Through the Bible - Nahum

The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious... The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked... The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. (Nahum 1:1–3, 7)

When we read of God's wrath against Nineveh, we discover that His anger is the other side of His love—and that Nahum, whose name means "comfort," brings consolation to those who trust Him.

A Flyover of the Scriptures

How many of you read through Nahum these past couple of weeks? More than normal—praise the Lord. It's only three chapters. Next week we're in Habakkuk, also just three chapters. These minor prophet books are kind of nice, aren't they? It's not like Isaiah's 66 chapters or the long stretches of Leviticus.

As we plot through the Scriptures, we've now passed the halfway mark. There are 66 books in the Bible, and this is the 34th. We're on the downhill run, taking a book a week and considering what the Lord wants to speak to us. This is the Bible at 50,000 feet—a brief flyover to grasp the scope of Scripture. As we've gone since last August, I hope you've begun to see the common theme of God speaking to His people, many times through these prophets.

In our School of Discipleship we talk about the ways God reveals Himself. David tells us in Psalm 8 that the heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows forth His handiwork. When David considered the moon and the stars, he asked, "What is man that you are mindful of him?" God reveals Himself through creation, and further, in the Old Testament, through prophets—holy men of God who spoke as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance. How blessed we are to be the recipients of God's Word, thankful to the Jewish people who kept the oracles of God for centuries.

The Attribute the Church Avoids

As you go through these three chapters, you see a clear theme the church does not often want to talk about. Especially in the last hundred years, the church has focused on the attributes of God that make us feel good—His grace, mercy, and love. Those things are true, but emphasizing them alone can give us a skewed view of who God is. The love of God has been highly exalted in recent times, yet Scripture also reveals that God is a God of wrath. There are times when God gets angry, and we say, "Wait a minute, that doesn't fit our picture of Jesus"—our gentle Jesus, meek and mild, with blue eyes, blondish-brown hair, and a cool goatee.

Some people look at the Old Testament against the New and imagine the God of the Old Testament was God in His teenage years, throwing chairs around. But that isn't what we see. We see a merciful and loving God in the Old Testament too. Through Jeremiah, God says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 33). Yet He also reveals that He will not clear over guilt.

God's Name Defined

In Exodus 34, Moses wanted to see God—what a request. Any of us who have walked with the Lord for long share that desire. There's a story of a teacher in a children's class who asks a little girl, "What are you drawing, Lucy?" "I'm drawing God." "But Lucy, we don't know what God looks like." And Lucy says, "Well, we will in a minute." It's the desire of man to know what God is like.

Moses spent forty days with God on Sinai. When he came down, the people had built a golden calf, and Moses cast down the commandments—a sign Israel had already broken God's law. Back up the mountain, God's anger was revealed and He spoke of destroying His people, but Moses called out for mercy, and God showed Himself a forgiving God. Then Moses said, "God, I want to see you." God answered that Moses could not see Him and live, but He placed him in the cleft of the rock and passed by, showing His afterglow. Moses certainly saw something—his face shone so brightly the people were afraid, and he had to wear a veil.

But more than that, God declared His name. The very first thing God says is, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful." He speaks of mercy, forgiveness, and grace, but He also says something vital for the modern church: "By no means clearing the guilty." God says, "I will judge iniquity. I am going to judge those who are guilty."

Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do Right?

God's judgment is just. In Genesis, when God revealed to Abraham that He would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham asked, "What if there are fifty righteous? Forty-five? Thirty? Twenty?" And finally, "Lord, shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" That's an important question. If one Being will judge all humanity, must He not judge with perfect justice?

We struggle with God judging all humanity because we live in a society where justice often fails. We've seen judges make unrighteous rulings. There are people in prison who shouldn't be and guilty people walking the streets. Justice is not always served in man's courts. But when we consider God, we cannot apply our bias or limitations to Him. God has no limitations, and when He judges, it will be with complete justice. There is coming a day when all mankind will stand before Him, and when He casts a person into the lake of fire, none of us will object, because we will all recognize that day that He is completely just and righteous.

A Hundred Years After Jonah

This book reveals God's judgment upon a city we've already met. Just a few weeks ago we were in Jonah, who was called to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, then the empire of the world. Though Jonah didn't want to go, when he preached, "Forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed," the people repented from the king down to the animals. Because God recognized their repentance, He relented and spared them.

But a hundred years have passed, and now we come to Nahum. Did the people stay repentant? Nahum 1:1 says, "The burden of Nineveh." Obviously not. Secular history confirms the Assyrians repented from their repentance—a sad thing when people do that. God now has a burden against this great city.

We don't know much about Nahum the Elkoshite. Like Isaiah and the prophets before him, he saw a vision. We don't know where Elkosh was, but it may have been near the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum, where Jesus did much of His ministry, is in Hebrew Kfar Nahum—"the village of Nahum"—and many believe Nahum came from that region, though others place him south of Judah.

God Is Jealous—For Us

Verse 2 says God is jealous. We often misunderstand this because jealousy is tainted in our minds by the flesh. In our culture, jealousy looks like a selfish, fleshly desire. How can we say God is jealous? Because God is jealous for us, not of us. He doesn't look at us wishing He had what we have. You can lie, but God can't—He's not jealous of that. You can worship, but God can't—He is above all creation, so He has nothing to worship.

God is jealous for our attention because if we place our affections on any other thing, it will destroy us. The first four of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationship to God—no other gods, no idols, not taking His name in vain, keeping the Sabbath. If we break those, the soul that sins shall die; the wages of sin is death. God is jealous for our attention because He doesn't want us to perish—He's not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance.

Furious, Vengeful, and Slow to Anger

The verse continues: "The LORD revengeth, and is furious." Here are attributes we don't like to focus on. "The LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies." God's fury, wrath, and vengeance reveal the whole counsel of who He is just as much as His love, mercy, and grace.

If all you knew about God was Nahum 1:2, you'd be scared—both hands up. Jealous, vengeful, furious, reserving wrath for His enemies. If that's all we knew, I'd want to make sure I'm not His enemy. I don't want to be on the receiving end of almighty God's wrath.

But—and I wrote "Praise God" next to verse 3—"the LORD is slow to anger." Ephesians 4 tells us to be angry and not sin. The first thing we learn about God's anger is that He has a long fuse. He doesn't blow up like a teenager who can't contain his temper. As Gail Erwin would say, God is slow to anger. How awesome to know our God has a long fuse before He acts.

Yet verse 3 also says He "will not at all acquit the wicked." God does not pass over guilt. He won't look at the guilty and say the prison is crowded, so we'll let you go. He is slow to anger, but He will bring wrath upon those who have rejected Him—because He's jealous for their affections, and if those affections are not focused on Him, they will die.

Great in Power

"The LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet." We cannot fully grasp the greatness of God's power, so He speaks to us in earthly terms. God always does this. To explain His love, He tells us the greatest human love is to lay down one's life for one's friends—then Romans 5:8 goes further: while we were yet sinners, while we were His enemies, He died for us.

To gauge His power, He points us to the whirlwind and the storm. I love the Discovery Channel—remember the storm chasers? Most of the men would sign up to chase a tornado; most of the ladies would say, "No way." On HD television you see a category-five whirlwind a mile wide at its base, lightning strikes, erupting volcanoes, and you say, "Now that is power." But that's nothing in comparison to God.

"He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers... The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence." Imagine God simply speaking and every ocean dries up. Imagine His presence so great that Mount Everest melts like wax. The most powerful thing we can grasp is perhaps the atomic bomb, leveling Hiroshima and Nagasaki—but God's power is beyond comprehension. The Lord is slow to anger, but He is great in power, and He will judge His enemies with that power.

Who Can Stand Before His Indignation?

"Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him." This is the focus of Nahum's whole message. And once again—thank God for verse 7: "The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him."

If all we knew were His power and wrath, we'd be fearful. But God wants us to know He is slow to anger, He is a good God, He is a stronghold, and He knows those who trust Him. "But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies. What do ye imagine against the LORD?"

Many imagine vain things against the Lord, but Galatians 6 says God is not mocked. Revelation looks forward to a day when the Antichrist and rebellious humanity gather in the Valley of Megiddo to fight against God—the dumbest thing anyone could imagine doing. Psalm 2 says God laughs from heaven at them. He will make an utter end; "affliction shall not rise up the second time." He won't have to do it twice.

The City of Blood

Why would God judge Nineveh? First, they were a cruel city. By Nahum's day it had earned a name for itself—just as we call Las Vegas "Sin City," Nineveh was called "the city of blood." From their own records we read terrible things. One king boasted, "I stormed the mountain peaks... I slaughtered them; with their own blood I dyed the mountain red like wool." The Assyrians developed some of the worst torture imaginable—they were the first to develop crucifixion, and they skinned their enemies alive, setting up monuments of bodies outside conquered cities. God will judge them for their cruelty.

Second, they were a conceited people. Their kings wrote, "I am the great king, the mighty king, the king of the universe... the great gods magnified my name." King Esarhaddon declared, "I am powerful, I am all-powerful, I am a hero, I am gigantic, I am colossal... I am without equal." You can see their arrogance.

We see that conceit clearly in Isaiah 36. In Hezekiah's fourteenth year, Sennacherib of Assyria came against the fortified cities of Judah and took them—forty-one cities destroyed, two hundred thousand men taken captive in a single day, by his own records. He sent his commander, the Rabshakeh, from Lachish to Jerusalem with a great army, standing at the conduit of the upper pool—right at the city's main water supply. Hezekiah sent three men out—Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah—and the Rabshakeh said, "Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest?" Throughout Isaiah 36 and 37 you see Assyria's arrogance.

Third, they were idolatrous, with dozens of gods—Dagon, Nisroch, Ishtar, Marduk, Nebo, Ashur—worshiped in the most wicked ways, even offering their children.

Cruel, Conceited, Idolatrous—and Impenitent

Fourth, and most decisively, they were impenitent; they refused to repent. Here is the powerful thing: you can be a wicked, conceited, cruel, idolatrous person, yet if you repent, God will give you grace and mercy and forgive you. That is the most awesome thing about our God. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul lists idolaters, fornicators, homosexuals, adulterers, murderers, and liars, then says, "And such were some of you, but you've been washed by the blood of Jesus Christ." God will forgive any sinner who comes to Him in repentance.

But Nineveh would not repent. Around 660 B.C., God said He would destroy them, and not long after—in 612 B.C.—Nineveh was completely destroyed by a coalition of Babylonians, Medes, and Scythians. They saw themselves as great—"we have taken this city, nobody helped us"—but God says, "You're a tool in my hand; you've done nothing without my help." Because of their cruelty, conceit, idolatry, and impenitence, judgment came.

The Wrath of God Revealed

If a man stands against God in this rebellion, what happens to him? Romans 1:18 says, "For the wrath of God is revealed"—underline that. There is coming a day when God's wrath will be revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.

The first four commandments concern our relationship with God; break them and you are ungodly. The last six concern man's relationship with man—do not covet, steal, murder, lie; honor your parents; break them and you live unrighteously. God's wrath is revealed against both.

Why? "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them." God reveals Himself in two ways: creation and conscience. The heavens declare His glory, and He has written a moral law upon every heart. That's why we get infuriated when people do wrong—God has written that law in us. So all mankind is without excuse, and all will stand before Him. Hebrews 9:27 says it is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment.

Storing Up Wrath

Romans 2:1 says, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest." Every time you judge someone and say, "That's wrong," you reveal you have God's moral law written on your heart. Yet we who judge do the same things, and the judgment of God is according to truth. Do you think you'll escape God's judgment? Or do you despise the riches of His goodness and longsuffering, "not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance"?

But verse 5 says, "After thy hardness and impenitent heart, you store up for yourself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God." Unpack that: if you will not repent, you are storing up God's wrath for the day of judgment.

I know these are the attributes that don't grow churches. You won't hear them at certain churches because people don't want to hear about sin and judgment. But this is what God's Word says, and if I don't speak it, Ezekiel 3 warns that the blood of the unwarned is on my hands. James says teachers are worthy of a stricter judgment. Some call me a bigot or hateful for saying this, but if you won't warn someone, it proves you don't love them. If a semi is coming and I love you, I'll warn you. There are large churches that won't talk about this because they want more people, but if they truly loved their people, they would warn them.

Destruction Decreed, Described, and Deserved

That's why God always sent a prophet—Jonah, then Nahum—to warn the people before destruction. But Nineveh would not turn, and fifty years later they were destroyed exactly as Nahum foretold. In chapter 1 destruction is decreed; in chapter 2 it is described; in chapter 3 we learn why it was deserved—because they were a wicked and vile people.

It's striking that the name Nahum means "comfort." Are these comforting words? They don't seem so. But Nahum 1:12 shows God speaking to His people Judah, whose enemy was Assyria: "I will afflict thee no more." God's word of wrath upon Nineveh was terrible for Nineveh but comforting for Israel, because their enemy was destroyed. Verse 15 says, "Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts... the wicked... is utterly cut off."

Comfort Through Christ

How does this apply to us? We were deserving of judgment for all our sin, but God poured out His wrath upon Jesus, and because that wrath fell on Him in full, it means comfort for us. "He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might receive the righteousness of God in Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Just as God's fury was poured out on Nineveh, His judgment was poured out on Jesus when He bore our sin, so that today we can receive God's comfort.

So the call goes out, as Jesus preached in Matthew 4:17: "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." If you turn to Christ, you will be safe and receive comfort, for "the LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble." But if you stand with an impenitent, hard heart, the day of wrath will come upon the ungodly. God doesn't desire that anyone receive it—He poured out judgment on His only begotten Son so He would not have to pour it out on us.

Nineveh would not turn; they were on a course dead ahead with destruction. Oh, that we would hear the Word and draw near, and that we would carry it to a sick and dying world on the wide path. Joel warns us not to delight in the day of judgment—God says it will be like escaping the lion only to meet the bear, then reaching home and a serpent bites you. There is no escape from the day of judgment except refuge in Jesus Christ.

A Word Worth Hearing

The book of Nahum, perhaps more clearly than any other, reveals God's wrath upon mankind. Let me read from a great man of God who wrote on this passage in 1966—almost prophetic for our day:

"To those who think that God is only a God of love and never of wrath, let them learn from Nahum that a God who is never angry is a God who cannot love. God's wrath comes from His love. What moves you to anger? Almost always when something or someone you love is threatened or injured. If you can read of atrocities, oppression, and soul-destroying drugs among young people and never be moved to burning anger, then there is something wrong with you—the one who cannot be angry is the one who cannot love. If God cannot smite, if He cannot destroy in vengeance, then He has no capacity for love."

He continues: "It is true that God loves the sinner but hates his sin. But that is only part of the story. If a man loves his sin and holds onto it at all costs, refusing the grace of God, he becomes identified with his sin, and eventually the wrath of God against his sin is directed against the sinner. It is time to reassert that God has this capacity for anger, time again to warn men to flee from the wrath to come. Men say that if you only preach the God of love you can fill churches. But the facts prove the opposite. For thirty years or more the message of God's wrath has been almost totally absent, and people have interpreted the God of love as a God of permissiveness—one who lets you get away with anything. As a result the churches are emptier than ever, and instead of turning to God, men have defied Him."

You cannot preach the God of wrath without the God of love, but the wrath of God grows out of His love. As Charles Spurgeon said, "He who does not believe that God will punish sin will not believe that He will pardon it through the blood of His Son."

The Way of Escape

What is the way of escape from the anger of God? Nahum tells you in chapter 1, verse 7: "The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him." This attribute of God's wrath, though the church doesn't like to hear it, is necessary and important. There's a move in our nation and in the church to turn away from these things, even making it a political issue, telling the church it may say nothing about a sinful lifestyle. But it is out of love that we speak. To those living in the homosexual lifestyle, it is love—because we don't want them to abide under the wrath of God. We want them standing with us on the day of Christ, rejoicing and praising Him. So we say: repent and turn to the only One who can save you. Would to God He would stir us with that kind of love to take this word into the world.

Closing Prayer

God, I thank You for the love You have shown toward us. You demonstrated it by dying for us while we were yet in our sins, while we were enemies of You. We praise You that You have given us life by the death of Your Son—that because wrath was poured out upon Him, we can stand apart from Your wrath today, and abiding in You we will never see wrath, for 1 Thessalonians 5 tells us the church will never experience that. Thank You that we will not stand under Your wrath on that day. Lord, give us boldness to speak this truth to others. You are a God of love, and we thank You for Your love, mercy, grace, and truth. But we know You will also not pass over guilt; You desire that all would come to You in repentance. Help us to preach that from the mountaintops, we pray. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.