"The Ultimate Avenger" Nahum 1 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Would you take your Bibles and open them to Nahum chapter 1?

Nahum 1 · chapter mention

No, I did not sneeze.

Nahum is a book in your Bible.

And as Pastor Jesse continues to serve at African New Life Church over the next couple weeks, we will go through the book of Nahum together.

You can find it in the Minor Prophets, the Twelve Prophets.

They come just before the beginning of the New Testament.

Nahum is just a couple books to the right of Jonah.

In fact, it is the sequel to Jonah, as we will see this morning.

Nahum in chapter 1 is our text for this morning.

One of the wonderful things about the Bible, one of the mysterious things about the Bible, one of the unique things about the Bible is that it is an equal opportunity offender.

I don't know if you've considered the Bible through this lens, but that's exactly what the Bible is.

Because it did not arise from a human culture, but comes down to us as a divine revelation, it doesn't find a home in any human culture, in any time, in any place.

There are elements of the biblical story that offend every human culture.

And which particular elements of the biblical message any given society may find offensive will differ from culture to culture.

But to take ours as an example, as we walk through the book of Jonah, Pastor Jesse this summer, the book of Jonah is dripping with the reality that the God of the Bible is a God of mercy and grace and compassion, who extends undeserved mercy to even the most wicked people.

There's something in that message of a God of forgiveness and compassion that our society finds rather palatable.

On the other hand, many other societies find that highly offensive, that God would apparently sweep sin under the rug.

We come to the book of Nahim, which serves as, in fact, the sequel to the book of Jonah, as Jonah went and preached to the city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and God extended to them mercy because they repented.

Nahim comes a hundred years after Jonah, and that apparent repentance has faded away, and the book of Nahum announces God's righteous judgment and wrath upon Nineveh.

That is a message that our society finds highly offensive.

But this is just what you would expect if the Bible were what it claims to be, not a product of human culture, but a product of divine revelation.

The Bible is a unique book.

And what we're going to do today is look at one of the unique books within the Bible, the book of Nahum.

Before we begin to read the text, it would be helpful just to give you just a moment of introduction to it.

As I mentioned, the book really serves as the sequel to the book of Jonah.

It follows just after it in your Bible, and it announces God's judgment on people who had spurned his mercy.

But there's another element of this book that's helpful to just keep in mind as we begin to read it.

There's a little bit of a contrast between these two prophets that both spoke to the city Nineveh.

Jonah announced God's judgment and they repented, and so God showed them mercy.

And the whole book of Jonah is unique in that rather than focusing mainly on Jonah's prophecy, the book of Jonah really focuses on Jonah the prophet, doesn't it?

I mean, we spent the whole summer looking at the book of Jonah, and we looked at the prophet as much as we looked at his prophecy, didn't we?

The book of Nahum is very different.

We could exhaust all of our knowledge of the prophet Nahim just by reading the first verse.

Nahum of Elkosh.

That's it.

That's all we know about him.

There are a number of traditions as to where Nahum's home was from, where he wrote this letter, but they're traditions, and ultimately we have to live with uncertainty as to who this person was, where he came from.

But that's okay because the book of Nahum is a book that is not about the prophet who spoke the message.

It is about the God of the prophecy.

The book of Nahum is given to us to reveal to us an element of God's character that we need to understand and believe to live mature Christian lives.

The Book of Nahum reveals to us that God is a holy God of both mercy and justice.

He is a God who delights in justice.

And that's what we'll see as we walk through the book of Nahum over the next two weeks.

So let's begin our time by reading the first chapter.

I'm going to read the entirety of the first chapter, our text for this morning, and then we will look at it in some detail.

So follow with me as I read from God's Word.

Look down in your Bibles in Nahum chapter 1, beginning in verse 1, and hear God's word.

Nahum 1 · chapter mention

An oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God.

The Lord is avenging 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 ways in the whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

He rebukes the sea and makes it dry.

He drives up all the rivers, Bishon and Carmel 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 overwhelm overflowing flood he will make a complete end of the adversaries, and he will pursue his enemies in a 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 and many, they will be cut down and pass away.

Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more.

And now I will break his yoke from off you and burst your bonds apart.

The Lord has given commandment about you, nor more shall your name be perpetuated.

From the house of your gods I will cut off the carved image and the metal image, 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, O Judah, fulfill your vows, for never again shall the worthless pass through you.

He is utterly cut off.

This is the word of the Lord.

The book of Nahum is something of a shocking revelation.

I think to get our arms around it a little bit better, it would be helpful to set it in something of its historical context.

We've talked a little bit about what you might call its canonical context, that is where it fits in your Bible.

Let's talk a little bit about where it fits in the flow of history.

Jonah appears in the scene in the 8th century, the 700s BCE, and he lives in a time that's recorded in 2 Kings chapter 14.

2 Kings 14 · chapter mention

He goes to Assyria, that is at that time a very powerful city, but it's not yet hit its peak.

And he announces to it God's judgment, and they repent, and so God shows them mercy.

But now a hundred years have passed.

Nahum lives in the 7th century, a hundred years after Jonah, and in the meantime, a number of important events have happened.

Right in between the time of Jonah and the time of Nahim, Assyria has risen to much greater power than they had in Jonah's day, and they have obliterated the northern part of Israel off the map.

In 722, Assyria marches into Israel, they destroy Samaria, obliterate its capital, murder many of its inhabitants, and deport the rest as slaves.

The northern kingdom is no more.

Number of years later, Sennacherib, as recorded in 2 Kings and 18, begins to march down through the southern kingdom of Israel, through Judah, destroys at least 50 cities from the kingdom of Judah and besieges Jerusalem before the Lord miraculously delivers it.

But in the process, he has greatly weakened the city and murdered many inhabitants.

Another generation has gone by, and at the time of Nahum, Assyria has now hit its peak in power.

It's ruled by a tyrant named Aserbanopol, who has risen, who has raised Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, to the greatest city in the world.

It was a massive fortress.

Historical documents say that there were at least two walls that surrounded the city.

The inner wall was about eight miles in circumference.

It stood a hundred feet high.

It was so broad that you could race three chariots across the top of the wall abreast.

There was also sprawling suburbs outside of the inner wall, and then an outer wall, and sprawling suburbs outside of that.

This was an impenetrable, invincible, mighty, mighty city, mighty empire, the greatest at that period in the world.

And you can see their massive influence in that just a couple years before the book of Nahum is written, Assyria has gone past, traveled south on a campaign past Judah, and hasn't even bothered destroying them because the king of Judah at the time, Manasseh, as recorded in 2 Kings 21, has taken up a policy of capitulation to Assyria so that he has become basically a vassal.

Assyria continues south and they destroy Egypt.

They march all the way to lower Egypt, up the southern part of Egypt, and destroy Thebes, its capital.

They are the most dominant empire in the world.

And at this period of time, this prophecy of Nahum comes that this mighty, invincible, oppressive, wicked nation is going to fall.

I think it's helpful to get a sense of the world into which this word was spoken, to see how hard it would have been to believe.

In fact, you could even compound the difficulty.

Not only is Assyria the seemingly invincible force, but if you're living in the kingdom of Judah, then you are living in a kingdom where your king and your entire culture has capitulated to this wicked empire.

Manasseh, the Bible tells us in 2 Kings 20 and 21, has filled God's temple with the idols of Assyria.

He has taken up the gods of Assyria as his own and has caused all the people in the country to worship at the feet of the gods Asher.

Were you in Nahum's shoes and you got this word from the Lord?

My guess is you might have responded the same way that Jonah would have.

You would have said, This is insane.

This is far crazier than the word that you gave to Jonah.

If you were someone who would have been a hearer of the original oracle from Nahum, what would you have done?

This is not a very easy message to believe.

How would you possibly have heard this message and said, yes, I'll believe and I'll act on this word?

Though there is absolutely no evidence around me that I should maintain my loyalty to Yahweh alone and believe that somehow this mighty empire is going to fall, somehow I'll maintain my loyalty to Yahweh.

How would you do that?

And yet, history tells us that just a generation later, in 612, every single word of this prophecy came true.

As an armament army of Medes and Babylonians destroyed the city of Nineveh and crushed the Assyrian Empire.

In fact, we don't have the time, but we could go detail by detail through this prophecy, and historical records show us that what Nahum spoke was fulfilled.

You see, the lesson at the very front of the book of Nahum for us is this.

Sometimes God speaks a word into your life that seems completely unbelievable.

Sometimes God speaks a promise.

Sometimes he speaks a command into your life that seems impossible to believe.

What do you do when you receive the impossible word of God?

How should you respond to it?

The book of Nahum teaches us that the way we ought to respond is to believe the bare word of God.

That's a phrase that Martin Luther used to use in the Reformation.

We ought to believe the bare word of God.

When there is no apparent evidence around us that the word of God is true, then we still take him at his word because God is truth.

We believe the bare word of God.

You know, you can apply that to every single difficult thing that you read in the Bible.

And there are difficult things, aren't there?

Sometimes not even, I'm not even necessarily talking about things that are intellectually challenging.

And there are intellectually challenging propositions in the Bible.

I'm sometimes talking just about those that are personally or morally challenging.

The command for a husband to love his wife when she seems unlovable.

The command for a wife to submit to her husband when he seems unbelievable.

The command that parents are to nurture their children in the admonition of the Lord and not just to cultivate people who will succeed in society.

We're to cultivate people who fear the Lord.

That's what we're to cultivate in our children.

And when there is a society that says that you don't have time for that, the book of Nahim will tell you that you believe the bare word of the Lord and you make time for what God tells us to make time for.

You can apply this lesson to every word that God speaks into your life that you find impossible.

You believe the bare word of God, and what we're going to see as we walk through the book of Nahum is a guarantee that when you believe God at His Word, you will be vindicated.

What I want to do as we walk through the book of Nahim is I want to walk through and show you that Nahim shows us something of the character of God and gives you reason to believe him.

Reason to take him at his word.

In fact, our outline for this morning will be three truths about the character of God that give you reason to take him at his word.

Three realities about who your God is that give you motivation and reason to take him at his word.

Especially in the day of trouble.

Let's walk through these three realities.

The first one that I want you to see goes from verses two through six, and that is this reality that God is an avenger.

God is an avenger.

That doesn't sound particularly comforting or nice, but I think that as we walk through this text, you'll see that this reality about God is a cherish, something that you ought to cherish and cling to in the day of trouble, that God is an avenger.

So let me walk through this aspect of God's character, and I want to show you five things about the reality that God is an avenger.

First, you need to see that God's vengeance is holy vengeance.

Look at verse 2.

Look down in your Bibles at verse 2 and read this.

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God.

The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemy.

You see the threefold repetition?

Avenging, avenging, and takes vengeance?

That's there for emphasis.

The first thing that Nahum wants to do is grab you by the shirt and say, God is an avenger.

God is a jealous God.

God is a wrathful God.

He will punish wickedness.

And immediately, as I said at the beginning, there are elements of the biblical message that our culture, or maybe we personally, find less palatable than others.

And this may be one of them.

A number of criticisms would certainly rise to the surface.

One of the criticisms of a verse like this would be maybe this sounds a little bit like petty nationalism.

I don't know if you would raise this in your own heart, but certainly you would hear this at least from others.

It sounds like petty nationalism.

This sounds like a kind of tribal deity from an unsophisticated ancient time period in which these tribal peoples were rising up and saying, Yeah, our God, he's gonna get him.

He's like this giant pit bull on a leash, and we're gonna sick him on our enemies.

Now that kind of objection we could certainly spend a long time responding to, but I think that the first thing that you should say is that the Bible certainly doesn't present God in that way, as a petty tribal deity who's on the leash, ready to do the beckoning will of his master.

In fact, the book that intervenes between Jonah and Nahum, you know, I said that Nahim is the sequel to Jonah, but they're not back to back in our canon.

There's a book that intervenes.

It's the book of Micah.

And the very first chapter of the book of Micah announces judgment on God's people.

According to the Bible, God is not a petty tribal deity.

He's a God of who is at the mercy of no one.

He is a transcendent God who has no leash around his neck, who serves no one but his own perfect and holy character, and he will judge sin.

There is no partiality with God.

So the first thing to see it say about his avenging nature is that it is a holy vengeance, not at the beckon will of a master.

In fact, you see this in the language, it's in verse 2.

Look at verse 2.

You see, God is a jealous and avenging God, he's avenging and wrathful.

That word wrathful is translated different ways in different English translations.

The Hebrew is master of wrath.

There's a couple English translations that render it that way.

Master of wrath.

Why doesn't the Bible just say that he's wrathful?

Why a master of wrath?

But don't you see how important it is to understand that God is the master of his wrath?

He is not like us.

When we imagine wrath, it is almost impossible for us to imagine anger without sin.

Because the way that we see anger work out in our lives and in the lives of others is that anger masters us.

It builds and it builds and it builds and then it lashes out in unrighteous ways.

It controls us.

But it is not that way with God.

God is the master of his anger.

Anger never masters him.

Anger, his anger only ever serves his good, just, and holy purposes.

He only ever feels anger at what is genuinely evil, and he only ever exercises his anger at what ought rightly to be punished.

God is a holy God by nature, and his wrath doesn't master him, rather, he masters it.

There's a second thing about his avenging nature you need to see.

Not only is he holy, but this verse also tells us that God's wrath, God's vengeance, should bring you comfort.

It's intended to bring you comfort.

Do you know where we see that?

We see that in the title of the book and in verse 1.

An oracle concerning Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.

Do you know what Nahum means?

What his name means?

I don't think this is a coincidence that his name means comfort.

Comfort.

The Nah Nahum in Hebrew is a word that is announced when God is going to bring salvation to his people.

So in the book of Isaiah, chapter 40 is a hinged chapter in that book.

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

Chapter 40 is a famous chapter in which the prophet shouts out this grand announcement comfort, comfort my people, and the rest of the chapter goes on to say, Because my salvation is coming.

Nahum starts with the same word, comfort.

Because my judgment is coming.

How is it that God's judgment brings comfort?

Well, if you are in Nahim's shoes and you are under the heel of a wicked tyrant, then the reality that God sees your suffering and cares and is going to come vindicate you would bring you comfort.

If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you are experiencing oppression and injustice in this life, then the reality that your God sees your suffering and will vindicate you ought to bring you comfort.

God is an avenging God.

And do you know that I think even secular people recognize this?

You might have noticed in my title for this sermon, The Ultimate Avenger, a little pop culture reference as youth pastors are wont to do.

The reality is that I think our secular culture has something in its nature that recognizes that there ought to be some avenger in the world.

One of the greatest cinema franchises in American history and global history is the Marvel movie franchise about the avengers, these great superheroes who oppose evil and stand up for good.

There is something in our makeup as human beings in the image of God that knows that there ought to be someone who avenges what is good and punishes what is evil.

Do you know that the God of the universe is the ultimate avenger?

But he is not at the beck and will of anyone below him.

He is only subservient to his own nature.

He will destroy all that is evil.

And if you're a believer in him, that means he will vindicate you.

Here's a third thing you need to see about God's avenging nature.

It's holy, it should bring you comfort.

And thirdly, it should empower you to forgive and love your enemies.

It empowers to forgive and love your enemies.

What do I mean by that?

Let me walk through a couple texts in the Old Testament and you see if you pick up.

Up what I'm putting down.

Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18 says, You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Leviticus 19:18

Don't take vengeance, God says.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

On what basis can the Bible say, don't take vengeance?

Well, because Deuteronomy 32 says, Vengeance is mine, I will repay.

Because God is a just God, and he will punish sin better than you ever could yourself, more righteously and justly than you ever could, with more force and strength than you ever could, then when you are wronged, you are not to take vengeance, but you are to entrust it to God because He will avenge.

See the Old Testament says that because God is an avenger and he will punish sin, that frees you not to be your own vindicator, to leave vengeance to God and extend forgiveness and love to your enemies.

And by the way, I think that another objection to the reality of God's vengeance that might be raised is that this is a doctrine of the Old Testament, right?

Didn't Jesus come and bring grace and mercy in the New Testament?

Doesn't have anything that smacks of tribal vengeance.

Well, actually, the Apostle Paul, excuse me, quotes exactly the text from Deuteronomy 32, 35 that I just quoted and applies it to the church.

He says this, the Apostle Paul in Romans 12, verse 19, Beloved, never avenge yourselves.

Romans 12:19

But leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.

Beloved, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Do you know that it is only belief in a holy and avenging God that can give you the strength to return good for evil?

In the long run, the reality that God is an avenger and he is holy and will execute justice frees you to extend mercy and love to your enemies.

And only this reality can do that.

You know, there's a famous quote from a Croatian theologian named named Miroslav Wolf, who, as a Croatian, he experienced something of the horrors of the Balkans War in the 90s, and he has this very famous quote in which he applies this reality of God's vengeance to our ability to forgive.

And he says that, in fact, only in the hardest of life circumstances, only if you believe that God has a day of judgment and he will right every wrong can you be freed up to forgive.

And if you don't believe that, and if you believe in the very common Western belief that God is uncoercive love and he would never harm a fly, and he is only just ever, always beckoning people to be nice and forgive and kumbaya, etc., if you believe in that kind of God, inevitably, when you face the hardest realities, the hardest injustices of life, you will sooner or later be compelled to take vengeance into your own hands.

And I want to read you this quote.

He writes, I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone, which in fact is where a paper that underlies this chapter was originally delivered.

And so among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have first been plundered and then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been abused, whose fathers and brothers have been murdered, and the topic of your lecture is a Christian attitude towards violence.

And what are you going to tell these people who have been the victims of horrible violence?

If your thesis is, we should not retaliate, because God is perfect non-coercive love and we should imitate him.

Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God's refusal to judge.

Because in a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die.

You see what he's saying?

Human, compounded human experience teaches us that only the belief in God is righteous and he will judge, only a firm belief in the reality of the holiness of God's vindicating judgment can free you up to extend mercy to those who wrong you.

So that when we are wronged, our impulse is not to get even, but to leave it to God.

And overcome evil with good.

Well, God's vengeance is holy.

God's vengeance brings comfort, it then empowers us to forgive and love our enemies.

Here's a fourth thing about his vengeance is that it secures our greatest good.

What do I mean by that?

Well, let me raise one more objection.

You might say, as you have heard, God will judge, so you shouldn't.

You might say, wait a second, why does God get to be different than me?

Why does God get to act differently than I am required to act?

If God requires me to just forgive, shouldn't he also forgive?

You can see the problem in the hidden premise in this re uh uh criticism, can you not?

Implicit in this criticism is that God is just like me.

The fact of the matter is, friend, if God is to be God, then he is not like you.

I'll give you two reasons why God is an avenger and we are not.

Here's one reason that God is you are not God, and God is God.

Look at verse 3.

The Lord is slow to anger and great in power.

The Lord will by no means clear the guilty.

Listen to the description of God that follows.

His ways in the whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, dries up all the rivers.

Bashan and Carmel 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.

God is not a product of his creation, he's the creator, he's transcendent, he stands outside and above it.

God has the prerogative to judge because of who he is.

God can judge because he is God and you are not.

But we could stretch this a little bit farther, and we could say, in fact, because God judges evil, he secures for us our greatest good.

And what do I mean by that?

Well, let's just think for a moment about what the Bible says, about a couple basic questions we could ask.

What is the greatest good in the universe?

What is the greatest thing in the world?

My four-year-old might say ice cream.

And as we grow into adulthood, our view of the world would expand a bit so that we wouldn't say ice cream, but we would say whatever.

You could come up with some experience, some achievement, but in fact, the greatest reality in the world is nothing in the world, it's in the one who made the world.

The greatest reality in the universe is nothing in creation.

The greatest reality is the creator.

It's the glory of God Himself.

That is the greatest good in the universe.

We see this everywhere in Scripture.

In John 17, verse 5, Jesus prays to his Father and says, Lord, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world.

John 17:5

That's the greatest good, is that for eternity, before there was a world, God the Father and God the Son were sharing infinite glory and were infinitely satisfied.

And the reason they created the world was not because they had any lack, but because they wanted to make people in their own image capable of enjoying the same glory they had enjoyed for eternity.

That's what God made you for.

Isaiah 43, 6, God announces, bring my people from afar.

Everyone whom I created for my glory.

God made you for nothing less than to enjoy the very glory He's enjoyed for eternity.

What then is sin?

Sin is belittling, spitting on, diminishing this glory.

Romans 3.23 says, we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And that word fall short means to lack God's glory.

We reject it, we turn away, we say that it is not all that God says it is.

If God then were to not judge sin, he would participate in the belittling and the diminishing of his glory.

He would make himself the chief of sinners.

And in fact, by belittling his glory, he would diminish the greatest thing in the universe.

He would take away the very thing that can satisfy our souls forever.

No, by judging sin, God magnifies his glory and so secures the greatest thing he can possibly give to you, which is to enjoy the fullness of his glory forever.

For in his presence there is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.

If God were to do anything less than stand up and vindicate his glory, he would not be loving to you because he is the best thing he can give you.

That's why Jesus said in John 17, 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory.

Jesus Christ, in purchasing our salvation, purchased nothing less than the everlasting enjoyment of the very glory he has savored eternally.

The righteous was given for the unrighteous to bring you to God.

And God's judgment is God's action of securing that glory for his people.

God's vengeance is holy, comforting, empowering, and secures your greatest good.

Oh, God's vengeance is good.

But there's one last thing that we should see about his vengeance, and that is in verse 6.

We could just say it this way: God's vengeance is unbearable.

Look at verse 6.

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?

You see those staccato questions?

Who can stand?

Who can endure the answer?

It's rhetorical and obvious.

Nobody! Not Assyria, not the greatest empire in the world.

Could you?

Can you stand before his fierce indignation?

Do you have the strength of Assyria?

Of course not, but perhaps you would rely on something different.

Perhaps you would say, but I'm not wicked like Assyria.

I'm far more righteous.

I'm thankful that, as far as I'm aware, none of you have perpetrated the crimes that Sennacherib perpetrated against humanity.

Thank you for not massacring masses.

But do you know that if God is to not be a tribal deity, if God is going to be more than just a pit bull on a leech who we can sick on our enemies, if God is going to be a transcendent God, a holy God of justice, then he must judge all sin in the world that belittles his glory.

Not just the injustice outside of us that harms us and that we hate, but God must also judge the evil that is inside of us that we like.

If God really is a God of holy justice, then no one can stand against his burning wrath, not even you.

Because the reality is that in the presence of a God who the next book in our Bible, Habakkuk chapter 1, verse 13, says is of purer eyes than to look upon evil and is so holy, cannot see sin, in his presence you will be judged.

Habakkuk 1:13

Hebrews 4.13 says, No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

Friend, I wonder when is the last time you were genuinely conscious of the reality that you will give an account to a holy, holy, holy God, who the Bible says even the angels in heaven are so aware of his glory, they bow their heads because even they are unworthy to look upon him.

Are you conscious of the reality that you are standing on the precipice of eternity and you will give an account to the God who is there?

Samuel Johnson said the knowledge that a man is to be hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Nahum would like for you to think with eternal perspective.

You stand before a God who will judge you, and you will not stand in the judgment.

God's vengeance, holy, comforting to his people, enabling them to forgive and love their enemies, securing their greatest good, but it is unbearable in yourself.

And that forces us to go to the next reality of God's character that we must look at in this text, and that is that God is not only an avenger, he is a refuge.

God is a refuge.

Look at verse 7.

Abruptly, after rumbling on in the thunders of fury, prophesying to us about the holy wrath of God, chapter 7 abruptly intervenes with these words.

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble.

He knows those who take refuge in him.

Feel that abruptness?

That is meant to get your attention.

God is a God of perfect holy vengeance.

His vengeance should rightly judge you and your sin, but God is also a refuge to all who trust in him.

What does it mean to take refuge in God?

The Psalms flesh that out.

The Psalms tell us that it means to fear him, to love him, to serve him.

But in the context of Nahum in chapter 1, it means to find your refuge from the wrath you deserve.

It means to rely on him for the righteousness that you don't have.

It means to come to him empty-handed and say, Save me from the wrath that is to come.

Save me from the judgment I deserve.

Be my refuge.

Hide me in the cleft.

Protect me.

To take refuge from the wrath that you deserve.

You see what's in this text is this reality that God is simultaneously in the Bible a holy God who will judge all sin and a Savior who stands ready to save sinners.

The very God from whom you must run because his judgment will fall upon you, is the very God to whom you must run because only He is able and willing to deliver you from it.

Nahum just allows that tension.

You feel that tension?

He allows it to just stand there, and it only comes unraveled for us in the progressing revelation of the Bible when we get to the person of Jesus Christ.

And it's revealed that the way that God can simultaneously judge sin and save sinners is by sending his Son Jesus Christ into the world.

So that in Jesus, God the Son steps off the throne of heaven and comes into the world and willingly, as a man, stands in our place as a representative to bear the wrath of God, so that all of the judgment we deserve can be removed from us and we can be brought into his presence, blameless and spotless, because God identifies us in his Son Jesus, so that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

That's how that can be true.

But what Nahum is doing for us as New Testament believers in the person of Jesus Christ is that he is rubbing us in the rubbing our noses in something of the stench of the horrors of God's judgment so that you might better appreciate what it is that Jesus endured to secure your salvation.

In fact, as a New Testament believer, one of the ways you could read Nahem is you could just read through this text, and all of the text about God's judgment you can imagine, that is what Jesus endured on the tree.

God's way is in whirlwind in the storm.

Jesus endured that whirlwind.

The hills melt, the earth heaves before him.

Who can stand against his indignation and the heat of his anger?

His wrath is poured out like fire, and on the cross, Jesus is enduring the fiery wrath of God.

That's why he's crying out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Because all the fury of God's justice in a moment is falling upon the brow of his innocent Son in our place.

God's wrath is an overflowing flood.

It will make a complete end of the adversaries.

He pursues them into darkness, and Jesus Christ, in our place, stands before us and endures it.

And soaks up every drop of the wrath of God, turns the cup over and says, it is finished, paid in full.

As a Christian reading Nahum, this text ought to drive us to Christ, who loves us so much, he would endure the wrath of God that you can't even possibly comprehend.

You know, two takeaways that you can get from this verse that God is a refuge is that in the day of your trouble, if God is so holy that he will judge sin even in his son, then he will vindicate you and judge the sin that oppresses you.

And at the same time, if he loves you so much that he is willing to send his son to bear that judgment in your place, then he will deliver you in the day of trouble.

God is an avenger, God is a refuge, but there's one last thing that we ought to look at, and that is that God is a deliverer.

God is a deliverer.

For the sake of time, we'll jump to verse 15 and see the conclusion of this chapter.

In verse 15, Nahum announces this good news.

The result of God's deliverance is in verse 15.

Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace.

Keep your feasts, O Judah, fulfill your vows, and never again shall the worthless pass through you.

He is utterly cast off.

So the images of a messenger coming up over the hills and announcing, Assyria is destroyed, you are safe.

And what is the result of that?

You might think for a moment that the result would be sweet, just go back to business as usual, plow your fields, make money, have a good Israelite life.

But this text says that the result of that ought to be keep your feasts.

What is that?

Well, Exodus chapter 12 and Deuteronomy 23 describe the three feasts that Israel would have where they would march to Israel, or rather to Jerusalem, and they would worship before the temple of God and keeping your vows.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

That's from Deuteronomy chapter 23 that describes voluntary vows of devotion to God.

Deuteronomy 23 · chapter mention

What this text is saying is the result of your deliverance from the judgment you deserve ought to be wholehearted worship and devotion to God.

After all, he did not endure the wrath we deserve to free us up, to run away from him, but to run to him, and to enjoy the very glory he's been enjoying for all of eternity.

This is a picture of who our God is an avenger, a refuge, and a deliverer who has freed you from the wrath to come so that you might enjoy the glory that is to come.

In the day of trouble, where will you look?

Not to yourself, not to your enemies.

You will look to God, the only one who can vindicate, deliver you, and enable you to enjoy all that He has in store for you.

Why don't we pray?

Oh Father, we do indeed worship you because of what we see in this text.

You are a deliverer, you are a holy, just God, and you've delivered us through the redemption that is in your Son, Jesus Christ.

So as we have read from your word this morning, we ask that you would open the eyes of our hearts to see what is the hope, the inheritance, and the power that is ours in Jesus Christ, and to enjoy you in the way that you designed us to.

Lord, we pray that we would go forth from this place with great hope that you are for us, not against us, and that we would submit to you in our thoughts and our words and our deeds.

In the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Manual.

We'd love to personally make you this Monday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our help that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

And we God bless you this week if you speak to this constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel faithfully.