Welcome to this Daily PBJ devotional. Read 2 Chronicles chapter 4 through chapter 6 verse 1 and Nahum 3 today. This devotional is about Nahum chapter 3. Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without prey. The crack of the whip, the rumble of the wheel, Galloping horse and bouncing chariot, Charging horsemen, flashing sword, Shining spear, heaps of slain, Mounds of corpses, dead bodies without end, They stumble over their dead, Because of the many harlotries of the harlot, The seductive mistress of sorcery, Who betrays nations by her prostitution, And clans by her witchcraft. Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts. I will lift your skirts over your face, I will show your nakedness to the nations, And your shame to the kingdoms. I will pelt you with filth and treat you with contempt. I will make a spectacle of you. Then all who see you will recoil from you and say, Nineveh is devastated. Who will grieve for her? Where can I find comforters for you? Are you better than Thebes, stationed by the Nile with water around her, whose rampart was the sea, whose wall was the water? Kush and Egypt were her boundless strength, Put and Libya were her allies. Yet she became an exile, she went into captivity, her infants were dashed to pieces at the head of every street, they cast lots for her dignitaries, and all her nobles were bound in chains. you too will become drunk. You will go into hiding and seek refuge from the enemy. All your fortresses are fig trees, with the first ripe figs. When shaken, they fall into the mouth of the eater. Look at your troops. They're like your women. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies. Fire consumes their bars. Draw your water for the siege. Strengthen your fortresses. Work the clay and tread the mortar. Repair the brick kiln. There the fire will devour you, the sword will cut you down, and consume you like a young locust. Make yourself many like the young locust. Make yourself many like the swarming locust. You have multiplied your merchants more than the stars of the sky. The young locust strips the land and flies away. Your guards are like the swarming locust, and your scribes like clouds of locusts, that settle on the walls on a cold day. When the sun rises, they fly away, and no one knows where. O King of Assyria, your shepherds slumber, your officers sleep, your people are scattered on the mountains, with no one to gather them. There is no healing for your injury. Your wound is severe. All who hear the news of you applaud your downfall. For who has not experienced your constant cruelty? This is God's Word. As we've read already in Nahum 1 and 2, God's judgment on Nineveh was mostly due to their extreme violence. Remember that God's law, which is imprinted in our consciences and written in his word, is the standard by which we are judged. It is impossible to keep the law of God because of our sin natures, but that does not exempt us from accountability to the Lord and judgment by the Lord for breaking His laws. What our inability to keep God's laws requires is God's grace. Christ secured that grace by taking our penalty on the cross, and He forgives us by grace when we trust in Christ's cross work for us. So the kings and people of Nineveh were responsible before God and guilty before Him for all the nations they attacked without cause, and the soldiers and civilians who were killed by their military aggression. Verse 1 here in Nahum 3 describes this city as the city of blood. Verses 2 and 3 vividly depict their powerful armies. And verse 3b detailed the results of their attacks. The NIV says this in Nahum chapter 3 verse 3. Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses. That's a pretty vivid description of a violent city. Verses 5 through 19 warn this wicked city and her king. You can see verse 18 for that. Of God's impending humiliation. Again, that's verses 4 through 7. and the defeat of Nineveh. The prosperity that the Assyrians enjoyed at that moment would be stripped from them like locusts decimating a farm, as we saw in verses 16 and 17. Warfare and tyranny run through the history of humanity. As civilization has advanced, technology has improved our lives and, simultaneously, made the killing and destruction of war more efficient and more massive in its scale. We should consider how our country wages war. Although we do not take over countries and enslave them the way that the Assyrians did, In my opinion, many American presidents are far too quick to drop bombs on and send troops into other nations. Our leaders use military might to advance their political agendas. In the process, they have sacrificed too many American soldiers, too many soldiers from foreign lands who were forced into service by their government or merely wanted to defend their land against our invading armies. And of course, too many civilian casualties have been lost due to American aggression. Passages like this one in Nahum call world leaders to be careful about waging war and to repent for wars that were and are unjust. As American citizens, we should do what we can to hold our leaders accountable for how recklessly and needlessly they wage war and provide weapons of war to foreign governments. God is watching. If he held Nineveh accountable for her unjust wars, for her cruelty, for the many people that were killed by Nineveh, what will he do to us?