Prophet Nahum. This is what we read in the opening of this prophecy. This is what we read. It says, the burden against Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum, the Elkishite. God is jealous. And the Lord avenges. The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take his 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. Bashan and Carmel wither, 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. 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. Darkness. Darkness will pursue His enemies. His enemies. God is jealous. The Lord is slow to anger, great in power. The Lord is good. He's good. Let's pray together. Fathers, we open this book, we do pray. Father, help us get a sense of what you're revealing here. So that we can live today. So that we can live today. But we ask this in Christ's name, amen. Just imagine, let's just go to hypothetical here just a second. Although today, given today's climate, this might not be so hypothetical. It's not out of the realm of possibility that you could engage in a conversation something like this. But let's just say you're talking to a husband. And let's just say that he's been married to his wife for some time. Let's just say during the course of the conversation, you get the sense from this husband that he considers himself to be quite a modern man. He's quite modern. In fact, in the course of the conversation, you get the sense he's actually pretty proud. He's a modern man. And he's pretty proud of the fact that he's a modern husband. Because as you're talking and you get into this conversation, and you start talking about the relationship, and you're sharing a little bit about your relationship and so forth, and your marriage, and all of a sudden, he starts to say things like, yeah, you know, the core of our relationship is this. Each of us is committed to pursuing our own personal satisfaction beyond anything else. That's the core of our relationship. You kind of scratch your head because you're a believer, you're a Christian, you're thinking about this from a Christian worldview and you're like, what exactly does that mean? And he says, well, you know, my wife, she could just, if she wakes up one day and feels like pursuing something brings her personal satisfaction, and in getting her personal satisfaction and happiness, she discovers her true identity, then I'm all down for that. I'm all in with that. And they're like, it's still not quite true. What do you mean? Well, let me give you an example, he says. Let's say that she wants to run off and have a spat with a neighbor. He's good looking after all. He's got a good job. But she just wants to go hang out with him for a couple of weeks and, you know, carry on with him for a couple of weeks. And you go, are you okay with that? Well, yeah, if that's what brings her personal satisfaction, if that's who she really feels like she is at that moment, then again, that's the core of this relationship. And you say, but don't you get jealous when she runs around with another man? Oh, no. I'm not the jealous type. I don't get jealous at all. You just sort of scratch your head and think, my gosh, I can't imagine this type of relationship. Although, we can imagine it now, because there are plenty of marriages that are living this very thing right now. Not the jealous type. Well, in one sense, we go, well, that's good. I mean, you don't want to be just jealous and fly off the handle and go to your neighbor and beat him up. I mean, you don't want to do that. I mean, I think that's sort of what we mean when we talk about jealousy, right? Not the jealous type. I'm not going to fly off the handle. I'm not going to beat somebody up. You remember the little schoolyard love affairs? You remember those little love affairs? You remember those? We didn't have a clue what we were doing. Didn't have a clue what it meant. Didn't have a clue at all. I remember telling a friend of mine in the second grade, you need to leave her alone. She's just using you. In the second grade. You need to leave her alone. She's just using you. And he looks at me like, I was jealous. I wanted her to use me. Listen, I see this with kids all the time. They use the language of committed relationships, and they don't have any idea. It's like a 10-year-old or a 9-year-old saying, he cheated on me. What in the world do you mean he cheated on me? Oh, he Instagrammed another girl. Oh, I get it. I see. Yeah. Because we're thinking, and we're going to start using that kind of language, then, hey, something else is going on here, right? But you see, if we hear that, we go, as Christians, thinking about relationships, because marriage is a covenant. It's not a contract. But if you're looking at it as a contract, then you might look at it that way. The terms of the contract say we're free to pursue our own personal satisfaction. We're just living up to the terms of the contract. But when you understand what the Bible presents about this relationship of a marriage, you understand it's a covenant. It's not a contract. And you begin to understand when you look at that and you place that in light of God's relationship with his people. And we've seen this over and over where God pictures this relationship with his people as he is that loving husband, right? And his people in the old covenant, Israel, that's his bride. And we see she was an unfaithful bride. but he was the faithful husband, he was in covenant relationship with her, pursuing her, and so forth. We even see it in the New Testament, when we get to the New Testament, and the language is used of the church being the bride of Christ, right? He's the bridegroom, the church is his bride. And so when we hear language like that in a relationship where someone says, I'm not the jealous type, She can run around with whoever she wants to, it doesn't bother me. I'd have to say deep down it does, it has to bother. But, you know, you can put on the face and say, hey, whatever. Then we have to start to question whether or not there's any commitment, any love at all in that relationship, right? You have to start to say, well, wait a minute, do you really love your wife? Because I question whether you really love your wife if you can look at it that way. I really question whether you do. And so just imagine a conversation that goes something like along those lines. And the underlying issue there, when you raise the issue of jealousy, oh no, no, no, no, no. I'm not the jealous type. No, no, no, no. I'm not jealous. And again, think of this in terms of God's relationship with his people, this marriage covenant. Again, as I mentioned, this relationship, which marriage is a picture of that relationship. Is God OK with us pursuing other lovers? Is God OK with us pursuing our own personal satisfaction? Is God OK? And he just sits back and says, you know, really, I created you to pursue your own personal happiness. And I'm just here to help you along the way. And if I can provide assistance, fine. But if I can't, well, you just go find your true identity in whatever it is that makes you happy. And is he that way? Does he respond that way? Is he okay with us turning his standards, his laws, his morality into just personal preferences? Is he okay with that sort of relationship with us? You see, when we look at it and we combine that with the thinking that's prevalent today, then when it is that a relationship is all about pursuing personal happiness, satisfaction and identity and all that other stuff, then what we begin to find out is that the ultimate goal is to throw off oppression. The ultimate goal is to throw off anything that oppresses you from pursuing that. Any social institutions, any social convictions, throw it off. Political convictions, throw it off. And ultimately, you get down to the root of it, and it's let's get rid of God. Let's get rid of him because he's the ultimate oppressor, right? So is God, the question that comes to this, is God just that modern husband? There are a lot of people who look at God that way. There are a lot of Christians who start to give ear to this kind of talk. I mean, if he's not denied outright, there just is no God. But if he is, if he is there, and if this force is there, then he's got to be like this modern husband, right? He's got to be up there cheering for us, pursuing our own personal happiness. He's got to be that way. Is it okay to have an open marriage with God? Is it okay for us as his people to have this? Nahum's going to confront us with something about God in the context of this judgment on Assyria that sometimes might make us a little uncomfortable to talk about God like this. Now the prophets have talked about, so far we've seen, the prophets have talked about His wrath, His judgment, and it is clear. Why did His wrath come? Why was His judgment coming? It was the sin of the people. It's not that God was just sitting in heaven and said, what do you want to do today? Angels? Hey, go afflict somebody. Just go do it. Come back and tell me what it was. I haven't had anything going on. It's not that at all. His people sin. What happens? Here comes his judgment, these temporal judgments that we've seen over and over and over and over. Right? So if there is a rejection As we'll see in just a second, when we look at jealousy, if there is a rejection of His holiness, and if there is a rejection of His character, if there's a rejection of His glory, if there's a rejection of His honor, how's He going to respond? Linnean shows us. Nahum shows us. And what's interesting is Nahum's going to show us this response against a pagan nation. It's against a pagan nation, which I think may say something we'll get to here in just a minute. But Nahum describes this reaction. And the word that he uses right out of the gate is jealousy. Of all the things that he could have said about God's nature and God's character, right out of the gate, he says God is jealous. God is jealous. Now we've been looking at the prophets trying to discern how do we engage a post-Christian culture. That's what we've been trying to do. is take these prophets and see how is it that they engage declining and decaying cultures in which their cultures were turning their back on God and it was decaying and declining and in a sense using the language of they were confronting in a sense of post-Christian culture. We are in a post-Christian culture and it is running as fast as it can away from God. How do we engage it? What do we do? How is it that we can have conversations with them? How is it that we stand for truth and the gospel and so forth? And sometimes we see not so much what we should do, but what we shouldn't do. And one of the things that we've seen with the prophets that we should not do at all is join in. It'd be easy to say, well, let's just join. What's been heartbreaking is over this past year is to see people who said they believed the Bible, who two or three, four years ago, you would have said, man, they were the strongest. They were standing so strong on God's word. And over this past year, caved left and right with the mindset that, well, let's just join. When in Rome, right, do what? Do as the Romans do. When the world is taking over, just do as the world does. I mean, surely we have an open marriage like that with God, right? Surely he'll understand, right? Now, I'm gonna tell you how he's responding. He is responding, by the way, he is responding. And we get a hint at how he's responding with Nahum. And it's not so much that Nahum shows us exactly what to do. Daniel showed us some things to do. Nahum is more in this book, is more of what not to do, what not to do. All right? So let's look at it. Nahum's going to unfold in four sections. There's three chapters, but it's going to unfold in four sections. Now, let me just set the context for Nahum just a second. We read through this Wednesday night, and I dealt with some of the context, some of the background a little bit Wednesday night. The only thing you need to understand now about Nahum is Nahum is basically Jonah part two. Jonah part two. I want you to keep your finger here in Nahum. I want you to go back just a couple of books, and I want you to go back to Jonah, and I want you to go to Jonah chapter three. If ever going through the book of Jonah, Jonah sent to Nineveh to preach, Jonah says, I'm not going to those people. They're pagans. I'm not going there. Ends up in the belly of a whale. God delivers him. What does he do? He goes and preaches. And what happens? They repent. And you remember, this is what we read in chapter 3, verse 5. So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. Word came to the king of Nineveh and he rose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and satin ashes. The king repented. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles saying, let neither man nor beast nor herd nor flock taste anything. Taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish? Then verse 10 says, God saw this and he relented from what he was about to do to him. Jonah gets ticked off and you know what happens with him. Right? So here's the point. This is the same Nineveh. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. So this is addressing the Assyrians, this growing empire at the time of Jonah. And now by the time we get to Nahum, they are strong. What they've already done is destroyed the northern kingdom in 722 BC. They've already destroyed that. So what happened between Jonah preaching the Ninevites, Assyria repenting, turning to God, and then we get to Nahum? in which God's saying, you're as good as dead, Assyria. Something happened. Now, we don't know exactly how and the details and all, but what we do know is this, somehow Assyria turned her back on God. And that's the gist of it. There was this great revival, this great movement of God, this great awakening, and at some point, Assyria said, no more of that, we're going this way. We're going this way. And what happens? God says, okay. And we get nailed. And in a sense, it may be that, I don't know, this is speculation on my part, but it may be that Nahum is sort of like telling Jonah. Because you remember, Jonah goes up and he sits. I want to see what's going to happen to these people. This can't be happening. These are pagans. God's not going to save them. So he goes up and he sits. It may be a sense in which God's saying to Jonah, listen, man, you should have trusted me. I had this thing the whole time. I had this thing the whole time. You think I didn't know who they were? I knew exactly who they were. And so they turn, whatever happens, they turn their back on God again, and they say, we're not going that way anymore, and they go back to their evil works. Assyria was evil. Assyria was wicked. Assyria did horrible, horrible things. When Assyria came to world dominance, and they took cities, they took places, they took areas, they were horrible! Torture! Unbelievable torture in what they did. They were wicked. They were horrible in what they did. And so Nahum, you see the first part of this, the burden against Nineveh. This is Assyria. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. There's the interesting thing about Nahum. It says the book. Nahum is beautiful poetry. Nahum unfolds like a beautiful poetic work. Nahum's not preaching. Like we've seen the other prophets who preached over a period of time and then their messages were written down. Nahum's a book. Nahum's writing. You see that? The book of the vision of Nahum the Elishite. We know nothing about Nahum. We know hardly anything about Elish. But that's the title. That's how it starts. But then it starts, the first thing we see in this is a beautiful hymn of victory. Because this reads like the Psalms. And it's this beautiful hymn of victory and it starts with the first thing that it says about God is God is jealous and the Lord avenges. Why does He avenge? It's because of His jealousy that He avenges. The Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries. You see how many times avenges, vengeance is mentioned? Three times here in connection with jealousy. And he reserves wrath for his enemies. But then here comes the second thing that he says about God. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. Man, he's jealous. See, in our understanding of jealous, we fly off the handle, right? You ever had a jealous fit? Have you? You just get on a rage over jealous, and then you calm down and you go, wow, that's pretty stupid. See, God's jealousy is not like that. It's not the green-eyed monster that's a vice in us and can be a vice in us, right? I mean, it can be a vice and it can be bad. But Nahum says the Lord is slow to anger. He's great in power, but He's slow in anger. The New Testament talks about this in terms of being long-suffering. He's patient. He's patient. He doesn't zap us every time we sin, does He? Can you imagine before you became a believer if he zapped you every time you sinned? How long would it take before there's no one left? He's patient, long-suffering. He's slow to anger. He's not flying off the handle. He's great in power, though. Don't you forget that. And here's another interesting phrase, "...and will not at all acquit the wicked." Well, hang on a second. What about what Paul says in Romans 4, verse 5? It's God who justifies the ungodly. You know what's interesting about this section? It's taken directly from Exodus chapter 34. It's taken directly from Exodus chapter 34. In that section where Moses is writing, we see these same things there as Moses is writing all the way back in the book of Exodus. He's jealous. The Lord's slow to anger. He's not going to acquit the wicked. Moses said that. So how is it that we get to Paul and Paul says he justifies ungodly people? How does he do that and still remain God and just and all that? How did he do it? The cross. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how he justifies ungodly people because Christ paid our price. He took our sin. He took the wrath of God on the cross and so forth. Then he continues on this, the Lord has his way, he's sovereign, he has his way, and all this. But then look down at verse 7, here comes another one. The Lord is good, he's jealous, he's long-suffering, and he's good. This is a hymn of victory about God. By the way, verse 6 says, who can stand before His indignation? It's a rhetorical question. These rhetorical questions occur in the book of Naaman. Who can stand? Nobody can stand. Remember the book of Revelation? Who can stand? No one can stand except those in Christ. Those in Christ, that's who will stand. That's who will stand. What about this jealousy then? Does it bother you that the Bible says that God is jealous? Does it make you You like power, don't you? You like faithful, don't you? You like sovereign, don't you? You like love, don't you? Well, you really can't understand love unless you understand his jealousy. Because his jealousy is connected to his covenant relationship. It's tied to that relationship. Let me read to you a couple things. On Sunday nights, we went through a book by J.I. Packer. knowing God. And Packer had a chapter on the jealousy of God, the jealous God. And he brought out some things that were just brilliant. And he says, the jealous God, doesn't it sound offensive? Oh my gosh. For we know jealousy, that green-eyed monster is a vice. One of the most cancerous and soul-destroying vices there is. Whereas God, we are sure, is perfectly good. I mean, that's what Nahum's just said. He's good, right? How then could anyone ever imagine that jealousy is found in God? How could we ever imagine that? Nobody would imagine that God is jealous. And yet we see over and over here in Nahum, Exodus 34, other places in the Old Covenant where it is clear God's jealous. In fact, His name is jealous. That's what Moses tells us. His very name is jealous. Oh man, what do we make of this? Packer goes on, he says, how can jealousy be a virtue in God when it's a vice in humans? How can he be virtue in God and yet it's looked at as a vice in us? Some people would say God's schizophrenic. Some people would say God's conflicted within his own self. Can you imagine using that kind of psychological garbage about God? Why he loved him in Jonah, he hates him in Nahum, God's just conflicted. No, God's not conflicted. God's sovereign and in his providence, has a plan, and he's working his plan. So, he talks about this. He says the biblical statements about God's jealousy are ways, this is the first way in trying to understand it, it's just ways of God communicating to us in human terms. We can understand something about jealousy, right? He goes on and he says, in the same way, God's jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy, and spite, as human jealousy so often is, but appears instead as a literally praiseworthy zeal, and here's the key, a praiseworthy zeal to preserve something supremely precious. Why is he jealous for his people? Because he's going to Preserve something precious. Why would I be jealous of my wife? Well, reflecting God's character, I would be jealous of my wife to preserve her purity and preserve her covenant faithfulness to God. That's why I would be jealous of my wife. That's why I'd be jealous and protect her and protect those things that threaten her. Now we're starting to see This is where Nahum's going with jealousy. What's threatening his people? What's threatening his people? Well, it was Assyria. He says there are two sorts of jealousy among humans and only one of them is a vice. He says, but there is another sort of jealousy, zeal to protect a love relationship or to avenge it when broken. This jealousy also operates in the sphere of sex. There, however, it appears not as a as the blind reaction of wounded pride, but as the fruit of marital affection. As Professor Tasker has written, married persons, and this is why I used the illustration I did at the beginning, married persons who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of a lover or an adulterer into their home would surely be lacking in moral perception. For the exclusiveness of marriage is the essence of marriage. And if marriage is a picture of the relationship between us and God, then that is an exclusive relationship in which there are to be no rivals. No rivals. God's not flying off the handle in a jealous fit as a jilted lover. God's jealousy stems from His preserving something precious. And what is that something precious? It's you, it's your very soul that He's preserving. Let something threaten that. Our God's jealous over that. He'll protect you. He'll protect you. He'll protect you. Packer goes on and he says, he meant that he demands from those whom he has loved and redeemed utter and absolute loyalty, and he will vindicate his claim by stern action against them that betray his love by unfaithfulness. Unfaithfulness. That scratches the surface of something of what it means when Nahum says God is jealous. Don't think of him as a jilted lover, going into a tizzy fit, and just wanting to break something because he feels like we've rejected him. When there's a rejection of him, when there's a rejection of his holiness, and when there's a rejection of his honor and his glory, God is going to preserve his honor, his glory, and his holiness. He is going to preserve it, and whatever threatens it, he's jealous. And what comes out of that? How does he respond? Vengeance. Vengeance. That's how he responds. That's pretty serious, isn't it? You see, that's exactly where Nahum starts with this. And it's talking, he's writing about the Assyrians. Because in the second section, after this victorious hymn that we see, this divine warrior that's coming, that's drawn straight out of Exodus 34. Here he comes. This is the one you're dealing with. See him. We're just saying he's seated on his throne. This is who's on the throne. This is who's on the throne. This is what he's like. This is how he responds. But then all of a sudden he begins to talk about this destruction that's coming on Nineveh. You see verse 9, as I read through this Wednesday night I said you have to pay attention to the pronoun you here. You have to pay attention to that pronoun because what Nahum's going to do in a poetic way is he's going to go in and out of talking about judgment and then talking about salvation. He's going to talk about Nineveh and then he's going to talk about his people. You see this in verse 9. You see, what do you conspire against the Lord? This is Assyria. What are you going to conspire against the Lord? What are you going to do? He's going to make an utter end of it. Affliction will not rise up a second time. You're going to be thrown down once. He's not going to have to do this again. Because when he does it, he does it and it's over. It's done. He's not going to have to do it again. And he goes through, he's talking about this destruction that's coming. But then we see verse 12, thus says the Lord. Though they are safe and likewise many. Assyria is still strong at this point. Still strong at this point. This is after 722 BC. Assyria starts to weaken probably sometime in the 630s BC. Nahum very well is speaking maybe 20 years before this weakening happens. There was a civil war that happened. There were two brothers that started to fight over the throne. Isn't that history full of that kind of stuff? Assyria begins to crack. And eventually in 612 BC, Babylon destroys Assyria. That's what God is telling Assyria. He threw the prophet Nahum. You're good as dead. And it happened in 612. And so you follow this. And likewise, they seem strong right now, don't they? But then he says when he passes through, though I have afflicted you, that you there is God's people. This is Judah. He's writing to encourage Judah. You, there's hope, here's salvation, here's deliverance. I will afflict you no more. For now I will break off his yoke, Assyria's yoke from you, and burst your bonds apart. Verse 14, he goes back to Assyria. The Lord has given a command concerning you, Assyria. What is that command, Assyria? You're done. I will dig your grave, God says. If somebody tells you they're gonna dig your grave, they're coming after you, right? God says, I'll dig your grave. Why? For you are vile. And then here comes a shift again, deliverance. Behold, on the mountains, the feet of him who brings good tidings, who proclaims peace. Oh Judah, keep your appointed feasts. Perform your vows, for the wicked one shall no more pass through you. That you there is God's people. There's deliverance. Then he shifts back again. Chapter two, verse one. He who scatters has come up before your face. Assyria here. Man the fort. Watch the road. Strengthen your flanks. Fortify your power. Go strengthen yourself, Assyria. Go call up reinforcements. Go line up your armies. It's going to do you no good. I don't care what you do to try to protect yourself, Assyria. It's not going to work. In verse 2, the Lord will restore the excellence of Jacob. Here comes deliverance again. Like the excellence of Israel, for the emptyers have emptied them out and ruined their vine branches. Here it is, Nineveh. You're going down. This destruction. And then what we get in the third section, beginning at chapter 2, verse 3, is this description of this destruction. It's graphic. It's poetic. It's graphic. The shields of His mighty men are made red. Was it their color? This is the approaching army. This is the army that's coming to wipe them out. And it's an awesome scene. They say that when Germany marched through Belgium in the First World War, When they marched through Belgium, it took something like 24 to 30 hours for them to march through these towns. And the army rolled through in this awesome scene of power and glory. And they said that when they came through, that the chains on the carriages and the chains on the horses at night made a spark on the pavement, made a spark on the cobblestone streets. And as the people of Belgium and these Belgium towns watch this army walk through in silence, in this order, their jaw just dropped. How can you stand against this? This is what, in a poetic way, Nahum saying, Assyria, look out your window. This is what's coming against you. It's an awesome scene. Do you see him? Maybe the red here is because of the blood on their shields. Here they come. They're coming in the day of his preparation to the spheres of brandish. The chariots rage in the streets. They jostle one another in the broad roads. They seem like torches. They run like lightning. He remembers his nobles. They stumble in their wall. They make haste to their walls. A defense is prepared and the gates of the rivers are opened. I shared Wednesday night, in some ancient accounts of the fall of Nineveh, it describes how the Tigris River, because Nineveh was located on the Tigris River, northern Iraq, Iran, that area. And some ancient accounts describe the fall taking place because all the ancient cities had these walls around them, and so the Babylonians had laid siege, but the Tigris River flooded and wiped away the walls. The Babylonians just walked in. Just walked in. Destroyed Nineveh, destroyed the Assyrians. May have happened. That may be a reference here. Verse 7, it is decreed she shall be led away captive. She shall be brought up and her maidservant shall lead her as with the voice of doves beating their breast. It continues, though Nineveh was old like a pool of water. She was full. She was full. Now they flee away. They're running. Nineveh, even your own soldiers are going to flee. There's going to be desertion. Your own leaders are going to say, oh, wait a minute, guys. Stay here. They're coming. You've got to stay and fight. Halt, they cry. But no one turns back. They're fleeing the battle. This once proud Assyrian empire It's once proud Assyrian empire. No one's going to turn back. There's no end of treasure, wealth, and every desirable prize. She's empty, desolate, and waste. Three words here. Empty, desolate, waste. This is total destruction that happens. The heart melts, the knees shake, much pain is in every side, and their faces are drained of color. You're going down. Assyria's going down. But then here comes the first of this statement. Verse 13. Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts. I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lines. I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers shall be heard no more. There is no more Assyria, no more Nineveh. Nothing. You won't find them. God's against you. God's against you. Now, the fourth section is this funeral dirge. is dirge. Again, remember, this is poetry. Woe to the bloody city, you ruthless people. It is all full of lies and robbery. Its victim never departs. The noise of the whip and the noise of rattling wheels, galloping horses, clattering chariots, chariots, horsemen charged with bright sword and glittering spear. There is a multitude of slain, great numbers of bodies, countless corpses. They were brutal. When they took it, they were brutal. And when they fell, it was brutal. It was bloody. It was graphic. Graphic. Why? Beginning in verse 4, because of the multitude of harlotries and seductive harlotry. They were involved in sex trade and everything you can imagine. And here comes the second statement, the second time the statement's made, verse 5. Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts. I'm going to shame you. I'm going to lift the skirts over your face. I'm going to let the nation see your nakedness. That's language of shame. I'm going to make you a spectacle. You're going to be vile. That's what I'm going to do to you. That's what's going to happen. Nineveh's laid waste. Who will bemoan her? Where shall I seek comforters for you? No one's going to be sad that you fall, Nineveh. Are you better than Noaiman? This is Thebes, Egypt. We do know that Thebes fell in 664 BC to the Assyrians. So Nahum's writing after this event, but before 612. You're no better than Thebes. Thebes fell. They didn't think Thebes would fall. But guess what? Thebes fell. You took it. I'm about to take you. I'm about to take you. And you know what? There's nothing you can do about it. Verse 11. You will also be drunk. You will be hidden. You will also seek refuge from the enemy. But you're not going to find it. And then here comes a series of taunts. These taunts to them. All your strongholds are fig trees with ripening figs if they are shaken. You are ripe for the judgment of Syria. Verse 13. I do have to point this out, so ladies don't take offense. This is the taunt of all taunts. You fight like a bunch of women. That's the taunt of all taunts. You're talking about a blow to the male ego. That's what he's saying. You get the picture? I mean, you don't go to a funeral and hear somebody stand up and taunt the person who died, do you? You don't go to a funeral and see people clapping and celebrating. Yeah, they're gone! Ah, they fall like a woman anyway. Good riddance. But God's saying this is exactly what's going to happen at your funeral, Nineveh, as the Assyrians. When you fall, they're going to mock you. They're going to mock you. And in verse 18, it closes this sarcasm. Your shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria. Your nobles rest in the dust. Your people are scattered on the mountains, and no one gathers them. Your injury has no healing. Your wound is severe. All who hear news of you will clap their hands over you. They're going to celebrate your downfall. It ends with a rhetorical question. What's interesting is Jonah ends with a rhetorical question. Jonah and Nahum are the only prophets that end with these types of questions, these rhetorical questions. For whom has not your wickedness passed continually? You've affected everybody. You've touched everybody. Your vileness, your wickedness. Assyria was a world power. Assyria was the most dominant empire in the world. And it's touched everybody. It's touched everybody. And no one is going to be sad Assyria. When you're gone, no one's going to mourn your death. All of this in context, this judgment against Nineveh, now it's easy to see that this judgment against Nineveh because of God's covenant relationship with His people, the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom in 722 BC. Now the northern kingdom they sinned and they brought it on themselves and God said this is what's gonna happen. But he's jealous. What does he do? He avenges. God's covenant relationship. On the positive side of this covenant relationship, he's going to protect his people, right? On the positive side of understanding this, in his jealousy, he's going to protect his people. He's going to preserve what's good and what's precious. He will avenge. But on the negative side, if I can use positive and negative, that may not be the best words, but on another side, on the flip side of this, you chase other lovers, He will discipline you. You chase other lovers, He will discipline you. If you be unfaithful, He's gonna discipline you. He's a jealous God. He's a jealous God. And in that jealousy, he avenges his glory and his honor. Some people say, well, that just doesn't make sense. Is God so egotistical that he's out for his own glory? We're thinking in human terms again, right? God's God. He's not like us. He is jealous. He avenges his glory and his honor. We can see that with His people. We can see that with the church. We can see that in our understanding of our relationship with Christ. He will not tolerate any rivals in that relationship. He's not going to tolerate that. We are not to love the world, we're told in 1 John. Do not love the world. James tells us in James 4 that friendship with the world is enmity against God. In fact, he talks about this friendship in terms of committing spiritual adultery. We can't give our hearts to the world in that way. We can't give our affections to the world in that way. But I think there may be something else here too, as well, with the jealousy of God. Because we can see it with His people. I think we connect with that understanding, right? But keep in mind, this is a pagan nation. Assyria was a pagan nation, even though they had repented. Is there something broader in this jealousy of God as we look at His creation as a whole? He created everything to His glory. And when He created it, it was good. It was perfect. Sin enters the picture. All of a sudden, with the entrance of sin, there's this perversion that happens. Everything's turned upside down. Right? Everything's turned upside down. Man rebels. We see in the early pages of the book of Genesis. We see that fall. Then we see after that, we see shortly after that, there's the flood, right? There's another great rebellion that happens on a big scale. And what did God do? How did he respond? The flood. But he saved Noah and his family, right? Then we see shortly after that, there's another great rebellion that happens. Tower of Babel. Tower of Babel. How did God respond? Scattered. It's where we get the nations, right? I wonder if there's not this sense of God responding out of His jealousy over His creation when His creation decides, we will totally, fundamentally reject you and your glory and your honor. And how did He respond? How did He respond? The world is already under His condemnation. You understand that? The world is already sitting under His condemnation. But I wonder if when even the world in its depravity goes so far A couple of examples, I could list a bunch, but when the world in its depravity goes so far as to say it's okay to kill babies in the womb for any reason, no restraint. When the world in its depravity goes so far as to say we are going to fundamentally redefine what it means to be human and reject the glory of God. How's he going to respond? Doesn't Nahum say something to us about that response? Yeah, Asiri had rejected him. How did he respond? And it's just so striking to me that of all the things that Nahum could say about God at the beginning, he says he is jealous! He is jealous. He created us for His own glory. And when we pervert that glory, can't you just see how He's going to respond out of His jealousy over His creation? What about the church? Man, I could say so much about the church. How is He going to respond when we not only say condone this, but we participate in it. We're participating in it. Nahum shows us exactly how he's going to respond. God's jealous and the Lord avenges. But see, here's the word. Here's the beautiful thing about it. Because if this was it, we could go to the very end and go to Revelation. We've already been there when it's over and it's done. And there's no hope. It's over. It's done. But here's the thing. There is still hope and time now. We can sink so far in our depravity as a culture. Sink so far in our depravity as a culture, but yet the grace of God can reach even into those depths and pull us back. And pull us back. Pull us back. It's not final yet. There's still time to turn. There's still time to turn to Christ. And this is one of the things that I think Nahum helps us see in engaging a post-Christian culture. Don't you dare join with him because I'm a jealous God. And I will tolerate no rivals. Don't trade my glory for the supposed glory of this world. Don't do it. Don't you dare do it. Don't do it. But also in that, turn to me. Just turn. Come to me. Trust me. It's not final yet. There's still time to turn. Christ will save you. Christ will save us. Christ can save this culture. Christ can save this nation. I've told you, and I believe this, at the end of all this, however it plays out, when it implodes, and it's going to implode, there's going to be a great awakening on the backside of this. There's going to be a flood of people turning to Christ. I don't know what's left, but there's going to be a flood of people turning to Christ. It's not over. It's not final yet. And so we need to hold that up to this post-Christian culture and say there's hope in Christ. But we also need to be crystal clear, just like Nahum, twice. The Lord is against you. He is against you in this. He is against you and you seeking your personal satisfaction and going your own way. He is against you! And we say it in love and compassion and say, you don't have to stand against Him. Just come to Christ. Then he's for you. Then he's jealous for you. You're in a covenant relationship with him because Christ died on the cross, was buried, and raised the third day. And all you've got to do is turn and trust him. Turn and trust him. Then we begin to understand something, I think, of the jealousy of God.