Immanuel Sermon Audio
Nahum (34:66)
All right, book in Nahum, find it in your Bible, we're going to read the entire book tonight but not yet, we're going to do that in a little bit. Nahum is one of the few minor prophets that is short enough for us to read the whole thing and so we are going to read it in just a little while. If you don't have an outline, I think there's a few left at the front and a few at the back. If you can't find it in your Bible, look it up in the table of contents, book in Nahum. As Tony just prayed, it is a minor prophet. If you've been around, you don't need me to tell you that that does not have any reflection on the importance of Nahum, either his book or his ministry or his life, it just means that the book is shorter. The minor prophets are shorter books and there's 12 of them and you know that in the Jewish canon, the Jewish collection of the scriptures, they're lumped all together in one book, it's called the 12. The Christian canon divides them into 12 separate books and so we're going to look at Nahum. Just a quick reminder about how some of the minor prophets break down, we've talked about this a lot. So this is review, Hosea, Amos, Micah and Jonah, all of those men had their ministries and wrote their book before the fall of Samaria and you know Samaria is the capital, should say was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. Nahum, we're going to look at tonight about the same time as Habakkuk and also Zephaniah. These guys were after the northern kingdom was taken into exile by Assyria but before the fall of Jerusalem in the southern kingdom and so we're right there in the timeline and then I have the other guys up here as well, Joel and Obadiah, after the fall of Jerusalem, after everybody's been taken to exile and then the last three, Hagai, Zechariah and Malachi are men who ministered and wrote their books after the time of the exile. So if you want to put this in the history of Israel, we've tried to do that all the way through most of the Old Testament books. You can see where these guys fall, Nahum, right there in the red between 700 and 600 and I think there's another slide, go to the next one. That's where they're at in the history of Israel during the exile. So the northern kingdom is gone into exile. The southern kingdom is just about to go into exile. So that's where it fits in the story and then put the next timeline up here. So you kind of know what's going on, some major world events because these things, I promise you, they're not just boring history dates. I know sometimes history can be boring but if you wrap your mind around some of these things that are going on, it really helps you to understand what Nahum is saying and why it's important. So we're just talking on this slide where in the timeline, more specifically than what I just showed you, does Nahum fall. So you see in green Israel, northern kingdom goes into exile. You see over here on the right in green, Judah goes into exile. You see the guys on the far right in blues, a rubber bell who was leading a group of exiles back to rebuild the temple and then Ezra and Nehemiah led groups of exiles back to Ezra teach the law and Nehemiah to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. So all that's in the future and then there's two little dates or two little events there in red that kind of help us date Nahum. When you look at Nahum 3, verse 8, 9 and 10, it talks about the destruction of thebes in Egypt. And so in verse 8 it says, "Are you better than thebes that sat by the Nile, water around her, her rampart, a sea, her water and water, her wall? Cush was her strength, Egypt too, and that without limit, put in the Libyans were her helpers, yet she became an exile." So we know from history that thebes was conquered around 663 BC and we also know that Nineveh, which is the point of Nahum, Nineveh was conquered in about 612 BC. So sometime Nahum's writing where he can look back and say thebes already got flattened and he's looking into the future and he's saying in this book, Nineveh, the capital of Assyria is about to be flattened. So just so you understand where that fits in the history of Israel, Nineveh, you see it in red, 612 BC, it's about to be flattened, it's about to be conquered by Babylon. These are the same people, if you back up to the left, that took Israel into exile. The Assyrians, their capital is Nineveh. They're the ones who marched against the northern kingdom, hauled those people into exile, and now Nahum is saying your day is about to come. Even if you remember, if you've been here, when we talked about the Book of Jonah, this is where Jonah got sent, sent to Nineveh to the capital of Assyria, and so we're going to talk about that tonight. Nahum was a guy who was taken into exile, most traditions say, and put this next picture up. I don't know exactly how you pronounce the name of this little community today, but when you look at Nahum 1-1, it says the oracle concerning Nineveh, the Book of the Vision of Nahum of El Qash. That's how it gets translated to us from Hebrew. In Arabic today, you can go to this place in northern Iraq and the community is called Al Qash, and Muslims believe that this is the traditional site for the tomb of Nahum, and so you can go see, or you could go see, Nahum's tomb, where they believe that this prophet was buried. I looked it up on Wikipedia today, I always tell you Wikipedia, you can trust everything on Wikipedia, and I'm reading about Nahum's tomb in this place, and interesting, this is factual, the tomb is in danger of being destroyed by ISIS, because they're going around this part of the world, they don't like these tombs, because people go to these tombs to pay homage to Nahum or to these prophets or to whoever, they don't like that, they feel like that's an idolatrous thing, so they're just going around this northern part of Iraq blowing stuff up, so if you want to go see it, you should go, right now, you should get online, book your tickets, and you should go, because it may not be there very much longer. Nahum, this is important, Nahum means comforter, and that's a fitting name, because his book is intended to comfort those who went into exile. Assyria comes and conquers Israel, hauls these people into exile, we'll talk about what that was like, and Nahum is writing to these people, and to Assyria, to Nineveh, and he's promising judgment on Nineveh, and he's offering comfort to the people who got taken into exile, so let's talk about Nineveh just for a second, it's mentioned in Nahum 1-1, an oracle concerning Nineveh, that sets the tone for the whole book. You can go to northern Iraq, and you can go to the city of Mosul, and Mosul is my understanding just across the Tigris River from the ruins of Nineveh, did you go to Mosul, Brian? I'm right, see, and Brian's been there, when Brian went, he had a big gun, so he did it the right way, and ISIS didn't exist, another good point when Brian went, so it's right across the river for Mosul are these ruins of Assyria. We talked about Assyria a few weeks ago, let me just remind you about some of the things that we know about this city, it was about 1,850 acres, and for those of you who aren't farmers, that's about three of the UTPB campus, just take three of those, that's about how big the ancient city of Nineveh was, there were gardens, dams, parks, aqueducts, roads, there was a double wall around the city, they had a big library in the city, and one of the cool things about this wall is that they had this big external wall that is sort of like the primary line of defense, and these are sort of like my understanding, rebuilt sections, like that, you say, man, they built it and it hasn't even lost a brick, that's kind of rebuilt at some point in time, but you get the idea of what the wall might have looked like, inside the outside wall of Nineveh, there was another wall, and if you believe historical records, those records indicate that they used to have chariot races around the inside wall, and the wall was wide enough that they could line up three chariots across it, and they could have their races around the edge of town, something that the folks like to do. I tried to read about these ruins, and apparently, ISIS has destroyed some of it and is promising to destroy other parts of it, and so some of it is still there in Nineveh, and some of it is no longer there, so you've missed your chance on some of this stuff. There was a moat, if you go to that slide, this is a picture, a drawing, not a photograph, but there was a moat around the city, and again, if you believe the historical records, the moat was 150 feet wide and 60 feet deep. That's a pretty serious moat around an ancient city. Even if they're exaggerating a little bit, that's a pretty good size moat, so they had the moat around there. In the palace, King Sinakarib had collected this carved stone, we talked about some of this carved stone, two square miles of carved stone, which is a lot of carved stone, that takes a lot of time and man hours into carving these things, and you can go see some of them that have been sort of rescued from the war zone, whatever you can visit them, look at them, and most of them depict battles, ancient battles, which we'll talk about here in just a minute. Understand this, when Nahum writes this book and he starts an oracle concerning Nineveh, this is the height of power for Assyria in their capital city. This is the pinnacle. They are ruling the world, they have everybody that they want to have under their thumb, under their thumb, and they've just whooped up on the northern kingdom of Israel, was not difficult, and Nahum is writing this book promising judgment to them. So a little bit more about the Assyrians, this is interesting. There's a, go to the next slide, I don't know what you call that, some sort of inscription, and you can see it in some museum and it is Assyrian, and it talks about some of the battles that these Assyrian armies went and fought, and it talks on the thing about going to Samaria, so it's not just a biblical account that they fought at Samaria and conquered the city, it's also in their records. We went to Samaria, we conquered the city, so you can read it in 2 Kings 17 and 18, or you can read it on this thing, and according to this inscription, carving, whatever you want to call it, they exiled 27,290 people from Israel from the city of Samaria. There was a king in Assyria during Nahum's day, so this is after the exile, and let me just read you a quote from a king, and this king's name is Asher Bannapal, Asher Bannapal, that's close, and in an inscription kind of like this, here's a quote from something he would say, and it just sort of gives you a feel for these people, okay? The king speaking, "As for those common men who spoke derogatory things against my God, Asher, and plotted against me, the prince who reveres him, I tore out their tongues and abased them." So they talked trash on me, and I cut their tongues out. As a posthumous offering, I smashed the rest of the people alive by the very figures of protective deities between which they had smashed Sennacherib my grandfather. So he was out for revenge, and he smashed people with idols. Their cut up flesh, I fed to the dogs, to swine, to jackals, to birds, to vultures, the birds of the sky, and to the fishes of deep pools. So this guy is like a villain on a James Bond movie, right? I'm going to crush you to death, and then I'm going to cut you up, and I'm going to feed you to my pet shark, and my pet vulture, and he's just sort of dreaming up these cruel things, and you say, "Well, maybe that was just one king. Maybe the rest of these Assyrian people in Nineveh were not that bad, but you remember, God was pretty concerned about it when he sent Jonah to preach to these people. That was a hundred years earlier, a whole century. And now Nahum is saying, "These people, you're in trouble, you're in trouble," and we'll read some of the things that God says he's going to do to these people, and it's shocking. You think, "God, you kind of lost your cool," but look at some of these pictures. These are carvings of things that the Assyrians did, and I'm going to use my laser pointer, because I like laser pointers, and you don't get to do that very often. This is a pole, and it is going through that man. That is what you think it is. They're taking these people and hanging them by their chin, by the top of their chest cavity, on these poles and just leaving them there to die. Primitive form of basically crucifixion. We're just going to impale you up on the stick, and then we're just going to leave you there to die. Go to the next picture. You see right here, heads in a pile, and these two guys, I'd like to think they're high fiving. I don't know what's going on, but it looks to me like they're high fiving. They're celebrating. They're greeting each other. And these guys are counting heads, and so they took a lot of pride in this. We went and we fought this battle, and we chopped off 1,800, however many heads, and they wrote it down because they were proud of it, and they wanted to scare people, and they put this in their historical records. So they're chopping off heads, they're keeping count. This is a pole that goes right up through somebody, just like it looks like in that picture. Basically what you think, this lady, if you look, that's not just like bad art, they chopped her legs off, chopped her hands off. That was a common practice for the Assyrians to just sort of chop the extremities off people. They were amused. And then you see right here, this is like the gates of a city. You see the gate right here in the big wall, head, head, head, head, head, head, head, head. So at the gate of the city, they'd take some of these heads they'd collected and put them up there for decoration, basically to intimidate anybody who would march against the city. March against the city, we're going to add your head to the wall here, and we're going to do the same thing to you, okay? Next picture. This guy's got his bow and arrow, and he's fighting this city, and they've got all these heads on a pole, right here, piled up. Next. This one is showing, this is actually Assyrians not taking Israelites but taking people into captivity, into slavery. Basically bragging, we went and fought this nation, we fought these people, and here's the Assyrians up top. You see this guy's got his arm up beating these slaves, and we're taking these people, we're just lining them up, and they're pulling our stuff, you can't see the rest of the carving, but they're pulling our stuff for us, and we're taking them into exile as our slaves. We're stealing people from their homes who are able-bodied, leaving the weak and the infirm and the helpless because they're of no value to us, and taking the strong ones and taking them with us into exile, okay? Next, this is a great picture. This guy has a head, and this guy has a head, and this guy doesn't have a head, and there's a pile of heads, and these guys are kind of showing off, and I don't know what this guy right here is doing, but when you look at the next couple of slides, you'll have a pretty good idea of what he might be doing. This is reliefs of people being skinned alive. Again, it's what you think it looks like, okay? They got this guy up here, they got him tied up, you see his hands tied, and his feet tied, feet are tied up, and this guy has a filet knife going down the back, he's just going to filet him right open, and they're going to skin these people alive. They're working on this guy, they're working on this guy on his head, and again, you've seen some of the headlines of what ISIS does when they go around and they brutalize people. They're not inventing anything that hasn't been done before. It's the exact same part of the world, exact same people doing the exact same things they've been doing for a long, long time, so there's some people being skinned alive. This one's a little bit clearer. You can see they got the kids involved in this one, watching, teach them when they're gone, and then they're watching, and they've got this guy tied up, and they are pulling the skin off of his legs. You can see the muscles exposed, right? That's not just like they accidentally forgot to smooth that line out on his calf, they're trying to show you in their art, the skin is gone, we're pulling the skin off these people from the backside. Is that the last one? One more. Guys getting their heads locked off, is that the last one, okay? So you're Nahum, you're from Israel. These guys come march against your country, and that's the kind of stuff that they do. We read it in 2 Kings 17-18, and it just sort of like the army came, they conquered the city, they took some of the folks into exile, and at least in my sort of tame, naive American 21st century mind, I think, okay, there was like some bombing, and they blew up some buildings, and they launched the catapult, and they put the white flag up and said, "We give up, we surrender," and then they said, "Okay, you, you, come with us, the rest of you stay here." No, no, no, no, no. That stuff that you just saw carvings of, that the Assyrians carved, is their depiction of what happened in the battles that they went to fought. So if you're Nahum, you live in Israel, the army comes march against your city, incredible violence, and once they take the city, that's the kind of stuff that happens. I mean, Nahum knows people in Samaria, and he knows, I used to know that guy, now his head's on a pole outside of town, and I used to know that guy, and there they are, skin in my buddy alive. All of these things, Nahum watched with his own two eyes, all of this horror, and he writes his book, "To God's People," and he writes it about the Assyrians, and what he's saying in this book is, "You need to have hope," that's kind of an audacious thing to say to people who have gone through that, right? I mean, we cannot imagine what these people went through in the exile, and Nahum is writing this book to them, and he's pleading with them to have hope. Here's what maybe you could call the big idea of Nahum. It reminds God's people that God is just, and that evil nations will not escape judgment. So if you're Israel, and you're Nahum, and you are one of the very few in Israel who fears God, you look around Israel, and you say clearly we're a wicked nation. We have idols, and we're doing all these things. God deserves to punish us. Then you look at how God chose to punish you with the Syrians coming and doing that, and you sort of scratch your head and think, was there any other way that we could have learned the lesson? Could it have gone down any differently? Did it have to be that bad? Did you have to use those people? And you punished us for our sin. Now what about them? They are conquering everybody. What are you going to do to these people? And so Nahum writes this book, "God's Speaking Through Nahum," and we're going to read it in just a second. Let me give you the outline of the book, usually give you this earlier in the evening, but since we're just about to read it, here's the outline. Introduction, verse 1 begins in the first few verses with a description of God's character, and then there's a few words where God is speaking through Nahum, and he's talking to God's people and the Ninevites, sort of both, and then the end of the book is just God speaking to the Ninevites and promising them bad things. So that's the outline. Introduction, the character of God, he speaks to Judah and the Assyrians, and Nineveh, and then words to Nineveh at the end, okay? We're going to read it, it's not long, and then we'll wrap it up with a few thoughts at the end. An oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh. The Lord is a jealous and a vinging God. The Lord is a vinging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. He dries up all the rivers, bastion and caramel wither, the bloom of Lebanon withers, the mountains quake before him, the hills melt, the earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those who take refuge in him, but with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of the adversaries and will pursue his enemies into darkness. What do you plot against the Lord? He will make a complete end. Trouble will not rise up a second time. For they are like entangled thorns like drunkards as they drink, they are consumed like stubble fully dried. From you came one who plotted evil against the Lord, a worthless counselor. Thus says the Lord, though they are at full strength, right, Nineveh, they're at full strength, this peak of their power, and they're many, they will be cut down and they will pass away. Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more. And now I will break his yoke from off of you and burst your bonds apart. The Lord has given commandment about you, no more shall your name be perpetuated. From the house of your gods I will cut off the carved image in the metal image and I will make your grave for you are vile. Behold upon the mountains, the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace. Keep your feasts so Judah, fulfill your vows. For never again shall the worthless pass through you, he is utterly cut off. The scatterer has come against you, man the ramparts, watch the road, dress for battle, collect all your strength, for the Lord is restoring the majesty of Jacob as the majesty of Israel. For plunderers have plundered them and ruined their branches. The shield of his mighty men is red, his soldiers are clothed in scarlet, the chariots come with flashing metal on the day he musters them. The cypress spears are brandished, the chariots race madly through the streets. They rush to and fro through the squares, they gleam like torches, they dart like lightning. He remembers his officers, they stumble as they go, they hasten to the wall, the siege tower is set up. The river gates are opened, the palace melts away, its mistress is stripped, she is carried off her slave girl's lamenting, moaning like doves and beating their breasts. Nineveh is like a pool whose waters run away, halt, halt they cry but none turns back. Plundered the silver, plunder the gold, there is no end to the treasure or the wealth of all precious things. Desolation in ruin, hearts melt, knees tremble, anguishes in all loins, all faces grow pale. Where is the lions din, the feeding place of the young lions where the lion and lioness went, where his cubs were with none to disturb. The lion tore for his cubs and strangled prey for his lioness. He filled his caves with prey and his dins with torn flesh. "Behold, I am against you," declares the Lord of Hosts, "and I will burn your chariots in smoke. The sword shall devour your young lions, I will cut off your prey from the earth. The voice of your messengers shall no longer be heard." Whoa, to the bloody city, that's Nineveh. All full of lies and plunder, no end to the prey. The crack of the whip, the rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot, horseman charging, flashing sword, glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end, they stumble over the bodies, 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. "Behold, still talking to Nineveh, I am against you," declares the Lord of Hosts, "and I will lift your skirts over your face. I will make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame. I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle. And all who look at you will shrink from you and say, "Waste it as Nineveh. Who will grieve for her? Where shall I seek comforters for you?" When you read that, you think, "God, take a chill pill." But when you look at the pictures we saw, you realize these are really, really bad people who have done a lot of really, really bad things. Justice does need to be brought upon them. It's what he's talking about. Verse 8, "Are you better than thieves that sat by the Nile with water around her, her ramp her to sea, her water a wall, cush was her strength, the Egypt too, and that without limit, put in the Libyans were her helpers." 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. You also will be drunken, you will go into hiding. You will seek refuge from the enemy. All your fortresses are like fig trees with first ripe figs. If shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies. Fire has devoured your bars. Draw water for the siege. Strengthen your forts. Go into the city. Tread the mortar. Take hold of the brick mold. There the fire will devour you. The sword will cut you off. It will devour you like the locus. Apply yourselves like the locus. Multiply like grasshopper. You increased your merchants more than the stars of the heavens. The locus spreads its wings and plies away. Your princes are like grasshoppers. Your scribes like clouds of locus settling on the fences in a day of cold. When the sun rises, they fly away. No one knows where they are. Your shepherds are asleep. O king of Assyria, your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them. 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. There's a lot of things in there that you may say, "What is that talking about? What are you talking about here? I don't understand this." We're not going to get into the details. We don't have time for that on a Wednesday night. We're just going to look at the big picture of this book and I'm going to give you some things to think about. Clearly God is promising to destroy Nineveh. That's the big idea. That's pretty obvious. He's going to get the Ninevites. The interesting thing is that that actually happened in 612 BC when the Babylonians came and conquered the city and brought devastation on the people who had been bringing devastation on the whole world. I give you a couple of verses here. I'm going to give you a couple of more if you want to jot these down. Just sort of interesting things. When Babylon came and marched against Nineveh, their defensive strategy, remember how many walls they have around the city? Two walls. They thought nobody can get through these walls, so here came the Babylonian army and they just closed up the gates and said, "We'll just sit here. You can't get through our walls. You try to get through our walls. We're just going to drop stuff on you, shoot stuff at you. You can't get in." They lock up the whole city tight. They started raining and it kept raining and it kept raining. What happens to a city that's locked up when it keeps raining? Fills up with water, the city flooded. Look at chapter 1, verse 8 in Nahum. With an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of the adversaries. Interesting. Chapter 2, verse 6, "The river gates are opened and the palace melts away." Verse 8, "Ninova is like a pool whose waters run away." It happened, just like God said it was going to happen. When the Babylonians got into the city eventually, they pillaged everything. They burned the whole city flat to the ground. Look at Nahum chapter 3, verse 15, "The fire will devour you," just like it happened. You read the story of Nahum, or the promise of Nahum, the warning of Nahum and you say, "Wait a minute. Is he going to flood the city? Is he going to burn the city?" You look back in history and you say, "Yeah, he did both." City flooded. It was this disaster. They marched into the city. They burned the whole thing flat to the ground. They did such a good job of destroying Nineveh. You realize this is we're in the 700s, 600s, B.C., right? No one discovered Nineveh until 1842 A.D. That's how flat they took the city. No one even knew it was there until 1842. Archaeologists discovered it, and so look at chapter 1, verse 14 says, "No more will your name be perpetuated from the house of your gods, I will cut off the carved image in the metal image. I will make your grave for you or vile." Down a little bit lower, it talks about being utterly cut off, talks about being plundered, talks about in chapter 2, verse 13, "He's going to burn them, he's going to devour them, he's going to cut them off from the earth and the voice of the messengers will no longer be heard." These people got cut off. One of the things archaeologists thought was interesting, 1842, they find the city, they start digging around, and they do this all the time, they find these cities, and they pretty much know what to expect. You find an ancient city, and they kind of have some idea of how old the city is and rock layers and different things, and they're digging around in this site, Nineveh, and there's something that they didn't find. They found no gold or no silver in the whole dig. We'll look at Nahum, chapter 2, verse 9, "Plunder the silver, plunder the gold." There is no end to the treasure or the wealth of all the precious things. They carried it all off, all of it. When they finally dug the city up there wasn't anything left. So all of this happened, just like God said it would happen. That's the historical context, you could say. Now I want you to think about the biblical context of what we've been talking about in the Minor Prophets, especially with Jonah, right? Jonah got sent to this city a hundred years earlier, you're going to read about that in the book of Jonah. So you're going to read Nahum as a book of wrath or patience. This would be the kind of book when you read the things that God says He's going to do to these people. I'm against you. I'm going to lift your skirts over your face. I'll make nations look at your nakedness, kingdoms at your shame. God says to the Ninevehites, "I will throw filth at you." That means what you think it means. And secular historians read that and say, "Oh, he's just throwing a temper tantrum. He's just angry and cranky and just killing people and he's wrathful. We don't like that." If you read the actual story in the context of Scripture, you understand that many, many decades earlier, God sent another prophet to these very same people and warned them about judgment. Jonah. And the people listened to Jonah. Jonah didn't tell them to repent, but they went ahead and repented, right? And God did not destroy the city. He spared him. You look at that and you say, "Oh, God is so gracious." And you put it in the context and you say, "Then He gave them another hundred years." That's a long time. That's the kind of thing the Bible's describing when it says that He is slow to anger and abounding instead fast love. You can read the story, lift it out of context, not know anything about what's going on or what God has done with these people or how bad they were or any of it. And you can say, "God's just mean." Those people didn't deserve to be treated like that. God's just cranky. Old Testament God is a jerk. Or you can read it in context and understand God gave these people a warning through Jonah. They did listen and He gave them a hundred more years and entire century. Nothing changed. Nothing changed. And then God finally said, "I've had enough." And He promised to judge these people. So you can look at it and you can say, "Is it a book of wrath or a book of patience?" I guess it depends on your perspective and probably the right answer is that it's both. Here is one little fun fact. I can't help but give you this. Someday you're going to be playing Bible jeopardy in Sunday school and you're going to need to know this, okay? And you're going to answer the question and everybody's going to look at you and think, "That's amazing. You're the greatest Bible scholar in the whole church." And you don't have to tell them, "I told you this. You just take all the credit," okay? There are two prophets, major prophets, minor prophets. There's two of them that end their book with a question. Guess who they are? Nahum. And guess who the other one is? Jonah. Kind of interesting, right? Two prophets end with a question. You can look at Jonah 3.11. It is God asking Jonah about Nineveh. Shouldn't I care about these people? Jonah, look at all the people. Look at all the... Shouldn't I have concern for them and really what he's saying is shouldn't you have concern for them? I'm going to be patient with them. I'm going to spare them. And then the second prophet that ends with a question is Nahum and this time it is God asking a question not to the prophet but to Nineveh and saying to the Ninevites, "Upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?" That's a weird way to ask a question. It's a leading way to ask a question. And what he's really saying in question form is you have brought evil on everyone. There is no one. Point them out to me if you can tell me where they're at. Who on the face of the earth have you not done wicked things to? Everybody. Two books end with a question. Nahum and Jonah, okay? Here's the big takeaway, the most important takeaway from Nahum is there's a moving description of the character of God and that's what comes first in the book after the introduction. I just want you to listen to some of the things that Nahum reminds the people about God. Nahum one, look at the first couple of verses, verse two and three. The Lord is a jealous and a vinging God. The Lord is a vinging and wrathful. He takes vengeance on his adversaries and he keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. I read those two verses and you think about the people Nahum is talking to. He's really kind of talking to him on two levels here. On the one hand he's saying you guys need to look in the mirror and you need to understand you spend a lot of time bowing down to Baal and Asherah and Molek and all these gods and God punished you. He's a jealous God. He's not going to let his people whore after other gods forever. He's going to discipline you. He's going to get your attention. And he's also speaking to the people saying God knows what the Assyrians did to you. He's not overlooking that. His arm is not too short or too weak to do something about that. He says he's great in power, slow to anger and great in power. He will by no means clear the guilty. You can get away with sin for a while but not forever. And he's saying eventually it caught up to you and eventually it's going to catch up to the Assyrians. Look at verse 6 and 8. Who can stand before his indignation? What's the answer to that question? No one. Who can endure the heat of his anger? What's the answer to that question? If those two verses, if you like to make notes in your Bible, those two lines, okay? Nehem 1, 6. That should be like your favorite life verse, helping you to appreciate what Jesus Christ did for you. You can just shock somebody. Again, you can win in Bible jeopardy now and now when somebody says what's your favorite verse in the Bible? You say, Nehem 1, 6. Nehem 1, 6. Start scratching their head. What is that about? And then you can say to them, it reminds me that I can't stand before God's anger. You can't either. My only hope is that Jesus stood there for me and he bore the wrath that should have fallen on me. Who can stand before his indignation? No one. Who can endure the heat of his anger? No one. His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him. And then look at verse 7. The Lord is what? Good. If your picture of God in your mind does not include both of those things, you're an idolater. If your vision of God is only that he's angry at sin and he's just ready to sort of punch people in the throat and take people out and he's mad, then you're missing about half of what Nehem says here. He's slow to anger. He's good to his people. He's a refuge for his people. But if your vision of God in your mind is only, well God's just loving and he's nice and he's just sort of like a big warm hug and all this stuff about anger, it's just Old Testament stuff, forget all that, then you're leaving out about half of what the Bible says about God. Because it does say that he's wrathful, he's avenging, he's jealous. He keeps his wrath for his enemies. He's slow to anger, but there is anger. It's sin. He has indignation. He has wrath. There's a day of trouble for those who do not take a refuge in him. The big takeaway for Nehem and what he wanted the people to see is not necessarily to have all the answers to their circumstances and why they got sent into exile or what God was going to do to Assyria. He talked about some of that. God's going to punish them in his own time. He's going to take care of it. He knows he sees he'll handle it. And what he begins with right out of the gate is saying to the people, you're perplexed. You don't get it. You're frustrated. You're circumstances stink. Remind yourself who God is. And not just sort of like a caricature or one-sided description of who God is, but remember the fullness of his character, his wrath and he's avenging and he's angry and he's also good and he's patient and he's slow to anger and he's saying to the people, you need to embrace the whole truth, the big picture of who God is. All the specifics and the details, God's going to take care of that in his own time in history. You don't have to worry about that. You don't have to understand at all. You don't have to understand everything in Nehem. What you need to take away is this big picture of who God is. So to that end, I'm going to pray for you and pray for me and we will call it quits on Nehem. Father, we love you. We're grateful for this book of the Bible. We thank you for this man in his life and his ministry. We cannot imagine some of the things that he lived through or that your people lived through. We know that they as a nation had turned from you to follow idols. We know that you were right and just and fair in everything that happened. Father, we know that you brought judgment on even the nation that you used to bring judgment on your people. We look at this story and we can look back and see how it fits in history, but the reality is even we struggle like Nehem did. We struggle to understand all the details and the whys and the winds and the hows. Father, our prayer tonight very simply is that we would not worry about the secret things that belong to you, about your timing, about your plans, about your ways, but that we would love you for who you are and that we would know you as you truly are and that we would come to the Bible and we wouldn't pick and choose verses and themes and doctrines that make us feel good and ignore the others, but that we would be willing to embrace all that the Bible says about you. Father, we see in this story your hatred for sin. We see your love for your people. We see your justice and Father, we even are reminded of our need for Jesus and we confess that we cannot stand before you. There's nothing we can do to survive the day of your wrath and we are grateful that Jesus Christ has done everything that needed to be done so that we could survive, that we could live, that we could know you. Again, thank you for this book, help us to leave with a greater desire to know you as you truly are and to live our lives in a way that honors you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.