by Gods enemies, Assyria. God is bringing them Comfort Nahum prophesies that there will be no escape for Nineveh, they will be unable to escape. In Verse 7 Nahum compares them to someone caught among thorns. A few years ago, that was me! I was literally caught in thorns. A good friend was with me and we…. well he …. was doing some work putting down pavers at my house. I ducked around the side of the shed to get something and there it was a rosebush with thousands of sharp thorns. I was caught…… I couldn’t move without thorns piercing my skin…. “BEN HELP…….” Thankfully Ben did come to my rescue, there may have been a good bit of laughter but he came to my rescue. Escape wouldn’t have been easy. It would have been very painful and For the Ninevites it will be worse, they have no chance of escape and no one who would or could come to their aid. They would stagger and be consumed like dry stubble in the flames. Chapters 2 & 3 talk of the destruction of Nineveh, the soldiers clad in scarlet marching towards the city and the devastation they will bring. Nineveh will be stripped bare; the palace will crumble and its people slaughtered. The imagery shows the full horror of invasion. In this book Nahum speaks to the Ninevites and urges the city to prepare for what is coming, to brace themselves and to marshal their strength. But he also knows that it will not save them. God speaks several times declaring that it is He who is against Nineveh, it is he who will burn the chariots and destroy the city. It is God who will make the voices of Nineveh silent. God is a slow to anger but he does take vengeance upon his enemies Nineveh the great city will lie in ruins. Yet none will mourn, instead they will clap their hands to hear of the end of this brutal empire. It is God who will destroy his enemies, in his timing. Despite the focus on Gods Wrath and destruction in the book of Nahum we do see another side of God. The dominant picture may be a vengeful God upon his enemies but there is also loving kindness shown to his people. Look back at Verse 7 The Lord is Good, a refuge in times of trouble for those who trust in him, or verse 13 where he lifts the yoke from the neck and tears the shackles away. While he brings destruction to Nineveh with one hand, he is bringing peace to his people with the other. He is bringing peace at this time to Judah. God uses the soldiers clad in scarlet defeat His enemies and save His people So, who is Gods Enemy? Just reading todays passage we can probably say that we can work out who God’s enemies are can’t we…. It’s easy to point the finger and see Nineveh and Assyria the cruel, vicious people as God enemies. They brutally attacked Gods people; they were evil. It’s as easy as seeing the bad guy in a classic western movie the one always wearing black. The one that even the dogs don’t like. But we need to stop for a moment yes, the Ninevites were God’s enemies and had been for a while. In the book of Jonah, God spared them then even though they were not much different to the ones receiving Gods message through Nahum. God’s own people Judah & Israel were also known for being brutal and wicked. In fact, God used Assyria to punish them too. God used his enemies to punish His people the Jewish nations. Assyria had wiped out Israel, 10 tribes gone crushed and scattered. It didn’t stop there though there were 50 towns of Judah had been destroyed. It’s almost easy to miss in v 12 God says that he had afflicted Judah through Assyria but he will do it no more. Today his enemies are not as obvious to see as the Assyrians. His enemies are not one specific nation. The Bible tells us His enemies are those who do not submit to Him and live with Jesus as Lord in their life. Back to the speeding ticket well looking back you could probably say I had a few choices. I could have sped off to avoid the ticket…… Except the police car was bigger and faster. I could have run for a little while but I would have been caught. Perhaps I could have tried to turn off the road and hide … it was broad daylight and the policeman knew the area better than I did. A bribe… probably not. There was no escape. I broke the Law so I deserved the punishment. It’s like that with God we have broken his Law and there is no escape, we have been caught red handed and the penalty has been given and the penalty is death. There is no fence sitting, you are either recognize your need for Jesus, his forgiveness and kingship or you don’t. Who are God’s people? Who are Gods people? Well we could say that the Jews the descendants of Abram Isaac & Jacob were the ones that He called out to be his chosen people. That’s the story of the Old Testament. So, I will ask the question why did God send the prophet Jonah to the Ninevites…. They were the enemies of God people they were his enemies. They were not part of God’s chosen nation. Yet God wanted the Ninevites to repent. God’s plan was always intended people from all nations to be His people. Through Jesus we now see that Gods people are the ones who believe and trust in the finished work of Jesus. Gods people are the ones who submit to having Jesus as lord of their life. Note the Wicked may triumph for a while but it is all in Gods control & Timing. Gods people may suffer. We all suffer to varying degrees and none of it is insignificant. Some here today may be suffering illnesses or struggling with family issues. For some it may be work pressures or money problems. …… Some of these may be from living in a broken world other because of the cost of following Jesus. Nahum teaches us that God will provide that safe place that refuge in times of trouble. He DOES CARE for those who trust in Him. The relief from this suffering however is always in his timing Application We can do a few things after hearing from God today in Nahum. We can miss the point and think something like, it’s okay I am good enough, I can do it on my own. I am not perfect but surely God will see how good I am he will see what I have achieved. If you are thinking this you are setting yourself up to be a little Nineveh. You are setting yourself up as an enemy of God. This is a path that will only lead to destruction to your being burned up like the stubble. Alternatively, you can look at what it’s like to be a part of God’s people, yes, we may go through struggles, we may suffer but God does not forget his people. God knows that we cannot save ourselves. In the rest of Nahum, we can read of the warriors clad in scarlet who defeats Nineveh the enemy of Gods people. The Jews who could not save themselves from Nineveh are saved by an outside army. For those of us who see our need for Jesus We too are saved from our enemy sin, sin that keeps us from God. Our savior too was covered in scarlet. It was his Blood shed upon the Cross. Jesus is the one who rescues us from the enemy we can’t defeat. It is those that truly believe and trust in him that are saved. You may have the picture of God as the policeman but God also pays the fine for us.