Reading from Nahum, Nahum chapter 1, verses 1 through 8. Hear the word of God. The burden against Nineveh, the book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. God is jealous, and the Lord avenges, the Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserves wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power and will not at all acquit the wicked. The Lord has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and dries up all the rivers. Bation and caramel wither, and the flower of Lebanon wilts. The mountains quake before him, the hills melt, and the earth heaves at his presence. Yes, the world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before his indignation? And who can endure the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. And he knows those who trust in him. But with an overflowing flood, he will make an utter end of its place and darkness will pursue his enemies. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And it is our desire not only to grow in knowledge, but to grow in love for you, grow in faithfulness to you. So sanctify us through your word and the preaching. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Well Nahum is the second book whose primary focus has been the pagan nation of Assyria, especially its capital Nineveh. Jonah's earlier rebuke resulted in Nineveh's repentance and salvation. This rebuke resulted in irrevocable judgment. And both salvation and judgment glorify God. I think we tend to forget that. We tend to think God's most glorified when nations repent, and that is a marvelous thing. But God is also glorified through their judgments, and both mercy and judgment are essential characteristics of God. Now, we do need to delve a little bit into the historical background in order to understand this book. On Floyd Nolan Jones' chronology, this book comes 180 years after Jonah. That's a long time. And a lot can happen to an empire within the span of 180 years. Now, we saw that at the time of Jonah, Nineveh was completely converted, every man, woman, and child. And Jesus said it was a genuine conversion. And it appears that this city, perhaps several other cities, archeology shows, remained faithful to the Lord for perhaps 40 years, if not more. And we don't know a lot about that history because later kings did not like the king that's in the book of Jonah. And it appears two, maybe three kings were expunged from the record. But in some way or other, the pagan empire took over Nineveh, and it reverted to its cruelty, its evil, its treacherous ways, and did so with a vengeance. Now, a lot of things had also happened to both Israel and Judah as well. Shalmaneser of Assyria had invaded Israel, had taken captive most of the population, and then besieged the capital city of Samaria for three years. Now he died before he could take it, but his successor Sargon conquered the city and deported most of the population. So Israel as a nation no longer existed after 721 BC. Basically that region just got assimilated into Assyria. So that's a pretty major change that happened in the north. Between Jonah and Nahum, Between those two prophets, there were four other prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah. So Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and then Micah. And you can see Nahum alluding to Isaiah a lot in this book. Now, there is debate on where Nahum lived because they're not quite sure at Elkoshite. Where is that town from which he is said to have come? A lot of debate on that. Some people say it's in the south, in Judah. But the evidence seems to be much more strong that he lived up in the Galilee region, which means if he lived up there, which is what I tentatively hold to, this was an incredibly dangerous prophecy for him to be prophesying against Assyria. He was living in Assyrian territory and the Assyrians never took kindly to any kind of criticism to their rule. And Nahum 1 verse 11 indicates that he was prophesying at the height of Assyrian power. Actually, the whole book shows that. But that says, if you translate it, one of the translations says Assyria was at its full strength. And so it would have taken a lot of boldness on his part to follow God's command to make this prophecy. And it would take a lot of faith on the part of his hearers to say that Assyria is soon going to be ended. It seemed like Assyria was absolutely invincible. So that all happened up in the north, but there was a lot that happened in the south as well in the previous 180 years. There were five new kings that ruled in Judah, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, and wicked king Manasseh. 2 Chronicles 33 verse 9 says, quote, Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before, the children of Israel. He had adopted the religion of Assyria and became an incredibly wicked king. So he's in league with Assyria. What happens? Assyria takes him out, puts him up in the capital, humiliates him up there. I don't know if he received torture or not. And 2 Chronicles tells us that he repented. and thoroughly converted, came back to the Lord, and astonishingly, against all precedent, the king of Assyria decides, hey, I'm gonna put Manasseh back into Israel, I'm gonna put him back onto the throne. The conversion and the restoration to the throne of Manasseh is almost as puzzling and as incongruous in terms of the times as Nineveh's conversion under Jonah. Anyway, during the time of Nahum, you see both mercy and judgment side by side. The last five years of Manasseh were spent in bringing biblical reform to Judah, which may explain why the Book of Nahum does not criticize Judah at all. I believe that Nahum prophesied during these last years of Manasseh, and there's quite a number of scholars that hold to that view. Not everybody agrees. However, there are certain boundaries within which the book has to occur. For example, Assyria was overthrown in 612 BC, so this was not prophesied after that. And Nahum mentions as a past tense the overthrowing of Thebes, a city in Egypt, by the Assyrians. Well, that took place in 663. So that really narrows the scope of where this could be. And I think Opalmer Robertson, I'm not going to bore you with all of the details, but when you look at all of the details, Opalmer Robertson is probably right that this had to have occurred somewhere within the five-year period of 647 to 642, the last five years of Manasseh's reign. Some people say it was during Josiah later on. But if you look at this book, you'll see this was at the height, not when Assyria was falling apart under Josiah. This was at the height of Assyria's ascendancy, their heyday. And so that's the historical background of the book. Now, why is this such a dark book? Well, the answer is that it's dealing with a very dark situation, the evil empire of Assyria. When I was doing some research, I ran across a very clever overlay of images from one of the Star War movies and the Book of Nahum. And initially I thought, this is really weird. But it was just remarkable how those two overlaid just perfectly and showed why all of the nations would rejoice when Assyria fell, the evils that went on at the time. It's just a very weird but beautiful illustration of the book of Nahum. Now, I want to skim through the book of Nahum very, very quickly, just give you a few descriptions. I think we covered it adequately under Jonah, the evil of that empire. But if you take a look at chapter 1, verse 2, you see the word violence that describes that. Verse 3, plundering and violence. That's a recurring theme, so I won't read any more in the book on that. But verse 4 says, justice never goes forth. Now, that's astonishing. Most nations have at least some justice in order to survive, but Assyria had gotten to the place that treachery was fun and justice was absent. It had become so demonic that God, by inspiration, says, justice never goes forth. Chapter 3, verse 1, we'll skip forward. lays out a number of things that describe the essence of Assyria. He says, woe to the bloody city. It is all full of lies and robbery. Its victim never departs. Now, virtually all commentators appealed to history and archaeology to prove that Assyria really was a bloody empire, the most bloody of the empires of the ancient world. They not only delighted in torture and cruelty, but they seemed to have a blood lust. And I'll just give you one example of this. Right next to the king and queen sitting at a banqueting table was an apple tree, and hanging from that apple tree was the head of the king of Elam dripping with blood. Now, you'd have to be pretty hardened to be able to enjoy your food eating in a grisly scene like that. A grisly, gruesome spectacle. Second thing the verse highlights is that Nineveh was full of lies. To be full of lies indicates that lying was the norm, not the exception. Now you have probably occasionally seen people like this, where they lie so much they don't even know when they're lying and when they're telling the truth. It's just part of their persona to lie. And commentators like Meyer detail the lies, the broken promises, the broken treaties that kings not only engaged in, but actually boasted of. I've read a number of these Assyrian accounts, and repeatedly they boast of how many people they deceived. So they didn't even hide the fact that they deceived other people, like the Sawi tribe of Irian Jaya in the book Peace Child. I don't know if you've read that book. It's an amazing missionary biography. But like the Sawi tribe, Assyrians actually had come to the place where they saw lying and treachery as a virtue, not as something to be avoided, a virtue. And there are biblical examples of kings being completely duped by Assyria. I'll just give you one. 2 Chronicles 28 20 says that King Ahaz trusted the king of Assyria, entered into a treaty with him only to have Assyria treacherously turn on him the moment that treaty was signed. The third characteristic of the empire was robbery. And the amount of plunder that they collected from other nations is apparently astonishing, and Babylon inherited it all. But since this book sets up Assyria as an example of God's judgments in every era, there are a lot of descriptors in this book of what God's attitudes toward later empires is going to be. The fourth evil that Nahum accuses Assyria of was that it constantly victimized people. Now, the literal Hebrew is they were carrying the prey. And so those are four pretty big evils in chapter 3, verse 1. Meyer says of all four characteristics in this verse, this is no exaggeration. It is a summary of the practically ceaseless pillaging and endless rapine, which marked particularly Tiglath-Pileser and the Sargonide dynasty. verse 4, chapter 3, verse 4, and I'll end with this one. because of the multitude of harlotries of the seductive harlot, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations through her harlotries and families through her sorceries." Now, commentators who have dug into the details of this verse have pointed out that Nineveh is described as a madame of prostitutes who combined sex and the occult to keep its citizens and other nations in bondage. And that last clause, who sells nations through her harlotries and families through her sorceries, involves both seductive religion, which brought people into demonic bondage, and human trafficking of sex slaves, that brought people into another kind of bondage. Assyria was guilty of both. And Manasseh, who was the king of Judah who had adopted Assyria's religion, he's a prime example of a person who had been seduced demonically as well as adopting the sexual practices of the Assyrians. So where Jonah shows how God is glorified through the salvation of such people, this book shows how God is glorified through the judgment of such people. Why were they ever judged when you read the history? I won't get into it that much but they got a taste of their own medicine When the Babylonians attacked them, of course, the Babylonians had been a persecuted minority as well and they finally threw off the shackles of Syria and conquered them chapter 2 is a poetic description of what it looked like for Babylon to march in orderly formation up to the walls of Nineveh, completely destroy her after they had plundered her. Now God mockingly in that chapter challenges Assyria, okay, fortify yourself, do your best to defend yourself, but you are not going to be able to gain the victory against Babylon. It's just a straight out prophecy that a lot of people probably mocked if they were not believers, That's impossible. There is no way that Babylon could take over Assyria. Now, he gives an awesome description of the shields and chariots, the weapons of the Babylonians charging the fortified city, overwhelming it, and either putting the Assyrians to the sword or into slavery. Chapter 3 moves on to the entire empire's fall to Babylon. Just as Assyria had devastated Egypt, Babylon will devastate Assyria, put the king to death, And the chapter ends by saying, all who hear news of you will clap their hands over you, for upon whom has not your wickedness passed continually? Now, all of that was fulfilled to a tee in 612 BC. And you might think, why are we getting all of this ancient history, you know, from an irrelevant ancient empire that no longer exists? Well, it's not irrelevant. God has put it into the canon for a good reason. And what I want to do is I want us to go back to chapter one. I want to show some very, very intriguing hints that the book continues to be relevant for all generations. And the first hint, unless you know Hebrew or you've got a study Bible that tells you about it, you're probably not going to know. In the Hebrew, every line begins with a different letter of the alphabet. It's an acrostic. Okay, and there's a lot of ink that has been spilled on this partial acrostic that's used in verses 2 through 8, but not the rest of the chapter, where every line does start with the next letter of the alphabet. Well, with one exception. Anyway, we've seen in previous books that where acrostics are complete, they are symbolic of completeness. It's an A to Z of something. This is not complete, and because of one irregularity, There are liberals who say, this must have been corrupted text because it's beautiful. And then all of a sudden it ends. And then there's this odd difference right in the middle. But conservatives have said, no, there is absolutely nothing missing. If you look at the structure, you look at the poetry, you cannot insert anything in there. It is beautifully crafted. And so this incompleteness in the acrostic is very deliberate. And the best explanation that I have seen is by scholars who say that the judgment upon Assyria that's being described is only the beginning of many ungodly empires that God will take out. In other words, Assyria is not the A to Z of evil empires. Assyria, by the time you get to there, it's only A to I, the letter I, okay? Nine. After Assyria comes Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and other empires that will demonically dominate and will eventually be doomed. And the irregularity is deliberate as well, just showing us we don't know God's timing. He sometimes seems irregular, but it's for a purpose. Now I've got a theory, it's only a theory, as to why one of those letters is missing. And I think it's because God converted Nineveh under the preaching of Jonah. I'm not going to be dogmatic on that, but it really is a very intriguing, beautiful symbolism there. Now, the second hint that this book relates to all evil empires is that verse 3 is a direct quote from Exodus 34, 6-7. where God declares His very nature and being in these words, This is not only true of Assyria, it is true of all times. And then the poem goes back and forth between the fate of nations that rebel against Him and the protection of God's faithful remnant who cling to Him despite persecution. So there's judgment and mercy go side by side, and both of those reflect God's abiding character. These contrasts make clear that the judgments upon pagan nations are really a demonstration of God's loving provision toward His people. I'll just give you one example, and that's verse 7. Yehovah is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who trust in him. Now the word know can be translated as intimately know or he loves. It's an incredibly comforting promise for those who face any evil empire. In other words, God's got everything in control. Now the third hint that we find in chapter one, Is it Assyria or Nineveh is nowhere mentioned by name in chapter one. Instead, it simply points to God's judgment against bad guys, hinting that even Babylon will eventually get its comeuppance. And the last hint, and I think this is the most powerful one, is that he describes this judgment on the bad guys with words identical to Isaiah 52 verse 7, which shows that the good news of the gospel is the answer to the bad news in every age. And I want you to take a look at chapter 1 verse 15, because Nahum's use of Isaiah here is absolutely fascinating. First clause, verse 15, is a verbatim quote of Isaiah 52, verse 7. Behold on the mountains the feed of him who brings good tidings, who proclaims peace. I think this is the most obvious reference to the Lord Jesus Christ in the entire book. Now keep in mind the New Testament says every Old Testament book speaks about Christ. So if you don't think this verse refers to him, you're going to have to find it somewhere. But I think this one is, by inspiration of the New Testament, clearly a reference to Christ. Romans 10, 15 quotes this verse and says, this is a prophecy of the new covenant good news, interestingly, being rejected by Israel, and that Israel is being treated as another Assyria. In other words, Paul's point is anyone who rejects the Good News will suffer the same kind of judgment, whether you're Assyria or Israel. While Nahum 3.15 goes on to pronounce the New Covenant trajectory that the Good News will be so pervasive, eventually there will be no more wicked people. O Judah, keep your appointed feasts, perform your vows, for the wicked one shall no more pass through you. He is utterly cut off. So for those four reasons, commentators point out, chapter one is setting us up to realize that the rest of the book is simply going to use God's judgment on Assyria as an example of what God will do to any nation in any age if they defy Him. these evil empires simply will not endure. And when the A to Z of evil empires is finished, in other words, there is a limit, at some point it's going to be Z, we don't know when that is, but when the last evil empire is overturned by the Lord, then God indicates his victory will be so extensive that eventually there will be no more unbelievers to convert. It's an incredibly encouraging message. So the upshot is don't see national judgments as a bad thing. They are a part of God advancing His perfect plans. See them as God's goodness at work. God hates the evil in this world a whole lot more than you and I do, and He fights against evil either by conversion, as in the book of Jonah, or by judgment, as in the book of Nahum. And many times he actually advances his kingdom even through the judgments, like the judgment in Nahum, as can be seen from the conversion of the Syrians, conversion of the emperors in Babylon, and actually countless Gentiles during the post-exilic period. Now theologians call these things redemptive judgments. So if you're reading in systematic theology about redemptive judgments, this is the kind of thing. Yes, there's judgment, but there's mercy that God brings through it by drawing the elect to himself. It's a beautiful doctrine. Now, the Book of Nahum is thus an abiding memorial to the truth that God will bring down all bloodthirsty and arrogant regimes from the past to the future, whether those regimes are a Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, guilty of over a million deaths, or the Soviet regime, guilty of somewhere between 3 and 60 million, depending on which scholar's calculations you look at. God will bring them down. Nahum 1 verse 2 says, God is jealous and the Lord avenges. The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries and he reserves wrath for his enemies. And he does not make exceptions for America. He reserves wrath for his enemies, all enemies. No matter how mighty China might appear to be, that murderous country will face God's judgment or salvation. Either way, God will not allow evil to triumph forever. Even the name Nahum, which means comfort or consolation, shows that when read rightly, the judgments of this book are a comfort. So that's really the story of Nahum in a nutshell, and I could quit here, but a 15-minute sermon would not be appropriate. So I'm going to end by giving some meditations on the nature of our God in Nahum chapter 1, verses 1 through 14. He has got unchanging character, the same yesterday, today, and forever. I'm going to begin with verse 2. God is jealous and the Lord avenges. The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries and he reserves wrath for his enemies. Now, I've already commented on the vengeance side of things. I just want to draw out two theological points from that verse. And the first one is that God is jealous. God is jealous. He is jealous for his bride. He is jealous When the bride is unfaithful, he is jealous when other people attack his bride. The jealousy of God is an incredibly comforting doctrine. Now, remember I said that Manasseh had converted and he began a reformation in Judah during the last five years of his reign, which Josiah actually continued. So converted Manasseh rebelled against Assyria. Assyria had put him back on the throne. He's converted. He realizes God's law says I cannot be in covenant with a pagan nation like Assyria. So he breaks covenant. He revolts against Assyria, which from an atheistic perspective seemed like an insane, absolutely crazy move to make. It would expel his death. But since Manasseh now wanted to please God more than anything else, Manasseh refused to think pragmatically. If God forbids making treaties with the Assyrians, I'm going to break that treaty. By the way, this is one of countless scriptures that the Reformers pointed to to why they were justified in breaking their vows of celibacy when they did not have the gift of celibacy and breaking of their vows of blind complete allegiance to the church even if the church engaged in criminal activities and so they repented of their vows and they They went about what God said was righteous to do. Now, it is a sin to break a vow, any vow, but it's a far greater sin to keep an ungodly vow. That's the point. And God honored Manasseh for doing this. And when Assyria planned retribution and destruction, God was now jealous for his now faithful bride and was going to defend his bride. Jealousy is a comforting doctrine if it is a jealousy that imitates God. Exodus 34, 14 says, you shall worship no other God for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. There is security in a husband's jealousy to protect the marriage covenant. And there is security in knowing that God is jealous on behalf of his bride. Now, coupled with this is that God avenges. In that same verse, when Assyria threatens to rape his bride, God threatens to kill Assyria. Avenging is a sign of love. Defending those who are being attacked is a sign of love. And so Christians sometimes wonder, OK, well, if that's the case, why does not God take out the wicked much sooner? Well, verse 3 gives the answer to that. The Lord is slow to anger Now we might wish that he wasn't slow because we get very frustrated with the evil that is around us But consider this if God wasn't slow to anger You would be in trouble if God wasn't slow to anger then and he wiped out all of the people today well they would uh their descendants who are elect would never come into existence actually if he had done this decades ago you would not be in existence right now if it was not for his slowness to anger If God wasn't slow to anger, America would long ago have perished. And so we can praise God that his slowness in judging is a perfect slowness. It is balanced with the next two characteristics in verse three. The next phrase says that he is great in power. OK, that means that his failure to judge is not because of his inability to judge. He could take out the enemies any time that he chose to. And the fact that he has not taken out the enemies means we need to evaluate whether God is using these enemies as tools in our life. That's exactly what he was doing in Israel and Judah. They were backslidden, so God was using these enemies to discipline them, to try to bring purity into their lives. But when we call upon God in repentance, we can be absolutely assured that God has made the very same God who made the universe in six days, has plenty of power to fulfill his plans. The Illuminati cannot frustrate God's plans. The deep state cannot frustrate God's plans. The second characteristic that balances out the slowness to anger is that God does not overlook evil. Verse 3 goes on to say, and will not at all acquit the wicked. They will get their just desserts, whether in this life or in the life to come. And God's slowness to anger, he's basically saying, has nothing to do with the fact that God is overlooking evil in this world. He hates the evil in this world far more than you and I do. But God's self-control, and it must take incredible self-control in all of his attributes, means his attributes are serving his decrees. are serving His plans perfectly. He doesn't just fly off the handle. His wrath is meted out perfectly. The next encouraging characteristic is that God controls all of nature, including the termites that destroyed your house. God includes all of nature. Listen as I read verses three through six and see if you can recognize some of the parts of nature that God personally is governing. And by the way, Many people define miracles totally wrong as if God is intervening in their nature. God is never not in nature controlling it. That's not the proper definition of a miracle. So many people are deists. Deists believe God set certain laws in motion like winding up a clock and he puts it on the mantle and he disappears. No, God is personally right now very much involved in every atom that occurs and every tornado that occurs. Okay, starting to read halfway through verse three. The Lord has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. and dries up all the rivers. Matian and Carmel wither, and the flower of Lebanon wilts. The mountains quake before him, the hills melt, and the earth heaves at his presence, yes, the world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before his indignation, and who can endure the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him." Now, just in that little paragraph there, It indicates that God controls storms, inland seas, rivers, mountains, flowers, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the whole world. If that's the case, then we have absolutely no excuse for failing to trust God in difficult times. Because our fears and our doubts are really expressions of lack of faith in God's control, His sovereignty over nature, especially given the next attribute. Verse 7 says, the Lord is good. When people lose money in the stock market, they're very tempted to think, doubt God's goodness, or at least they wouldn't doubt God's goodness in general, but God's not being good to me. Okay, they doubt that. But in the midst of pain, we need to cast off such doubts, rebuke ourselves, and say, no, I will not think that way. God is good, always good, without exception, good. And that's why we should run to him rather than to the things of this earth to find security and comfort. Verse seven goes on to say, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who trust in him. God is your stronghold, His fortress, high tower, and refuge. And since He loves those who put their trust in Him, we should run to Him for deliverance rather than to the creation. You should not so much as take an aspirin without asking God to make that aspirin work. You know, how we deal with the creation around us makes a statement of where our trust really is. Is our trust in the creation or the creator of this creation, the controller of this creation? He's not against us using medicine, but he is against us failing to trust him in our finances and in every other area of life. Is our strong tower in America or is our strong tower in God? Verse 8 affirms that God will utterly destroy His enemies, and when you read the histories of conspiracies, and I can recommend some fascinating books on that, You realize that our age is not the only age in which conspiracies against God's rule have taken place. There have been thousands of conspiracies and every single one of them has failed. Just reading the history of conspiracies makes you realize, you know what? Not a one of them has worked. Satan is a failure, an absolute failure. So, Verse 8 says, but with an overflowing flood, he will make an utter end of its place, and darkness will pursue his enemies. Now this means it's useless to conspire against God. Verse 9 tells a serious leadership, what do you conspire against the Lord? He will make an utter end of it. Affliction will not rise up a second time. If it doesn't serve God's purposes, it's not going to happen. And then in verses 10 through 14, God makes several statements about the absolute futility of every conspiracy against him. They're very encouraging verses. So if you've allowed the conspiracies of this world to shake your faith, you're acting like the 10 spies who went into the land of Canaan. instead of acting like Joshua and Caleb. Joshua and Caleb saw exactly the same problems and giants that were in the land, but they saw God was much bigger, right? That's the key point. Verse 15 has already been dealt with. It's the prophecy of the gospel. of the New Covenant going forth to the ends of the earth, guaranteeing an eventual end to wicked people. But it highlights the fact that even God's judgments usually have a redemptive theme to them. While bringing judgment to some, He's bringing salvation to others, while bringing bad news to some, there is bringing good news to others. So if God takes down America, there's going to be bad news to some people. Keep in mind, there's always going to be good news that is involved as well. We may be in the position to help pick up the pieces. and lead disillusioned Americans to the true source of hope, who is Jesus. It's because good news almost always accompanies bad news in God's economy. But the book as a whole brings one final encouragement, that nothing is a match for God, not even Nineveh. Now people feared Assyria, and the Assyrians themselves boasted that they would last forever, One of the later emperors, Esarhaddon, said this, I am powerful. I am all powerful. I am a hero. I am gigantic. I am colossal. I am honored. I am magnified. I am without equal among all kings. You know, when I read that, you know, the first image that came to my mind, probably a farsighted mind, but was the image of Loki saying to the Hulk in the movie The Avengers, you know, stop you. I am a God you dull creature is what he said and The Hulk grabs him by the feet and he's smashing his head all over the pavement And he's just lying there on the ground and the Hulk walks off saying puny God That's the best line in the whole movie as far as I'm concerned Well, Assyria was, from a human perspective, pretty impressive. It was impressive to Israel, to many other nations, but in God's sight, the emperor was puny. Assyria was no match for God. Now, sadly, many in Israel did not see it that way. They saw Assyria as invincible, and they just pragmatically said, we've got to be in covenant with them. There is no way that you could oppose them. They were not walking by faith. Instead, they were walking by sight. And what they saw with their sight was an immense, unbeatable empire. At the time of Nahum's prophecy, Nineveh ruled the world from Libya and Ethiopia to Babylon and beyond. The capital city Nineveh was much better fortified than the painting in your outline shows. I couldn't find an adequate painting that accurately describes it. So, the inner wall around this gigantic city was 100 feet tall, 50 feet thick. That's just the inner wall. The towers of the wall were 200 feet tall. It then had a 150 foot wide moat. It was a pretty deep moat. And then it had other walls. Its most vulnerable side did not at all look vulnerable to their enemies. because they faced the first massive wall that was strengthened with detached forts, then two deep ditches, then two more walls, and the distance from the outer wall to the inner wall was 2,007 feet, where any enemies who managed to get over the first wall were completely vulnerable to the arrows of the enemy coming in, and they couldn't bring their horses with them. And so, scholars who have analyzed the structure of this city are mystified as to how Babylon could take over Nineveh. It was an astonishing feat. But because God had decreed it, it happened, and it happened with ease. It happened in a remarkably speedy time. The Assyrian emperor was shown to be a puny God. And so the last reason that we can last lesson that we can learn from this book is that nothing, nothing, nothing is a match for God. If you are discouraged over the political scene in America, stop being discouraged. If you're going to be discouraged over anything, be discouraged over the lack of faith in the church. Because that means we're going to continue to be disciplined. That's what we should be discouraged over. If the church continues to support pragmatic U.S. presidents like the Judeans did before the time of Nahum, then you too deserve domination by evil. Keep in mind, God is just as glorified by discipline and by destruction as he is by salvation. Don't think salvation is the only thing. Deliverance from some comfort problem is the only thing that glorifies God. Keep in mind, He is just as glorified by judgment and discipline as he is by salvation. God will keep cranking up the pressure, but if there is a repentance on the part of the church and a major turnaround of the church in America like happened in the last five years of Manasseh and during the reign of Josiah, then even the impossible becomes possible with God. Our God is a God of impossibility, so let's trust Him rather than putting our trust in princes. Amen. Father, thank you for your word and the encouragement that it gives to us to not put our trust in what we see with the physical eyes, but in your promises and in your invisible kingdom. Forgive us for those times where we have doubted you and we have become discouraged at all of the difficulties that are around us. Father, those mountains that face us are just molehills in your sight that you can, with one kick, spread and disperse. And so I pray that we would be given the conquering faith that 1 John speaks about, where you have said, everyone who is born of you overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. Father, fill our hearts with faith and a vision of your greatness. You are greater than the puny gods of this world. And we love you and we bless you. In Jesus' name.