Nahum's word of hope to Israel and Nahum's word of warning to the Assyrians.
In my estimation, Nahum is perhaps the most unique of all the minor prophets. His prophecy is a word of hope to the nation of Israel. At the time Nahum prophesied, the Assyrian empire had captured the northern kingdom of Israel, divided up her people, and exiled them to distant lands. By scattering her enemies to distant lands, the Assyrians hoped to destroy the culture that had rivaled their own. Scattered abroad, the Israelites would not be able to worship at their temple or hear the book of the law read. They would not be able to offer sacrifices to God nor set up institutions to govern their people. Instead, they would become aliens and strangers in distant lands, surrounded by idolatry, witchcraft, sorcery and other pagan belief systems. The Israelites would be under constant pressure to forsake their God, break the law, and succumb to the secular values that governed the empire of Assyria. The church today faces many of the same dangers!
Nahum’s message is that God’s chosen people, the Israelites, could be assured that their most mighty enemy, the Assyrian empire, would be held accountable for her brutal reign. But if you look closely you will notice that Nahum addresses God’s enemies directly. He doesn’t just talk about them. With great boldness he talks directlyto them about the God of Israel they had set themselves up against. The Assyrians really had no clue what they had gotten themselves into by attacking, killing, and plundering God’s chosen people.
A real life lesson about stirring up wrath.
As a youngster, I went to church camp every year. I have fond memories of the Prairie State Christian Assembly! One summer, we found a bee hive by the monkey bars. With excitement, we watched little bees fly in and out of this mound of dirt. The camp staff warned us not to make the bees angry, but my friends and I didn’t listen. We started daring each other to get closer and closer to the bee hive. Soon we had found a large rock to drop directly on top of the nest. According to our calculations the bees would be squished instantly and none of us would get stung! A word to the wise: bees fly faster than kids can drop large rocks. I got stung and we got stung as the bees took out their wrath on us. Was that ever a bad idea!
Some time later at the same camp, I was lying down under a large oak tree. Suddenly, I noticed something way up in the branches of the tree. It was larger than a football, even larger than a basketball. It was a UHO, an unidentified hanging object. And it was busier than O’Hare International Airport. Every few seconds, dozens of hornets would enter and exit through a small hole at the bottom of the nest. I had a pretty good arm. I had good aim. I was a pretty fast runner. Wouldn’t it be fun to see if I could toss a rock high up in the tree and rock those hornets' world?
The camp manager noticed me messing around and told me that if I knocked that nest down the whole camp would have to shut down. "Don’t stir up that hornet’s nest!" Because of my strong desire to be conformed to Christ’s likeness, and my even deeper desire to be camper of the week, I relented. Actually, I just didn’t want to get stung!
The Assyrians were stirring up God's wrath against them.
The Assyrians were not so wise. They stirred up the hornets' nest of God’s wrath. You don’t just march into God’s Holy City, desecrate his temple, plunder his gold and silver, impale his servants, scatter his people, and come away a happy camper. This was essentially Nahum’s message to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire. He was telling them, "You have crossed a point of no return. You have exhausted God’s patience. The Lord is coming upon you with vengeance."
In Nahum 1:2 (NIV) Nahum says, "The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies." In Nahum 1:3-5 (NIV) Nahum reminds Ninevah, "The Lord is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and dries it up; he makes all the rivers run dry. Bashan and Carmel wither and the blossoms of Lebanon fade. The mountains quake before him and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, the world and all who live in it."
In Nahum 1:6 (NIV) he asks, "Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before him." Do you know why we threw that rock at that beehive? We didn’t believe that we’d get stung! The Assyrians thought that the God who was slow to anger would surely not sting them!
The paradoxical face of God.
In your outline, there is a statement about the paradoxical faces of God. A paradox is something that looks like a contradiction on the surface, but in reality is not. In Nahum 1:3 (NIV) Nahum acknowledges, "The Lord is slow to anger and great in power." In Nahum 1:7 (NIV) he acknowledges, "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him."
We're comfortable with the face of God that is slow to anger, the face that is good, and the face that cares. But the face of vengeance that God shows Nineveh is mysterious to us. What does it mean that the Lord is a jealous and avenging God? What does it mean that the Lord takes vengeance filled with wrath? What does it mean that God’s way is in the whirlwind? And what is Nahum talking about in Nahum 1:6? God’s indignation? His fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire? The rocks are shattered before him? Does God have an Old Testament face that is different than his New Testament face?
God has various dimensions.
In Nahum1 you can see Nahum wrestling with these paradoxical faces of God. God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. He is great in power, good, and a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.
But on the other hand, God is a whirlwind or tornado. God is a drought that gives or takes away life. God is a volcano that melts the hills. God is an earthquake that shakes the earth. God is like a forest fire that consumes everything in its path. God is like an avalanche that crushes rocks into dust.
Let me ask, do you believe in God’s fierce wrath? Do you believe God takes vengeance? Do you believe God gets angry? Or is he perpetually gracious and patient? Our problem is that we don’t know the face of God that gets angry, the one that stings. We don’t fear God. We don’t respect his power and holiness. And so like the Assyrians, like the city of Nineveh, we keep on sinning, exhausting the patience of God.
In Romans 6:1 (NIV) the apostle Paul asks a compelling question. He asks, "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" One hundred fifty years earlier, God had sent Jonah to the city of Nineveh to preach against her sin. Despite Jonah’s reluctance to witness to them, the people of the city of Nineveh repented and the whole city was spared God’s judgement. But their repentance was short-lived. There was no lasting change among the people of Nineveh. Their wickedness steadily increased until the time of Nahum. But nowthey were taking wickedness to all new levels.
We cannot have it both ways.
We see this mentality in the church today, even among church leaders. People today reason, "I can have the best of both worlds. I can have grace without genuine repentance! I’ll keep on sinning and God will keep on forgiving my adultery, my fornication, my lust, my malicious acts, my unforgiving spirit, my selfishness, my pride, my greed, my racism, my gluttony, and my idolatry. But Hebrews contains a warning against this behavior. Hebrews 10:26-31 (NIV) says, "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' and again, 'The Lord will judge his people.' It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
I think we do ourselves a disservice to resolve these paradoxical faces of God. There is such a thing as a healthy fear of God. We should respect God’s holiness, his justice, his jealously, his anger, and his wrath against sin. We should never grow complacent about nor comfortable with the sin in our lives. We should never take God’s grace and mercy or forgiveness for granted. Grace must cause us to change. Grace should always lead to a life more fully formed in Christ. Otherwise, it isn’t true grace.
Again, Nahum doesn’t resolve the tension. He is wrestling with God’s nature. God is slow to anger, but God also displays his fierce anger. God is good. He is a refuge. He cares for those who trust in him, but he pursues his enemies like a mighty warrior.
The destiny of God's enemies.
Let’s talk for a moment about the destiny of God’s enemies. Later on, you might want to read the book of Nahum for Nahum’s poetic description of Nineveh’s destruction. It is a great example of the prophetic literature and great prose found in the Bible. But for now, let’s just key into a few short verses. In Nahum 1:7-9 (NIV) we read, "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him, but with an overwhelming flood he will make an end of Nineveh; he will pursue his foes into darkness. Whatever they plot against the Lord he will bring to an end; trouble will not come a second time."
In its time, Nineveh was a great and magnificent city. The inner part of Nineveh was about three miles wide and eight miles long. It was surrounded by a wall. The outer suburbs of Nineveh extended fourteen miles north and twenty miles south of the main city. In Jonah 3:3 it took Jonah three days to walk across the city of Ninevah.
Up until about 1850, liberal theologians dismissed the book of Jonah and Nineveh. Outside of the biblical accounts there was no evidence that the city of Nineveh existed. But in 1850 archaeologists located the city where the Khosar River flows into the Tigris. The Khosar River ran through the heart of Ninevah. In 612 B.C. the Babylonians, Medes, and Schythians laid siege to the city. But it wasn’t until a flood came and broke through the city walls that they’d be victorious. As Nahum’s prophesy indicated, the flood completely devastated the city and Nineveh would never be rebuilt to cause trouble a second time.
[http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=974]
God always keeps his word.
I tell you this bit of history to illustrate that God always keeps his word. He cares for those who trust him, but he doesn’t let the guilty go unpunished. I wonder if we can be as honest about God’s wrath today as Nahum was back then? People today, even Christians, don’t believe that there is anything to be saved from! In Nahum 4:19 (NIV) Nahum tells the King of Assyria, "Nothing can heal your wound; your injury is fatal. Everyone who hears the news about you claps his hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?" The King of Assyria had a fatal wound, and Nahum had the courage to point it out to him! Do we have that same courage to identify our fatal wound before a holy God?
The destiny of God's people.
Well I about fell over when in the midst of reading Nahum, I came across Nahum 1:15. There in Nahum 1:15 Nahum catches a glimpse of Christ’s ministry. His vision of Christ practically interrupts the flow of his oracle of judgment against Nineveh! Christ would come bringing good news and proclaiming peace among God’s enemies. In Nahum 1:15 (NIV) he says, "Look, there on the mountains, the feet of one who brings good news, who proclaims peace! Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, and fulfill your vows. No more will the wicked invade you; they will be completely destroyed."
In Colossians 1:19-23 (NIV) Paul describes how Christ brings peace to God’s enemies, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant."
In Romans 10:9-15 (NIV) Paul interprets Nahum’s vision. "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, 'Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.' For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!' "
For those who trust in Christ, no wound is fatal.
For those who look to Christ and trust in his name, no wound is fatal. In Christ, God makes peace with even his most notorious foes. 1 Peter 2:24-25 (NIV) says, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls."
2 Corinthians 5:19-21 (NIV) says, "that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."