Nahum: Mercy and Justice
Return: the Minor Prophets – Nahum – Revd. Buffy Langdown
O Lord, take my words and speak through them;
Take our minds and think through them;
Capture our hearts and set them on fire with love for You, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Nahum or should I say Jonah the sequel!
I don’t think anyone would disagree with me that we live in a very broken world. Almost every day we hear new stories about corruption, global health epidemics, violence and crime, and global tension between nations ravaged by war and terrorism. The sheer amount of brokenness in our world is enough to make us wonder if things will ever get better.
Living in Denmead it’s all too easy to try and pretend like these things aren’t our problem or that these issues don’t have any relevance for us today where we live. But I believe the Bible gives us timeless wisdom and instruction on topics such as this and one of the books that speaks to this issue in profound ways is the book of Nahum.
Nahum was a prophet of God, and his message comes in the form of a prophetic vision to the people of Ninevah, which was the centre of the Assyrian empire. As Nahum delivers the prophecy he declares, ''The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked'' (Nahum 1:3).
The book of Nahum provides a view of a powerful and just God who maintains His absolute moral standards, while offering hope to those who are despised and downtrodden. Nahum’s message teaches us to trust in God, even when our situation seems hopeless, and reminds us that God will stand with those who belong to Him.
The book which could also easily be titled, Jonah the sequel, opens with a declaration concerning Nineveh, about 150 years after the Prophetic word given to Ninevah by Jonah and during the reign of Hezekiah.
Describing the Lord as a jealous and avenging God, Nahum forewarns of divine wrath against His enemies. The book of Nahum is God's message of the impending destruction of Nineveh. The prophet's name means ''comfort'' or ''consolation which considering the content of the vision seems ironic.
Some background information about Assyria might prove helpful in revealing why judgment against them was forthcoming. The Assyrians were brutal enemies of God’s nation, Israel, and practiced some of the most evil and violent methods of war known to mankind.
Assyria made its appearance on the world scene in 14th century BC, its territory located in the northern part of present-day Iraq. Assur its capital was located some one hundred and fifty miles north of present day Baghdad on the west bank of the Tigris River. Nineveh later became their capital. A warring and ruthless people, they sought to crush all who opposed their continual advancements. By the ninth century BC Assyria had become a dominate world force, having as their goal to further expand their territorial empire. As their power grew, they began to pose a threat to Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and Judah (the Southern Kingdom).
The Northern Kingdom, weaken by spiritual deterioration and weak and corrupt leaders, under the leadership of King Menahem was forced to pay heavy honour to Assyria. With the heavy burden of paying tribute to Assyria, Israel decided to revolt. The Assyrians marched into Israel, seizing the capital city of Samaria, and after three years of fighting destroyed the city).
Thousands of Israelites were deported, and we read in two Kings 18:11, “The king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan.” While the Assyrians were a thorn in the side of the Southern Kingdom, they were never able to capture them as they did the Northern Kingdom.
The imagery of God’s power is vivid, depicting His ability to command the elements and shake the foundations of the earth. The message of Nahum to the Assyrians is deeply haunting yet simple and goes something like this: God will utterly destroy, devastate, and humiliate you and your people for your blatant evil, bloodshed, and injustice upon the innocent. In three short chapters we see that God will bring destruction to Assyria in such a way that has never been seen before.
Despite the impending judgment on Nineveh, Nahum reassures that the Lord is a refuge for those who trust in Him.
Amidst the warnings of judgment, there’s a ray of hope. Nahum speaks of God’s grace and provision for His people, offering solace amid impending calamities. This duality of judgment and grace underscores the enduring message of all the minor prophets: that God’s justice is tempered by His compassion.
After the grace given to them a hundred years earlier with the prophet Jonah, we see The Ninevites turn right back around to embrace their sinful and destructive past once again. However, before we get too self-righteous, we would be wise to consider how many times you and I have done the exact same thing. In fact, how many times have you and I done the exact same thing this week?
While we may not have led an army to burn cities or slaughter innocent women and children, you and I still have sin living inside of us. This rebelliousness seeps into our heart, mind, and soul and causes us to one day embrace God’s forgiveness and the next day get right back to the sin we were so sorry by the previous day. Such is the human condition.
The book of Nahum serves as an example, both then and now, to encourage us that God does not take evil and injustice lightly. Nahum, and many of the other minor prophetic books, is a bold indictment upon evil and injustice and gives us a glimpse of how God will one day bring His sovereign justice to these horrible injustices in our world today.
While we mourn and feel the weight of living in our broken world, we must take encouragement and hope that God will not remain silent. In His perfect timing, there will be swift and unfathomable judgment to His enemies. At the same time, as in every message in Scripture, there is good news that points to God’s steadfast love and mercy. For those that trust in God and submit to His ways there will be refuge and comfort until His day of judgment occurs
The message of Nahum is that God’s sovereign, loving-justice will eventually prevail. One may ask, “How can you use love and justice in the same sentence? Are they not two opposing terms?” Quite to the contrary, at the very heart of Nahum’s message is love, for it is God’s love that imposes judgment. If God didn’t bring the judgment of divine justice to bear on unrepentant ungodliness, He would not be a Being of love. Love and justice are inseparably interwoven together, as God’s love for humanity and His people arouses His righteous-justice and in time reacts in judgment against those who continually live godlessly and mistreats His people.
If you think that God is only a God of love and never of wrath, then listen to the message from Nahum, that a God who is never angry is a God who cannot love. Did you ever think of that? God's wrath comes from his love. It is because God loves that he is angry. What moves us to anger? Isn't it almost always when something or someone we love is threatened or injured?
It may be yourself. What makes us angry? Somebody injures us and because we love ourselves, we get mad at them. Or someone injures our child, and we feel justified in being angry towards those that have hurt them. If you read or hear the stories of atrocities and oppression and the awful traffic in body-destroying and soul-destroying drugs and narcotics among young people and never be moved to anger, then you are far more patient and kind then I am.
We cannot just talk about the God of wrath without the God of love, but the wrath of God grows out of his love, is a manifestation 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." What is the way to escape the anger of God? Well, Nahum tells us that too in chapter 1, verse 7:
The Lord is good, a stronghold on the day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him. (Nahum 1:7 RSV)
We are familiar with the good news of the New Testament—in the Gospels. What is the good news of Nahum? Just as our God is unchanging and eternal, the good news of the prophets is much the same as we find in the gospels. There is nothing unpredictable about the anger of God. There is nothing selfish about it. It is a controlled but, fearsome to behold.
You can get some idea of the awfulness of this divine anger in the fact that all the Hebrew words for wrath or anger are brought together in the first six verses of chapter 1. The words are: jealous, vengeance, wrath, anger, indignation, fierceness, fury. All of them describe the anger of God.
But let’s look at the opposite of the judgment prophesied to Ninevah.
Blessed are those who are the object of God’s jealousy. Nahum proclaims that the Lord is a jealous God. Not an evil, corrupted concept of jealousy—for that would be envy. Jealousy is the longing and the love that covets that which belongs to you. We belong to God, and he is jealous for us.
Blessed are those avenged by God. Evil is not allowed to prevail at the end of the day. The good news of Nahum means trusting that wrongs will be made right.
Blessed are the ones with whom God’s anger moves slowly. Judgment and wrath are not hastily dished out. The good news of Nahum means that God’s patience works quicker than his wrath.
Blessed are those who take refuge in him. We are safe within the arms of God. When the floods and torments of life threaten to overtake us, he is our refuge.
Blessed are those freed from the yoke of slavery. The good news of Nahum is freedom—freedom from oppression, subjugation, humiliation, and every form of persecution.
The good news of Nahum is the dim shadow of the good news of Jesus that came over four hundred years later. He longs for us. He conquers evil. We place ourselves in his care. He frees us. We have peace
Nahum serves as a warning, driving us to the cross of Jesus. For there we see God's perfect combination of love and justice. All we need to do is to go to Jesus, repenting of our sins, trusting in his free gift of salvation through Grace not through anything we’ve earnt, not for a moment or for a season, like the Assyrians, but fully and forever.
The world we live in simply is not operating the way God intended.
But we know that there is a God of grace who meets us in those moments of darkness and difficulty. He is worth running to. He is worth waiting for. He brings rest when it seems like there is no rest to be found. God has always cared about those who need a refuge, those who need a shelter in the time of storm in their lives. And He is a God of great comfort.
We can be thankful that God sent Jesus into a world of suffering and sin, to pay the price for our sin that we might have eternal life. That we might have the hope that one day there will be no more afflictions. Because that is our greatest comfort. We know that suffering will not have the last word. As Nahum made clear, the day is coming when God will make all things right. The righteous will be rewarded, and the wicked will be punished
Because of that resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have hope. We may live in a world where we have suffering and affliction. But there is coming a day when it will be over, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. That is our greatest comfort, and we praise him for it. We praise God for the hope we have in Jesus Christ, not just in the future, for the comfort we have from him each day.
Amen